Literalmente lo estuve jugando mientras esperaba que estuviera estable el Legends Arceus en yuzu. Llegué al cuarto gimnasio, según el juego me tomó unas 15 horas, pero se sintieron como 40, incluso jugando con el mod de 60fps. Es más, los que jugaron en hardware real ¿Cómo es que no se duermen? I mean, sé que es un juego enfocado a un público para todas las edades, pero es increíble que en toda mi aventura haya usado solo 3 pokes y solo me la pasé apretando A, incluso cuando mi tipo no era fuerte contra el del contrincante igual ganaba con 3 o 4 golpes, y las interacciones que hay con tus mascotas son super limitadas. ¿Es que ahora todos los que dicen que los juegos son buenos juegan de forma instintiva al nuzlocke? porque de otra forma no lo comprendo.

BTW, no sé por que existe la queja de la mecanica de repartir experiencia, con lo simplón que son las batallas el hecho de que la EXP se comparta me parece un regalo de Dios.

(Review originally written in December of 2019)

I had originally posted a largely positive review of this game. I was legitimately having a good time with it, and had put about 50 hours in at the time. A few days before writing this review, I completed a Living Dex, with 400/400 catchable Pokemon sitting in my boxes. After nearly 90 total hours, I took a break from the game and had a depressing realization.

I hadn't actually enjoyed most of it.

So why did I think highly of the game at first? Was I deluding myself in to thinking the game was better than it was just because I wanted to like it? Were my 21 years of fandom blinding me to the game's flaws?

Well yes, but actually no.

For much of the game, I was filled with that sense of childlike wonder that I really crave when it comes to gaming. I was playing with my kids, and we were having a great time. But I can pinpoint the part of the game where that stopped: When we had seen all the new Pokemon.

I made a point to not look at any of the leaks, or even most of the official news releases regarding the game. I made that commitment because playing Blue Version in 1998 was the only time I had played a Pokemon game without already being intimately familiar with every Pokemon in the game. I wanted to recapture some of that sense of discovery. And it worked! Discovering brand new Pokemon regularly was incredible. I was having the best time I'd had with the series in a long time.

But that was exclusively because I was being surprised regularly. Once the new Pokemon had all been seen, the game had nothing else interesting or new to show.

I truly love Pokemon as a franchise. It's been dear to me since I was a kid. My wife and I have played Pokemon games together throughout our relationship. Now I play with my kids. And because of that, I LOVE seeing new Pokemon. And I made Pokemon Sword all about that sensation. But that only works once.

The HD facade really just hides a Game Boy game, and that feels weird. Quite similar to what I said in my review of the remake of Link's Awakening, the game feels like it should be on more primitive hardware. When a game is simple due to hardware limitations, it makes sense. Gold and Silver were incredible because they were on the friggin' Game Boy. They were MASSIVE adventures in context. Platinum and Black 2/White 2 were impressive RPGs for the DS. But once the series hit the third dimension, it felt empty. I enjoyed XY. I really liked ORAS. I had an okay time with the four Alolan games. But the simple, repetitive gameplay of Pokemon just doesn't feel fulfilling when you KNOW the hardware is capable of so much more.

I've been a Pokemon main series apologist for a long time. But suddenly, I don't know if I've been honest with myself. So why would I play through all of these games?

It's the same reason I enjoyed my first 40-or-so hours with Sword. Because I really just like Pokemon. I love their designs, I love the new moves, I love their abilities, I love evolution (and Mega Evolution, RIP), I love crafting a team of six, and I love games that give a sense of adventure. That last point is especially important. I think it’s what’s really missing from the 3D Pokemon titles. Somehow, Pokemon entered the third dimension and it made things feel smaller. Instead of opening the world up, it became claustrophobic. Instead of growing up with the fan base, the games got simpler and easier. Instead of having a region you explore, Galar is the most linear region we’ve ever had.

I dunno, man. This has been a big ol’ word vomit, and I’ll probably have to revise it later after taking some more time to think about it. But Pokemon games need to be reworked in one way or another. I don’t know if I’m quite to the point where I’ll completely skip the next game. We’ll have to see what it looks like when it comes out. I don’t even care about Dexit. I just want the games to be interesting again. Because I played this game the same way I played Pokemon Rumble World, Pokemon Shuffle, and Pokemon Picross: giving in to my compulsion to “Catch ‘em All”. And in the end, I didn’t feel happy with my accomplishment. I didn’t look back fondly on my time with the game. I felt as hollow as the games themselves.

