Pokémon Sword and Shield — A bold evolution, full of stumbling blocks, but ultimately victorious
Originally published in November/2019 in cafecomgeeks.com, auto translated by Google Cloud.
The dream of many has happened — Pokémon, the best selling franchise in the world, arrived on the table consoles with Pokémon Sword and Shield for the Nintendo Switch, but this time, being the biggest controversy in the history of the franchise, in the face of multiple leaks and misunderstandings due to the lack of communication between the developer and the strict (more than ever) fans.
Pre launch
Having been in development since the launch of Sun and Moon on the 3DS, the game, located in the fictional Galar region, based in Britain, the season before the game’s release was extremely turbulent, especially after the release of Pokémon Let’s Go, even though it was well received. The wait for this title was stark: a complete game on the big screen, with graphic updates and all known monsters — but it was at E3 2019 that Game Freak confirmed that the title would not have all the Pokémon previously released, where they started a series of boycott campaigns against the game, involving hashtags such as #BringBackNationalDex and later, with supposed leaks showing dubious graphic performance, heavier as #FuckYouGameFreak.
Closer to the launch, the news came that employees of the company would have the lowest morale in history in the face of so much negative repercussion in the face of a project that, in many interviews, was given as a project very dear to the developers, these who had just finished. launching Little Town Hero, the first time the studio has attempted to carry out a new authorial project, whose launch was well received, but ended up being ignored by many who expected the new title of the company’s main series.
Game Freak’s history
Game Freak, which opened its doors in April 1989, did not start working on the Pokémon series. Its first titles feature Yoshi, Mario & Wario and exclusive Japanese locations, but they didn’t release the first Pokémon until seven years later, in 1996. Once the series exploded, with the exception of unknown titles, the company’s focus became Pokémon . In 1998 the Pokémon Company was founded, responsible for marketing and licensing the franchise — which now would be another strong factor in the franchise’s dominance, which left Game Freak’s hands, leaving it now only the development of the games.
What we get
Pokémon Sword and Shield, as previously said, takes place in the fictional Galar region, based in Great Britain. Its map is one of the largest to date, with comparisons to AAA games like The Legend of Zelda — Breath of the Wild. Now it is divided between routes and cities and the Wild Area, where the player can meet with some others, or alone, and freely hunt monsters in different terrains, climates and forms. The routes and cities work in a similar way to those of Sun and Moon, but with a much greater expansiveness and variety than the previous titles.
The controversial Pokédex
The Pokémon individually have some of the most different designs of recent times. Seeking to innovate, not only in this topic, the GF broke some stereotypes of Pokémon, bringing unique designs to replace the animals that always won some new version “prima”, such as Lucario and Zoroark, legendary trios, among others.
The new Pokémon are of an average quantity compared to the other regions. After the popular Alolan forms of Sun and Moon, the company decided to continue with the idea of renovating old designs, this time with Galician monsters.
Most new Pokémon are conceptually defined in their region. From farm animals to species adapted to city pollution, to fantastic and mysterious creatures, we have one of the largest varieties in any region since Hoenn.
The controversial Pokédex, which includes just 400, was a big target of pre-launch criticism, after all, we already have more than 900 individual monsters in the franchise, having some with multiple shapes.
However, at no time was there a need or lack of one from past generation not included — those who returned were abundant, evenly selected from generation to generation, type in type, concept in concept, so that no space is empty, either conceptually or in practice.
It is possible to find animals of all types in all possible areas, since they are now visible in the world, walking, fighting or simply existing. In the bush you can find sneaky or insects, while wandering around you can come face to face with predators and extra-active animals. It is also possible to find flying animals that will collide with you, starting a battle, not to mention the aquatic pokémons in and out of water that are better represented than ever.
This is all the more interesting when we realize that there may now be rare or unusual animal spawns that could only appear before evolved, hatched or given as gifts. This makes it all the more realistic — a world really alive. If something is missing from this game, it is definitely not what makes a Pokémon game … Pokémon.
The Wilderness, Dynamax and Multiplayer
In the wild, it takes on a much larger scale. Predators at levels much higher than yours run to destroy your team, storms affect all spawns on the map and the dens of DYNAMAX, Sword and Shield’s new exclusive battle mode, are the stars of the moment — where you can fight with other players against huge wild Pokémon or even GIANT ones, having a small chance of capturing them, guaranteeing good stats and, if giant, guaranteeing their special and unique form, also counting an exclusive blow.
