Pokémon Sword/Shield is Hell

This is the worst Pokémon game that I have ever played. I went in with modest expectations, and as the game proceeded, my feelings sunk and sunk. And then that ending came, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

Again, because past journals are deleted from the main platform—DeviantArt—I will recap what I think of the Pokémon titles I have played since 2022, the year I began to properly dive into the series.

I didn’t like Pokémon Emerald because it felt so confusing in areas and needlessly difficult; my opinion stands that it is a newbie-unfriendly game, but I wouldn’t call it bad. I like Pokémon Platinum. I really like Pokémon Black, and despite finding its story massively overrated, many of the other things about that game worked.

I then tried Pokémon Ultra Moon. It started fine, but the story didn’t go anywhere interesting, the gameplay was so restrictive and easy, and overall I didn’t finish because I wasn’t happy. At the same time, I had beaten Pokémon Red. That game is archaic; it feels dated even by late ‘90s standards. But at the same time, the lack of story meant less wasting of my time, and I could give some elements a pass because it was the first time they attempted this gameplay style. Plus, Blue is the best rival, it’s no competition.

Pokémon Crystal was the first Pokémon game I played, and returning to it, I think it’s good. Definitely suffers from Johto being a weak region with a strange creature distribution, but I like Crystal otherwise.

Recently, I’ve tried Black 2. While I could make a journal about that game, I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s not as much of an upgrade as fans hyped it up to be. I see that there is more content added, every human gets an animation, and I like smaller touches like the less derpy Xtransceiver faces. But the story is severely scaled back, and while the first game’s plot is terrible, the lack of story in this game makes it feel like a less engaging adventure. Plus, I just don’t like the rival here either. Still a good game, but a very disappointing one that feels like a discount Pokémon Black.

That leaves me with three generations I haven’t tackled: VI, VIII and IX. However, now I’ve beaten one game from Generation VIII. Pokémon Shield.

This Presentation is Shameful

At first, I thought people overexaggerated about the graphics in this game. Whenever people say that something looks like a PlayStation 2 game, I tune them out. I’m convinced they have no fucking clue what a PS2 is.

SwSh looks like a PlayStation 3 game; I’ve played many RPGs on that console that resemble this look, down to the shading style. And to be fair, SwSh runs better than many PS3 titles. However, when PS3 games tended to be laggy as fuck—thanks you, CELL processor—the bar isn’t that high.

The game has a good art style and the graphics are competent enough for the first move to HD. What I cannot excuse are the techniques that reek of PS2-era stuff. The pop-in is so noticeable that it’s painful. It’s literal pop-in, as they pop up like they’re in a children’s pop-up book. And it happens in every city, so I cannot ignore it. Not to mention, the draw distance for objects is so low that they will spawn in a short distance from you.

I would assume this is because the Pokémon have models with such a high number of polygons, but come on. The Switch may have been weak for 2017 standards, but it wasn’t that weak.

Beyond that, I have other complaints. Characters don’t change their expressions enough to match the cutscenes. During Leon’s conversation with Rose, he’s supposed to look angry, but he’s still got a big smile on his face.

Battles have mediocre cinematography for the most part. They get better during the stadium events, but then you wonder why many of the battles don’t have as dynamic a camera. The N64, GCN and Wii titles were more flexible than this game.

And why are battle arenas so inconsistent? When on a route or in a field, the arena is accurate to the surroundings. Whenever you’re in a gym or a city, suddenly the players are transported elsewhere, often to a blank void. It’s boring.

While the Pokémon models look mostly good, the 2D faces are so distracting in HD. What could be covered by low resolution is painful when blown up to 720p. Wooper is the most obvious case for me, just because its head is 70% mouth.

And how about that lack of voice acting? I, again, assumed people were overexaggerating how bad it would be. But seeing the game play out, no, it’s very awkward to have no voices.

They have so many cinematic cutscenes, and yet there are absolutely no voices to go along with them. Did you ever play any of the Kingdom Hearts Final Mix games on the original consoles? The many new cutscenes in them are weird because they couldn’t get new English recordings, so the developers had them play in silence. Now imagine that but for every single cutscene.

