cashew | Pokemon Sword&Shield - Initial impressions

So, to add to my previous retrospective, I'm covering how I feel about Pokemon Gen VIII, Sword&Shield. Yeah, there's going to be spoilers, but hey, c'mon, it's Pokemon. The anime already spoiled everything for you.

Likes:
Camping/Cooking
Friendship
Watts
Soccer theme

Dislikes:
Dynamax/Gigantamax
Wild Area

Ambivalent:
Raids
Move Reminder revamp
Brilliant Pokemon
Resource balance

Note: I've only completed three gym battles so far, so it's very possible that new mechanics are unlocked that I'm not aware of. But for now, I think I have a pretty good idea of what to be expecting more or less. Although, again, only three gym battles so far and, if prior Pokemon games can be used as reference, there's usually at least one or two more new mechanics locked behind gym 4 (or whatever the progression equivalent: usually the half-way mark).

Likes

Camping/Cooking:

This is by far my favorite new mechanic. Camping (and cooking whilst at the campsite) is a mega combination of the Pokemon amie-Pokemon grooming-Berry crushing system from Gens V-VII. For the first time, we're seeing the Pokemon in the party interact with one another. And it is hilarious to see certain Pokemon get into a grudge fight with other ones while forming cliques with the ones they like. Pokemon natures actually have personality now, beyond just battling and it makes the entire world of Pokemon more alive.

Playing with Pokemon is still pretty straight basic, which involves either waving a toy or throwing a ball. I'm a little sad that we can't pet our Pokemon anymore, but that was never a super core part of the Pokemon engagement, and being able to watch the Party interact more than makes up for not being able to touch them.

And, to be completely fair, petting/grooming was a pretty bland mechanic anyway. (Although mechanically being able to remove poison/burn/paralyze without having to consume items was great.)

In replace of grooming (which previously just involved running a medicine swab over the pet for a bit), the cooking system achieves the same effects while allowing you to play an actual mini-game.

Cooking has the benefit of healing your Pokemon's HP, PP, and curing status, albeit it's based on how well you can cook. The base level, which is not the worst level, is Wobbuffet. Not doing anything will still get you this basic level, which heals half of the Pokemon's HP. (The worst level is Koffin, which involves basically fucking up every single thing you could be doing and only heals 1/4 of the Pokemon's HP.)

The next level up is Milcery, which usually can be achieved with some passable timing sense. This fully heals your Pokemon and removes status effects.

After Milcery is Copperajah, which is the equivalent of visiting a Pokemon center.

Then it's the elusive Charizard class, which doesn't give any extra benefits other than more experience than the previous cooking levels and a sense of satisfaction.

Friendship:

Happiness and affection stats have been combined into a single friendship stat. This actually makes more sense, as happiness and affection was really confusing to separate, and the whole point is to measure how close the Pokemon has grown towards you, so it doesn't make sense to separate the two stats. It does mean that happiness/affection based evolution now have to use the same friendship stat and that has it's own implications - mostly the result of Pokemon being much easier to evolve. Also, a friendship ball auto-maxes the friendship requirement, making getting a Togepi to a Togekiss that much faster.

Watts:

Watts is a new currency earned from visiting Pokemon dens, hunting down Brilliant Pokemon, and completing the mini-game Rotom Rally. Watts can be traded in at Watt traders for either expensive items or one-time-use TRs (which functions like the TMs of old ever since TMs became multi-use). It's useful, easy to collect, and what more is there to say?

Soccer theme:

So, the theme of Sword&Shield is...uh, English professional soccer leagues as far as I can tell. First, the gyms are all references to actual British cities with soccer clubs, like Sheffield (Turffield in game), Newbury (Hulbury), Stoke City (Motostoke), Manchester (Circhester), etc.

Second, the default gym battle uniform is definitely a soccer kit. You even have to give the kit a number for no discernable reason. (Mine's 10, because, well...)

Third, apparently gym leaders who do poorly can get relegated. The promotion-relegation system is one that's very much tied with the club soccer league in Europe (including the English Premier League).

Then there's the stadiums themselves. You enter, as a contestant, through the tunnel, just like in a soccer game. The battle begins at the the center circle, just like a soccer game. Oh, and the big screens inside the stadium is very reminiscent of how actual soccer stadiums are designed.

Finally, there's the fans. Yes, the fans are the Team Rocket of Sword&Shield. Hooligan, obnoxious, overbearing fans are the ones who stand between you and your way to becoming the champion of the league. Which is probably the most soccer thing of all.

Dislikes

Dynamax/Gigantamax:

Overall, I have to say that I'm pretty disappointed with the new gimmick in Gen VIII.

Dynamax/Gigantamax system seems to be a combination of Z-Move and Totem Pokemon. Dynamaxing makes your Pokemon big for three turns and its moves are replaced with Z-move-esque souped up versions of the moves. Gigantamax is available to a few Pokemon to make them look more unique, but otherwise functions exactly the same.

With the Dynamax system, Mega evolutions are gone. Dynamax are also limited to only the Raid and Gym battles. In the regular battles, where you'll be spending most of your time, the Dynamax system is unavailable. So Gen VIII is really pushing Raids as their thing.