And that really sucks.

At this point, I don’t even know what it would take for a new Pokemon game to be great. I can’t even imagine it happening. But I do still love those absurd critters. You know what Pokemon game announcement would really do it for me?

Pokemon Snap 2. (Again, review originally written in December of 2019)

Heads up, this review may have a different feel than others I’ve done recently - I got the idea to write it while procrastinating and wrote it all in one pass out of sheer frustration.

The best way I can describe Pokémon Sword and Shield is that they’re games that fight against your ability to have fun with the solid Pokémon mechanics that are there. It was after I watched my roommate try and fail to enjoy their time with Alpha Sapphire, that I realized the crucial issue Pokémon's gameplay formula has always had: Its entirely built on game knowledge. If you know the opponent’s Pokémon, know the strengths of your own Pokémon, know what moves your opponent’s Pokémon may do and how to counter it, and know which Pokémon are worth raising versus which have no potential, the series’ groundwork is one of the most flexible, deep and experimental RPGs ever made, highlighted even further when you add self-imposed challenge rules such as the famous Nuzlocke on top to truly make the experience rewarding.

The problem is that the games have never been good at conveying that knowledge, and rather than work to fix it, have worked increasingly hard to provide bullshit workarounds to let you survive the game.

Because each player’s team and game knowledge is going to vary wildly, the bar of difficulty is lowered to ankle height, with gym leaders never sporting more than 3 Pokémon, often with only 3 moves each as to not overwhelm and surprise. Because players may not be able to remember what attacks are good against what types, or remember what types some Pokémon are, you’re told by the game which moves are super effective once you’ve met the opponent’s Pokémon even once - not even captured them, just if you’ve even one time encountered them in any context. Because not every Pokémon is good or viable (despite the fact that they seemingly cut the National Dex for the sake of “balancing”), there are a plethora of options given to the player to let them win through brute-forcing, such as Affection. And crucially, because every player doesn’t feel like committing to raising Pokémon they have no idea will be worth doing so with, the EXP Share is turned on at all times and exponentially raises the amount of EXP handed out to you across the game, leaving you with a thoroughly overleveled team if you don’t deliberately switch teammates in and out and keep an eye on what level you’re “supposed” to be at. When Game Freak presents players with a square piece to fit in a square hole, rather than trying to teach them how to rotate the piece to fit in the hole, they hand the player a collection of power tools to drill their own bigger hole.

This feeling of being forced to play a way you don’t want to extends beyond excessive handholding, all of which I was somewhat able to work around. The game’s big feature is the Wild Area, which is a rather nice inclusion in that it lets you find a bunch of different Pokémon in a new way - which was especially fun with the rules of my Nuzlocke giving me two new area catches from every gym. That’s all well and good, but it couldn’t just be left as a neat oddity to be explored at the player’s own pace: Through the Raid Battles and the purchasable rewards you get from participating in them, Game Freak is essentially forcing you to spend more time in the Wild Area than you would otherwise want to. What makes this system differ from optional challenge areas such as the Battle Maison is that the rewards are things that have historically always been obtainable throughout the core campaigns and were crucial in making the most out of your teams - good attacks. TMs are still in the game, but have gone from a big toolbox of interesting moves to housing some of the most gimmicky, garbage attacks in the series - Rock Tomb, Whirlpool, Electroweb, Mega Punch, Charm, and so on. Several Pokémon I’ve consistently loved using were left sitting on the bench because I simply wasn’t able to provide them with the moves they’d otherwise thrive with using, because those moves were locked behind a gimmicky new game mode - and are also single-use, meaning that you’ll need to grind this game mode FURTHER in order to actually get several uses of those good attacks.