I’m not a gamer who thinks every bit of text needs a voice. Quite frankly, I find that equally trifling. Take Kingdom Hearts III, for example. Every NPC gets a voice, even though you really don’t need to hear them say everything. It’s slower, a waste of resources, and text cutscenes work fine as long as they’re not majorly important moments.

In any scene where there is text automatically playing, there should be acting in this game. I could excuse the absence on the 3DS, but not on the Switch. And don’t tell me they couldn’t handle it because of all the languages; there are nine languages, and Zelda on the same machine supports more. Even if storage were a factor, they didn’t choose the biggest Switch card anyway.

It’s unfortunate that I don’t have strong opinions on the music either. It’s a fine soundtrack, but not one of Pokémon’s bests. I enjoy Hop’s battle theme the most, which is the most surprising thing. Actually, Oleana’s and Rose’s themes are pretty good as well. However, we will get into their characters later, as that’s something else entirely.

I lastly have some small gripes with the sound effects. Pokémon cries are very quiet when they get knocked out. And on the field, there is an obnoxious popping noise whenever they spawn, which really highlights the bad pop-in.

So yeah, the game is shit from a presentation perspective. The graphics aren’t so awful, but the techniques that cover them up are, and the audio design is suspect.

Character Designs Are Pretty Good

The characters themselves can wait, but how about their designs? Honestly, next to SM, this has the most consistent set of quality human designs in the series. Even if I don’t find paticularly all of them, well, attractive, I can understand where they all come from design-wise.

Beginning with the protagonists, Victor is boring. He is. But he was part of a wider problem with male protagonists having to look generic just so Ash Ketchum could slip into their shoes, while the females—who often ended up as his partner in the cartoon—could go all out. And therefore, Gloria looks really good. Something about her gives me a dopey innocent vibe that I love, and her default outfit is more appealing.

I will say, I’ve kind of fallen in love with the look I gave her during this playthrough. Darker skin, black pants, braids, glasses, a more common cap. It was originally to have her resemble me more in my natural state, but damn, I love this style.

The gym leader looks are diverse as expected, and among them, Allister is probably the most breedable. He’s really funny to look at, especially the way he walks like a drunk. Bea isn’t in my version, but her design is good. Additionally, I’ve warmed up to Nessa, whom I previously wasn’t a fan of. Her shoes still look dumb as hell, but I can dig her colour palette now. Oh, and there’s Meloney. She’s not super memorable, however, Ice-type leaders are so rare, and she does a good job incorporating that type into her design. I also like that she’s a wider woman, something that is shockingly just as rare as an Ice-type gym leader.

Marnie is clearly the favourite from this game, as shown by the Internet. If we’re just looking at her design, I can see it. They don’t make her as generic of a goth as they could’ve, so at least that pitfall was avoided. Additionally, Bede walks a fine line between looking like a boy and a granny. But if I drew him, clearly I had to have some liking to him.

By the way, minor annoyance, but it pisses me off how people complain whenever you find a character attractive in this series.

“Aren’t they like 10—”

“I don’t care. They’re not real.” Seriously, this always happens, especially for the females. You can compliment the males all you like, but dare say you find a female hot on forums, and suddenly it’s endless FBI jokes. Kingdom Hearts’ fanbase is just as bad.

But moving on, even for the ones who I don’t get aroused by, of course, the designs are good and fitting. Come on, I don’t judge character designs solely by if they turn me on. I have only a few I don’t like. Rose isn’t terrible, but he’s not particularly interesting. Leon also just looks weird in a way I can’t describe.

Character designs check out. I just wish fans of this series realised that a good design doesn’t make for a good personality or story.

Pokémon Designs Are Whatever

I don’t have a lot to say about the Pokémon themselves here. They are what the series is mainly about, but in a way, I’m more interested in all the stuff revolving around the creatures. Nevertheless, I can comment on some of them here.