Unfortunately, Dynamax is also an easy win button that trivializes the gym system. Since the gym leaders never have the full squad available, a Dynamaxed Pokemon can easily OHKO the gym leader's Pokemon. And gym leaders all have a tendency to save Dynamax to the end of battle (which makes sense, given that it's also their strongest Pokemon). So it makes things really easy to predict and all you have to do is make sure you have a good stall Pokemon in the team to stall out 3 turns and...boom, you've won.

So, while Dynamax does make for an interesting wrinkle in competitive battling, the in-game experience is pretty boring once you get over the novelty of "omfg, giant Pokemon whee!"

Wild Area

This is the much acclaimed "open world" entry to the Pokemon franchise and...ugh. First, in order to actually meet other trainers in the open world, you need to connect to the internet. Which I don't like already, as Pokemon, the game-game, as to competitive post-game game, is an inherently single-player experience and I'd like to keep it that way, thanks.

Second, the Wild Area is where the Pokemon Raids happen, but Raids are...well, a bit of a mixed bag.

Third, the Wild Area is kind of...confusing, with powerful Pokemon mixed in with the weaker ones. Which would be fine if there was a bigger in-game clue that you've accidentally wandered into an area beyond your means. But no, you just walk in and get smashed before you know what happened. Oh, and you can't capture Pokemon over a certain level until you've gained the Badges, which is...ugh. Just ugh. What's the point of carefully crafting a battle strategy only for all of that effort to mean nothing because the Pokemon is too high level to be caught? What happened to rewarding a disc 1 nuke for tactical play?

Basically, there's nothing done in the Wild Area that can't be done through the usual route system and there's basically no added benefit to this other than...well, it's an "open area" because that's the hot thing in gaming.

Ambivalent

Raids:

On the one hand, I like that Raids give you 100% catch opportunity for rare Pokemon by defeating it rather than the usual process of slowly whittling the HP down to the red-zone, then apply sleep or paralyze and toss an expensive Ultra Ball and pray that it works.

Also, it gives free TRs, rare berries, treasures, and experience candy that can help you level up Pokemon in your collection quickly and catch everyone up to the right level.

On the other hand, it's a boring Dynamax fest with lots of animation, takes forever to complete even though you only used one skill in one turn, and you have to run through the absolutely useless Wild Area and hope the reset got you a rare Pokemon. It's just straight up boring once you get past level 20.

Given how much you get from Raids, I feel like maybe just a tiny little bit more challenge might be called for. Like...maybe not Dynamaxing your Pokemon, but then that would limit the Dynamax mechanic to only gym leader battle and...ugh, that's even worse from a design perspective.

I mean, yeah, you could always voluntarily not use the Dynamax button, but...it's not like the Raid gets more interesting, because then the difficulty goes through the fucking roof, as the Raid boss resets any and all status effects, making a lot of the usual tactical Pokemon not helpful. (Not to mention you only get one Pokemon so your options are really limited.)

So, Raids are meh.

Move Reminder revamp:

In Gen VIII, the Move Reminder appears in all Pokecenters and can let your Pokemon relearn moves for free. Which is great. Quality of life improvements are always appreciated.

Unfortunately, if your Pokemon skips learning a skill during level up, the Move Reminder cannot help them learn it later on. Which is the suck.

So...yeah, if your Pokemon levels up without learning a skill (as happens on Jobs sometimes), then...that Pokemon isn't going to have that skill on its learnable list, which kinda sucks.

Brilliant Pokemon:

Brilliant Pokemon are Pokemon that appear in the over world with a Glow. These Pokemon have usually at least two Max IV stats, which makes them more worth getting. On the other hand, they're completely random and with IV training, it's questionable why you should even bother. IVs really don't do much for your Pokemon that leveling doesn't already solve, and leveling, with the experience candies, is so much easier. So it's better to just max-Level then IV train, making hunting Brilliant Pokemon a kind of pointless endeavor.

General in-game resource balance:

So, the game starts you off with 30,000 Poke-dollars. Which is very generous. Raids treasures and Watt-item selling generates money very quickly. This is probably the first Pokemon game where I managed to get to 999,999 money within the first three gyms.

But then...there's little reason to bother with resource management. While I'm of the opinion that people should choose their challenge level however they want, it also can get to the point where...what's the engagement? Like, I understand that a lot of people play with infinite-Poke-dollars cheat code because of all the limitations in the games previously, but there seems to be so little reason to need the money in the first place because of how much stuff you can get for free. In this case...it just seems a little ridiculous. Hidden items respawn and are everywhere and it gets to the point where there doesn't seem to be any real balance to the resource anymore.

And with the Raid system offering you a way to catch difficult to capture Pokemon, even the need to strategize how to catch specialized Pokemon becomes kind of pointless. There's literally no in-game difficulty anymore and that's...um, I can't believe I'm actually saying this, but that's kinda boring.

I'm just saying some kind of management should necessary for an RPG, even if it's baby's first RPG.

So...there you have it. My first impressions. I think I liked the Sun&Moon edition better.