Board 8 > Pokemon Shield Beaten!

(+) Yeah! (+)

Sword/Shield final thoughts spoilers below

-This was a stunning game, grogeous at most turns. Didn't see any real issues graphically
-Musically it is the best game in the series. Towns were literally bumping, and giving each character their own theme was really good. We are literally a step away next gen from each gym leader having their own unique theme.
-I liked the general plot for most of the game of focusing on the gym leaders after the odd Sun/Moon cutting. The twist at the end was ....kinda weird. Yeah we built up the plot of the regions backstory and I expected that to come to a head. Expected Oleanna to turn, the league officials turned evil....was odd. Then the chairmans heel turn just felt bizarre. I feel like they should have really bent into that insanity when you see him in eternatus egg shell and fight him. You cant redeem a character at that point. Also I caught God in a timer ball.
-The actual setup for the E4 equivalant was great, I still wonder if the gym leaders are random at the end or its always those 3 of Nessa, Psychic kid, and Raihan.
-The champion battle didnt let me down. That was my one complaint about BW, BW2, ORAS and XY...the champion battles all felt flat. It felt like the last tough one was DPP or HGSS, but this was surprisingly tough
-Which brings me to the handling of EXP Share. I thought it was a smart shift in the end and I initially was skeptical. The issue is spend too much time in the wild area or grinding and you will break the balance. But catching what I needed and fighting every trainer left me at a literal perfect balanced level by the end.
-The new pokemon were great, there were a lot I geniunely liked
-Dexit shows hard here. This games one big issue is its not a big expansive world, its tight and structured. Which is fine except that they kinda ran out of pokemon to spread in this game because so many are tied to the wild area/raid battles. The later half of the game feels void of pokemon, maybe 4 per route when the grass next to the nursery had like 50 in a 2 by 2 patch of grass.
-TMs are unfortunately mostly useless. Most good moves are now in TRs which work like old TMs that break after one use. And you gotta live in the wild area grinding watts for that, which spend too long there and you break the main game.
-Removal of HMs is great, Fly anywhere is perfect and the surfing bike is great
-The rivals are pretty good here. I love Marnie. Hops story arch never quite completed for me. Bedes made sense although he sucks.
-The Gym leaders are mostly fleshed out a lot more than normal leaders. the trading cards on their backstory also helps some. Both version exclusive leaders have 0 personality though besides their generic trait of 'I'm a russianish woman' and 'im weird kid'.
-Although thankful for camping making it easy to heal my pokemon on a route, it seems pointless as the routes and dungeons are so tiny
-Yeah no more block puzzles is great but theres just no anything. There is no victory road unless you count the snowy hill full of trainers. There are a whopping two caves in the entire game and they are just run from start to finish.

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MegamanX posted...

or its always those 3 of Nessa, Psychic kid, and Raihan.

I played Sword and got Nessa, Fighting Girl, and Raihan.
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How would you rank it compared to others in the series?

swordz9 posted...

How would you rank it compared to others in the series?

Gens I loved: RBY, GSC, BW/BW2,

Sword Shield about here atm, higher if they readd the missing in raid battles

Gens I liked ok: XY

Gens that are ok: RSE

Gens I hated: DPP, SuMo
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What ever