The starter trio is bad. And I say that despite liking Scorbunny’s line and Drizzile. The reason they’re bad is simply because when put together, they’re all so samey. And as a result, the third form never makes any sense. They all start off cute and loveable with the same body shape. They then evolve into creatures who are emo as fuck. And for the final evolution, they’re back to their original personalities, just with a slight amount of edge in the designs. Oh, and they feel more humanoid.

It just feels lazy, like they didn’t have different designers working on them. And Grookey’s line is ugly from start to finish, so I would never choose the Grass starter in this title. It’s no Aipom (though it sure evolves like Aipom).

Wooloo! Wooloo! Wooloo!

Yamper is cute, though Boltund’s design leaves a lot to be desired.

Hatenna is strange but adorable. Hattrem is even cuter. Hatterene looks like a buttplug-shaped rapist.

I love Morpeko and its demon eyes.

Galarian Mr. Mime is fucking terrifying with its face, while Mr. Rime gets a pass.

Galarian Ponyta is precious and must be protected. Galarian Rapidash is fine, but I prefer the Kantonian version.

Galarian Meowth is ugly, and its evolution as well.

Galarian Zigzagoon is an major upgrade over the unattractive original, and I’d say its evolutions follow suit. Big glow-up.

I could go on, but I really didn’t pay attention to a lot of the newcomers. By the end, my team consisted of only two Galarian creatures. It makes me miss that system BW had, where the main adventure locked you from naturally having foreign creatures. It forces you to get familiar with the natives, and I only see that as a positive.

Oh, one thing. Why the hell didn’t the starters have Gigantamax forms at launch? I don’t know if it’s part of the DLC or a free patch, but that’s ridiculous. They gave all these other creatures the luxury form but not the starters? No wonder Leon ends the game using Charizard instead of the rival starter.

My main team consisted of Cinderace, Boltund, Vanilluxe, Chandelure, Toxicroak and Quagsire. I also used Linoone a lot.

Dexit

Dexit does not affect me personally because I have not built up a collection of creatures over the years. However, I am split about the decision to no longer include all Pokémon within the video games since this title.

On the one hand, I knew this would probably happen. The whole gimmick of keeping every creature in the games was unsustainable after a point. Yes, I know modders were able to get them in, but modders don’t have deadlines nor do they have to go through a quality assurance test. There’s a reason this series stopped bragging about catching them all after the GBC games; by the GBA, you couldn’t even transfer your old creatures, so Dexit wasn’t the first time something like this occurred.

But a lot of the rage seems to be around the fact that the developers promised more work would go into the animations and other mechanics, in exchange for the missing Pokémon. And that didn’t happen. The animations are largely recycled and often pretty bad, Double Kick standing out the most. So I understand why fans don’t like this.

And I also understand why this messes with the series. It forces you to have a HOME subscription to house your creatures, and you can’t even be promised you’ll get to use them again. To me, the second point is way worse. Spinda, everyone’s FAVOURITE spotted panda who just so happens to be dizzy, is fucked on the Switch.

You can’t transfer it from Pokémon GO to HOME because they don’t want to change the patterns. You can’t transfer it from BDSP to HOME because of a coding error which could’ve easily been reversed but will never happen. And Spinda is in no other Switch game, meaning that this cutey is left dancing either in BDSP, GO, or the Generation VII games.

Every Pokémon is someone’s favourite, so it’s going to suck that they’re unable to use them all. Especially in a multiplayer sense.

I sympathise with both fans and the developers on this, as it’s just a difficult issue to deal with. And now that the series has over 1,000 creatures, it’s only going to get tougher.

Dynamax and Difficulty

Every 3D Pokémon game seems to have a major gimmick. XY has Mega evolutions, SM has Z-Moves, and SV has a system that changes typings.

SwSh has the Dynamax/Gigantamax system, where for three turns, your creature will become a giantess fan’s dream and obtain phenomenal cosmic powers. The only difference with Gigantamax is that creatures get new designs rather than simple upscales; aside from Garbodor, they’re exclusive to Kantonian and Galarian Pokémon.

