Pokemon Sword - Review

After Pokémon Let’s Go last year, I was a little down on the series, it was an alright entry, but did only a few things to push the series forward, but as that was always meant to be a steppingstone to a something greater, I let it be. Now that we have that next, evolution, in the series, was it worth the wait or is it still missing something?

The story of the game is largely the same as it has been in every other game since, you are a new trainer, with a friendly person in your hometown, able to provide you with your first Pokémon, you adventure can begin. That would be enough, but Sword does has a lot of small little twists on the formula that make it feel a little different, though it is mostly the same. Once you have your starter Pokémon it is time to hit the road, or the route in this case and the adventure begins, though as this is a new region there are a lot of new things to try and understand. The main point of interest is becoming the Champion and much like other regions, you need to defeat eight existing gym leaders to get there, but the gyms are a little different now to how they used to be. Don’t misunderstand they still require you to flip switches or solve puzzles in order to access the leader, but they now list it more as a challenge, rather than some obscure and random event.

The problem that I have with the entire premise is that it is the same one since the original games, nothing has changed and that sums up my issues with the game as a whole. For each step forward they take, the still have one foot planted firmly in the past and it’s not that they don’t want to move that foot forward, it is that it is covered in cement and then buried underground, which is evident with Sword across the board. The game still forces you to battle against people, even though it now gives you an option to say no, but that option only delays the inevitable, you still have to do it. I am not talking about the random people that stand on the sides of the roads, with nothing better to do, but your friend, a random championship challenger, Team Yell, they will all stand in your way and won’t pass until you battle them and defeat them and its honestly insulting. Each time the game feels like it is letting go of your hand, it snaps back just as tight as before and refuses to again let go for a bit, something I could not enjoy. On top of that, the game has no option, again, to tell it if you have played a Pokémon game before, so I had to once again sit through multiple tutorials on things I have known for 20 years, it seriously can’t be that hard to add in.

The foot that is inching forward, has actual brought with it, a few amazing innovations to the series and they alone help bring the game up towards a level I wanted it to be, though it is not all the way there. The two biggest inclusion to the game are the Dynamax and Wild Areas, each offers something different, though one is far more impressive than the other one, let’s start off with Dynamax. This new mode allows you, in gym battles and raids, to supersize your Pokémon, giving them access to more powerful moves, but all that comes at a trade-off, as you can only use it once per gym battle and in raids, you have to build up power for it. Engaging it does reward you with a massive transformation and supercharges your attacks, the flip side to that is that the attacks of one type, all become the same, so anything that shoots fire, all become the same fire attack. With the restrictions about usage in battle, along with the fact that your opponent can Dynamax at anything, the resulting tension is something that I honestly haven’t felt from the series in sometime.

Dynamaxing also comes into play when it comes to the raids, events that you find in the Wild Areas, these dens will provide you with a chance to take down one large Pokémon that can be quite the challenge. Raids, if you have experienced them in other games are best attempted when you play with other people and the game lets you do that, you can connect to the internet and get some random folks to help, or just go solo, with the game throwing in some cpu trainers. Once you have brought down the health of the Pokémon you are battling, you can catch it, which is a little odd as the series has always been about getting a wild Pokémon down to as little health as possible, in order to catch it. As I mentioned before, these raids take place in the Wild Areas, which are large open spaces, where Pokémon roam free, the two differences to regular routes is that you can now control the camera, maybe and that much stronger Pokémon will be walking around as well. The game does take one aspect from Pokémon Let’s Go and that is that wild ones can be seen walking through the grass, a nice touch, but the larger ones will be wandering around in the open, giving you ample time to see them. These Wild Areas also have a subsystem of economy going on as well, with Watts able to be collected and then exchanged for moves and other items, there is a lot going on there.

The problem with Wild Areas though, comes from the game’s requirement of gym badges, in older games, Pokémon of certain levels would only listen if you had a matching badge, now though, you can’t even catch a Pokémon if it is listed as strong. You can still battle them and gain some exp, but the if you attempt to throw a ball, the game will tell you that they have not dropped their guard, leaving you the choice of taking it down completely, or running away. The other issue with the Wild Areas is that there is nothing else to really do in them, larger open spaces are fine and I hope they add them to future games, but there is little else to see or bother with, sure there is a day-care centre hidden away, but there is one on a main route as well, so it is no special. If the game had ruins or other cave systems to explore, that could only be accessed in these spaces, it would be more welcome, but unless you want to battle consistently, there is little reason to venture into a Wild Area.

Perhaps the most divisive aspect of the game though, is the presentation, with the visuals expanding on the style that was used in the Sun and Moon series, but now sporting a much cleaner look than ever. Characters do stand out more and each of the games many Pokémon look a treat, the towns have a more realistic feeling, thanks to the design that anchors the world and it makes everything feel better. The downside though is that the engine they used to make the game, is not one that can handle it properly, as people, items and of course Pokémon will pop in, and it happens a lot. This is not as big an issue in towns, but on routes and of course the Wild Areas, it is quite noticeable and does impact gameplay, with some of the stronger Pokémon only appearing when they are almost right upon you. If the Pokémon is small, then it would not be an issue, but as most of them are quite large, seeing them sort of explode into the game, without any sort of fanfare is bizarre at best.

On the audio side, the game shines in score and general ambiance, though it sucks elsewhere, which by now is just insulting. The games musical score is wonderfully done, there are countless tracks that are modern takes on the classic themes of the series, be it heading into battle, nursing your crew back to health or even reading about a newly discovered critter, each melody is a joyous composition and tugs quite firmly on my nostalgia strings, all the while sounding fresh. The game has an odd mix of other sounds, the most common one is when you do the gym battles, hearing large crowds cheer is amazing, and helps sell the spectacle that they are, the only issue is that the crowd is not reactive. When I land, or the gym leaders does, any sort of super effective attack, or even better a critical hit, I would have loved to hear the crowd react more, instead they just chant like always. The game’s biggest problem on the audio side, is once again the Pokémon, something that Let’s Go threw the spotlight on last year and they have added more lights this time around. AS you explore the world, there are countless Pokémon to discover, even the occasional Pikachu to boot, the problem is they still sound like bit tunes, except the aforementioned Pikachu, who says its name, like the anime. Given that Game Freak noted they would not be including all the Pokémon in this game, I would have loved to see them craft new cries for the creatures, bringing the game up to new heights in presentation.

Pokémon Sword is a solid entry in the series and adds a lot to the game, Wild Areas are a highlight, even if there is little do in them at times and while Dynamax fights are massive spectacles’, they don’t stray too much from the normal battling. The biggest issue is that we are over two decades into the series and there are still concepts from the first games that are front and centre now, which makes the gameplay feel stagnant and unless that changes, I can’t see myself returning to the series again.