Board 8 > So what exactly is bad about Pokemon Sword and Shield?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I mean, I'm aware of some of the prerelease complaints, like animations or some crap Idk

but anyways, I went to visit one of my best friends and my honorary niece got Shield

she was on the 8th gym leader and lost to him. So I examined her team and the gym's team and figured she needs a water type. This is just simply based on how many ground attacks they were using

so I asked here where was the last water area and she went to some ice place. We caught some whale dude. I googled his evolution and he would change in one level, so we started grinding the local enemies

then we got the big whale dude.

She had the fire starter, an electric dog, a fox thief, a big ass raven, and some rock turtle, but he didn't know any water attacks

long story short we had a huge struggle, but we eventually beat the last gym leader. We were hollering. It was crazy cause I was just applying my basic Red version knowledge, and in combination with her knowledge of the more recent stuff, we made quite a team. Having descriptions and stats of attacks and even the game telling you if its effective or not is super helpful god damn

Then she went out to some open area and we ran into some GIANT dragon fucker, his name was haxorz or something.

He was level 60 and her team was average 40. She started STEAM rolling us. I noticed the dog had an attack that caused instant paralyze, I was telling her to use that, and that was our saving grace. he kept getting paralyzed.

eventually we were down to our last pokemon, and we used a dusk ball on him and we caught him. This event was a little get together my friend was hosting and we somehow had a crowd watching at that point

so I had a good experience with the game. I thought it was fun. Shes apparently enjoying herself, having gotten the 8th badge

for a second I thought this game was like Pokemon Go, like the lets go games before. I thought THATS why everyone hated this game, but its nothing like that

so whats the dealio?

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No National Dex annoys the people who are fans of Pokemon that got cut.

No dungeons like in past games.

People just whine a lot about that first point and start looking for every little thing to complain incessantly about because they're still mad about the lack of national dex.

As usual, ignore the internet outrage.

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To me it just seems aggressively mediocre and Pokemon could be so much more, but it's still, y'know, fine. It's good Pizza.

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the biggest complaints I've seen:

1. a lot of the previous pokedex isnt avaiable (unlike most pokemon games)
2. doesn't break from the very simple formula of previous games
3. graphically no where near the standard of the generation

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I enjoyed it, but the developers were very lazy with it. It could have been so much better with more content and polish.

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She may have been on the 8th badge when you got there, but she likely was on the 5th or 6th just a half hour before.

There is just a ton of obviously cut content.

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swirIdude posted...

No National Dex annoys the people who are fans of Pokemon that got cut.

No dungeons like in past games.

People just whine a lot about that first point and start looking for every little thing to complain incessantly about because they're still mad about the lack of national dex.

As usual, ignore the internet outrage.

Yep. I'd say like 80-85% of the outrage are just whiny brats on the internet that are looking for something to be outraged over.

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the pokemon formula is solid, there can't be a bad mainline pokemon game as long as you don't fuck with it

people's (very legitimate) complaints revolve around the ceiling for improving pokemon pretty much not existing, you can build on the great formula with so much and it's been like 24 fucking years and other than some basic quality of life shit and graphical improvements they really haven't taken the franchise to the next level despite it being the most profitable franchise of all time that's worth $93 billion

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It's probably different for you if you haven't played since Red. But Pokmon has basically become a yearly franchise like Madden or CoD, and the quality of the games has been on a downward slope for a while now.
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If it's a really important aspect of the series to someone, I don't get why it's "whining." I've even seen people who aren't bothered by it admit that that there are reasons why it's a legitimate complaint. I've seen people bash/boycott things for much pettier reasons without this kind of resistance from the fanbase. It almost feels like they're saying "it's Pokemon, shut up and enjoy it," which to me is much worse than "I'm not going to play it because they removed something important to me."