I abhor this mechanic. Firstly, within the story mode, it’s so played out. Everyone who has the opportunity to take advantage of it will always do it on the first turn of their last creature. So there’s no variety whatsoever. Although, maybe that’s a good thing, as the mechanic is seriously busted. It makes everything a one-sided battle, and the only way you will stand a chance is if you can put the creature to sleep or be sure you can Dynamax your Pokémon while it has good defences and while it has maximum HP.

And if both sides are large at the same time, then it’s just continuing the shit that would happen at normal size, only bigger. If both aren’t large at the same time, whoever is larger just got an excuse to wipe out part of someone else’s crew for free.

This had to have been a mechanic thrown together at the last minute, as who does it benefit? From a casual perspective, it’s massively unfair. From a competitive perspective, it’s massively unfair. I don’t like Z-Moves in SM for a similar reason, but at least those are single attacks.

Now, you’re never needed to Dynamax to beat a single-player battle. I beat Rose and Leon without doing the transformation. However, you will be at a major disadvantage if you don’t do so, considering the other creature will have its stats rise should the terrain change.

I hate this mechanic so much, and I’m glad it died within this game.

There’s no point discussing the battle system otherwise because it’s the same old Pokémon style. All I can contribute is that the game is easy. I died twice, but it largely happened because there was a level gap. Once I got up to the gym leader’s levels, I never found myself dying. I’m not against the idea of having all creatures collect EXP (though there should be a toggle), but when you do this, you have to balance the game accordingly. That seems like a struggle SV also has, and I know USUM has it considering my experience there.

However, there are some neat gameplay touches. Managing the box outside of a PC feels great, and it makes a whole lot of sense now. We have phones, which are basically watered-down computers.

I also do appreciate the display on whether a move is effective or not against a previously fought creature, though it would be nice to have the option to disable it for veteran players. This franchise is in severe need of options.

The Gyms

I give this its own section just as point of mild praise. The gyms this time around attempt to be more varied than the ones in previous games, which were largely based around just following a simple path.

Here, there’s an ice labyrinth, a pinball-like side, the ability to collect creatures for one, etc. I appreciate the effort, even if not all of them hit the mark.

My favourite one is probably the ice area. It feels like a weaker version of a previous gym, but the concept is cool.

My least favourite is definitely the Fairy one with Opal. In that gym, trainers will ask you questions, and your stats will increase or decrease depending on if you answer correctly or incorrectly. That is an awesome and fun idea. I love quizzes.

But they wasted it by having most of the questions be jokes. How are you supposed to know Opal’s favourite colour? How are you supposed to know some random trainer’s breakfast?

Imagine if they asked you things that rewarded you for your gameplay skills. “Which of these types is Litwick resistant to? Ground, Dark or Fairy?”

The game does that a number of times, like with the detective scene in one of the hotels. It does that Paper Mario II thing of being a joke mystery with an obvious conclusion, which pisses me off because they could’ve had something interesting and fun there. But they just can’t commit to taking themselves seriously.

Well, that didn’t end up being so positive. But believe me, I like the gyms in this game more than the trials in SM, as at least they don’t try to pretend like they’re non-scripted.

The Map

This is the worst map in a Pokémon game. I don’t think the Galar region is the most boring aesthetically or culturally, as that might have to go to Johto. But Johto has more competent level design than whatever this game threw together.

To begin with, this game only has one remotely open area. The Wild Area. It’s the only area where the camera can be moved. Everywhere else? You might as well be playing a 3DS game, as there are strict camera angles and very linear paths.

This is not automatically a bad thing, even for an RPG. Disgaea and Persona are good examples of games being linear and also having fixed camera angles. But both of them have formulas that make sense within that linear approach, and they both have greater storytelling to detract from any gameplay faults. Pokémon, as I’ll discuss further down, does not have this.

Honestly, Unova has a linear map. Play those games again and you’ll notice how there is usually only ever one way in and one way out of a city, rather than multiple ways to get to a place. But I didn’t complain there.

