Review for Sword and Shield Pokémon. Game for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 15/11/2019
The announcement that radically changed the reception of the two titles of eighth generation of Pokémon it happened almost silently. Between a meeting in the tall grass and another during E3 2019 a smiling Junichi Masuda, hugging a Scorbunny plush, announced that Galar would have had only part of the Pokémon known, and that Game Freak was scrambling to select the most ideal specimens for the region. Masuda could never imagine (or could he?) The oceanic and infernal reaction of Pokémon fans, and so the months leading up to the fateful November 15 were poisoned and overshadowed by the criticisms sparked by the lack of the National Pokédex, or Dexit.
The graphics and animations in the various trailers, still considered anchored to the 3DS hardware, have not helped the cause of Pokémon Sword and Shield, and the two titles continue to be opposed and divisive, while Game Freak still records record sales, equal to about 7 million copies sold.
A little over a week has passed since the global launch of the Sword and Shield. The door of Galar opened for everyone with a cacophonic noise, ready for better or for worse for a new adventure. Backpacking: it's time to give the definitive judgment on Pokémon Sword and Shield - the new Pokémon era, according to Game Freak.
With the pastel colors of Let's Go aside, a new generation has landed on Nintendo Switch. We are only at the beginning but we want to be abrupt, without mincing words: Pokémon Sword and Shield are enjoyable and fun titles, the same games grind hours that we have come to know and love over the years, batch after batch of monsters. The basic recipe has remained the same; some ingredients are fresher and more modern, while others are bitter like a berry.
The version we tested was Pokémon Sword. It changes little compared to Pokémon Shield - some exclusive Pokémon and, for the first time, unique gyms (Fight in Sword, Ghost in Shield and others that we don't reveal). To welcome us to Galar is Rose, president of the Pokémon League, who in the region is experienced as a real sport, complete with stadiums and fans. Let's take President Rose to open a little parenthesis, and that is to complain aboutabsence of dubbing, which in more than 20 years of the brand's history is beginning to perceive.
Seeing the characters' lips in the cut-scenes move without any sound, or even sung scenes, where you have to appeal to the best imagination we are capable of, it just doesn't work anymore. That of Pokémon is a massive localization that refers to creativity, but the absence of the voice is felt and the immersion with it.
Closed the parenthesis on dubbing, Galar offers routes never seen before in the series. The region seems alive, thanks to the greater draw distance, of Pokémon in the background, such as flocks of Wooloo or Butterfree flying carefree and Pokémon that appear in the overworld, therefore visible to the naked eye in all their splendor. Furlongham is a breath of fresh air, and also the place where our avatar begins his journey, which will officially open with the choice of the favorite starter between Grookey, Scorbunny and Sobble.
The first small towns serve as a great tutorial, useful for getting used to the game world and getting to know some of the characters, such as our energetic rival Hop and his older brother dandel, which happens to be also the Champion with an unbeatable (they say) Charizard. There game plot, in fact, exhausted in about 35 hours and with a greater focus on the gyms, it rotates to challenge Dandel for the title of Champion, but nevertheless through the background story, which sees delving into the past and into the underground of Galar, the two titles prove more mature and attentive to certain themes - like the crisis and the exploitation of resources, of which Pokémon Sword and Shield become humble spokesmen. The real adventure, however, will begin once you get on the train, and the first obligatory stop is the Wilds of Galar.
A large island, a small region
We will talk about the open world area that is one of the major novelties of Pokémon Sword and Shield. Remaining on the geographical diversity of the UK-inspired region and on the routes, these wind between the more linear and the more particular ones, such as Route 6 or Route 9, more exploratory; the first desert with a system of stairs, while the second that reveals one of the few waterways that can be traveled in the titles that can be crossed with the Roto-Bike, which will be given to us during the adventure and which greatly facilitates travel allowing you to not click any button when passing from land to sea.
These paths, whose beauty at first can be blinding, follow a numbering to be taken literally and which does not allow shortcuts. From this point of view, we would like to say that Pokémon Sword and Shield are all too guided: many paths will in fact be blocked with the help of Team Yell, the “bad” team of this generation, who are none other than die-hard fans of one of our peers, Mary, whom we will meet several times during the game. Team Yell will most of the time be relegated to blocking access to a certain part of the game, and this will reveal in the long run the magician's trick, which is that the number and length of paths has been reduced.
The comparison with previous regions such as Unova or Kalos is merciless: Pokémon Sword and Shield have only half of the paths compared to the aforementioned generations. Same "alternative" paths such as caves or forests, concentrated in the first part of the game, can be literally counted on the fingers of one hand - and don't hope that new paths will open up in the post-game. There is no rock to move, no tree to cut, no second floor and the like. Galar is a large island, but at the same time it is a small region and this is because a lot of the team's energies have clearly poured into the Wilderness. The only secret that Galar jealously hides is the Dynamax phenomenon, which is also the reason why in the region there is no talk of gyms, but huge stadiums visible hundreds of meters away.