As for me, I've largely fallen out of love with the series. The only game from Gen V and beyond that I finished was Y. Now, I still LOVE everything before that and still go back to it, but the new stuff is just, whatever. The lack of National Dex was just the final nail in the coffin for me on this one.

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People claiming the outrage was just people whining for no reason or because their favorite Pokemon wasn't included are, as usual, simplifying the issue.

People were upset to start with, yeah, some very much so. But a lot of folks were just kind of annoyed or disappointed. The outrage was because the explanation GameFreak gave for why they couldn't include all of them was flat-out bunk. They essentially said that they didn't have time to do models for every Pokemon because they're made from the ground up, and that the development time that they could have spent on that was instead directed towards polishing the game itself.

Turns out they imported models from Sun and Moon, so the first part was just a complete lie, and while it's obviously subjective whether they accomplished the second part, it's far from an unreasonable opinion to say the polish is largely absent when compared to a lot of modern games.

Then there's just a lot of smaller complaints which, again, may not bother an individual player, but that are still perfectly valid. EXP Share has no "off" option for absolutely no reason. I've heard many people say the rival is terrible or that the game is too hand-holdy. The trend has continued where features that people quite liked from recent generations have been removed.

All in all, I get the impression that a lot of longtime fans like myself would probably enjoy it just fine if we played. It's still Pokemon. But after many, many years of a real console Pokemon adventure becoming something of a holy grail, and after seeing what other much beloved franchises have put out on the Switch thus far (whether the comparisons are fair or not, and you can make your own determination there), Sword and Shield is just kind of a letdown.

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Underleveled posted...

If it's a really important aspect of the series to someone, I don't get why it's "whining." I've even seen people who aren't bothered by it admit that that there are reasons why it's a legitimate complaint. I've seen people bash/boycott things for much pettier reasons without this kind of resistance from the fanbase. It almost feels like they're saying "it's Pokemon, shut up and enjoy it," which to me is much worse than "I'm not going to play it because they removed something important to me."

As for me, I've largely fallen out of love with the series. The only game from Gen V and beyond that I finished was Y. Now, I still LOVE everything before that and still go back to it, but the new stuff is just, whatever. The lack of National Dex was just the final nail in the coffin for me on this one.

I think it's because a lot of people that whine about the Natdex being gone are kinda insufferable about it. They say Pokemon is "dead" and anybody buying it is "cancer" and blahblahblah, and then nitpick every single thing just to try and argue that the game is objectively garbage. Thus, a very vocal, toxic part of the community blew up a legit complaint into something ridiculous that people are just much more likely to roll their eyes at.

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NBIceman posted...

Turns out they imported models from Sun and Moon, so the first part was just a complete lie,

This is actually not a fair description of it.

They imported the meshes, which is common, but most everything else was new. There was a link of somebody comparing everything that goes into it, and there's a lot of different shading and maps that changed.

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StealThisSheen posted...

I think it's because a lot of people that whine about the Natdex being gone are kinda insufferable about it. They say Pokemon is "dead" and anybody buying it is "cancer" and blahblahblah, and then nitpick every single thing just to try and argue that the game is objectively garbage. Thus, a very vocal, toxic part of the community blew up a legit complaint into something ridiculous that people are just much more likely to roll their eyes at.

There's always extreme opinions at both ends, though. I've seen just as many people saying anyone not buying the game, no matter their reason, is toxic or stupid or entitled or what have you.

Why do we give so much focus to the vocal minority these days?

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Online implementation is very poor. Back half of the main game is horribly rushed with clear cut content and a nonsensical climax that even puts X/Y to shame. I also feel like too much effort was spent on the Wild Area, and the region as a whole suffered for it.

But the game for the most part is still fun. Raids were great for awhile, but got old. The new Pokemon were mostly great, and I still enjoyed my time with them. It's just disappointing the game couldn't be more than it is.

