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SwSh The Game Is Out, Time To Discuss

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I feel a bit silly, but I think the thing I'm enjoying most so far are the changes to the underlying logic behind the whole Pokemon world and gym challenge. The idea that it's such a cultural event, that multiple do it at once, that there are these huge stadiums and participants need sponsorships and stay in hotels the night before... It fleshes out the whole system brilliantly! I mean, look back at previous gens, do leaders just sit in there waiting all day? Why? What happens if no one comes in that day? How often does it happen? It's not game ruining that they don't explain these things, but this world feels like stuff is happening even when the protagonist isn't on screen, and that counts for WAY more than I ever would have guessed!
I agree. I really do enjoy the effort they put into the Gym challenge and making them feel like an actual professional sport. I just don’t like the uniforms. They just seem really unesscary because in real sports you use uniforms to distinguish which team you are on, but on Pokémon, there’s only one person per team, so it’s not required for Pokémon.
 
Kabe’s battle was pleasantly challenging. It’s likely because of my team composition, since I had no Pokémon super effective toward him and I limited myself to a 3vs3 battle (I wasn’t overleveled), but fighting three fully evolved Pokémon was definitely challenging for Raboot, Toxel (I should’ve brought Dottler in retrospect) and Corvisquire.

Thankfully my faithful aerial knight with a +1 in attack with Hone Clows, while Dynamaxed, resisted Centiskorch’s dynattack....though I don’t get why he went for the bug one.
 
Been playing around for a little while. I haven't really hit my stride with my team yet, but I usually have a bit of a hodge podge team up until after the first gym anyway.

One cool thing that happened was I got a Sizzlipede in my first surprise trade. It's way overlevelled and I think I'd rather catch my own for my team but it was still cool.

Another interesting thing that happened was I caught a Blipbug that already had a ribbon (or mark?) and every time I send it out it says "Blipbug the Sociable".

Edit: Also I think Skwovet might be the most adorable rodent Pokemon yet.
 
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I barely got my partner Pokemon, I chose Sobble for my first attempt to play because he has higher speed (I'm starting with Sword). I think I'm disappointed at how little there is to the new Pokemon for Gen 8 in terms of fire types. The grass types outside of Grooky are boring as well.
 
So the games' score is 3.6/10 right now on metacritic (users score clearly). No surprise.
I've played the first two hours and:

  • The game improves in not focusing on that many tutorials but it stll holds your hand quite a lot. Every two steps there's Hop telling you what to do and where to go.
  • The animations for the starters are great.
  • The scene with Zacian at the beginning is great.
  • The levelling curve is like the past. Nothing difficult but no evident backstep.
  • Seeing the pokemon in the overworld is great and the new mons are amazing.
  • The wild area is a visual mess. Like seriously, if you get too close to trees they disappear. On the berries trees (which look bad) you can clearly see the pixelated leaves (and I'm playing on handheld to limit the flaws!). Really disappointing.
  • I like the fact that you can carry your box.
  • I liked some animations of pokemon, much less some others. Being able to see a Kommo-o in the first two hours is amazing. Not being able to catch a level 21 pokemon is not great.
  • The overworld visual outside the wild area is mixed for me. For example the first time you enter the professor house there's a huge black void on the right. I was seriously shocked. Like the visual rapresentation of the void. Other parts are really pleasant.
  • A LOT of closed doors. A lot of times I tried to enter somewhere just to find the door locked.
Overall, definitively not a 3.6. You can enjoy the games despite some shocks here and there. But certainly a game that has a lot of flaws and that feels rushed, especially in the tecnical department.
It's still pretty soon to judge the final result but for now is around 6/7. Some parts deserve 8/9, others parts 5 at best.

Yeah, I think I largely agree with this. I haven't thought it was too handholdy (I can see myself being a lot more eager to replay these games than I was with SM), and the level curve hasn't been too extreme for me, although I admit have skipped a few Trainers because I was still trying to get a feel for the curve.

The Wild Area is a bit visually glitchy unfortunately (and lags when you connect to the Internet), although aside from that, I've been playing it docked and I think the game generally looks great, for Pokémon's standard at least.

The starters interaction cutscene might be one of the best ones in the franchise so far.

It was fucking brilliant

With this, I’d like to share that the increasing fog (still related to the first encounter but not sure on spoiler policy) and us not being able to attack the legend the suspense factor was increased! Not to mention the beautiful music which used the legendary’s howls. I’ve been fascinated by wolf and dog howls my entire life so having a track inspired by them was great! Too bad it doesn’t carry over to the future encounters...

This was also fucking brilliant

Supposedly the cutscenes and hand-holding in this game are just as intrusive as they were in Sun/Moon, if not more so.

Has it been that way for anyone? Cause this one of my biggest problems with Sun/Moon and the reason why I skipped USUM. I don't like being interrupted by cutscenes every two steps I take. Nor do I like patronizing tutorials I'm forced to take.

