Tag: sword and shield

Crown Tundra Has Truly Legendary Levels of… Grinding (Pokémon DLC Review)

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

I’m a big Pokémon fan, but I’ll admit that the series has been incredibly inconsistent. Sword and Shield are games that do a lot right, while also doing some things bafflingly wrong, compared to previous generations. The very vocal critics on social media don’t help the series’ case either, especially nowadays. The Isle of Armor does make a lot of improvements over the core game, but we really can’t have a final say on Gen 8 without playing through its second wave of DLC: Crown Tundra.

In the Crown Tundra, your character boards a train to the titular location and finds itself confronting some person’s very energetic father. After whipping his butt, his disgruntled child uses the opportunity to skedaddle. You join up with dad, and he makes you catch some Legendary Pokémon.

This campaign somehow has even less story than Isle of Armor. Literally, the entirety of Crown Tundra revolves around catching Legendary Pokémon. A LOT of Legendary Pokémon. I don’t know if Sword has a different cast, but for characters, I got Peony and his daughter Peonia. Peonia is kind of a brat, but her father is a fun, energetic, wholesome guy. They imply that he’s related to Rose somehow, but I don’t care deeply enough about Pokémon lore to look into it.

Structurally, I think this is the better of the two Pokémon DLCs… to a point. At the start, Peony gives you three Legendary Pokémon quests, which can be done in any order (it’s been a while since they gave you that much freedom). They’re all introduced with a hilariously long title and a fanfare, giving Peony even more personality (although I think Looker has done the same thing once or twice?). 

The main quest is to help the Crown Tundra’s Legendary Pokémon, Calyrex, who possesses Peony in order to talk to you. I think this is the first time in the main series that you directly engage with a Pokémon. You also have a case where you have to pick one of two forms of Legendary Pokémon by planting a certain type of carrot to lure its steed, which further incentivizes spending the $180 on both Sword and Shield (with DLC) in order to get 100% completion in either game. Anyhow, Calyrex is a pure Pyschic-Type, and his steed is either Ghost or Ice-Type. Calyrex and the steed are an instance of a fusion Pokémon (the first since Gen 5), and it gets both of their Abilities at once. 

For the other quests, there is a return of the Regis. As expected, you have to solve riddles. They are nowhere near as obtuse as the Braille stuff in Gen 3, but in case you can’t solve one, Peony will give you some helpful advice (not that I actually used him because I was overthinking or anything >_>). Gathering all three regular Regis at the final door does not give you Regigigas, but a choice between brand-new Electric and Dragon-Type Regis. The third quest is the most interesting because you actually get to catch regional variants of Gen 1’s Legendary birds. They’re roaming Legendaries, but unlike in games of old, you simply just run into them as they fly around in the overworld and fight them straight-up; definitely an upgrade.

Unfortunately, they seem to be following Isle of Armor’s model of making incredibly grindy mechanics to actually give you bang for your buck. No matter what you do, 99% of your time on Crown Tundra will be spent in the Max Lair. It is both a fun and awful idea. Basically, the Max Lair is a gauntlet of randomly generated Max Raid battles. Your team (or just you if you play with A.I.) picks a path and fights whatever is there. You can run into berries or helpful people along the way; either a backpacker who can give you a selection of hold items or a scientist who offers a random rental Pokémon. You fight four consecutive Max Raid battles, ending with a random Dynamax Legendary Pokémon. The big plus is that the Dynamax Pokémon here are nowhere near as bad as in the overworld (mainly because they don’t have shields), but the fact that you have to fight four of them in a row is rough because the “if four Pokémon faint, you lose” rule applies to the entire thing instead of individual fights.

What spices things up is that everyone gets random rental Pokémon. These rentals are actually pretty good, and a lot of interesting strategies can come up. I imagine this mode is amazing with friends, but as a noob who doesn’t have friends or a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, well… Max Lair sucks. For starters, you can get a bad setup of rental Pokémon options versus the Pokémon you encounter in the actual dungeon. And while you can catch a beaten Dynamax Pokémon and switch it out of your team, the fifteen seconds you get to decide a path is nowhere near enough to optimize a root. And if you have A.I., one of them will always switch out for the newly defeated Dynamax Pokémon, even if you choose not to catch it, and even if it has a type disadvantage against a future opponent. Save-scumming works, but you eventually have to spend Dynite Ore for doing it too often. “What’s Dynite Ore?” you ask. Dynite Ore is your reward for playing Max Lair. Completing a run only nets you nine. NINE.  And to get the good stuff, including an item that gives your Pokémon its Hidden Ability, you need hundreds of the stuff. You do unlock an endless mode that gives you more Dynite Ore in exchange for not getting to keep any caught Pokémon, but I didn’t dabble in it. Overall, Max Lair WILL kick your butt, especially if you’re using A.I., and since you only have a vague idea of what Pokémon you’re up against, you won’t know if it’s worth save-scumming for a particular Legendary. The even better part is that you only keep one rental Pokémon at the end of a run. And guess what, some of the regular Pokémon you encounter are exclusive to Max Lair, which means you’ll still be playing through it even if you catch every Legendary! This also includes the opportunity to catch Ultra Beasts once you complete Crown Tundra, but I couldn’t find a single one in the attempts I made.

