We’ve come a long way as trainers since we battled and caught a bunch of pixels on our Gameboy. The first core Pokemon game on a home console has finally landed and one thing is certain. It doesn’t lack ambition!
Generation 8’s hype season was the most secretive of all and Game Freak & Nintendo were very careful not to give too much away before the game’s release. One piece of news hit fans straight in the heart… The removal of the National Dex. In exchange, we were promised a more interactive game experience with better animations and the first steps towards a true free roam experience by introducing the Wild Area.
And no… They did not lie! This is by far the most ambitious Pokemon game ever and the few flaws do not outweigh the tremendous magic I felt stepping into the Galar region!
Story-wise the game pitches elements from the world teenagers live in nowadays; smartphones, influencers getting endorsed and being seen by everyone in the world! A new Dynamax and Gigantamax feature is added to make it all look like a grand adventure where you train hard to compete in the gym competition and become the new champion. But Dynamax holds a secret you’re yet to uncover. Your rival Hop picks the starter weak to yours but his brother Leon picks the remaining starter Pokemon that should beat yours according to the type advantages. So we have a “weak rival” but we immediately understand that Leon will be harder to beat further into the game and he should be seen as your real rival. Hop is kind and shows you around in the beginning of the game. He acts as your “tour guide” rival.
This handholding was a fear of fans and while it’s still very present at the beginning of the story it does get more intertwined into the actual game and story. One place where there’s no handholding is the Wild Area. Straight from the start you’re thrown into the wild and I had my LVL 11 Sobble looking into the eyes of an Onix that was already in its 20ies! That’s the Wild Area in a nutshell. You’re free to go wherever you want and you can immediately team up and get into the many raids! I cried out with joy when I discovered that you could connect to the internet with the Y-menu and actually see random players from all over the world! The fear of the Wild Area being an empty place was gone in seconds when I saw dozens of other actual players around me. Running together towards raids and seeing other people’s camps is just amazing and it makes the Wild area feel alive like an actual training and catching grounds for trainers around the world! This is a step towards an MMO-world. You can also interact with them and they’ll give you ingredients for your curry cooking!
First I was a bit skeptical about this cooking part but it is a fun addition and it’s the only way to heal your team in the Wild Area besides items such as revives or potions. There’s no Pokemon center in the Wild Area and setting up camp to cook is the only way to heal your allies among the sometimes overpowered monsters. If you manage to defeat an overpowered Pokemon you’ll gain a massive amount of experience points but you’ll never be able to catch it and add it to your team. This makes it actually balanced and you’ll want to take the risk sometimes to get some experience points. Playing with your Pokemon while setting up camp will also give you some experience to level up. If you want to boost more be on the lookout for white beams in the Wild Area that will host another player’s camp. Here you can even cook together with total strangers and play with both Pokemon teams to get even more experience points. One side-note, this is still a Pokemon game on a Nintendo Console so the interaction with the random strangers in the Wild Area is limited to cooking, playing with their Pokemon and getting preset messages like “Konichiwa, I found this ingredient in my bag”. So it’s still all safe and child-friendly!
“I usually stuck with the same team all game long but the Wild Area entices you to change your team regularly.”
“The ‘always on’ EXP. Share makes the game experience more effective and streamlined. “
The many raid battles are scattered in the Wild Area and while some claimed it looked to much like Pokemon GO!, I think it’s a fantastic way to introduce other Pokemon into your team rapidly on the go! Instead of seeing the same kind of team again and again in the games (a starter, a bug, a bird and a rat) you can now switch up your team and thus your entire gym experience by introducing a cool new Pokemon from the wide array of wild and raid Pokemon the Wild Area offers. Check the weather on the map to see where you can find that much-needed ice-type to gain advantage in the next gym for example. I changed my team way more than when I played older games.
I usually stuck with the same team all game long but the Wild Area entices you to change your team regularly. Another mechanic that makes this possible is the “EXP. Share” that is now hardcoded into the experience and cannot be turned off. As a veteran of the series I was not pleased at first but I do get it now! The EXP. Share is a symbiotic mechanic to the Wild Area and the entire game is build around it now! It’s not just to make the game “easier” as many feared. It makes the game experience more effective and streamlined.
The gym battles in the stadiums are amazing and are your moment to shine. It’s all about being seen and making the crowd go wild by Dynamaxing your Pokemon and by making a plain battle look fantastic and giant! The many camera angles during the Dynamax raid battles and the gym battles are well picked and they add to this overall feel of being a famous competitor in this league that’s televised and is by far the most popular thing to do or watch in all of Galar. It’s not just about making your Pokemon larger, there’s new effects to your moves and some moves even change entirely. Some abilities are real game-changers too. Nullifying status changes on which you or your foe rely can break the battle in your favor or against you as well. The Dynamax and Gigantamax mechanic are pulled off well and add to the grandeur of the experience.
“No this is not a Taylor Swift reference…”
The overall sound in the games is amazing. Game Freak really used this step towards a home console to add better cries for the new Pokemon. Wooloo sounds like an actual sheep! The score and other musical elements are revamped too! Even some menu classic tunes returned in an updated version. The new music had to grow on me first but some areas have great tunes and will become classics for sure. The devil is in the details in this game and it starts with how some items were reworked. Take the escape rope for example; you desperately need one when you’re stuck in a cave but they’re single-use only and if you forget to buy one before venturing inside a closed area you’re out of luck. Not anymore! The escape rope is now multi-use and that’s how it should’ve been since the beginning. Having single-use escape ropes doesn’t make your game harder, it makes it annoying. Sword and Shield finally remedy this and there’s a lot more small changes that again make the game more efficient and streamlined.
The online aspect is another thing that has been reworked from the ground up. There’s multiple ways to battle and enter official tournaments and the social experience in the Wild Area is well structured with the addition of a search feature for specific mechanics such as trading or raid battles. Switching from online to offline mode is easy and takes only 2 button presses. Connecting to the online mode is seamless and takes about 5 seconds. It’s all very clean in terms of UI and easy to use. Wonder Trade is back under the new “Surprise Trade” and you can start it up in a few presses and continue walking as the game will notify you when the trade has been completed. These animations are sped up tremendously in comparison with the old systems on the 3DS and this shows how Game Freak really wants to use the Switch to its full potential.
It all sounds like a dream come true and as the perfect game, doesn’t it? Yet there are some flaws… Game Freak uses the Switch’s full potential and so the Wild Area is plagued with some frame-rate issues especially when using the online mode. Some Pokemon, trees, and characters pop up out of nowhere and disappear again when you move a few feet away again. This shows the limitations of the engine they’re using. There’s some more small issues to be found and most of them are situated in the Wild Area but at the same time this area is the star piece of this game! I think we should see this as a first huge step for Game Freak into the home console world and they did make the step with tons of ambition. Is the final result flawless? No. But it is a big step forward from the 3DS era and it is the necessary step forward. Cutting the National Dex doesn’t make you popular, but in return, we’ve received a big step forward and an ambitious new generation that will only mark the beginning for Pokemon on Nintendo Switch. To move forward Pokemon needed its own “Breath of the Wild” with Sword and Shield!
