Sword and Shield are a bit of a controversial title in the series, however there is still a very enjoyable time to be had. For the first Switch entry the graphics have been notably improved over previous entries, the world feels more alive with Pokemon encounters coming both on the overworld and in shaking grass. Though some of this feels a bit shakey in execution, overall the ability to avoid encounters you don't want is a welcome addition to the mainline series. While some environments struggle from muddy textures and flat geometry, some areas do look very pleasing and I found myself wishing there was more of a camera system implemented into the game so I could take pictures of my character throughout the adventure. One welcome addition is the expanded Pokemon Camp, like Pokemon Amie and Refresh before this implements all of your Pokemon into a camp like area where they can roam around together and interact. I found it helps you feel closer to your Pokemon party and feel like they are part of a family rather than secluded in their Pokeballs outside of battles. Cooking curry with ingredients found throughout the region is another nice touch, with a curry dex that's quite a task to fill even for a completionist like myself. The battle system remains mostly intact but instead of Mega Evolution or Z-Moves, this regions speciality is Dynamax battles. This can feel like a push to win button throughout the single player adventure, but when you get into the competitive battles you'll find that there is quite a bit more strategy and depth to the system than meets the eye. This does help highlight one of the main criticisms against the game however, the singeplayer adventure largely feels too standard and safe. The gameplay never deviates much from the simple rock paper scissors formula and though some opponents use Dynamax themselves, it's easily anticipated and countered due to the age old formula. With so many strategies and mechanics it does leave you scratching your head why the developers tend to play it as close to home base as possible rather than attempting to expand the formula more and hit some home runs. That said, the turn based combat is still as pleasing as ever, continually adding more moves and abilities that help shake up the ever growing scene. The characters you encounter throughout your gym challenge are enjoyable and their unique animations do give them a real sense of belonging to the region. while the rival does seem familiar there was enough nuance to his character to make me care about his growth, by the end of the game I found myself wishing that I didn't have to beat him and that the story could pursue a different ending than myself becoming League Champion. The story of the gym challenge is a simple, but rewarding one, but when the stories decides to delve into other concepts of energy and legendary Pokemon, it feels underbaked and a bit out of place. Still, Its a good enough story for the Pokemon series, but not one that ever reaches the peaks it should. The post game offers a small amount of content for a casual player and a relatively similar amount of content to previous base entries for the competitive player, but you can't help wondering if there were many missed opportunities to flesh out the Galar region and it's Gym Challenge in the post game world. The QoL changes are where the game really shines. Using any Pokemon you'd like has never been easier. Anywhere access PC storage, level up candies, move learning, breeding and a plethora of competitive friendly mechanic tweaks means it's easier than ever to feel like you can make a splash in online battling without the need to hack or spend endless hours breeding. I did enjoy my time with Pokemon Shield back when the game released and I have continued to enjoy the game to the day I'm posting this review. The raids, events and multiplayer have offered me more reason to return to this entry than XY or Sun and Moon, and the subsequent DLC (which I will review later) is a welcome addition and a great consumer friendly move forward. Though many of the criticisms may be valid, I feel a large majority of the complaints against the game are overblown. While Sword and Shield doesn't evolve the formula like it does it's creatures, it gives an enjoyable, if not slightly underwhelming experience. That said I still very much enjoyed my experience through the Galar region and Im excited for what the future holds.

I just want to start with a simple fact, I'm not the biggest Pokemon fan. I grew up with Pokemon in the late 90's-early 2000s and stopped caring around Gen 3 when I was about 12-13 years old. I followed Pokemon afterward, but the card collecting and anime watching had pretty much stopped. My wife, on the other hand, continues to be a huge Pokemon fan to this day. This is actually the first Pokemon game I have ever finished including getting the legendary Pokemon. It was a chore I will admit. It was enjoyable some times and other times I put the game away for a couple of months. It was kind of exciting, then some times just plain boring. So, this review isn't coming from a raging fanboy or a complete hater, so hopefully, this review will help people on the fence. I've played nearly every other game in the series, but not for long. I love the idea of running around a world catching monsters, the problem is the series falls under 30-year-old JRPG tropes that still haven't really gone away. My biggest hate with JRPGs, in general, are random battles. I feel they are time fillers, something to pad an extra 50 hours onto a 30-hour adventure. I want to explore more and these random battles prevent that when they're happening every 5-10 seconds. It makes me want to give up, and I usually won't play JRPGs with random battles. Sword/Shield has gotten rid of that with Pokemon that can be seen in the grass and random encounters that show up like exclamation marks and something following you in the grass. Yes, Pokemon are still confined to water and grass. That solves that major issue which made exploring more enjoyable. When you explore the Routes, Wild Areas, and Towns, there are random items scattered throughout such as berries, candies, DMs (moves), and various items. You can ride a bike to get around faster and you can also fast travel to discovered areas which is a Godsend. This makes trying to go to certain regions that much faster and simpler to get to. Wild Areas consist of level ranges and now that a weather system is in place you get certain Pokemon in certain weather systems for each area. Now, I had to run the system