Other than that, I presume that completing both DLC campaigns unlocks the Galarian Star Tournament (since that’s how it happened with me), which is a repeatable team battle royale thing that will pit you and a partner against other Gym Leaders and characters. It’s easy if you have Hop, since he has his Gen 8 Legendary which can pretty much eat anything that isn’t Fire-Type. In other news, Peonia alludes to some weird woman who runs around at night, but I couldn’t get that to trigger. I tend to always miss some kind of post-game quest or whatnot in Pokémon games, so take this review with a grain of salt.

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Final Verdict: 8/10

While Crown Tundra is very small (and VERY grindy), I believe that it, along with the Isle of Armor, are a step in the right direction for Pokémon as a whole. They take the open-world mechanic of the Wild Area, but give it more variety and substance. Plus, the idea of putting dedicated sidequests in an area is cool. If they take these same ideas and integrate them into a future core game, then we might have something good. But of course, knowing the series’ trends, any new idea they implement will be discarded, regardless of how objectively good it is. 

Overall, I’m not entirely sure if the Expansion Pass is worth it. Obviously, you need it if you want completion, but both areas are still incredibly grindy. I kind of agree with the critics that the series hasn’t been the best it could be, but that’s mainly because I love Black and White 2 too much (maybe I’d do a retrospective on it if I had time or the willingness to erase either of my save files). Well, with Pokémon, I’m willing to pull a Star Wars fan and blindly hope that they’ll eventually release something really good despite them very consistently failing at every turn (Ooooh snap). Well, this got long-winded. Basically, I recommend the DLC if you’re a Pokémon veteran and just love the games in general.

Pokemon Sword and Shield: Isle of Armor DLC Campaign Review

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

The eight Generation of Pokemon has been perhaps the most controversial in the series’ history. Pokemon Sword and Shield has gotten a bad rap since they were first announced, when it was stated that there would be no National Pokedex for the first time in the franchise. And the games themselves have… issues. In my own review of Pokemon Shield, I praised the graphics, quality-of-life improvements, somewhat decent character development, and enjoyable difficulty level. However, it also had a lacking postgame, and perhaps the emptiest region design in the entire series. Plus, the Wild Areas- which could’ve made Pokemon a more open-world and grandiose JRPG- were just vast expanses of nothing. Despite all this, the new DLC might make Gen Eight more viable. Today, I cover the first part of the Sword and Shield DLC: Isle of Armor, specifically, the Shield version.

In this DLC campaign, your character is mysteriously given the Armor Pass, which allows them to go to the Isle of Amor. As you enter the train station, you end up fighting against a Galarian Slowpoke (unless you played the update beforehand in which case you already did that months ago), and catch a glimpse of a strange character heading off to the aforementioned Isle. When you arrive there yourself, you are challenged by this person and compelled to train at this Master Dojo place on the island.

With this being DLC, the story here can’t intrude on the main story; consider it filler in an old anime. The Pokemon here average at around level 60, and with battles exceeding level 70, making it seem like you are meant to go here during the postgame. But tbh, there really isn’t much of a story. You go there, fight some people, get a new Pokemon. The dojo master does foreshadow some kind of undisclosed event at the end, but I’m going to assume that’s Crown Tundra territory, since I couldn’t find anything of plot interest after the campaign.

This DLC does introduce some new faces, and one of them is determined by your version of the game. My new rival on the Isle of Armor was an eccentric, tye-dye-clad psychic named Avery. He is a lot like Kukui from Sun and Moon; someone with a secret other personality, and the tendency to use Pokemon moves’ names in their dialogue. His character arc was short, but sweet. The Dojo Master, Mustard, is also a great character with that lovable “old-fart-who’s-actually-really-strong” personality.

I don’t know about you, but I spent a lot of postgame doing Dynamax hunting, and since I was stuck with poopy A.I., I jacked up my team members’ levels to average at the mid seventies, way too high for the Isle of Armor. So, I made an entirely new team, with Pokemon caught specifically in the Isle. While some were carried over from the main overworld, there were definitely a lot of missed faces from previous Generations, such as Sharpedo and Jigglypuff. I was able to use Pokemon that I had never used myself in a serious campaign, and I was glad at this opportunity from the Isle of Armor. Since it’s short, I might just take the same team to Crown Tundra.

Design-wise, the Isle of Armor shows some great positives. After you fight your first battle, you’re told to head to the Master Dojo immediately. In most Pokemon games, you’d be blocked every which way various NPC, such as poachers who tried to force you to buy their Slowpoke Tails. But here, you are actually able to explore the whole perimeter of the island to your heart’s content. There’s also a lot more biomes in this area than in the main Wild Areas.

Unfortunately, the Isle of Armor is still an island, and an unsurprisingly small one. It only takes about a couple of hours to scope out the whole area, and that’s if you try to catch every new Pokemon as you see them. The individual biomes themselves are also similarly bland to the Wild Areas, with Pokemon placement just as haphazard as before.