Despite the widespread notion that the EXP Share is great for keeping grinding out of the game, this shows that it was not in Game Freak’s interest to minimize grinding in the game in general, but to just force you to play the game their way instead. With each game, more “quality of life” is added that just pushes the series further and further away from the stellar core mechanics and gameplay loop that it should be highlighting, to promote the most sandpapered and inoffensive “look at the flashy colors” experience possible. People had issue with getting stuck in routes, and finding HMs annoying? Let’s not think of a smart way to solve this, and instead just make every route a complete straight-shot from start to finish with zero engaging design. People found going back to the Pokémon Center to heal tedious? Nevermind the fact that its crucial to conveying the narrative difference between safe-space towns and the great unknown of the wilderness - now the player just has complete access to their entire PC of Pokémon at all times, meaning that if anyone gets hurt, they can just tag out without any issue. For the first time in the entire series there is no Elite Four OR Victory Road - the endgame challenge is effectively just one trainer battle at a time. Nothing is added to substitute for the loss in engagement that comes from sandpapering these rough edges: They may have been double-edged swords, but now there’s no blade in either direction.

What really stings about all this is that there is a genuine attempt behind it all to keep Pokémon going as a fresh experience lying in the background. Player models are all gorgeous in their lighting, modeling, shading, and animation, the environments not part of the Wild Area are almost all absolutely gorgeous in their framing and environmental design, the new creature designs and several of the new attacks are top-notch design ideas with unique playstyles, the pool of available Pokémon is plenty varied much like it was in Kalos, and the atmosphere of gym battles truly is unmatched in the series. The earlygame’s theming really is somewhat unique for the series, as after four games straight of over the top storylines about preventing the end of the world the focus is finally brought back on the interesting back-and-forth that can be brought from just wanting to be the strongest. You have Leon, the strongest trainer who rose to fame from nothing, contrasted with Chairman Rose, the well-liked millionaire with just as much influence yet far less earnestness in how they got there and what they do with that power. You’ve got Hop, Bede, Marnie and yourself, all with different goals, a group rivalry that echoes the best parts of Black and White’s Cheren and Bianca. And with each gym battle, you’ve got a stadium of adoring fans, watching the new generation of Pokémon battlers rise their way to the top with genuine awe, showing that anyone can become adored through sheer force of will.

And then the game still turns into a save-the-world plot by the end, and Chairman Rose was actually just an irredeemably evil man.

Pokémon Sword and Shield want to commit to new ideas, yet don’t know how to. They want to make the game more inviting to new players, yet can’t do so without encouraging them to just not pay attention to the game’s mechanics. They want to make a truly stunning first impression on HD hardware, yet still have tedious individual textboxes display the names of attacks not during - but before - the attack actually happens, still with ridiculously long animations to match. They want to be open world games, yet can’t be assed to make it a substantial enough part of the game to make players want to explore it without holding essential items hostage behind it. And they wanted to write a story about a group of new generation trainers clashing ideals to learn more about themselves, but couldn’t resist diverting far too much attention toward a forced disaster story that ends on the moral that you in particular are actually far greater of a trainer than everyone else because you stopped the end of the world. I’ve played through this game twice and I still don’t fucking know what Marnie’s personality is supposed to be, but I sure do know every individual detail of the Darkest Day now. Thanks, Game Freak.

[Playtime: 80 Hours]
[Key Word: Noncommittal]

Pokémon Sword is like junk food, not good but you keep eating anyway. This is probably the most I have ever played a Pokémon game, I don't know what's wrong with me. It's a bit crusty looking, runs like garbage in big open areas, lazy animations, bad story, and some dumb battle gimmick that hasn't shown up since.

Despite all those problems, I have over 165 hours, completed the pokédex for the first time, and even dabbled with the multiplayer. So it must've done something good, right? I can't really put my finger on it, nothing stands out. I'm not a huge Pokémon person and haven't played many; this one certainly is nowhere near my favorite.

Pokémon Sword is a weird one for me, I in no way recommend it and only consider it mediocre at best. However, I did get some good genuine fun out of it.

(5-year-old's review, typed by her dad)

It's where you get to catch Pokemon, and how you catch them is you just have to run into them or you can surprise them by going in front of them and they can just run up to you and you can go into a BATTLE.

My favorite thing is to cook food for Pokemon! But I cooked other things too, like... BEEEAAAAANNNNSSS. SSSSAAAUUUSSAAAAGEE.