The variety of GIGANTAMAX, as they are called, is relatively reasonable, compared to mega developments. In addition, the entire dynamax tool brings a good balance, as they are optional, occasional and temporary alternatives, each type having a single stroke that, even so, can be knocked down by a normal-sized Pokémon if well controlled.
Despite being based in Britain, creative freedom has given a timely chance to make the world even more interesting. The wild area, besides being expansive, has all kinds of terrain and climate — rocky, aquatic, freezing, among others, including climatic variations. This expands to routes and cities.
In addition, Wild Area brings for the first time a deeper multiplayer in the game. By connecting to Y-Comms, you can meet with other coaches, venture out with them, camp with them, make richer dishes, receive rare items from them when interacting, interacting and playing with your ‘mons, in addition to doing the immense battles against dynamax in cooperative mode, which further increases your chances of capture.
Multiplayer also features classic franchise functions, such as trade, battles and the old wonder trade, now called the surprise trade, that you can offer a Pokémon of yours in exchange for one of another random player.
Galar’s routes, cities and residents
In addition to the massive wilderness, the game features classic but expanded routes, larger and more relevant cities than ever before, as well as useful Galarians, who bring new uses and make the world even more alive.
There are only ten routes, but they are well distributed, crossing parts of the wilderness to reach cities. These routes and cities have a fixed camera, but kinematic, as in Sun and Moon, but even better positioned, allowing to see the horizon and most of the map. The presence of the fixed camera is questionable, especially in the face of such an open map, but it was probably the authors’ intention to focus the player’s attention, done in a way that does not disturb the immersion.
The routes have the same ways of encountering and battling monsters, but still have coaches eager for battles, even more varied than previous games. In these routes we find several, small buildings or people willing to provide a break in the rhythm to recover energy from their animals, take care of them and provide eggs from them, free train stations that can be used as well as the flying taxi, which replaces the function of fly from individual pokémons for fast travel, as well as other things relevant to the story.
Just like in the Wild Area, you can also make your own camp here — or use one of the NPC camps, which help you cook and give you extra buffs.
The cities are classic British counties — from the rural city to the port, to the polluted industrial center, to the village in the magical forest, to the gigantic castle, to the dark periphery and finally to the capital version of the game, which is one of the most beautiful places in this franchise — all cities are useful, vibrant and interesting.
The story and the most powerful and charismatic characters of the region
The Pokémon franchise, save exceptions, is known for modest stories. With the exception of Black and White and Sun and Moon, the stories are nothing more than the hero’s journey with minor changes in the protagonists and villains, save the characters who have always been charismatic.
In Galar, the story already starts differently. You and your rival will begin your adventure, but who introduces you to the Pokémon world is the champion, brother of your rival, Leon, known as the undefeated and legendary trainer of Galar. He is a personality whose image is in every corner of the region, almost like a Galarian superhero.
Closer than ever to his rival, Hop, his adventure continues by taking down gyms and meeting new characters, such as the president of the Galar energy company and the Sports League, Marnie and Bede, other coaches fighting for Leon’s position and discomfort and ironic team Yell, initially introduced as the villainous team in the game.
The region, like all others, also has a Pokémon study laboratory, managed by the almost retired teacher Magnolia and her granddaughter Sonia. Sonia was one of Leon’s rivals, but decided to focus on her studies and pursue her prestigious grandmother’s career. Magnolia’s guidance, Sonia is directed to accompany the protagonists on their journey to investigate the mystery of the dynamax and the legendary hero who saved Galar in ancient times.
Sonia is, not ironically and literally, the most charismatic character in the entire franchise since the creation of Pikachu. It is unusual in the franchise to have company not previously structured, such as rivals or initial Pokémon, but Sonia takes the best of other investigative characters in the franchise like Looker, mixes with the intellect of teachers like Sycamore and Kukui and closes with the region’s own elegance.
