SPOILER-FREE REVIEW
Despite a couple of innovative new features, Pokémon Sword is unremarkable and tragically disappointing, lacking the substance, charm and content of the series’ better entries.
Looking back, I can see that Pokémon was an important part of my childhood. It’s something that I devoted hours to, playing the Generation IV games on my Nintendo DS with my cousins, battling and trading away. That was nine years ago, and we’ve all grown since. So I wish I could say that playing the latest Pokémon games reminded me of fond memories of simpler times, but unfortunately that isn’t true, at least not totally. While that compelling core gameplay remains intact, as it has ever since the very first Pokémon Trainers set out to conquer Kanto in monochrome, I still got the sense that something was missing. Whether you wear your nostalgia goggles proudly, or take them off entirely, there’s no denying the huge absence that lies at the very heart of Pokémon Sword.
At times, it feels as though it isn’t really a game at all. Where previous Pokémon games placed me front and centre for all the action, Sword had me watching from the wings. There is a story involving Legendary Pokémon and the mysterious Dynamax phenomenon, but it’s not actually a main concern for most of the game. Every so often, I’d bump into one of the few NPCs actually responsible for doing all the exciting stuff off-screen. I’d select one of two dialogue options and be told how clever or insightful I was, regardless of which option I’d chosen, but that I also should focus on the Gym Challenge and just leave the tough mental stuff “to the adults”.
The end result is a straightforward story with characters who range from disinteresting to borderline insufferable. The Galar region’s local villains are the victims of poor narrative choices, and have the dubious distinction of being the least developed or threatening villains in the history of this franchise. To Game Freak’s credit, there is a post-game story, but it’s one that’s emblematic of the game as a whole. It’s been streamlined, and the lack of content means it’s easily completed in under a few hours.
That attempt to streamline Pokémon has dire consequences beyond the story. My journey became all about going from point A to point B, and doing very little else. The fun time-wasting diversions and the small special encounters, all of which are vital in making Pokémon magic, are entirely absent. I still remember exploring off the beaten track in previous games and finding all kinds of secret areas to explore. You’d always find interesting things to do, like battling a family of Pokémon trainers at their house in Hoenn, or delving into the depths of Sinnoh’s Underground. In Sword, journeying from town to town is sadly uneventful. While the Galar region’s UK-inspired aesthetic is undeniably cool, it quickly becomes obvious that it’s little more than an artfully constructed façade designed to hide the lack of content from full view. Veteran players will remember things like Contests and the Safari Zone, fun diversions from the main story. Sword doesn’t have them. The game’s towns and cities feel more like movie sets than real places; designed to offer the illusion of size and scale when in reality, there’s only sealed doors, nobody to talk to and nothing to do beyond buying clothes or haircuts, and daily battles in the various Battle Cafés. It’s a far cry from previous games where every nook and cranny had little secrets, and the world was broken up by challenging dungeons filled with wild Pokemon, Trainers, puzzles and lore.
The game does attempt to introduce new features to attract your attention. The game’s Wild Area, a massive open-world area populated with dozens of Pokémon, is open for players to explore to their hearts’ content and is one of the game’s best new features. Roaming around, seeing Pokémon frolic in the tall grass under the sunny skies and camping in the great outdoors and making curry with the Pokémon Camp feature was pure, unadulterated Nintendo joy.
However, other new features don’t work nearly as well. The Max Raid Battles, where you can team up with other players online or work with NPC trainers offline to battle giant Dynamax Pokémon, are fantastic when they work properly. In essence, these are Pokémon’s version of raids, and pitting giant Pokémon against each other for the chance to catch rare Pokémon and earn a stunning set of rewards is the most fun I’ve had with this new game. Unfortunately, they don’t work properly very often, whether you go online or stay offline. I found it hard to find proper online raids, since other players are currently busy using exploits to find the rarest Pokémon and earn the best rewards, or alternatively they’re bringing Magikarp on these raids for a laugh. NPCs offline didn’t do that. Instead, they often brought Pokémon with obvious type disadvantages, so I had trouble there too. The post-game Battle Tower is serviceable, but I didn’t compelled to return after trying it out.
The ability to Dynamax your own Pokémon creates stunning set piece battles, but its use is limited. It can only be used in certain areas, like in the game’s stadium-sized Gyms, and even then it’s only available once every battle for three turns. This is a positive rather than a negative; it makes your battles against Gym Leaders feel epic and truly special. However, it creates a disparity in terms of difficulty. Battling Gym Leaders can be tough because you have to consider when and how to use Dynamax to your advantage, but battling ordinary Trainers isn’t usually that difficult at all. Because of EXP Share, which is now permanently active, I didn’t have to work or train particularly hard to get my party of Pokémon to a point where they were high-levelled and scoring one-hit KOs 70% of the time. There was also a radical disconnect between me and my chosen team as a result. Because training one also indirectly trained the others, I struggled to form bonds, which would normally have been formed from grinding for experience alone, with any of them. It flies into the face of basic video game logic: to be rewarded with something, you have to earn it first.
In terms of visual design, Dynamax also exposes more of the game’s limitations. All Pokémon can Dynamax, but only a select few species can Gigantamax, undergoing massive form and appearance changes, during that process. That brings us to the real elephant in the room: Dexit. The absence of the National Pokedex doesn’t feel bad in itself. 400 out of the 891 Pokémon species are still featured and so the shortfall isn’t exactly blatant, at least not to begin with. But it soon becomes painfully obvious. The absence of starters from previous games other than Charmander is disappointing, and the designs for many of Galar’s Pokémon aren’t particularly compelling. Fans complained about not being able to catch them all, but the cruel irony is that, having seen the new Pokémon, I don’t want to catch a lot of what has been included.
There are parts of Pokémon Sword that are still fun to play. In those, you can sense real effort and creativity. But the important distinction is this: in all of the previous games in this series, you could see the effort and creativity present no matter where you looked. Seen from that perspective, this game will likely be a disappointment for fans and even for people who’ve never touched a Pokémon game before. This is a dud, plain and simple.
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