I'm not a National Dex complainer, btw. I always only ever use new Pokemon during my playthroughs and don't get into competitive, so missing half the dex really doesn't effect me at all. But it's because I don't care about competitive multiplayer that the lack of strong maingame is such a problem for me. I do however think that refusing to patch in the cut Pokemon post-release is still really dumb though.

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as a casual pokemon player who doesn't really care about any of the stuff the internet was complaining about, swsh was just underwhelming as a game

it's still Pokmon and it's fine... but also like, you'd expect a bit more effort in the first console entry for the mainline series

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Game has some issues but it's still pretty damn good and in the upper half of Pokemon releases.

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Dexit aside, there is one massive problem that was not mentioned here - they killed off exploration. Totally.

They have been doing this for while. XY maps were simple but still had some maze-like feeling, and Sun Moon were corridor simulator. SwSh are even worse.

All the maps are simple and short. They don't contain any secrets or puzzles.
Did you like getting lost in Whirl Islands and then finding Lugia? Did you like figuring out the way to reach the top and catch Ho-Oh? Did you like using the bicycle and ride over the pits to reach Rayquaza?
Too bad. Nothing like this exists in SwSh. Not even close.
Just looking at the map design of the old games makes me sad because we will never get a new Pokemon game like how they used to be.
I want to backtrack. I want to use HMs (even as a Pokerides, who cares) to reach new places I couldn't before. I want to solve puzzles and get rewarded with a legendary

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I was very much against the hate the game was getting before release and for the first half or so of playing it, but...

Last half of the game is barebones as hell. Tons of obviously cut content, even ignoring the actual cut pokemon. It's the shortest game in the series from an actual content standpoint, even R/B is longer by a few hours. Even by pokemon standards the story is a joke, which is a real shame because the characters are great but not utilized at all.

The big open wild area that is the focus of the gen runs like embarrassing garbage, constantly stuttering with 15 frames if you're lucky, and the only Switch game that has ever crashed for me. Online is...I can't even call it pine, it just doesn't work. Even when I got online to work on a basic connection level to spam mystery trades, I never once managed to get a raid battle going in the entire game. I spent well over an hour total time waiting in lobby over my playtime.

It's just an incredibly lackluster pokemon experience, using the high production of the gyms as a shiny toy to dangle in from of your eyes, hoping you won't notice it's shortcomings everywhere else. And I must stress that this is IGNORING the National Dex issue entirely, I honestly don't care about that at ALL and it has ZERO impact on my dissapointment with the game. The most apt comparison I can imagine is that it's like the first release of an annualized sports franchise for a new console launch; completely stripped down to it's essentials and lacking a lot of established content because the devs are just trying to get the damn thing to work...which they didn't really manage to do, either.

Soundtrack is good.

Also I learned recently that the main villains were designed by my favorite modern mangaka, Land of the Lustrous creator Haruko Ichikawa (very obvious look at the promo art now), and the game's #1 sin is wasting these designs.

It was very rushed. Overall, the core gameplay loop is as fun as always and you can see the polish and care in some of the features. But other areas are devoid of polish. It seemed to me if they were able to work on some of the areas that were lacking, they could fix some areas like move animations and such, but they simply ran out of time in order to have a Call-of-Duty-esque yearly iteration.

Also there was some thing where they said they had a smaller dex cause they had to work on all new models for HD, but people looked into it and said the models were the same and there was a #GameFreakLied thing. Overall, I feel like the team just isn't good or experienced enough with HD development since the jump from the 3DS.


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The cut content wouldn't be so bad if the lack of polish wasn't so apparent in the rest of the game. If you transform Ditto into a Pokemon with a custom move animation, Ditto won't use that custom animation. It'll use the generic one instead. You can get a Razor Fang with Trick in the Battle Tower, but since it's unobtainable otherwise, they didn't program its sprite into the game (see here: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/259372-pokemon-sword/78291906). They've been using the same item sprites since Gen 3, so it's not like they had to make a new one for it, they just had to use the one they already had. So we got the worst of both worlds in less content and lower quality for the content we did get.