One of the most joyless things I’ve honestly ever played. Virtually every aspect of this game feels either unfinished or out of date. The graphics are embarassing, it would’ve looked behind the times if it came out on the Gamecube. Despite it not looking like it should be very taxing, it somehow experiences frame drops into the teens at points, and the draw distance is pathetic with things popping in and out of existence right in front of you. Combat is the most bare bones, one-dimensional, poorly balanced, shitty, out of date take on turn based combat I’ve ever experienced, just pick the correct element and mindlessly spam the super effective option to win, except you might not even have to do that because the game’s progression is so poorly balanced you’ll be massively overleveled in the first hour, absolutely no thought or effort are required on your part to win. Even the gigantimax enemies, all that’s different is “oh no, I can’t one shot it, I’ll have to two shot it instead.” Most animations in the game range from missing completely to recycled stodgy minimalist gesture lined up (or misaligned) with some basic recycled particle effect, in contrast to the “sheer volume of high quality animations” that were falsely promised, the true unique ones I saw I could count on one hand. The wild areas that were so built up by the marketting are just empty fields, or rather AN empty field, there’s only one of them. On top of that the whole game is so patronizing and handholdy. I thought Pokemon was supposed to be an adventure, yet every time the game seems to be building up something of marginal interest, some character goes “Aw, you just missed it. Well don’t worry kiddies, the adults will take care of this!” while you’re left to dick around with some Hot Topic wearing weirdos obsessed with a 12 year old girl, then bully your best friend into giving up his aspirations. The gym puzzles were a joke, the cutscenes are shot like they’re meant to be voiced but the characters just sit there uncannily silent, the game is pathetic short for an RPG, I beat the story in around 13-14 hours. The only thing I didn’t touch was the multiplayer component, because it demands an insubordinate amount of grinding that I just was not willing to deal with. I have two friends who tell me it’s fine once you get there, but has a one sided rich-get-richer kind of balance with the EV level, and since the bulk of the real competitive scene plays on pc emulators, most of your opponents will be just kids who don’t understand the game, and the occasional neckbeard who dumps hundreds of hours thinking he’s some top shit competitive player even though he’s basically just dunking on children who stand no chance of fighting back.

It’s funny too because I played through the original Final Fantasy VII for the first time shortly before I played this. I remember being bewildered that this modern console entry in THE biggest franchise of all time, from probably THE most well funded game studio in the world couldn’t even meet the standard of a PS1 game from 25 years ago. It should be an industry leader, but instead it’s a cynical testament to how you don’t even have to try so long as you’ve got a nostalgic brand name to hide behind. This whole experience was insulting to my intelligence, what a pathetic excuse for a video game.

This game is a farting horse corpse that deserves to be poked at with a knot. Can you name a game worse than that? Well, I can, probably Fallout 76 or Superman 64. Continuing this way, this contemptible game offers nothing, but horrific graphics, dreadful and unbalanced gameplay and uninspired areas that are way too linear. There is no exploration, no difficulty, no adventure, no story, not the full compendium of monsters, not a full game. But you can buy the Pokéball Plus for 50 bucks to get access to Mew, I suppose.

They brought back National Dex. They really did it.

Pokemon Shield I thought was one of the worst games ever made. It really was just very boring and not as good as the other Pokemons, which are really good. But this one had no National Dex, and bad tree, and just bad game. But now, I play it again, and it is very good with National Dex. I love Pokemon, gameplay is very good and filled with subtlety. When you fire the water, the water is resistant. When you water the fire, the fire is hurt because water is put out by fire. It's this sublte design that makes the Pokemon series so great. This would have been a one star, maybe even half a star, if there was no national dex, which made this way weaker than other Pokemon games like the ones released between 2008-2012 when I was young and played them, but now it is really really good. The gameplay is wonderful, wonderfully developed characters like Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Maractus line the walls of this game, and it's overall just a delightful experience. 10/10, time to not play another game until the next Pokemon releases.

Despite the huge controversy involving this game, I really enjoyed it. Obviously it's still Pokémon, if you've enjoyed Pokémon at its most basic level, I see no reason you wouldn't enjoy this.