Hop, his initial rival and childhood best friend, also leaves something to be desired. Taking comical personality traits from Hau de Sun / Moon with the cunning of rivals like Wally from Omega Ruby / Alpha Sapphire and Barry and Diamond / Pearl / Platinum, we have a companion like no other. The development of his personality is profound, addressing identity crises with factors purposefully placed in the game in his favor. Its outcome in history, like that of Sonia, is beautiful and exciting.
In contrast, Bede and Marnie are extremely mysterious and curious figures. Bede follows the pattern of provocative rivals and strong personality in the franchise, such as Gary / Blue by Kanto and Gladion by Sun / Moon. In opposition to Gladion, he has a strong aversion to the protagonist, which makes him a great opponent in the game, both for you and for Hop and Marnie. The same is endorsed by President Rose, which makes him extremely unpleasant and debauched. Throughout history, a drastic change in events causes an unexpected change of destination for this character and its outcome is excellent.
Marnie and the Yell team have a relative connection. The team is a group of toxic fans of the character, who hinder their rivals with inconveniences along the way, even though Marnie strongly requests their distance. Afterwards, the origin of this team is revealed, which is more than friendly and the group changes its objectives for the better.
Marnie is a different type of rival. Despite being completely neutral to different situations, its objectives are clear and its determination is one of the greatest in Galar. When she became more involved with the protagonists, they became strong friends and she started to walk with the group fighting for the objectives presented in the story, mainly after the revelation of the real team of Galar’s villains.
Gym leaders are a show apart — each with their own peculiarities, now they are famous people in the region with activities in their gyms, in the league and outside. Some are rivals to each other, others are related to each other, but in general, they are great characters included in the story that often help its progression. Piers, leader of the dark gym, is also leader of the Yell team, musician and one of the most important characters in the game, because besides being against the use of dynamax, it helps to coordinate important missions at the end of the game to save the region from one ancient evil provoke by irresponsible people.
President Rose, basically the leader of the region at the head of several corporations such as the league itself, is an extremely interesting and compassionate character. His life is directed towards the well-being of Galar, seeking more and more to produce and conquer more for his people and for the Pokémon. His assistant, Oleana, is his opposite. Focused only on bureaucracies, it only cares about technical results and little is directed towards the common good.
Finally, Leon is one of the best champions to date — besides being a very powerful trainer, being the real rival of the game and having an initial Pokémon to his advantage, he takes everything that was good in all previous champions and condenses it into one striking and powerful personality, after all, he is the hero of Galar (jokes aside — he is basically All Might). Near the end of the game he becomes part of the protagonist’s group and that’s when everything gets more amazing.
The story, after the sixth gym, takes a very cinematic turn, not seen before in the franchise. For years he was asked for events like those in anime films, things that took place in a few titles, like Platinum, B / W, OR / AS and S / M. This time things got (forced joke) GIANT and the story truly extends into the post-game, with new characters and a grand challenge to capture the legendary, who this time are true characters.
What makes Pokémon… Pokémon
In the face of major content improvements, it is to be expected that the game maintained a decent quality standard in its system of battles and progression.
Taking advantage of ideas initially implemented in Pokémon Go and later Let’s Go, sweets are now frequent items in the game, received by defeating wild dynamax. Sweets are for any Pokémon, and in addition to the mandatory but moderate EXP Share, it is possible to decently balance your team’s progress, in addition to training new Pokémon at the end of the game.
The new combination of typing mentioned previously in the text was a major breakdown of paradigms, accompanied by new blows that take away the repetition of the old ones, now promoting frequent changes of state in the animals — and taking advantage of these changes of state to break even more their enemies — or members of your team.
Considering the distribution of the ‘mons on the map, it is commendable how the variety was thematically and technically well implemented. The game encourages you to meet new Pokémon and expand your team, combining devastating sequences and training different types.
The gyms, back better than ever, are now big stadiums. In Galar, Pokémon battles are a great sport that moves the economy and society forward. With light challenges to reach the leader, the main attraction, they raise the level of the previous ones, but still leave something to be desired in the level of obstacles.
Leaders, on the other hand, can be big challenges. With varied and sometimes unexpected teams, they require real preparation to be fought — or they will bring down your entire team in the blink of an eye, especially when using your Pokémon Gigantamax.
The League is no longer made up of an Elite of Four, despite having four major challengers before the Champion. It functions as a key tournament with the strongest challengers in Galar, as well as distinguished gym leaders. In the end, you fight the legendary Champion, Leon, in an epic and remarkable battle.