That’s because SwSh has the problem of there being absolutely nothing to break up the routes. Routes exist in every Pokémon game as basic paths, some more advanced than others. But in every other game, your adventure would be broken up by a cave (a dungeon), exploring the inside of a ship, scaling a mountain, etc. This game only has one mandatory cave, and it’s tackled early in the adventure. After that, you just get a forest, and the rest is outside with nothing to interrupt the routes.

I think they meant for the Wild Area to serve as the greater connection to all the parts of the map. However, the Wild Area itself is so boring that I never returned to it outside of grinding.

The Wild Area made me appreciate why there has never been one single Pokémon game with all the previous creatures on the map. Because once you do that, the region starts to lose identity. In this area, it seems any creature within the Galar Pokédex can spawn, whether it makes sense or not. Why would a Vanillish be potentially in the same area as a Litwick, for example? What’s the correlation?

Beyond that, the game didn’t encourage me to go back there to get to other cities. It often wanted me to take the routes.

It’s as if they wanted this to be an open-world game, yet they couldn’t figure out how to do it without uprooting the traditional Pokémon plot formula.

All the towns look fine, I’ll give the game points there. There’s not one that I despise visually or even in terms of layout. But overall, this is a pretty poor map.

The Roadblocks

It needs its own section. Roadblocks exist in every RPG to stop the player from progressing further than they should. They’re necessary. However, some games do it better than others, and I’ll use two of my favourites to explain how.

Using Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door as a good example, you can’t leave Petalburg until you talk to the Koopa mayor. This is done to force the player to interact with the NPC, get a bit of funny dialogue and an explanation for what to do next, and then the player moves on. It makes perfect sense to need the mayor’s permission to enter deadly territory.

Kingdom Hearts II is actually a bad example. Unlike its predecessors, to stop players from entering certain areas, the game will simply have Sora or Roxas declare that they don’t want to go into that area. That’s frustrating since there’s no justifiable reason they can’t continue.

SwSh uses Team Yell as the dedicated roadblock for most of the game. You can’t get past this area? It’s because Team Yell did something to the bridge. You can’t get past that area? It’s because Team Yell is playing music. And when it’s not Team Yell, it’s something equally foolish, like not being able to move past the Wooloo or a tranquil Corviknight.

Past Pokémon games have roadblocks, but none are as frequent or as frustrating as the ones in this game. Could they really not think of anything else besides dormant animals and Team Yell?

Why the fuck can’t I move past these idiots? They’re playing music? Bullshit. Not only do we not hear music, but I can clearly push my way through them. Nobody would stop someone from advancing just because they’re practising a shitty cheer.

This is what contributes to the map feeling so small and limited. During the story, you can seldom advance when Team Yell is on screen.

The Awful Characters

Pokémon has had bad storytelling since its inception. Fans are either blind to this or simply aren’t that smart when it comes to judging narratives.

Somehow many of you think BW has deep storytelling despite the games painting the opposing side as generically evil. Somehow people think Cynthia is this amazing character despite the fact that she has a simple personality of being into archology. The standards for storytelling in this franchise are so low, even for video game standards.

However, one thing fans seem to agree on is that SwSh has the worst story. For many people, this is the game where the story actively hurt their enjoyment of the title. Just like with the graphics and lack of voice acting, I thought this was exaggerated.

It’s not. This is the worst Pokémon story, and that is saying something when there’s so much competition.

Hop is the worst rival in this series, by far. I already wasn’t a fan of Hau, but Indian Hau here is a whole new level of hell.

He’s painfully repetitive and one-note. All he cares about is talking about how great his brother his and how he wants to beat him to become the champion. Those are his only two traits.

By the end of the game, I was convinced Hop had some deeper feelings for his brother. It’s one thing to see your sibling as your hero, and I understand strong family love. But Hop can’t go a minute without mentioning something about Leon. If you asked him to draw Leon’s dick, he could perfectly do it.