I absolutely love what this game does with gym battles, turning it into a huge competition. Everyone starting at the same time means you get a true feeling of progression, and as you go on you hear of more and more challengers who had to drop out due to it being too tough. The way it starts out with you registering with everyone else, then going to sleep at a hotel before waking up to see a crowd of people gathered to cheer you on creates such a huge scale of excitement.
It does kind of die down near the end unfortunately. By the 5th or 6th gym the challenge is treated almost like any other game, until we get to the finals, which once again bring up the scale far above anything seen in past games.

So overall I really enjoyed the story, even if it was simple. Just you, the player, on a quest to become the greatest trainer of all time. It's what all the games have technically been about, but this is the first one that truly made me feel like the game took it seriously. I also liked the little sub plots it caused, like Bede being disqualified and then picked up as the fairy type gym leader.

The difficulty in this game is a somewhat weird one. While I do feel like the game is scaled to exp share, the Wild Area makes trying to predict player levels a mammoth task. A player could skip the Wild Area completely and maybe be under-leveled, especially if they don't catch or beat any wild Pokémon. On the other hand a player could spend hours and hours in there before even getting their first gym badge. By adding so much freedom to the player without dynamic scaling, finding the sweet spot is difficult. I had a really weird experience myself, for the first 3 gyms I was slightly ahead of the gym leaders, then the 4th gym had a big boost and caught up to me, but after that, despite me not changing my play-style, I skyrocketed ahead of the rest of the gym leaders.

This weird level curve is especially prevalent in the "champion cup" as its called. It's essentially a long stretch of story which, while technically possible to take a break from and grind, isn't encouraged at all by the way it pushes itself forward. But when I started this section I was about 10 levels ahead of the first opponents Pokémon, then by the time I got the champion I was actually slightly under-levelled. The game essentially makes it that you have to be over-levelled for most of the climax to stand a chance against the final boss; it's such weird game design.

As for the Exp scaling, the game uses the method of giving less exp the higher level you are compared to your opponent. This works pretty well for the most part, but there's one major flaw: Wild Pokémon. For some crazy reason the wild Pokémon in this game are far above even the trainers in their area. Hell I ran into a few wild Pokémon that were higher level than me! Since a huge part of Pokémon has always been to "catch 'em all", naturally I did try to catch a bunch of Pokémon on my journey, but because they were all buffed to crazy levels, the idea of getting less exp for beating/catching lower level Pokémon kind of became futile. If they just lowered the levels of the wild mons it would have done so much to improve game balance. Of course you could just ignore them to not get the exp, but if your idea of game design is to not play as much of the game as you can, there's a problem.

Presentation in this game is definitely a step above anything we've seen in the series so far. Gym battles alone are a great example of this, as now there's no transition between the pre-battle dialogue and the battle itself. Instead the opponent and your character with get into position and it flows into the start of battle seamlessly. Add in a bunch of Mid-battle dialogue and it really helps make these battles stand out from the rest, whereas in previous games the only real difference between a gym battle and a regular battle was the music and a slight difficulty increase. Unfortunately it's not all great, a lot of the animations and cutscenes still look cheap. It's a shame because the very early cutscene of the starters showed such great promise, but nothing like that ever really came up again.

Going on to the things that make this game unique over other Pokémon games, let's start with Dynamax. Personally I hated it. Mechanically it just feels like a mish-mash of Megas and Z-Moves, but both of them done far worse. And from a practical point of view, trying to imagine these Pokémon fighting each other at that size is just ridiculous. I would have much preferred to just have no gimmick at all over this.

The Wild Area is decent. It's not super deep or anything, and the weather effects changing from area to area look janky as all hell, but it does a pretty good job of showing off a bunch of Pokémon walking around, making it feel alive and active. Raid battles are also a fun addition, even though I don't think they have the staying power I think Gamefreak wants them to. But the amount of rewards you get every time you clear one is bound to set off those happy chemicals in your brain that make you want to keep playing.

