[Sword & Shield] A second Shield playthrough and I am pulling my hair out...

Figure · Nov 19, 2020

I haven't played through SwSh since it came out, so a year ago at this point, and it is so much worse than I remember it being. I have always been more critical of the games but there is also a lot that I like considering I have around 210 hours invested and I am still playing. I decided to start a nuzlocke on another profile on my Switch to play with my girlfriend because she likes watching me play and commentating.

As far as the story goes, I remember really enjoying the stadium atmosphere and I really like most of the new Pokemon designs as well but the problem here, just like with Gen 7, is that you have no fucking freedom. I don't remember it being this bad, probably because I was hyped at a new release and I was actually reading the text (even though there is far too much of it). What I hadn't remembered, however, is that you essentially have no control over your character, besides the wild area but it is also level restricted. Every 20-30 seconds of story progression, when you aren't just exploring, not on a route, you get stopped by an NPC telling you where to go. In Hammerlocke it tells you to go to the Budew hotel or whatever and there is a fork in the road and instead of letting you explore and see the clearly marked neon green Budew sign, a god damn NPC is like, "HeY oVeR hErE iS tHe HotEl!!" Then once you get inside it is more just NPCs telling you what to do and with way too much dialogue. It isn't just Hammerlocke either, literally the whole story thusfar has been this way and it makes replayability nonexsistent.

My girlfriend has never even experienced the story and she is over it as well. I don't know how this can be called an RPG when you have no power as to where you go or what you do. Remember games when we were children? (I am 26 so I am really talking late 90s to mid 00s) Games like Ocarina, Majoras Mask, Gold and Silver and many other were "made for children" but were difficult and made you use your brain and you would feel accomplished when you progressed in the story. This shit however, makes me pretty upset. If you get this game and you aren't an invested Pokemon fan excited to play on release and planning on dumping many hours postgame, how the hell could you enjoy this? This is not a good introduction to the series for new people, if this was my frist Pokemon game it would be my last. Take off the rose colored glasses, replay this game, or if you have, tell me what you think.

Zeostar · Nov 19, 2020

I did a second play-through after about 10-11 months.

At it's core it's still a fun Pokemon game. The wild area lets you put together a team very quickly, and I liked how battling in the region was treated like a sport.

Sometimes it felt like the game was unfinished. The draw distance was bad enough to actually feel distracting. The Wild Pokemon felt robotic. They just wander and occasionally chase, until the draw distance removes them from the screen. Even Pokemon Snap for the N64 has a more lively world. The battles are just white backgrounds sometimes, which is confusing considering Colosseum and Gale of Darkness had backgrounds for every battle, and those were spin-offs.

squideyes · Nov 19, 2020

Yeah, I feel this. I think it's still a good Pokemon game, but the core story is only good once... and the lack of freedom (other than the wild area and DLC) feels rough.

Figure · Nov 19, 2020

squideyes said:
Yeah, I feel this. I think it's still a good Pokemon game, but the core story is only good once... and the lack of freedom (other than the wild area and DLC) feels rough.

What makes it a good game for you? I'm just curious because I wasn't really impressed with the "plot" of either DLC either. Dynamax isn't my favorite gimmick, and personally, I wish they had just continued with megas.

squideyes · Nov 19, 2020

Figure said:
What makes it a good game for you? I'm just curious because I wasn't really impressed with the "plot" of either DLC either. Dynamax isn't my favorite gimmick, and personally, I wish they had just continued with megas.

I'm not too sure if I can put it into words. There a lot of things that make a game good, to me. I guess the subjective feelings it evokes in me. For example, the stadium battles getting my blood pumping. Granted, there really wasn't much of a challenge that I would've enjoyed more, but I will look back on this game fondly. I understand a lot of criticism and concerns, nevertheless.

