I'll get around to finishing my living dex some day. But not because SwSh is enjoyable. While I very much appreciate the easier leveling, easier breeding, easier competitive breeding I hated the wildly linear gameplay and story. I was not a fan of the complete lack of dungeons, the repeated Hop cutscenes for shit I already knew, the super easy gyms, the weak storyline, the near total dearth of postgame content, the 5 FPS Wild Area, paying $90 for the same content (a little less even) that used to be in a $40 game + $30 for Bank/Home subscriptions to keep my mons.

A total mess that has me very nearly unconcerned with Pokemon at all anymore.

the people who say this is better than scarlet and violet fucking escape me.

This game. Is not good. At all.

It feels like an all-time high in the unbearable lagginess of Pokémon games, the setting is COMPLETELY devoid of life beyond a flat green texture that's crustier than my grandmother's corpse, and I could not tell you a single part of this story that brought me any modicum of entertainment or joy. The only thing I will give it is that at least gigantamax exaggerated the designs a LITTLE.

What a fucking nightmare.

EHHHHHHHHHHH. I had a hard time ranking this one. I beat it a few weeks ago and have just been mulling my thoughts.

I started a run of this game years ago when I got it but I got so bored after gym 2 I stopped. I felt it was too easy.

I beat the game doing a semi blind nuzlocke run. I'm sure most of you know what that is but if you don't: you can only catch the first pokemon you encounter in each new named area, and if your pokemon faints, it's dead and cannot be used. I throw it into the PC in a graveyard. Because Shield is a bit weird with the wild encounters being static in the overworld, I did not count any static overworld pokemon. Only grass patches. Also I played on Set mode which is way harder.

So ok, I felt the game was too easy so I added self imposed rules to make it harder. And it DID make the game more enjoyable. I didn't lose a ton of teammates, maybe around 8-9. For a mostly blind run (since I've never gone past gym 2) I thought that was pretty good, I got pretty decent encounters and variety as well. And there were a lot of moments since I was on Set mode where I really had to think about my next course of action.

There's other general stuff I like about the game. All the gym leaders are pretty cool. I love the stadium as the backdrop for everything. The new Pokemon are actually awesome and I liked a lot of them. My Greedent which was one of the first encounters I had ended up being the MVP of the entire run. Super tanky and body slam two shot basically everything. Also, it has great music like most Pokemon games.

So there's a ton of issues that bog down the experience a lot. First, Hop is mad annoying. Even with the nuzlocke rules, he was honestly super free until the very very last battle. Probably one of the weakest rivals in all the games. He feels like a way worse Barry. I get what they're going for that he's weak on purpose, but I don't think it worked because the character is still too arrogant for most of the experience. I will say that the story of his Wooloo going in and out of the team was cool.

The game is just bloated with a lot rival type characters like Hop who are way too easy and don't really contribute much. Marie is alright and she has a decent design, but she dossnt do anything other than battle you. Bede is also mad annoying. Here it felt like they were trying to do Silver again, but it also didn't work. Whatever arc is intended here, Bede is barely in the game, so it feels hollow.

To go back to Marie. Easily the worst team in all of the games. Team Yell might as well not exist, like all they do is serve as a very minor inconvenience. It's legit a team of simps.

The story in general is pretty bad. Basically anytime anything interesting happens, it's in the background and Champion Leon with his Charizard that they 100% do not make clear enough that he has a Charizard, yeah he shows up and says "I got it, you just go get the next badge." And then the stuff with Chairman Rose is so horribly forced in. And also right at the end: it felt like they just forgot about the character and were like "oh yeah, he's in the game..."

The game also feels REALLY cheap. That body slam on Greedent is strong but the animation is laughable. I think they spent most of the budget on Dynamaxing animations.

So where do we rank this? I was hovering around a 3 because I did enjoy the game as a Nuzlocke. But that's a personal decision I made. I think the game as is is just average. Not AS bad as I remember, but not great.

after finishing the pokedex, and the main story line + the epilogue, have to say this game is just ok. i had fun playing it, just because i like finishing the pokedex, but the story was honestly not great, predictable plot and unnecessary long texts of dialogue, it feels like they werent even trying to write a proper story. characters have such great designs but so much potential wasted, some of the cool characters barley have any personality or dialogue (marnie) . The overworld, and the camping mini games feel unfinished, like it was half baked and they had to release the game as quick as they can. is this game worth $80? absolutely not. there are better pokemon games out there but if u got this game really cheap, just play it to get Galar Pokemon to add to your pokemon home collection.