Frustratingly, he always makes it a point to emphasise that we’re rivals. And moreover, he wants me to be his rival so that I can make him stronger, and not so he can help me in any way. In addition to being annoying, he’s also selfish, which ruins the likeability aspect. Likeability is important considering the game clearly wants us to like Hop as a friend. But he comes off like a clingy boyfriend who needs attention all the time.

Not to mention the fact that this boy’s a dumbass who forgets everything. Yes, Hop, I fucking get it! I know about super effective moves! Stop saying it in every damn match!

People say he goes through an arc, but I don’t see it at all. He gets a little sad that Bede beat him in a battle, but it’s inconsistent because I’d beaten him multiple times. And after going through a faux depression phase, he’s back to wanting to be the champion again and depending on me to be his rival.

Fuck Hop. Fuck Hop hard. He is such a waste of space, and I felt my soul leave my body every time I saw him and his $10 haircut. Hau may have been stupid, but once you see Hop, you’ll wanna marry Hau.

Though his brother isn’t too far behind. I think their mother was a druggy or something, as she pumped out two very simple-minded boys.

Leon has no real character. He loves to use “champion” as an adjective, and he likes battling. That’s it. They try to have a gimmick where he gets lost—a joke that fails considering this region—but we almost never see him get lost. Everyone around us describes Leon as being this cool figure and doing epic stuff, but we never get to see him do anything until the ending of the game. That part where Hop shows us a photo of Leon defeating the Dynamax Pokémon really irked me, as it would’ve been cool to watch him in battle over hearing about it. Show, don’t tell.

And while not as stupid as Hop, Leon comes close. Why would he try to trap Eternatus in a standard Poké Ball? Wouldn’t the champion have Ultra or Master Balls on him?

Marnie is the game’s perfect example of how good design doesn’t make a good character. With how often people talk about her on the Internet, wanking to her as hard as the Team Yell squad, you would think that Marine is this amazing girl. If nothing else, she’d do some cool things.

But Marnie is bad. She’s not consistently written at all in the beginning. In the same conversation, she can go from being sweet to the protagonist to being an absolute cunt. Upon reflection, I appreciate what the writers were seemingly going for. Marnie living in this dirtier, poorer city (barely a city, more like a neighbourhood) would cause her to act weirder when around the more middle-class citizens. However, they don’t push the concept far enough, and Marnie herself doesn’t do anything or really grow.

We know she loves her brother, she loves her people (but thankfully she’s smart enough to get annoyed with their simping for her), and she has a very nice hamster. That’s it.

You don’t love Marnie. You don’t love her at all. You love Marnie’s body and your idea of her, and that’s all well and good. But fans seem to struggle when having discussions about characters, not realising that a lot of what they think of a character is stuff they generated in their head (very obvious with Cynthia). Pokémon is almost like Five Nights at Freddy’s in that sense, where the characters are almost entirely dictated by the fanbase rather than the games.

Bede is equally a poor rival. I appreciate that he’s mean throughout, something needed after the games since Unova only had nice rivals. However, they don’t give him anything that endears us to him.

You could argue Blue (Gary Oak) has the same situation in RBY, but I strongly disagree. Blue works because he uses simplistic writing to his advantage. We see him just enough in RBY, and he’s always one step ahead of us. He’s a dick the whole way through, but in a way like that older sibling you wanna prove wrong. Because the game wasn’t trying to tell a deep story, a lot of the rivalry with Blue is formed in our head and through the encounters, making our rivalry against him more personal.

The reason why this can’t happen with Bede is because SwSh tries to tell a grander narrative. Simple ideas for characters can’t be relied on, so Bede needs to actively have us want to beat him or even have a sort of respect for him. They try to give him a tragic backstory where his parents abandoned him and Rose raised him, but the scene it’s in is terribly shot and written. Plus, it doesn’t seem to affect his personality that much, as if he was raised by Rose, you’d think he’d be nicer.

Just like Marnie, Bede also suffers from inconsistent writing. In the unofficial semifinals match where he’s pissed about being indoctrinated by Opal to be a Fairy gym leader, he ends by saying he was proud to show off the greatness of the Fairy type. Like, what!? You were pissed a moment ago, so why are you happy now that you lost?