colours · Nov 20, 2020

you know, these kinds of takes aren't really uncommon. there's a lot of dunking on recent games because they're not "what they used to be" is the common concern. i don't want to water down those concerns by saying they're viewed with nostalgia glasses, but i can't help but feel that everytime there's criticism levied toward swsh, some variation of "it's not like past games" manages to fit its way into the argument. it's not like (insert poster's favourite generation/game here) is how the argument is typically framed, even if in a different way. that's not to say, however, that the games are free from flaws or that they can't be criticised, but i feel the argumented presented have to be at least fair and constructed with the failings of the game in mind, not simply because it's not like the game you once enjoyed in the past.

this is honestly the big problem with giving pokemon games fair criticism. personally, i find your claim that your character has "no fucking freedom" to be wildly exaggerated. the base wild area is definitely nothing to write home about, but credit where credit is due as far as the DLC areas are concerned because exploring those actually felt fun for me. i will make no defense to the plot whatsoever, as i feel like most people can agree it felt rather rushed, but for me, there's more to a pokemon game than the plot. as someone who cares primarily about battling and shiny hunting above all else, the plot is there for me to get through beginning to end and that's that. there were some meaningful moments, such as when crowned zacian and zamazenta were summoned to combat eternatus and i think their theme song was done really well, but overall the events leading to that definitely fell short of expectations.

there's lots of areas of improvement, even nowadays. for example:

solo dynamax adventures were implemented rather poorly, and it was clear that game freak either made zero attempt to make these kinds of things soloable or that they're pushing players to pay for switch online so they can play with friends, or really both. regardless, little excuse for the AIs to be this poor and unreliable. this makes shiny hunting significantly less enjoyable despite the increased odds. it feels like artificial difficulty to have AIs make dumb decisions just to make battles harder.
the isle of armor was interesting at first, but i can imagine it was a letdown to a lot of people due to the very short story length. as mentioned, as far as pokemon goes i'm not a big story person, but it was definitely noticeable to me how once you get urshifu, the story is basically over. it can be said that this is the whole point of IoA, but to wait all this time for a story you can do in roughly an afternoon seems like a letdown
pokemon following you could do with an improvement. not to say this is not appreciated! but i can see how it would get annoying to constantly have your pokemon disappear and reappear if you go too far. i'm not a game designer nor am i going to pretend to know how this could work in a 3D environment so points for effort for at least trying to bring a beloved feature back, i suppose. it could still do with a bit more polish.
for a story criticism: i'll repeat again that the events leading up to chairman rose rather dramatically enacting his darkest day thing just seem... rather out of nowhere. rather than slowly building up excitement, the game kind of throws a curveball at players by now suddenly making chairman rose and oleana villains. perhaps if they were secretly villains from the start, pulling the strings behind everything with the plot giving vague hints or something i can understand, but this is definitely a weakness.

for every weakness however, i must note areas where game freak has done well in my eyes. again, credit where it's due and all:

dynamax adventures with friends are a blast! if you and a friend are into shiny hunting, there's little disappointment to be had in the RIDICULOUSLY high shiny rate that you get (1/100 i think? or so i've heard). this means that it definitely wont be too long before you encounter at least 1 shiny out of a group of every pokemon that you catch. it's nuts.
there is /substantial/ difference between the environments in IoA and CT than in the base game. in fact, the wild areas in those games put the base game's wild area to absolute shame. take note that i'm someone who plays games other than pokemon (in fact, i'm a pretty big jrpg player), so this isn't a case of me not being aware that isn't room for graphical improvement, but it's worth noting the work that has been done to make the scenery look pretty, especially in CT.
i haven't finished CT all the way through yet (busy with another game at the moment), but exploring it has been rather fun so far, especially the methods for getting the legendary birds!
this is more for battle types like myself, but the item to make a pokemon's ability it's HA is most definitely welcome! as an additional note, although it's rather expensive, it's nice to have the option to purchase beast balls at last.

i'll agree that the main game is a bit of a slog to get through, but that isn't much of an issue in the DLC, as far as i can remember? i barely did any of the story in CT and i could already explore just about the whole part of it to my heart's content. i don't think you're stonewalled from exploring IoA either unless my memory is that poor, so they definitely give freedom to the player to basically ignore the story if they want and just get into catching pokemon (unless you want to catch the legendaries i guess).

i suppose the tl;dr of all of this is that the game appeals to people with different tastes. it's unfortunate that it struck a sour note with you and that you don't seem to enjoy it. i'll, again (just to make sure i'm not misunderstood) reiterate that these games most definitely have a lot of flaws, but that can be argued in just about every pokemon game. for me, the most annoying thing about current CT swsh is the dumb AIs and that i'm almost forced to rely on online to shiny hunt when i'd rather do it on my own, but eh.