But just because it’s small, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot to do. Unfortunately, a lot of that “lot” is helping out the Diglett Trainer. There are ONE HUNDRED FIFTY Alolan Digletts all over this place, and he wants you to find them. It’s nowhere near as bad as the Red Lobster thing in Xenoblade Chronicles X, and for a number of reasons. For one thing, the game actually tells you how many are in each area. And more importantly, ALL OF THEM EXIST AT ONCE. But if you don’t have 20/20 vision, good luck finding them. Your only visual indication is the three little hairs that stick out of the ground, which blend in in a lot of places. You obtain a regional variant Pokemon for hitting certain milestones. I didn’t find all of them because my last reward was Alolan Eggxecutor and that was good enough for me. There is also a new mechanic with the Watts. After a certain point, you can donate them to spruce up the dojo. It takes HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS to get all the upgrades, and I honestly didn’t have that kind of time.

In addition to this is the Armorite Ore mechanic. You earn these by doing Dynamax battles on the island, and they can be used on this one dude to dig for more Watts, a guy at the dojo to teach some exclusive new moves (as in entirely new to the series), and on this one lady in an all-or-nothing gamble for additional Armorite Ore. The first and latter mechanics are all luck-based. Also luck-based is the Cram-o-Matic. You can insert items and pray that you get a better one. Using berries can make TRs appear. Additionally, Apricorns return to this game, and using them can get you a rare Poke Ball… if you’re lucky.

A welcome addition is Max Soup. This stuff can take any Pokemon whose species is capable of Gigantimaxing, and enable that to any of that species that can’t Gigantimax. This is a really good mechanic. However, it requires Max Mushrooms, which are easy enough to find, but only respawn after Dynamax Battles. And as someone who needs to rely on A.I. trainers to win them… I didn’t exactly get to use Max Soup too often.

The new Pokemon are the biggest reason to play Isle of Armor. First up is Galarian Slowbro. There are two reasons why it’s one of my favorite regional variants yet. The first reason is that I’ll never forget the time when Chuggaaconroy trollishly made Lucahjin and MasaeAnela draw it during TheRunawayGuys Colosseum Direct before it was ever revealed. The second reason is that it’s flat-out really good. It comes with the unique Poison-Psychic type, and the effect of the Quick Claw as an ability. I paired it up with an actual Quick Claw… and have no idea if the effects stack. But hey, it makes me feel good!

The other new Pokemon is Kubfu. It starts off as a typical Fighting-Type, but after MUCH level grinding, you can use it to take on one of two towers. Whichever one you beat determines which version of Urushifu it evolves into. Urushifu is definitely a great Pokemon, or at least my version is. It comes with an ability where it ignores Protect as long as it attacks with a direct contact move, plus a signature move with great base power that always crits.

As I said before, there isn’t anything of story interest after you finish Isle of Armor (unless I missed it). But there is one thing that does appear: Restricted Sparring. This is a competitive battle gauntlet, much like the Battle Tower, but you can only use teams with a matching Type. It’s really interesting, especially as someone who’s always wanted to do entire campaigns in this manner. But since it has teams built around competitive battling… yeah, I didn’t dabble in it too much.

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Final Verdict: 7.65/10

The Isle of Armor improves a lot of Sword and Shield mechanics, and shows the potential for what a hypothetical Generation Nine can hold. However, it’s short-lived and relies on grindy mechanics in order for you to get the bang for your buck. It’s worth playing if you’re a series’ veteran, but it’s more rational to wait and see if the Crown Tundra can justify the Expansion Pass’ cost.

Pokemon Shield Full Review

by macksamson, posted in Full Reviews, Gaming

PREFACE: Due to this being an update of a first impressions post, some content will be similar to the original post. There are also some spoilers.

You’d think that with eight whole generations of Pokemon, Game Freak would be out of ideas. However, the latest installments, Sword and Shield, prove that Pokemon still has a fire going, even if it isn’t necessarily blazing white-hot.

So, the premise of both Sword and Shield is a return to form; no more having to “make the Pokemon League” crap (although it was pretty interesting conceptually). In this instance, your rival character, Hop (who, unfortunately, still chooses the Starter with a disadvantage against yours), is the younger brother of the Champion, and said Champion gives you your Starters. You and Hop also have a run-in with some weird Pokemon that is immune to all attacks, and promptly shrug it off before the two of you head off on your adventure. But hey, Gyms are back! Thank Arceus! 

Every new Generation feels like it has a billion new mechanics and changes, so it’s overwhelming to talk about stuff… Gah, I guess I’ll just go off of whatever comes to mind first. Let’s talk Pokemon Centers. These things baby you; allowing you to buy each type of healing item other than Full Heals, and REVIVES before your first Gym Badge. But other than that, these are the best Pokemon Centers ever because they EACH come with a Name Rater, Move Reminder, AND Move Deleter; no Heart Scales required!