I like this one a lot, I know the graphics aren't great, but that never really hurt it for me, I think the pokemon designs in this one are great and the gyms and routes are fun. The story however was not great, and the villain made no sense. Good overall though.

My Team Was:
1. A Lvl 78 Cinderace named Scorch
2. A Lvl 74 Boltound named YamYam
3. A Lvl 72 Zamazenta named Zammy
4. A lvl 70 Blastoise named Squirt
5. A lvl 69 Galarian Rapidash named Ponia
6. A lvl 59 Kubfu named Kubi

I excitedly began playing this on November 15th, 2019, the day it released. It started out fun enough — the beginning is cinematic, has some nice music and pretty locations... Exploring the Wild Area was novel and enjoyable for me at the time. I spent a lot of time there, actually, squeezing every bit of enjoyment I could out of that place; camping with my Pokémon as they became inadvertently over-leveled, hoarding items I would mostly never use... until I wound up dropping the game for a few years. Over the course of those years, I saw some of the criticism that this game received, and I didn't really get it. Everything seemed fine to the point that I'd played. Oh well, Pokémon fans can be pretty critical at times.

I picked it back up more recently, and pushed ahead with the main story. From there, it just went downhill. Lower, and lower. This sucked. If I weren't so loyal to the Pokémon main series of games, I probably wouldn't have pushed to complete it, especially with how much of a drag the final parts of the game were, wherein an utter lack of content gave way to anticlimactic repetitiveness.

The main thing I have to say is that everything about this game is so surface-level when compared to the other main-series Pokémon games. They tried putting a coat of pretty paint on stuff, but there's nothing of substance behind it. It might fool you for a bit, but it can't keep it up for long at all. It shows in things like the lack of flavor text after leaving the first town, for objects you'd be able to examine in other games (except Scarlet and Violet, which is similar and even worse in that regard), and the inability to enter the majority of buildings. (Of the structures that can be entered, many look near identical to each other, with the exception of buildings one is required to be in for story scenes. They wouldn't want you to miss the few locations they put any effort into designing, after all.) Where new towns in other games often promised crannies to peek into, small discoveries to be made, or unique features... this game largely presents the facade of new towns, where all you can do is pass through them.

In other Pokémon games, there are optional activities to participate in, some of which have a lot of depth to them! TV/radio programs, contests and performances/musicals, underground mining and secret bases, riding Pokémon, flying through the sky from location to location, the Safari Zone, Trick House, little side quests, gambling, photography, an entire second region to journey through (HGSS was just WOW), optional Legendary Pokémon to pursue, Entralink, the ability to pet or walk with one's party members — I could go on and on. There are no such treasure troves of optional content, locations, and features in this game. The most there is to mention here is like, Max Raid Battles and making curry. And you can play fetch with your Pokémon. (I believe it goes without saying, but I'm judging this game based on the $60 USD full game, not based on paid DLC.)

Once you're done in the Wild Area, I felt there's no real incentive to return — it's all behind you — and everything from there is a straight shot from one Gym to the next, broken up only ever so slightly by bits of an absolutely mediocre plot that had so little thought and care put into it. Pokémon games aren't known for their high quality story telling, but this is a new low. I can't even say that it seemed to me like the writers were trying. It felt so lazy, stingy, and stale, and not once did it touch me emotionally. It's devoid of the adventurous magic I've found to varying degrees in the games that came before it, as well as the more recent Legends Arceus and Scarlet/Violet. The story lacks imagination... They tried going for some plot twists, but they fell completely flat. Most of the characters have so little personality, you could copy the words spoken by one of them and paste them on another character's text box and it might not be apparent at all that you'd done so. There were a couple of main characters who could have been interesting, but the writers just didn't... really do anything with them.
There are a few nice music tracks, but not much I enjoyed relative to most Pokémon game soundtracks.

Overall, this game is an empty disappointment.