It’s genuinely impressive how with all four of these characters I named, they have the most minimal personality, and they’re still so inconsistent. No matter how frustrating Lillie and Hau are, the writers never had them act out-of-character.

They did Sonia so dirty. She could’ve been interesting, basically a better version of Cynthia with her interest in history, but they turned her into the exposition machine of the game’s background.

Team Yell is very obnoxious (roadblocks), but it’s not the villain team this time around. However, I think that’s what led to story issues in the end, as the developers couldn’t think of a way to have the main villains sprinkled through the whole plot.

There is no point going over the gym leaders since most of them don’t have time to do anything, a series tradition at this point. It’s disappointing that BW is the only time gym leaders felt like they had anything to do with the plot or the main villains. Of the leaders, Opal does the most, considering she abducts Bede. That part of her creeping him out was funny, in fairness, so she’s probably the most memorable personality wise.

Rose and Oleana are where this game really fall apart, and for that, I have to finally discuss the story.

The Final Act

First and foremost, why does the conflict only happen after the eighth gym? What the hell kind of pacing is that? Sure, past games escalated the stakes after the final gym, but they at least had a conflict beforehand.

This game has no actual conflict until you finish the semifinals. There, Leon fails to show up for dinner, so Hop and the protagonist set out to find him. I mean, this is a lame way to get the ball rolling in the first place. Oh no, Leon missed dinner!

Then Oleana shows up to explicitly tell the characters not to mess with Rose, even though she should have no idea they’re after him. She also bluntly states that he has a key and has given it to a guard, she shows them the fucking guard, and then she tells them not to bother interfering.

For the most part, the game hadn’t had story beats as unapologetically stupid as this one, so it’s very distracting.

Also, the gameplay here is very stupid. You’re supposed to find a guard with unique shades, right? That’d be fine if the camera weren’t so zoomed out! Oh, maybe like the game shouldn’t have had a fixed camera in the first place!

Then when Rose Tower is infiltrated, Oleana is suddenly obsessive about Rose and goes crazy trying to defend him. They even give her this super evil music. I can’t even call this a twist since that implies I had expectations to begin with. Oleana for the rest of the game was like a generic secretary. Never was there a hint that she’d have some dark side or that Rose was even up to anything suspicious.

Once we get to Rose and Leon discussing things, we get to the dumbest plot point in this title. The fact that Galar runs on Dynamax energy and will face a shortage in 1,000 years. Rose wants to awaken Eternatus, some very unstable creature, in order to secure the region for… I don’t even think they explain the length of time. He wants to awaken the creature on the very same day that the finals are being held, which Leon rightfully takes issue with. Leon even agrees to this plan, only asking Rose to wait until the championship match is finished.

The next day, before the player can fight Leon, Rose hijacks the monitors to explain that he awakened Eternatus and that Leon “forced his hand”. The region is plunged into the Darkest Day, some terrifying event where Pokémon Dynamax like crazy.

Where to even begin with this?

Why is Galar so dependent on this one energy source? None of the other regions use Dynamax energy, and yet they’re perfectly self-sufficient. It makes no sense to get all your energy from a legendary Pokémon who is unstable.

Past that, what the fuck is Rose’s deal? He couldn’t wait a single day? The crisis was 1,000 years in the future. This wasn’t the only day that Eternatus would’ve been wherever the fuck it was. Other than to further the game’s plot, what reason did Rose have to be so impatient? If the explanation is that he’s just that stupid, then how the fuck did he become a CEO of any company?

There’s no way to even make this plot work. Because not only is having energy derived from one Pokémon stupid enough, but even if the crisis was the very next day, people can live without energy for a day (all the time it would need to capture Eternatus). You ever heard of hurricanes? Tropical storms? I’ve been without power for nearly three days and survived.

And it’s not like Rose is even that proud of what he did. He realised he fucked up and took himself to jail. This is like if a president launched nukes into another country and said, “Oopsie.”