On the field, Gen 8 borrows from Pokemon Let’s Go!, and shows wild Pokemon in the overworld. However, it’s a bit confusing. While some appear visibly on the field, there are still old-school random encounters, except those tend to have completely different Pokemon. Intuitively, the invisible Pokemon are ones that are too small to actually be seen above the grass, which makes sense, but it’s still annoying (and sometimes, Pokemon that are larger than the player still somehow manage to hide themselves in there). Also, the Pokedex yet again does not have the Habitat List from Black and White 2. Instead, the Pokedex tells you what Pokemon you can catch in a given area, but it only shows one area at a time, meaning that you have to catch EVERYTHING as you go along in order for it to actually show the next place. Furthermore, it only shows Pokemon that you’ve encountered once before, so it doesn’t help when you’re looking for that last Pokemon in the Pokedex.

Another noticeable thing is that all party Pokemon naturally gain battle EXP together from the get-go. Also, there’s the Pokemon Camp ability, which allows you to play with your Pokemon and cook Curry (which is this game’s version of the crap you make with Berries in past games, and it’s just as convoluted as ever). This gives them even more EXP and increases their affinity towards you. So far, it seems that they at least got rid of the EXP boost from affinity, but kept the more luck-based perks. I’m sure you’re looking at this and thinking, “Oh my God the game’s even EASIER than ever! 0/10!” I thought that too, but this game’s actually proven to be reasonably difficult. You really need to know your stuff (fortunately, they still have the Battle Info button for noobs). Even with the bonus EXP from catching Pokemon (which I’ve done pretty liberally), fighting most Trainers, and using the Camp, I’ve been cutting it close. Even when I ended up getting overleveled by around the seventh Gym, and having my team catch Pokerus, it still proved to be a worthy adversary. They finally designed those Pokemon-helping mechanics around the actual challenge factor (as long as you don’t grind). Speaking of Pokemon-helping mechanics, you also have Poke-Jobs. These are accessible from the PC and are basically Merc Missions from Xenoblade 2. You send out boxed Pokemon for a set period of time, and they come back with a chunk of EXP (with bonuses for the Types specified on the request). This will be important for breeding tons of Pokemon at once.

Overwhelmed yet? Well, there’s also the addition of Wild Areas. These are where Pokemon becomes a true JRPG; they are vast, open, and have tons of Pokemon of wildly varying levels and draw points to get items from. The most important materials are Watts, which are obtained by visiting glowing red Pokemon Dens and pressing A on them. These can be exchanged for items, such as the new/old TR items. TRs are like TMs of old, use it once and they break. They are much more common, and generally contain better moves (seriously, most of the TMs are going out of their way to give you crap moves), plus they can be obtained multiple times, such as from Pokemon Dens…

…which segues into the BIGGEST (pun intended) change made in Gen 8, Dynamax Pokemon. Inside some Pokemon Dens are Dynamax Pokemon, giant versions of regular Pokemon who are much stronger than regular ones; so strong, that four Trainers need to band together to take one down. So that means that you have to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online and connect to the Internet and fight them alongside some randos, right? Fortunately, no; you can play offline and you’ll be joined by some fairly competent A.I. trainers. When fighting against Dynamax Pokemon, you’ll be able to Dynamax the Pokemon you chose to fight in these battles, turning them gigantic as well. Dynamax is basically a fusion of Mega Evolution and Z-Powers. When your Pokemon are Dynamaxed, their HP gets a big boost, and their moves are modified. Offensive moves become a much stronger move of the same type, and leave a free effect like a multi-target stat buff on your team, a multi-targeting debuff on the enemy team, or a Weather effect, and Status moves just become a stronger version of Protect. Dynamaxing lasts for three turns before it has to recharge, so coming out swinging isn’t always the best. A lot of battles were decided by me timing my Dynamax so that the opponent’s would run out while mine was still going. Overall, Dynamaxing is by far the most gimmicky and least necessary mechanic in the game, but they made a good decision in restricting it to Pokemon Dens and Gym Battles.

There are two big problems with this mechanic. One is that the fights against Wild Dynamax Pokemon get ridiculous later on in the game. After 3-Star difficulty, they get shields that need to be broken by hitting it X number of times. Fortunately, breaking it lowers their Def and Sp Def by 2 levels, so it makes the rest of the fight easy. Unfortunately, the later Dynamax Pokemon also get up to 3 turns in a single round, and can wipeout your entire motley crew as a result. What’s worse is that the 5-Star ones get TWO shield phases. The problem is that battles have to be won in ten turns, and two shields guarantees at least four turns wasted. The whole thing ends up boiling down to your Pokemon’s levels and the type advantage, unless you can actually get humans to help you. The other issue is the Gigantimax gimmick. This is an ability that specific Pokemon can have to get new forms and unique move effects upon Dynamaxing. The problem is that you have to know which Pokemon can do it, and then you have to catch them in a Dynamax battle. Yup, it’s not good enough to catch the Pokemon itself. I even had two Pokemon with Gigantimax forms, but since they were normal catches, I couldn’t do anything about them. It’s a really dumb mechanic, and the unique moves don’t even have interesting animations, unlike the unique Z-Moves of Gen 7.