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That's really what it is at the end of the day. I honestly think Nintendo has some fault as well. The full truth will likely never come out, but from the looks of things:

-Sameish budget as the handheld games

-No new staff for console development on a team that has no experience in the field

-no additional dev time given compared to the handheld releases

-some major staff members devoting significant amounts of time towards Gamefreak's pet project, Little Town Hero (terrible game)

I've found the Wild Area to be very lackluster so far, especially how much it was pushed in marketing.

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For me combination of the pokedex (maintaining a living dex is the main reason I played the series) and the fact the first console game isn't a bigger step forward it's just a nicer looking version of the 3DS games.

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swirIdude posted...

No National Dex annoys the people who are fans of Pokemon that got cut.

People just whine a lot about that first point and start looking for every little thing to complain incessantly about because they're still mad about the lack of national dex

this sums it up, yeah.

swirIdude posted...

No dungeons like in past games.

and this is more of a positive than a negative. unless you really like being attacked by a zubat every 5 steps.

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Nanis23 posted...

Dexit aside, there is one massive problem that was not mentioned here - they killed off exploration. Totally.

They have been doing this for while. XY maps were simple but still had some maze-like feeling, and Sun Moon were corridor simulator. SwSh are even worse.

All the maps are simple and short. They don't contain any secrets or puzzles.
Did you like getting lost in Whirl Islands and then finding Lugia? Did you like figuring out the way to reach the top and catch Ho-Oh? Did you like using the bicycle and ride over the pits to reach Rayquaza?
Too bad. Nothing like this exists in SwSh. Not even close.
Just looking at the map design of the old games makes me sad because we will never get a new Pokemon game like how they used to be.
I want to backtrack. I want to use HMs (even as a Pokerides, who cares) to reach new places I couldn't before. I want to solve puzzles and get rewarded with a legendary

With that said
Game ia still charming. Gym missions were fun. Gym battles were epic with Dynamaxing and Gigantamaxing. Wild Area is a great idea (need a little polish). Galaraian forms evolutions is a surprising mechanics that I enjoyed. Most new Pokemon design are good. They didn't spoil 90% of the game pre release. Oh and no random battles byt instead Pokemon in the overworld is the best feature from Let's Go and I hope it will be like this forever

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Gym Gigantamaxing would have been cool if literally every single Gigantamax gym pokemon in the entire game did not die in one hit on the same turn they were brought in, no exceptions.

At least I got my 15 seconds of rad fake vuvuzelas each time.

Yeah, the game's fine, but corners are cut all over the place and it's really obvious that Gamefreak struggled putting this game together. It's a shame too, because the Pokemon, character and town designs and the music are some of the best in the series, I think.

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It's like getting a pizza from Little Ceasers. Sure, it still tastes fine but it doesn't satisfy you a lot of the time.

Except Little Ceasers makes up for it by being cheaper than the competition. SwSh is more expensive than all the other main games before them.

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I think things like raid battles and easier entry into competitive battling go a long way in giving it better legs than previous games.

If you only play Pokemon for the main story I guess I could see you being disappointed.

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I was enjoying it a lot for the first half (despite being quite disappointed about the Dex cut), but then a little after halfway through it becomes amazingly obvious that they were told the game needed to ship in time for the holidays and had to cut probably like 50% of the planned content for the second half of the game. In a particularly bad example, the town for the 7th gym is literally just a Pokecenter and the gym.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I was enjoying it a lot for the first half (despite being quite disappointed about the Dex cut), but then a little after halfway through it becomes amazingly obvious that they were told the game needed to ship in time for the holidays and had to cut probably like 50% of the planned content for the second half of the game. In a particularly bad example, the town for the 7th gym is literally just a Pokecenter and the gym.

Yeah it's quite bad
Also Ballonlea looks pretty but only has...two houses
Then there is the whole "bad guy Rose" out of nowhere

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I'm still not sure what the bad guy's plan was

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Neither did he.