The Challenge of the Gyms?
The goal of this eighth Pokémon generation is the canonical one, that is to collect the 8 medals that allow you to challenge the Champion. Pokémon Sword and Shield elevate this concept to the maximum, building around this climb a event broadcast on a regional scale called Challenge of the Gyms. For the first time ever, not everyone who collects medals ends up challenging the Champion, and emphasis is placed on competing against the same other coaches like us. At this turning point to participate in the Challenge it will be necessary to have a sponsor, or a more experienced coach who justifies his presence. Once we get the reference letter, we will become full participants. Each "gym" has its own mission, which are the reinterpretation of the challenges that had to be done in the past generations to get to the gym leader: for example, in the first gym in Galar (Erba) it will be necessary to roll the tender Wooloos to their destination paying attention to the Yamper who they have the task of scaring them. Once you have overcome the challenge designed by the gym leaders, you will enter the arena.
Hearing the sound of your footsteps and the buzz of the fans in the stands before you catapult yourself into the center of the stadium is a unique emotion. which really feels the weight of being a Pokémon trainer. Probably, if you have not been captured in advance from the Wild Lands, it is precisely in a stage that for the first time we will witness the characteristic phenomenon of the lands of Galar - the Dynamax.
Fundamental mechanics in the clashes that replace and merge the Mega Evolutions and the Z-Moves of the past generations, involves the increase to gigantic size of the Pokémon for three turns, during which they earn increased HP and new Dynamax moves depending on the type. Some Pokémon such as Drednaw or Butterfree are also capable of gigamaxizing: similar to Dynamax, the Gigamax allows the Pokémon - thanks to a particular bracelet - to grow out of all proportion, with the difference of gaining exclusive moves and a new aesthetic aspect that makes it more formidable in battle. The stadiums were created precisely to contain these "monsters", if we can still call them that, given their new features.
We can't talk about coaches and gym leaders without talking about difficulties, a topic very close to heart especially to the hard and pure of the franchise: Pokémon Sword and Shield settle on a medium-low difficulty, felt especially at the beginning of the game, decreasing towards the middle and quickly climbing up close to the post-game. The main "culprits" are two, which go hand in hand: the Share Experience, which allows a homogeneous training of the whole team but which cannot be deactivated, and the freedom to explore the Wild Lands at the beginning of the game, where you can encounter Pokémon of a level much higher than your own (and for this very greedy).
To this we must add that it will not be uncommon to find wild Pokémon at a level close to ours, and dangerously often of a higher level than the gym leaders themselves, in the paths of the Galar, something that has happened to us several times, finally becoming a practice. At the same time it must be said that the Share Experience and the Wild Lands also have the merit of allowing an easier change of some team members through a very fast training and the middle way, in this case, would be to spend less time possible in the Wilds at the beginning if you don't want life too easy in the various stages of Galar.
Camping in the Wilds
We finally face the Cufant in the room with what is the main dish of Pokémon Sword and Shield. The Wild Lands are apparently a vast freely explorable area blessed with a free camera with the task of connecting one part of the Galar to the other. There are the water basins that have not found space in the region, along with lush areas and others raged by sandstorms depending on the microclimate of the moment, which you can check every time on the game map. Each Pokémon is associated with a climate and will not appear if there are no suitable weather conditions - for example, Deino, Sword's exclusive dragon, can only be found in a certain area and only when it rains, ice-type Pokémon will show up when it will hail and so on.
The Wild Lands are teeming with monsters that behave differently depending on the character, from the Electrike that loads the trainer to the Wimpod that runs away from the great coward he is, without forgetting fully evolved Pokémon and, in the early stages of the game, many levels ahead of us. This makes it seem like you are part of a living world, where Pokémon have real size and reactions, but unfortunately not all that glitters is gold, and the Terre Selvagge appear to be in practice more concentrated than they seem and above all immature from a technical point of view compared to the other parts of the game.
The open world area is also devoid of any secret, niche or cave that can be explored, not to mention the inelegant pop-ups (Steamington's Onix is a prime example) and the very short moments of freeze due to the uploads that haunt the Earths, all increased when the online functionality is activated, here called Y-Comm, which allows other trainers (with whom you can only interact passively), to appear in your own Wild Lands.
Nintendo Switch handles this by running the game at 1080p / 30fps in TV mode passing to 720p / 30fps almost always fixed in the handheld one, obviously sacrificing performance in the Wilds and showing at its worst - according to Digital Foundry - at 576p in certain areas in portable mode. The However, the generational leap from the Sun and the Moon is evident, and both the quality of the tall grass and the Dexit surviving Pokémon are pushed to the maximum in Sword and Shield.