After the contextualized post-game, it is possible to return to the League to re-challenge challengers and gym leaders, now as the champion. It is a new take on the formula previously presented in the anime that was very well used.
Also available now is the famous Torre da Batalha, in the same city as the League. It promotes a challenge BEYOND the standard, with frozen level for all trainers and less Pokémon per team. Its replayability factor is immense, especially considering the rewards available.
The sinful performance of what could be the game of the year
Now, there is a need to talk about some very strong points of the game, negatively speaking. Pokémon Sword and Shield are a beautiful pair of games that, due to the lack of management of what is the largest franchise in the world, was not what it could be with the available resources. At the beginning of this text it was explained what Game Freak is — a small studio that has lost control of its franchise for corporate reasons superior to it. Not to blame her, as she is responsible for the quality of her own products, but the time given for these titles was definitely not enough.
The game suffers from SERIOUS performance problems, bordering on acceptable. Making it clear that the game is a work of art — its technical presentation is sinful and at the level of an inexperienced independent studio; this studio being one of the owners of the absolute best-selling franchise on the planet, who has worked in this for over 20 years.
Sword and Shield are POKEMON games. Titles often developed for notebooks — which did not come from the heart of Game Freak. Taking advantage of many features of Let’s Go, but not all, its limitations are stark in view of the given production capacity. The art of the game is more than appropriate for the game, there are no flaws in this one, but the game that is for a table console does not have cutscenes that exceed ten seconds and the characters move in what should be cutscenes in a conventional grid of portable games , that is, still in eight directions.
In addition, the game suffers from a terrible, terrible and frightening lack of optimization (which is correctable) in the Wild Area. Its parts have different climates, which are well made and presented, but their transitions hurt if connected to the internet, where other players appear on the map. Transitions that could have been made simply smoother so as not to compromise the immersion or number of frames per second.
Speaking of transitions, the rendering distance of the game also plays a part when displaying semi-static objects. Characters and trees (these trees that for terrifying reasons have terrifying textures) sprout on the map unnecessarily, things that could be corrected with rendering priority defined by approaching the camera (which has been done for more than a generation of console). Pokémon and map details don’t have these problems! Why are things so much simpler and less active unnecessarily poorly optimized? It’s clear that Game Freak had a hard time optimizing their type of production for desktop consoles, but instead of postponing it like any other Nintendo title, they had their launch charged by the Pokémon Company and released the game in this state that is not unplayable, but whose mistakes are notable and unpleasant.
The art of Pokémon Sword and Shield, despite its poor graphics performance, is a beauty to behold. The animations of the monsters are rich, the designs are magnificent and the world is beautiful.
The soundtrack of this game takes all the best that they have played in all titles and makes musical and instrumental references whenever possible, maintaining the originality and Galar theme. Taking touches of folk music with classic British rock, to modern techno in more frantic battles, we have one of the most varied soundtracks of the franchise.
Final touches to magic: The purity of interaction with our Pokémon
The purest thing invented in recent times that has been mastered in this title has been the camp with your Pokémon.
Not only can you interact individually with them and your friends, but you can play with them, between them, raising confidence levels, which increases their individual status, as well as cooking and feeding everyone, which serves as a Pokémon Center portable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sChdbF89cP8
Pros:
- The magic of Pokémon has resurrected;
- Best art since GBA;
- Wild Area;
- Encouraged collecting;
- History and characters;
- Replayability / Amount of content.
Cons:
- Sinful performance for the quality standard of the rest;
- Generation execution errors passed in what should be a game of the current generation.
Platform:
- Nintendo Switch (platform reviewed)
Score: ☕️☕️☕️☕️ (out of 5)
Pokémon Sword and Shield are a pair of games extremely difficult to analyze in view of their launch situation, historical context of the franchise and change of platform type, however the game exceeded expectations in the face of such controversy generated before its launch. Our experience has been golden, bringing what we were looking for in the franchise for a long time — a personal and fanciful experience in this rich universe. Even with their technical difficulties, Pokémon Sword and Shield scored as one of the biggest releases of the year not only for the console, but for the franchise itself and illuminate a hopeful path for what may come next — but be done with more caution and more time.