Gyms are back and, well, the same, really. They build up Gyms as this whole extravagant thing, just for them to be the same. The problem with this is that you basically have to go through a whole extra step for no reason. When you enter a Gym, you now have to go to some receptionist and change into a tokusatsu uniform before actually starting the Gym in earnest. Fortunately, the Gym Missions are among some of the best in a while. Gym 3 revolves around catching wild Pokemon, Gym 5 puts a fun twist on a normally aggravating type of challenge, and Gym 8 is the first Double Battle Gym since Hoenn, with battles revolving around the power of weather effects.

In addition to the Gyms, the way they handled the Pokemon League is probably the best in the series. In Gen 8, it’s the Championship Cup. This tournament format makes it so that you fight characters that you’ve encountered regularly; characters who’ve been through the same trial as you. It really is a gauntlet, because after that they make you fight three of the Gym leaders a second time. It really showcases how much you’ve grown as a trainer, especially for me, who found myself able to one-shot Dynamax Pokemon that I previously had trouble with.

But unfortunately, the Gym Leaders themselves have taken a downgrade again. In Gen 8, most of them are once again one-note characters that you talk to a single time outside of the Gym, then fight back inside the Gym. Out of all of them, two are interesting: Opal, who is just really funny and creepy, and the 7th Gym Leader, whom we’ll discuss in a bit.

In my first impressions, I- for lack of a better word- “shat” on the cast of characters in Gen 8. However, I take that back now. While all the characters, like your rival Hop, privileged pimp Bede, and Professor assistant Sonia, start off as the typical one-note, uninteresting characters that have been peppering the series as of late, they become some of the best we’ve had in a long while. Each of the aforementioned characters go through big changes during the story and their arcs, and by the postgame, you’re like, “Sh**, these are like completely different folks now.” I really hope that the next Gen 8 game is a sequel, like Black and White 2 are for Gen 5, so that you can see how far they’ve come. 

Team Yell is our new mischief-making group this time around. Despite their similarities to Best Team Skull, they’re pretty unremarkable, and only seem to serve as justifying the game walling you with NPCs at the exits of towns (which seriously needs a new approach; it’s getting old). But if they have any saving grace, it’s their boss, Piers. For the first time since Gen 1, the leader of the designated group of thugs is also a gym leader. But unlike Giovanni, Piers becomes a straight-up protagonist after you beat him, which is really cool.

With Piers being the Piccolo of the game, the role of the main antagonist lies elsewhere. And unfortunately, this person is probably my least favorite character in the game. WARNING. This next part is the most spoilery in this whole review! If you don’t want to be spoiled, skip to the next paragraph, but even then it’s not a big spoiler, because if you’ve played ANY RECENT Pokemon game, you already know who the main antagonist is. The big bad is Chairman Rose, the guy in charge of Galar’s whole power grid. This makes the third generation in a row, from Gen 6 onward, where the big bad is someone with high political influence in the world and are in charge of some big R&D department. He’s at least more subtle this time, versus Lysandre’s “humans should die” schtick at the beginning of Gen 6, or the OPENING CUTSCENE of Gen 7 clearly painting Aether as suspicious, but the pattern itself is what tipped me off for Rose, and it’ll probably tip you off too (if I didn’t just spoil it for you).

Let’s discuss cutscenes next. These have been a replay-killer in Pokemon for a while, and it was OBNOXIOUS in Gen 7. In Gen 8, it’s at least been far better than Gen 7, but still kind of bad. The Poke Ball tutorial is still forced, but they at least not bother telling you to weaken it first (which sounds like a rude beginner’s trap in hindsight). However, to be honest, the cutscenes here aren’t actually terrible. With the more cinematic camera angles and more expressive character models, the cutscenes have a lot more personality. For example, the cutscene that introduced the Starters is a bit overly long, but it gives off a subtle visual cue of their Type matchups, to save from people actually having to tell you in a forced tutorial. Also, to make the game more anime, bosses offer comments during battle. While they are cool and will no doubt give later fights much more emotion, you can’t skip them, and are onscreen for what feels like ten whole seconds. Curiously, there is a setting to skip cutscenes. However, it is a toggle to automatically skip all cutscenes, not a button prompt to skip them, which is kind of stupid. Most modern JRPGs at least give you a button prompt… I guess in Gen 9, then.

Next, I’ll give my impressions on the new Pokemon. Thankfully, they actually made them pretty common out in the wild, unlike Gens 6 and 7, where you’d be hard-pressed to find actual NEW Pokemon. Regional Variants return, but this time it’s not limited to Gen 1. The best one I’ve found is a Ground-Steel version of my boy Stunfisk, and it’s freakin’ great. But as far as the new-new Pokemon, a lot of them are really cool. Unfortunately, the Starters are a downgrade. While they have great designs and are still powerful, they are marred by all being single-types. To be fair, it helps so that you don’t have to worry about finding something cool with a matching type as much, but it still bugs me. Gen 7’s Starters are still my favorite for now. Meanwhile, the Legendaries look like recolored Gen 2 dogs, but they’re not terrible. 