I wouldn't say it's as bad as SM. I've just about made it to the first Gym, and there's been nothing I wanted to burn down as badly as SM's Trainer's School. No forced tutorials like there was for Mantine Surfing. @Cute Charm is probably about right in their comparison of it to XY's introductory phase. Some of the story sequences can go on for a little bit but to me, the characters seem to move around a little quicker and the camera doesn't like to linger as much as it did in SM, so that mitigates it.

In fact, it's surprisingly willing to let you skip some of the most routine tutorials, like "How to catch a Pokémon" or "How to use a Pokémon Center."
 
Had the game for a few hours and have been taking it nice and slow. Was extremely easy to get up to level 19/20

I’m really not a fan of Drizzile’s design now that I have him, but Corvisquire is fantastic.

Wild Area Dynamax raids are actually quite... fun. It’s given me use of a Sudowoodo and Spritzee, which are quite nice team placeholders for now.

There’s a little too much cut scene dialogue so far now the game has actually gotten going- but the overworld encounters have been nice.

Slumbering Wield was incredible I am obsessed with that musical score.
 
Because it's a Pokemon game on a new system, I sorta enjoy the tutorials. But the in-game dialogue is right up there in excess with SM / USUM.

Also, can I just be rid of Sonia and Hop now?
 
I noticed something interesting while looking through the stamps on the y-comm.

A stamp for a max raid to fight a Scraggy appeared even though I have Shield version (and Scraggy is supposed to be exclusive to Sword) It didn't let me join because I think the max amount of people already joined it. So I can't confirm but it seems like you can catch version exclusives through max raid battles?

The stamps in general are also handy as an in-game way to know where to catch Pokemon too...
 
It's so! Frikken! British!

I love it!

I'm having lots of fun with it. Screw you doubters.

I chose Sobble and named it Scale because the dice told me to.

Ah, and I caught a Nicket and named it Rouge. Real creative, I know.
 
Unfortunately my only contribution to the release discussion is that I need to make like an Absol and go dark. It's going to be at least two more weeks before I decide to pick up Sword or Shield, and the best way to avoid spoiler details is to avoid Pokemon discussions in the meantime.
 
I've seen people complaining about tutorials.

Why?

I just chose to skip them.

There's an option to do that.

I did that thing.

There wasn't even a catching tutorial.

To be fair, the only way to skip the catching tutorial (because there IS one) is if you catch Pokemon before getting to Hop, and not everyone knows to do that. Still, it's a big improvement.
 
This game is really fun so far. I've put about 4 and a half hours into the game, just taking a bit of a break right now. Seeing the Pokemon in the overworld is always fun, and I love seeing them all running around. The little hints of the story have been far and few between, but I am certainly interested. While Hop does have similar qualities to Hau, he is definitely not Hau 2.0. Hop is much more ambitious than Hau and is superset on becoming champion. He definitely has more focus on his goal, while Hau definitely was more relaxed.

The Wild Area is quite fun, and also quite intimidating right now. Being much lower level than many of the Pokemon, I always have to keep moving if I am running around in an area that has higher level Pokemon. I stopped for a second earlier to check my phone and a Liepard ran into me and murdered my entire team. But its exciting running around over there with that risk, getting items and collecting watts. I've done a few Max Raid Battles too (offline), and those were also pretty fun. I love the free-form camera in the wild area. I hope future generations will move this free-form camera to the entire game because it is so fun to be able to see the world from whatever angle.
 
I don't hate Hop, but he's kind of annoying and slightly self-centered (but then again, aren't all kids).

It kind of makes me feel bad that I'm gonna beat the crap out of him and become champion instead.
 
I noticed something interesting while looking through the stamps on the y-comm.

A stamp for a max raid to fight a Scraggy appeared even though I have Shield version (and Scraggy is supposed to be exclusive to Sword) It didn't let me join because I think the max amount of people already joined it. So I can't confirm but it seems like you can catch version exclusives through max raid battles?

I do believe that is the case, yes.
 
A stamp for a max raid to fight a Scraggy appeared even though I have Shield version (and Scraggy is supposed to be exclusive to Sword) It didn't let me join because I think the max amount of people already joined it. So I can't confirm but it seems like you can catch version exclusives through max raid battles?

It's probably been confirmed by someone else, but I just caught a Seedot in a max raid battle even though I'm playing Shield. So it seems like we can catch version exclusives this way.

I don't know if all the version exclusives work this way, but I also had the chance to catch a Jangmo-o, I just missed it because it has a low catch rate I think.
 
I have never felt worse for marginally liking a game. I'm not even over the moon about the game or anything; it definitely has problems, but I am legitimately enjoying it and I don't think it was a waste of 60 bucks. And I feel terrible about that. I feel like I'm a bad human being for mildly enjoying a video game.
 
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