The main pastime of the Wild Lands is constituted by Dynamax Raid, in which the protagonists are special Pokémon that keep their dynamaxized form all the time and are which can be tackled in 4, both online with other players and offline thanks to the help of the AI provided by Game Freak. These Pokémon are found in burrows that emit a beam of red light that goes up to the sky, scattered throughout the area. Once we reach a lair and check the Pokémon inside, which will show the type, the difficulty in the form of stars (up to a maximum of 5) and the silhouette, we could choose or not the Pokémon to take with us and start the Dynamax Raid.
Special features of these Pokémon, which can be seen as boss, is the duration: you have a maximum of 10 turns (or 4 KOs) to weaken the Pokémon and try to capture it and there is only one attempt to capture. Especially at higher difficulties, it will often happen that the Pokémon Dynamax (or Gigamax) will create a shield that will have to be shattered before returning to affect its life bar, but luckily if it succeeds, its defenses will be greatly lowered.
By examining a Pokémon lair that glows red it will be possible to obtain Watts (W), which are a currency that can be spent to buy various items, including Technical Discs, with which it is possible to teach a move to the Pokémon at the price of breaking after use, like the old MT. The same triumph against a Pokémon Dynamax will result in a cascade of prizes, including DT and candy experience with which to greatly accelerate the training of our Pokémon team and its new members. This general streamlining of the titles catches the eye thanks to other elements such as the Box, available at any time and not only when you are in a Pokémon Center, the free and omnipresent move reminder, the possibility of change the nature of Pokémon it's a breeding made easier, as long as you get to level 100 and only in the post-game.
The natural fun of raid bosses is offset by the difficulty of finding a few other players through the Y-Comm, which is accessed through the button of the same name, and shows itself as a sticker system through which it should be possible to join or invite other players to a Dynamax Raid. We write "should" because we have rarely been able to play online with other coaches, the fault of one embryonic matchmaking which has often convinced us to skip the step and rely on AI, on whose incompetence we could open a separate chapter. As things stand, online rewards only those who have many friends register on your Switch, and the situation is only now improving - albeit slightly, with a long way to go.
Why-Comm and ties
The Y-Comm is the ancient and online heart of Pokémon Sword and Shield through which it is possible to exchange Pokémon, fight with players from all over the world and call attention to a Dynamax Raid. The exchange in links, a step back from the lamented GTS, de-evolves in transfers with an unknown player, save for presetting a password, while the magical exchange (formerly prodigious exchange) behaves the old fashioned way by swapping one Pokémon blindly with another mysterious one. Once again, if you have few friends it will be difficult to get a Pokémon maybe exclusive to another version, because everything will be left to chance; the most unpleasant mechanics of all are the sticker, that they can only be updated when the on-screen prompt exits.
Speaking of happier things, let's break a lance in favor of Pokécampeggio, thanks to which you can stop and play with your Pokémon. Through it you can see how much care has been put into each individual creature, which will move and behave differently depending on its nature and speed: Gastrodon, as a snail, will be very slow, while Scorbunny will be a concentrate of energy, kicking the ball to the sender. Pokémon will run free, with the ability to call them, play with them and cook the quintessential regional dish, curry, in order to build a bond and bring some advantage in battle. The Poké Camp ends up becoming in a short time one of the most hilarious and tender parts of Pokémon Sword and Shield, useful for breaking the tension during one gym and the other.
Honorable mention for the colonna sonora, Pokémon Sword and Shield have all the credentials to remain etched in the memory with its rhythmic and experimental touches, videogame catchphrases that enter right into the history of the series, including a composition by Toby Fox, who humbly signs one of the most pressing music of the post-game and of the entire game with his unmistakable style.
The Spada e Scudo post game ends with little chance of seeing a second chapter the story of Galar and the two legendaries on the cover, Zacian and Zamazenta, leaving the rest to the Battle Tower and the Terre Selvagge. Galar has been explored far and wide but as mentioned at the beginning, unfortunately, there was no room for the Sky Tower of Hoenn or the Giant Pit of Unova, where Kyurem rests.
Despite several technical and stylistic problems, Pokémon Sword and Shield cement the eighth generation as fun titles, faithful to the spirit to which the series has accustomed us and which mark, for better or for worse, the new era advertised by Game Freak. From the streamlining of various mechanics together with the inability to transfer all Pokémon, Galar stands as the epicenter of a new beginning from which one can only improve. The time is ripe to make a decisive leap forward, such as the addition of dubbing and a greater variety of places to visit, but the potential is all there: thanks also to the Wild Lands, the region is alive, invigorated by a soundtrack surprising and a plot composed of more present secondary characters. The Raid Dynamax offer a nice level of challenge with high rewards, but the Y-Comm is the most painful part of the package, to be completely reviewed.
► Pokémon Sword and Shield is an RPG type game developed by Game Freak and published by Game Freak Nintendo for Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 15/11/2019