The most stressful thing is trying to build a team of Pokemon I haven’t seen before when I don’t know what they’re going to evolve into, and the thing with Gen 8 seems to be that the Pokemon either have super reasonable or super BS evolution conditions. Most new Pokemon evolve on level up, and the game seems to be designed so that they would evolve right when they’re about to fall behind on your team if you were to use them as an official team member. However, there’s things like the new Yamask (screw that thing). Despite how easy it is to farm evolutionary stones, there’s almost nothing- at least not new Pokemon- that require them. It’s better than Gen 5’s “nothing evolves until you reach the Pokemon League,” but it doesn’t help that my bag has a bunch of useless stones in it.

My biggest complaint in the game is probably Galar itself. This is no doubt the smallest region in the series thus far. I admit I’m spoiled on Xenoblade’s big, grandiose worlds. But in addition to the small size of Galar, it also lacks substance. Routes are short and lack personality, and towns are so small that Tales of Vesperia’s towns seem huge by comparison, which sucks because the towns actually have the most charisma out of anywhere in Galar. The dungeons have also taken a hit as well. Despite them giving you an infinite-use Escape Rope, the dungeons can be gone through in less than twenty minutes each. They’re also small in quantity too. There’s NO VICTORY ROAD either, and the Route 10 that’s there instead is nothing like Gen 5’s, that’s for sure. In addition to all that, they still haven’t fixed the recent issue of NPC dialogue never changing; I’m still having people wishing me luck on my Gym Challenge even after I’ve already become Champion. 

The soundtrack is a downgrade from Gen 7. A lot of it felt kind of underwhelming. There wasn’t a single time where I stopped to soak in the atmosphere of a given area. Gen 7 still has the supreme soundtrack of the series in my opinion, with Gen 5 in second. If there are any good tracks, it’s the major boss themes; the themes of actual characters that you fight, like Bede and Team Yell’s loli mascot, Marnie. They also bring back Gen 5’s “music change when the Gym Leader has one Pokemon left,” and it really sells the intensity of those battles.

As for the visuals, the Switch has made Pokemon look like a true JRPG, or to be more specific, those new-fangled “animu” JRPGs, with cel-shaded anime kids, vibrant colors, and amazing lighting effects. This is definitely the best-looking that Pokemon has ever been.

Lastly, let’s discuss the thing I’ve been concerned about the most: postgame. For some reason, they haven’t gotten it right from Gen 6 onward, and it still seems to be the case here. Other than the designated Game Freak superboss, the postgame give you a single sidequest, like most recent games have done. In this quest, you spend the whole time going back to older areas and fighting whatever’s there, and your prize is the Legendary that’s on the box of the game you’re playing. Although the villains of the quest are funny, there are no new areas that open up, and even worse, THERE IS NO LOOKER. Looker has been a staple since Gen 4, and he’s one of the best characters in all of Pokemon! AND HE’S NOT HERE FUUUUUUUU- 

Anyways, finishing this sidequest opens up the “Designated BS Competitive Battle Area Where That You Challenge Out of Curiosity, Lose in 5 Seconds, and Realize that the Team that’s been with you Through Thick and Thin Sucks,” and it’s actually the easiest in the series. The battles aren’t just easier; it’s also easy to grind because you rank up by winning a total number of battle, instead of consecutive battles. I’m still not a fan of competitive, but hey, it’s there for those who want it.

You know what, for the sake of completion, I should touch on Gen 8’s competitive battle scene. The following information is all from an associate of mine who follows the competitive scene of Pokemon very closely. First off, Hidden Power and Toxic TMs don’t exist, which greatly limit what you can do to round out your Pokemon. Also, battles are apparently timed, with animations not pausing to run down the clock. Also, the lack of National Dex makes it so that you’re stuck with whatever’s in Galar, and that could make certain Pokemon significantly more dangerous than before. I also read an article saying that Dynamaxing is banned in competitive (which I would believe given how whiggety-whack it is), but I don’t know if it’s true. But hey… none of this is my problem!

As for the rest of postgame, you basically get to rechallenge the Champion Cup at Wyndon as many times as you want. In it, you merely fight random Gym Leaders and get a reward after winning; you don’t even refight Leon at the end. It’s good for grinding, at least, making it a big improvement over Gen 7’s NOTHING.

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Final Verdict: 8.8/10

They seem to be continuing the path they tread in Gen 7: amazing gameplay, user-friendly mechanics, and great difficulty, but a poorly built region. I feel like they’re either on the cusp of making Pokemon a tried-and-true JRPG series and not just “kiddy crap”, or completely ruining it once and for all. I guess we’ll have to see what happens then. But in the meantime, Pokemon Sword and Shield are nonetheless a wildly good set of games.

Pokemon Shield First Impressions

by macksamson, posted in First Impressions, Gaming

You’d think that with eight whole generations of Pokemon, that Game Freak would be out of ideas. However, the latest installments, Sword and Shield, might just be the best games yet. I will be covering my impressions of Shield on today’s blog.