The gym challenges before the gym battles themselves are very hit or miss. On one hand we have creative ideas, like trying to gain points by catching/defeating Pokémon while also having to deal with an NPC trying to sabotage you, we have things that give a unique gameplay mechanic that we've never seen before in Pokémon, like the spinning cup thing, or Wooloo herding. Then we have ideas that aren't necessarily bad, but aren't new, like the water maze feels very similar to past gyms with switches/levels to control water flow. But then the last 2 gyms just gave up completely and made the pre-leader challenges just a bunch of trainer fights. Even the fairy gym, which is done in the style of a quiz - not a new concept, but they try to make it feel fresh by adding stat boosts/debuffs depending on your answer - feels worse than old versions as the questions no longer test your knowledge of Pokémon and instead just ask dumb questions about the gym leader that feel like they're purposely set up to trick you. Overall it's a promising concept that just wasn't utilised very well outside of a couple of gyms.

I had fun with the game, and other than a certain lack of undeniable cheapness in certain scripted events, which give the impression this was a 3DS game, it does its job just fine. What's wrong with it is what it doesn't have, because there's so much damn potential in this game just begging to come out. This could have easily been the best game in the series if they just put in some extra effort.

Good lord. It's astounding to me that a game with the reputation that Pokemon Sword has managed to disappoint me. I could've sworn that I went in with eyes wide open; I'd play the game and have a good time despite the well-publicized flaws. After all, it's a pattern I have repeated to success a few times.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus was a game that everyone knew looked like dog shit from its announcement trailer. I bought it, and had an excellent time for several hundred hours on my road to 100%.

Pokemon Scarlet was (another) game that everyone knew looked like dog shit from its announcement trailer, and it was also one that was well understood to be complete and total jank. I also enjoyed that game for upwards of 100 hours.

So, as I sat bored one day, I figured "Why not but Pokemon Sword! I'm down for another hundred hour, janky adventure with subpar graphics." Of course, only the latter half of that statement ended up panning out.

First I'll describe the devil I knew. It's hard to be aware of Pokemon Sword without knowing its reputation for subpar graphics. Surely an odd thing to make a mainstay of the series, but god damn it let's let GameFreak cook. While this is most definitely a identify to have with this Pokemon title, it's almost redundant to take serious umbrage with it. The games are so consistently undercooked insofar as visuals that by this point you either accept it or you've moved on. It's a worthy talking point, but not a big contributor to my opinion of Pokemon Sword.

The flaws that only showed themselves over the course of my time with the game, however, were much more damning.

Part of the reason I enjoyed Legends Arceus and Scarlet so much was the sense of freedom and, to a lesser extent, adventure that permeated them. (You're probably enjoying a laugh at my expense right about now if you've played Pokemon Sword. Good beats.) Pokemon is a series that lends itself well to nonlinearity. The agency to seek out your favorite guys and build a team you connect with does a lot to enhance the experience; any amount of time you're forced to bond with the second-stringers is wasted.

Openness also gels with the games on a narrative level. Just about every one of these games is about a kid shoving out into the world to carve their own way. Having one's hand held and dragged through a linear series of events would be too dissonant with that idea. While it's easy to look at the latest games in the series and say that Pokemon has only just now reached that level of nonlinearity, the games have always had this down. Even in Pokemon Red one had a few junction points where the player could choose which boss encounter to pursue. You always had some amount of agency.

Pokemon Sword does its best to dispense with that idea entirely. There is always one (1) correct way to progress. Not only are there no other options, there are never any side routes for optional objectives or challenges. No, you simply are rushed through the main story until the game finally stops at some point post-credits with the message to "Go explore!" when there is no longer an incentive to do so.

Not that there would be much to explore, anyway. In addition to being a linear corridor, the world of Pokemon Sword is lacking in anything compelling to do or see. It's not even interconnected, as a few parts of it are cut off with only the loading screen of a train station linking them. The claustrophobia of the world design only exacerbates the death of the sense of adventure started by the game's linear progression.

And without an adventure to embark on, what is the reason to even play a Pokemon game? It's surely not the combat, which never even approaches a stress test demanding the player actually engage with it on a strategic level. It's also not the collectathon nature of a world with so many unique monsters; the absolutely glacial pace of any encounter discourages someone from catching 400 unique creatures.

I'm at a loss trying to answer that question. Why play this game? Why did I play this game? While I feel deflated now, it's nothing compared to how I felt when I finished the "post game content". Seeing my final play time fall shy of 30 hours was paradoxical in a way that inflicted psychic damage.


My time with Pokemon Sword was so insubstantial and mind numbing, and how dare it be this short??