Figure · Nov 20, 2020

squideyes said:
I'm not too sure if I can put it into words. There a lot of things that make a game good, to me. I guess the subjective feelings it evokes in me. For example, the stadium battles getting my blood pumping. Granted, there really wasn't much of a challenge that I would've enjoyed more, but I will look back on this game fondly. I understand a lot of criticism and concerns, nevertheless.

I agree completely about the stadiums, and I actually loved the Raihan fight. He had an actually decent sand team with several types and mechanics to get through!

colours said:
you know, these kinds of takes aren't really uncommon. there's a lot of dunking on recent games because they're not "what they used to be" is the common concern. i don't want to water down those concerns by saying they're viewed with nostalgia glasses, but i can't help but feel that everytime there's criticism levied toward swsh, some variation of "it's not like past games" manages to fit its way into the argument. it's not like (insert poster's favourite generation/game here) is how the argument is typically framed, even if in a different way. that's not to say, however, that the games are free from flaws or that they can't be criticised, but i feel the argumented presented have to be at least fair and constructed with the failings of the game in mind, not simply because it's not like the game you once enjoyed in the past.

this is honestly the big problem with giving pokemon games fair criticism. personally, i find your claim that your character has "no fucking freedom" to be wildly exaggerated. the base wild area is definitely nothing to write home about, but credit where credit is due as far as the DLC areas are concerned because exploring those actually felt fun for me. i will make no defense to the plot whatsoever, as i feel like most people can agree it felt rather rushed, but for me, there's more to a pokemon game than the plot. as someone who cares primarily about battling and shiny hunting above all else, the plot is there for me to get through beginning to end and that's that. there were some meaningful moments, such as when crowned zacian and zamazenta were summoned to combat eternatus and i think their theme song was done really well, but overall the events leading to that definitely fell short of expectations.

there's lots of areas of improvement, even nowadays. for example:

solo dynamax adventures were implemented rather poorly, and it was clear that game freak either made zero attempt to make these kinds of things soloable or that they're pushing players to pay for switch online so they can play with friends, or really both. regardless, little excuse for the AIs to be this poor and unreliable. this makes shiny hunting significantly less enjoyable despite the increased odds. it feels like artificial difficulty to have AIs make dumb decisions just to make battles harder.

the isle of armor was interesting at first, but i can imagine it was a letdown to a lot of people due to the very short story length. as mentioned, as far as pokemon goes i'm not a big story person, but it was definitely noticeable to me how once you get urshifu, the story is basically over. it can be said that this is the whole point of IoA, but to wait all this time for a story you can do in roughly an afternoon seems like a letdown

pokemon following you could do with an improvement. not to say this is not appreciated! but i can see how it would get annoying to constantly have your pokemon disappear and reappear if you go too far. i'm not a game designer nor am i going to pretend to know how this could work in a 3D environment so points for effort for at least trying to bring a beloved feature back, i suppose. it could still do with a bit more polish.

for a story criticism: i'll repeat again that the events leading up to chairman rose rather dramatically enacting his darkest day thing just seem... rather out of nowhere. rather than slowly building up excitement, the game kind of throws a curveball at players by now suddenly making chairman rose and oleana villains. perhaps if they were secretly villains from the start, pulling the strings behind everything with the plot giving vague hints or something i can understand, but this is definitely a weakness.

for every weakness however, i must note areas where game freak has done well in my eyes. again, credit where it's due and all:

dynamax adventures with friends are a blast! if you and a friend are into shiny hunting, there's little disappointment to be had in the RIDICULOUSLY high shiny rate that you get (1/100 i think? or so i've heard). this means that it definitely wont be too long before you encounter at least 1 shiny out of a group of every pokemon that you catch. it's nuts.

