How Game Freak Can Save Pokemon Sword & Shield

Only around 400 Pokémon are included in the original release of the game and not all of them are even new. Around 150 new Pokémon have been added but the rest of the slots are either pre-existing Pokémon from other regions or are a Galarian form of an already existing species. This was extremely disappointing as many of us wanted to see unique Pokémon designs specifically for the Galar region. but as it turns out many of them have already been previous games. This isn’t as bad for a competitive player, as some of the older generations have better stats than the new. Most casual Pokémon players, however, can’t help but be disappointed.

Only Chairman Rose acts as true enemy in the game, as I do not consider any of the game’s rivals worthy of that title, and the new “Team Rocket” in Sword & Shield might be the most disappointing of them all. Team yell, as they are called, don’t really have much prevalence in the story and their character designs are laughable at best. The old Team Rocket, Team Magma, and others had much cooler and intimidating designs that made them truly feel like an adversary.

Team Yell acts merely as a minor nuisance, as you only battle them a few times during the game and they have no real purpose or influence on the story. This absence of conflict curtailed the overall game length compared to previous generations of Pokémon games, where enemies provided more of a challenge to the player and played a more pivotal role in the story. Here’s hoping that Team Yell will have more impact in the upcoming DLC.

Leveling Pokémon has been made much easier with addition of Dynamax raiding. After each raid, you are granted a set of items and some of these items can increase your Pokémon’s level drastically. I’m not sure if this was added to speed the game up for post-game content like EV training, but it definitely removes the XP grind, which could be good or bad to some people. Unlike previous games, all Pokémon receive experience after a battle, even if they did not make an appearance in the match.

The DLC Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra for Sword & Shield is set to drop this summer, which will add around 200 additional Pokémon to the game, with some being new and some being from previous gens. However, this creates another annoyance as now we have to pay to have get access to all the Pokémon in the game. If you factor in the cost of the original game with the added DLC, the cost of a complete Global Pokédex is over $100. The DLC will add a new island, and hopefully, more substance and length to the story. Hopefully, the new content will justify the cost.

Another addition announced for the DLC is the reintroduction to some past legendaries such such as Motlres, Articuno, and Zapdos; however, this time they will have their Galarian form along with different type combinations. As cool as this sounds, wasn’t the whole purpose of legendary minions to be unique? These legendaries are also non-gendered, which means they cannot be breed, so it makes very little sense to have different versions of them. Hopefully this minor inconsistency gets some sort of explanation in the new story.

Pokémon Sword & Shield is a decent game overall but some of the changes feel rushed and some of the content feels recycled from past games. Hopefully the upcoming DLC will address some of these issues, but we’ll have to wait for Summer to find out for sure.

If you have not already purchased the game, it might be best to wait for a bundle version with The Isle of Armor & The Crown Tundra in order to get a more enjoyable experience.