So, the premise is a return to form; no more having to “make the Pokemon League” crap (although it was pretty interesting conceptually). In this instance, your rival character, Hop (who, unfortunately, still chooses the Starter with a disadvantage against yours), is the younger brother of the Champion, and said Champion gives you your Starters. You and Hop also have a run-in with some weird Pokemon that is immune to all attacks, and it is most likely a pre-evolution of your game’s titular Legendary. But hey, Gyms are back! Thank Arceus! 

Every new Generation feels like it has a billion new mechanics and changes, so it’s overwhelming to talk about stuff… Gah, I guess I’ll just go off of whatever comes to mind first. Let’s talk Pokemon Centers. These things baby you; allowing you to buy each type of healing item other than Full Heals and REVIVES before your first Gym Badge. But other than that, these are the best Pokemon Centers ever because they EACH come with a Name Rater, Move Reminder, AND Move Deleter; no Heart Scales required!

On the field, Gen 8 borrows from Pokemon Let’s Go!, and shows wild Pokemon in the overworld. However, it’s a bit confusing. While some appear visibly on the field, there are still old-school random encounters, except those tend to have completely different Pokemon. Intuitively, the invisible Pokemon are ones that are too small to actually be seen above the grass, which makes sense, but it’s still annoying. Also, the Pokedex yet again does not have the Habitat List from Black and White 2. Instead, the Pokedex tells you what Pokemon you can catch in a given area, but it only shows one area at a time, and in chronological order, meaning that you have to catch EVERYTHING as you go along in order for it to actually show the next place.

Another noticeable thing is that all Pokemon naturally gain battle EXP together from the get-go. Also, there’s the Pokemon Camp ability, which allows you to play with your Pokemon and cook Curry (which is this game’s version of the crap you make with Berries in past games, and it’s just as convoluted as ever). This gives them even more EXP and increases their affinity towards you. So far, it seems that they at least got rid of the EXP boost from affinity, but kept the more luck-based perks. I’m sure you’re looking at this and thinking, “Oh my God the game’s even EASIER than ever! 0/10!” I thought that too, but this game’s actually proven to be reasonably difficult so far. You really need to know your stuff (fortunately, they still have the Battle Info button for noobs). Even with the bonus EXP from catching Pokemon (which I’ve been doing pretty liberally), fighting Trainers, and using the Camp, I’ve been cutting it close, with major bosses being the exact same level as my strongest Pokemon. They finally designed those Pokemon-helping mechanics around the actual challenge factor (as long as you don’t grind). Speaking of Pokemon-helping mechanics, you also have PokeJobs. These are accessible from the PC and are basically Merc Missions from Xenoblade 2. You send out boxed Pokemon for a set period of time, and they come back with a chunk of EXP (with bonuses for the Types specified on the request). This will be important for breeding tons of Pokemon at once. You can also farm new EXP Candies, which do exactly what they sound like. They are much more powerful than they look; only 5 or 6 of the smallest units can level up a Pokemon early game.

Overwhelmed yet? Well, there’s also the addition of Wild Areas. These are where Pokemon becomes a true JRPG; they are vast, open, and have tons of Pokemon of wildly varying levels and draw points to get items from. The most important materials are Watts, which are obtained by visiting glowing red Pokemon Dens and pressing A on them. These can be exchanged for items, such as the new/old TR items. TRs are like TMs of old, use it once and they break. They are much more common, and generally contain better moves (seriously, most of the TMs are going out of their way to give you crap moves), plus they can be obtained multiple times, such as from Pokemon Dens…

…which segues into the BIGGEST (pun intended) change made in Gen 8, Dynamax Pokemon. Inside some Pokemon Dens are Dynamax Pokemon, giant versions of regular Pokemon who are much stronger than regular ones; so strong, that four Trainers need to band together to take one down. So that means that you have to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online and connect to the Internet and fight them alongside some randos, right? Fortunately, no; you can play offline and you’ll be joined by some fairly competent A.I. trainers. When fighting against Dynamax Pokemon, you’ll be able to Dynamax the Pokemon you chose to fight in these battles, turning them gigantic as well. Dynamax is basically a fusion of Mega Evolution and Z-Powers. When your Pokemon are Dynamaxed, they get a big stat boost, and their moves are modified. Offensive moves become a much stronger move of the same type, and leave a free effect like a multi-target stat buff on your team, a multi-targeting debuff on the enemy team, or a Weather effect, and Status moves just become a stronger version of Protect. Dynamaxing lasts for three turns (and I assume you can only use it once per battle?), so coming out swinging isn’t always the best. A lot of battles were decided by me timing my Dynamax so that the opponent’s would run out while mine was still going. Overall, Dynamaxing is by far the most gimmicky and least necessary mechanic in the game, but they made a good decision in restricting it to Pokemon Dens and Gym Battles.

Hey, another segue! Gyms are back and, well, the same, really. They build up Gyms as this whole extravagant thing, just for them to be the same. The problem with this is that you basically have to go through a whole extra step for no reason. When you enter a Gym, you now have to go to some receptionist and change into a tokusatsu uniform before actually starting the Gym in earnest. Also, when you actually get to the boss, the cutscene leading up to the fight is really long. But hey, I’d take this over those stupid Trials in Gen 7. 