Snrkiko posted...

I'm still not sure what the bad guy's plan was

Please wait for the anime or the third versions
They didn't have time for this
Please understand

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If USUM is anything to go by, they'll make the bad guy's plotline even worse.

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If you just want a new Pokemon game to play then it's fine, but it could have and should have been way more than 'fine'

I won't deny that I've been having fun with it so far, but they've cut corners in so many places that it's kind of painful to think about

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MichelBollinger posted...

It's the shortest game in the series from an actual content standpoint, even R/B is longer by a few hours.

With or without the grinding?

The game is solid and the new Pokemon are top tier. The series was eventually going to reach a point where bringing all of the Pokedex would become unviable, and that ended up being this game. As a big fan of fighting games, it happens with them all the time, and the community shits on it, then gets over it. Pokemon is just a bigger franchise than any fighting game series, and with mostly different fans, so they probably aren't used to it.

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demonfang178 posted...

With or without the grinding?

Who grinds in R/B? Starter + fossils at level 45ish are almost enough to beat the game by themselves. That's only a little over 200k EXP for the whole game, which would be about the same as getting your starter to 60 or the average full team to the late 30s.

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FBike1 posted...

Who grinds in R/B?

People who want to use more than to two mon. Yeah, you can probably counter the E4 with two but most don't play like that.

TomNook posted...

The game is solid and the new Pokemon are top tier. The series was eventually going to reach a point where bringing all of the Pokedex would become unviable, and that ended up being this game. As a big fan of fighting games, it happens with them all the time, and the community shits on it, then gets over it. Pokemon is just a bigger franchise than any fighting game series, and with mostly different fans, so they probably aren't used to it.

Fighting games arent about collecting every fighter. Pokemon is about collecting every Pokmon.

also it didnt have to be like that. There are a lot of things they could have done to remedy this, including something they already said they were doing in sun and moon (future proofing the models) that they then walked back on only to reveal they were lying about the reason for the walk back.

there is no excuse for gamefreak to treat the Pokemon franchise like they do.

I didn't mind the Dex thing but the game is so fucking short. I appreciated a streamlined story as the gyms are the high point of the game but I'd expect a little more post game content at least
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demonfang178 posted...

FBike1 posted...

Who grinds in R/B?

People who want to use more than to two mon. Yeah, you can probably counter the E4 with two but most don't play like that.

You're right, most use 1 in r/b
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It's the proof we'll never get the massive Pokmon console game we wanted (alla breath of the wild)

We're stuck with portable level mediocrity no matter what system the game will release on

With a 50% higher price

I think calling this "proof" that it will "never" happen is very exaggerated and silly to me

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I hope they'll get their act together someday.

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tcaz2 posted...

Fighting games arent about collecting every fighter. Pokemon is about collecting every Pokmon.

also it didnt have to be like that. There are a lot of things they could have done to remedy this, including something they already said they were doing in sun and moon (future proofing the models) that they then walked back on only to reveal they were lying about the reason for the walk back.

there is no excuse for gamefreak to treat the Pokemon franchise like they do.

See, I think this is kinda silly.

No other series has anywhere close to 1000 characters. Expecting them to just keep going and never cut a single one is kinda ridiculous.

The idea from the edit would be cool, but we also have no idea that they don't have plans to do something like that eventually.

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HashtagSEP posted...

See, I think this is kinda silly.

No other series has anywhere close to 1000 characters. Expecting them to just keep going and never cut a single one is kinda ridiculous.

The idea from the edit would be cool, but we also have no idea that they don't have plans to do something like that eventually.

Why not
They use the same models and they barely give a shit about balancing them. Most Pokemon are hit by power creep and were never fixed
Update movepools? With what new moves exactly? Steel Beam?
Most Pokemon are already "done" and they don't get many changes between generations as it is

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