clock around to get to the month when I started wanting specific Pokemon. It's actually quite fun to go around widdling down health and catching these guys and building up your Pokedex, that's the entire point of the game. Now the game had a lot of controversy by not having the full Pokedex of every game prior plus the new ones. It just has a grab bag of some from each generation. For someone like me, it doesn't matter outside of the first three generations of Pokemon. I also found that older Pokemon were messed with and their looks and types were changed like Rapidash, Mr. Mime, and Ponyta. I'm not really a fan of all this switching around, but it's not hard to get used to. Battles are one of the main components of the game and they look nice. I'll give the game that, seeing these guys in crisp 3D models is great, but the Pokemon battle system is something I've grown tired of. I'm sick of all the long animations to get into the battle and all the dialogue boxes that pop-up. I know most JRPGs are like this but this is a 30-year-old trope that needs to change already. Some battles feel like they take longer only because of how little input I'm actually giving. When you introduce something like Dyna and Gigamax Pokemon that can grow to the size of buildings and do massive damage, I start to feel this is just filler and nothing that adds anything. These are literally just giant Pokemon that have powerful moves. It never turned the tide of a battle because either I knocked a Dyna-mon out in one hit or I could change too. The strategy behind Pokemon battling is weaknesses. It's grown more complicated over the years with additions like fighting, fairy, ghost, steel, etc. I had to some times look up weaknesses online to make sure I didn't waste a move on some boss battles. These were the most challenging in the game but I never died once in my entire playthrough. Sure there were some cheap shots, but I always managed to pull through with most of my Pokemon knocking out opponents in one hit. I could chew through an entire gym leader's stack with just one Pokemon. The balancing is really off compared to other JRPGs with it being overly easy or unfair. I wound up some times with Pokemon that my enemy was not weak against. You always want super-effective moves, and thankfully once you've battled that Pokemon once you can see which moves will work against it and which won't which is super handy. The visuals are another disappointing feature. They don't really wow me in any way. They look like HD 3DS graphics and have the same bland anime RPG style that most other games have. It looks decent enough, but I just wanted this game to be the big game-changer that it wasn't. The Dynamaxing, Wild Areas, and overall small additions didn't add anything new but gave us the same experience in a slightly tweaked way. At least the menus are more simplified, but things like a cooking mini-game and being able to play with the Pokemon by petting them just doesn't add to the experience. I felt bored most of the time because of how little player input there is, and I haven't even gotten to the story. Pokemon has never had an interesting story, Sword and Shield are no exception. It's just something to make an excuse for dialog, which by the way, is another 30-year-old JRPG trope, you can't skip the cut scenes. The first 2 hours of the game drag because it treats you like you're stupid. So many tutorials and drawn-out animations, cut-scenes, dialogue, each Pokemon game is a chore just to start. It should ask you if you have played a Pokemon game before and just want to learn the new features, but they always have to integrate it into a story with dialogue and cut scenes. I honestly can't really explain the story that much because I didn't care. You're trying to become the Pokemon Champion and some bad people get in the way to steal the legendaries away like every other game. Characters have no substance or appeal and there's no reason to care for them. Overall, Pokemon is a game that you either love or hate, and somehow I got lucky enough to be stuck in the middle. It suffers from issues in the series that have never been addressed such as the lack of player input, boring battles, story, and characters. I want to care about the world I'm in not just my favorite Pokemon, it has to be more than that for the investment. I want to see a visual change, stop making battles more complicated and make them more interesting, can we go after something besides badges? It's a fine game and is done very well, but from a jaded Pokemon veteran, the series has just stretched itself too thin.

This game is very mixed for me. It is the same formula as the previous Pokemon games with a few nice additions but a lot of flaws with it. I would give this game a 6 or 7 / 10 but because of it's price (£40 or more at current) I'm lowering it to 5/10. - This is the first and only Pokemon game I've played where I've abandoned my starter at the start of the game. All 3 starters and their evolutions are just ugly, boring and have no interest in them at all. In terms of new Pokemon this generation it is also mixed. There are some that have really good designs and moves, and then some which are just really boring and uninspired. The new forms for old Pokemon I like and the new legendaries I like. - The story and characters are probably one of the worst of the Pokemon games as well. I can't even really remember the story that much after finishing the game a few days ago. The characters are really annoying and bland, namely Leon. This game also lacks a clear "bad guy / team". - The graphics and performance at first I thought were pretty good for Pokemon standards. However the further I got into the game the more performance issues I got, mainly frame drops and lots of really bad pop in. - The gyms were what you would expect from Pokemon games. They're almost the same as previous games which I like. Only thing I don't like about the gym battles were that they took place in stadiums, where you couldn't hear anything but the loud and annoying crowd. Music and other sound was mostly non-existent. - I didn't like dynamaxing at all. It felt like an annoyance that was forced on me instead of mega evolutions which I personally really like. Some of the features I liked in this were the Pokemon jobs system, accessing your boxes from anywhere, character customisation and the league card system was okay. The camping system was mixed, although I liked the playing with your Pokemon part, it was very lacking in what you could do. The curry system I didn't really enjoy.