But unfortunately, the Gym Leaders have taken a downgrade again. In Gen 8, they’re once again one-note characters that you talk to a single time outside of the Gym, then fight back inside the Gym. And it doesn’t end there; the whole cast is as one-note as ever. Hop shows that they gave up at making the rival anything more than free EXP. They tried to give him a defined character arc by making him edgier later, but it feels very cliche and contrived. Meanwhile, the cloud-headed Bede is a return of the obnoxious rival of old, but this guy is at least obnoxious as part of his job, working for Chairman Rose, the guy in charge of Galar’s biggest source of energy. Rose is at least kind of funny, as he comes of as this business-y guy, but spends more time wearing summer casual clothes than taking his job seriously (*cough* totally not the bad guy *cough*). Team Yell is our new mischief-making group this time around. Despite their similarities to Best Team Skull, they seem pretty unremarkable, and only seem to serve as justifying the game walling you with NPCs at the exits of towns (which seriously needs a new approach; it’s getting old).

Let’s discuss cutscenes next. These have been a replay-killer in Pokemon for a while, and it was OBNOXIOUS in Gen 7. In Gen 8, it’s at least been far better than Gen 7, but still kind of bad. The Poke Ball tutorial is still forced, but they at least not bother telling you to weaken it first. However, to be honest, the cutscenes here aren’t actually terrible. With the more cinematic camera angles and more expressive character models, the cutscenes have a lot more personality. For example, the cutscene that introduced the Starters might be overly long, but it gives off a subtle visual cue of their Type matchups, to save from people actually having to tell you in a forced tutorial. Also, to make the game more anime, bosses offer comments during battle. While they are cool and will no doubt give later fights much more emotion, you can’t skip them, and are onscreen for what feels like ten whole seconds. Curiously, there is a setting to skip cutscenes. However, it is a toggle to automatically skip all cutscenes, not a button prompt to skip them, which is kind of stupid. Most modern JRPGs at least give you a button prompt… I guess in Gen 9, then.

Next, I’ll give my impressions on the new Pokemon. Thankfully, they actually made them pretty common out in the wild, unlike Gens 6 and 7, where you’d be hard-pressed to find actual NEW Pokemon. Regional Variants return, but this time it’s not limited to Gen 1. The best one I’ve found is a Ground-Steel version of my boy Stunfisk, and it’s freakin’ great. But as far as the new-new Pokemon, I’ll say that I’m not screaming “WTF?!” as consistently as I was in Gen 7, but overall Game Freak’s still got it. The starters seem to continue the trend of being unremarkable until their final form, which in my case is my water Starter that ended up evolving into Michael Phelps the Pokemon. I have a Pokemon that I really like, design-wise, but it only knows Withdraw and Astonish. This is a sign that it will evolve into something amazing, but when and how? What if it’s a trade evolution?

Speaking of trading, the fact that this game is on the Switch has a down side for me. As someone who is uncomfortable around people, I just used two DSs to exploit trading in the past. Since I believe that Gen 8 is the first game in a LONG time to let you ACTUALLY complete the Pokedex, I’d like to be able to do that. The problem is of course, the other two starters, trade evolutions, and the opposite game’s titular Legendary. While I do have a copy of Sword that I would love to play in the future (any%, of course), I only have one Switch. I have no idea if you can trade between save files. But if I can’t, I’d have to subscribe to Nintendo Switch Online, and see if randos are willing to give up a Legendary just so someone else’s Pokedex can be completed. You can also use Link codes to trade with a specific someone, but that requires real, human friends.

Lastly, I will discuss the visuals. The Switch has made Pokemon look like a true JRPG, or to be more specific, those new-fangled “animu” JRPGs, with cel-shaded anime kids, vibrant colors, and amazing lighting effects. This is definitely the best-looking that Pokemon has ever been.

But despite how glowing this review has been, I do have some concerns. According to the Map, there only seems to be two Wild Areas in the game, which feels like a vat of wasted potential (maybe they’ll abolish Routes entirely in Gen 9). Also, I didn’t notice a Victory Road AT ALL on the Map, which is really bad, especially since the lack of one in Gen 7 sucked ass. And if that wasn’t enough, Gen 8 could have the worst postgame yet, since the Map doesn’t show anything interesting past what I assume is the Pokemon League. The only thing of note is a mysterious dot adjacent to the foggy area that you couldn’t do much in at the beginning, but that would make it even more miserable than vanilla Gen 7, which would be quite impressive in of itself. But alas, these are just concerns formed just by looking ahead at the Map.

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Current Verdict: 9.25/10

Despite the alarming possibility of a weak postgame, Sword and Shield are looking to be the quintessential Pokemon games. They’re not perfect, obviously, but like Disney Parks, perfection would mean no more strives for further improvement. The game’s options for different Pokemon you can use are a bit overwhelming, so I’d still recommend noobs start with Gen 7 (or Gen 5’s sequel, Black and White 2, if you don’t mind those stupid HMs). But seriously… Pokemon Sword and Shield is lit.