Then Leon throws a basic Poké Ball at Eternatus and fails. There are some cinematics. Hop and the player team up to defeat it with the help of the sword and shield dogs. By the way, those fuckers do most the fighting. This plays itself like that cutscene of Rayquaza in Emerald. What a goddamned disappointment, yet a fitting conclusion to a shitty twist that didn’t make a lick of sense.

Aside from a brief mention of what happened, the game completely forgets about this event and acts like everything is back to normal in three days. You’re back to fighting for the championship position, and that’s it. There’s apparently some post-game stuff, but I haven’t seen it yet.

Holy fucking shit.

Not only did this game have its entire conflict in the ending, but it managed to have the worst conflict of any Pokémon title. I perfectly understand why even if people were fine with the shallow stories before, this made them stop and think.

And I apologise if I come off a little combative here, but I cannot stand the defence that “Pokémon is for kids”. So kids don’t deserve effort in storytelling? That’s all you tell me when you say that. If the story doesn’t matter because this is for kids, then why did they bother having a story in the first place? Why would you ever include something major in a game if it’s meant to be ignored, and I hear this defence over bad narratives in games all too frequently.

It shouldn’t be that hard to tell a good story in the first place. I don’t place all blame on writers, as it is a collaborative effort, and sometimes games won’t do everything a writer proposes. But in this genre, I find little excuse considering RPGs have lots of room for cutscenes and whatnot.

Pokémon should not have silent protagonists. I don’t know if this is a controversial take, but I firmly believe that they are a relic of the past that needn’t remain in most current titles. It limits storytelling potential so much because the story has to be lifted by all the other characters. And at that point, we’re not even watching our hero do much interesting.

I mean, Zelda clearly also suffers from having a silent protagonist too, as the stories in these games are also often very simple and focus on everyone else. Majora’s Mask being a clear example, with Link having little meaningful interaction or relationship with these side characters. It’s just more tolerable in that franchise because Link is still treated as a character, just a quiet one.

Pokémon doesn’t even treat the protagonist as its own character. It’s just a blank template for the player to insert themselves onto. That works when you have a minimal story, but not when you want to tell something grander.

And on the opposite side of morality, would it kill Pokémon to have a good villain? I swear, almost every single one is terrible for no reason. Just give them understandable motivations and make them somewhat competent at their job. Don’t have Ghetsis with his generic taking over the world plot. Don’t have Rose being this non-villain for most of the story.

Of all of them, aside from Giovanni in RBY, Lusamine seems to be the only one I can call good.

Write! I know it’s egoist and silly to say that fanfiction portrays many of these characters better, but it does. You guys, even the worst of you, can write better than the Pokémon writers. And it’s only an issue with the mainline series. The spin-offs don’t have writing issues this bad. The show may be formulaic and basic, but it gives its characters some degrees of depth. It’s only the main series that suffers, which hints to me that the main problem is Game Freak itself.

Game Freak has a lot of problems, but from a writing and character perspective, it almost always shits the bed.

I’ve felt this way since finishing BW, but SwSh frustrated me in a way that awoke that hatred for the writing in this series. The climax quality is shockingly depressing.

Conclusion

This is the worst Pokémon game I have played, and I think it will be the worst Pokémon game I have played.

It’s graphically embarrassing for all of the technical flubs. The lack of voice acting is so distracting. The gameplay is super easy and has a terrible mechanic. The map is so uninteresting to explore. The writing hasn’t evolved since 1996, and the story itself somehow makes less sense than the Hoenn games.

Even without Dexit, this would be a bad game. Just because it functions well doesn’t mean it’s magically average. No, that’s the bare minimum you expect for a video game. It’s like rating a movie average just because the sound isn’t too quiet.

Bottom line, SwSh is shit. If you’re a fan of it, that’s fair enough. There are things I want to like about this game, and I see loads of potential in it. But what good is potential when the game does nothing with it?

Does SV get worse or better from here? I guess I’ll find out eventually.