there is /substantial/ difference between the environments in IoA and CT than in the base game. in fact, the wild areas in those games put the base game's wild area to absolute shame. take note that i'm someone who plays games other than pokemon (in fact, i'm a pretty big jrpg player), so this isn't a case of me not being aware that isn't room for graphical improvement before there is, but it's worth noting the work that has been done to make the scenery look pretty, especially in CT.

i haven't finished CT all the way through yet (busy with another game at the moment), but exploring it has been rather fun so far, especially the methods for getting the legendary birds!

this is more for battle types like myself, but the item to make a pokemon's ability it's HA is most definitely welcome! as an additional note, although it's rather expensive, it's nice to have the option to purchase beast balls at last.

i'll agree that the main game is a bit of a slog to get through, but that isn't much of an issue in the DLC, as far as i can remember? i barely did any of the story in CT and i could already explore just about the whole part of it to my heart's content. i don't think you're stonewalled from exploring IoA either unless my memory is that poor, so they definitely give freedom to the player to basically ignore the story if they want and just get into catching pokemon (unless you want to catch the legendaries i guess).

i suppose the tl;dr of all of this is that the game appeals to people with different tastes. it's unfortunate that it struck a sour note with you and that you don't seem to enjoy it. i'll, again (just to make sure i'm not misunderstood) reiterate that these games most definitely have a lot of flaws, but that can be argued in just about every pokemon game. for me, the most annoying thing about current CT swsh is the dumb AIs and that i'm almost forced to rely on online to shiny hunt when i'd rather do it on my own, but eh.

I don't think this game should be trying to be like the older games I think it should be trying to improve. Every Gen has had numerous positives and negatives and I agree wholeheartedly that I lot of the praise of old Generations is because of nostalgia (especially Gen 1, oof). I am with you on most of your opinions, IoA was super fun for two hours and then was a big disappointment after. The Pokemon following is nice but very flawed, but her, they didn't need to add it and I appreciate the effort, something they can build off of. The story is just bad IMO and that cutscene where Rose lays out his plan for Leon and it isn't even animated? Horrible.

I don't agree with dynamax adventures entirely though, I really only run it with pugs and it can be a total drag pretty often with people taking the wrong Pokemon and playing badly. The story in CT also does nothing for me and I am in the camp of a Pokemon riding another Pokemon isn't a good legendary. And yes, being able to teach your Pokemon its HA is fantastic, caught a shiny Nidoking and gave it sheer force.

Raicheot · Nov 20, 2020

Worst gen yet and worst story yet too easy to complete game and pokedex that's including dlc which was a let down and I couldn't wait to finish crown tundra was tedious as hell and just hoping the next gen bring something better I've had enough of the gen now , I wasn't a fan gen 7 but after this I actually think it's regression rather than advancing

Figure · Nov 20, 2020

Raicheot said:
Worst gen yet and worst story yet too easy to complete game and pokedex that's including dlc which was a let down and I couldn't wait to finish crown tundra was tedious as hell and just hoping the next gen bring something better I've had enough of the gen now , I wasn't a fan gen 7 but after this I actually think it's regression rather than advancing

Yeah if I had to choose UsUm or SwSh I would actually have a hard time choosing, probably SwSh only because I can play it on the TV. 😂 The PokeDex is insanely easy, I have a buddy with Sword and we got the Dex knocked out a day after finishing the story.

bobandbill · Nov 23, 2020

Having reviewed different aspects of SwSh officially, but only done the one playthrough so far, I think SwSh is a mix of hits and misses.

I think the wild area, warts and all, is a step in the right direction, and it'd be even better when played with access to the IoA from the get go. The sheer choices you have in Pokemon even before gym one is great, after all, and the core gameplay is... well, still pokemon. It's fun. Raids and DAs are also potentially hella fun (pending your ability to get past bad NPCs or dumb people partners).

But other parts... well. Music is an easy step up from gen 7 overall imo. Graphics are if anything worse in areas - LGPE had actual battle backgrounds, and also a much better implementation of Following Pokemon. Y comm is terribad - even the system for partnering up in DAs is cumbersome (one of my very first observations of it). The story is so clearly rushed and reflected in the diminishing-in-interest Gym puzzles. A lot of these things should, as also said, be implemented with the aim of improvement. I don't think in many aspects this is achieved in SwSh, and in cases it is it requires the DLC to really do so.

And I see the comment about comparing SwSh to older games, but well, what is one to do? It's natural to compare it to past games to see what it's better or worse at, and while it's still a Pokemon game through and through, when you're seeing the same base animations (or worse in graphics) than the XY days, alongside a worse wifi system, it's hard not to make that comparison! I think it's more than fair to compare to past Pokemon titles, one just has to be careful to separate nostalgia and the like.

Figure · Nov 23, 2020

bobandbill said:
Having reviewed different aspects of SwSh officially, but only done the one playthrough so far, I think SwSh is a mix of hits and misses.

I think the wild area, warts and all, is a step in the right direction, and it'd be even better when played with access to the IoA from the get go. The sheer choices you have in Pokemon even before gym one is great, after all, and the core gameplay is... well, still pokemon. It's fun. Raids and DAs are also potentially hella fun (pending your ability to get past bad NPCs or dumb people partners).

But other parts... well. Music is an easy step up from gen 7 overall imo. Graphics are if anything worse in areas - LGPE had actual battle backgrounds, and also a much better implementation of Following Pokemon. Y comm is terribad - even the system for partnering up in DAs is cumbersome (one of my very first observations of it). The story is so clearly rushed and reflected in the diminishing-in-interest Gym puzzles. A lot of these things should, as also said, be implemented with the aim of improvement. I don't think in many aspects this is achieved in SwSh, and in cases it is it requires the DLC to really do so.

And I see the comment about comparing SwSh to older games, but well, what is one to do? It's natural to compare it to past games to see what it's better or worse at, and while it's still a Pokemon game through and through, when you're seeing the same base animations (or worse in graphics) than the XY days, alongside a worse wifi system, it's hard not to make that comparison! I think it's more than fair to compare to past Pokemon titles, one just has to be careful to separate nostalgia and the like.

There is definetly a lot of good thinds to be said about the game and probably an equal amount of bad that can be said. Awful storytelling aside, if you were just givin your freedom instead of having your hand held throughout the story, the replayability of these games would be great instead of the slog that it currently is. I do like the idea of the raid system and, if improved on, it could be a fantastic part of the game. A lot of the issues with making parties is how over protective Nintentdo is because, for some reason, they seem to think only toddlers use their consoles.

Valroxen · Jan 23, 2021

Writing this for the second time because first time I accidentally wrote an essay and about 3/4 of the way through I went back and realised it was like over double the size of the longest post here so hahahaha nevermind there lol. But I do see what you mean, on a second playthrough I noticed alot more of the issues and had a lot more problems with the game. Is there fun to be had? Yes absolutely. Do I like the game? Yeah I still sorta do. Is it my least favourite Pokemon game? By far unfortunately. But there are positives. Mainly: the DLC, the music, the Pokemon, Gym Leaders, Gym Challenge concept and Marnie lol (sorry am a sucker for her lol)

bobandbill · Jan 24, 2021

Valroxen said:
Writing this for the second time because first time I accidentally wrote an essay and about 3/4 of the way through I went back and realised it was like over double the size of the longest post here so hahahaha nevermind there lol. But I do see what you mean, on a second playthrough I noticed alot more of the issues and had a lot more problems with the game. Is there fun to be had? Yes absolutely. Do I like the game? Yeah I still sorta do. Is it my least favourite Pokemon game? By far unfortunately. But there are positives. Mainly: the DLC, the music, the Pokemon, Gym Leaders, Gym Challenge concept and Marnie lol (sorry am a sucker for her lol)

Essays are fine to share!

Personally I've preferred SwSh to SM, and still enjoyed both overall - I've just preferred older titles more given more content, etc.

[Sword & Shield] A second Shield playthrough and I am pulling my hair out...

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