Were Pokemon Sword and Shield as bad as we thought?

Thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video. Go to strms.net/WolfeyvgcHelloFresh... and use code POGWOLFOCT65 for 65% off plus free shipping on your first box!
With Scarlet and Violet right around the corner, it's time to take a critical look at the last games in the Pokemon franchise. Were Pokemon Sword and Shield as bad as everyone said?
Check out all my Legends Arceus content in this playlist: • Legends Arceus
Pokemon Unite: 1 Year Later: • Was Pokémon Unite as b...
The Pokemon Iceberg: • The Pokemon Iceberg
I Ranked EVERY Pokemon Game: • I Ranked EVERY Pokemon...
Dynamax is the Best Mechanic. Here's Why: • Dynamax is the Best Me...
I Brought Magikarp to a HUGE Tournament: • I Brought Magikarp to ...
I ranked every Pokemon Spinoff Game: • I Ranked EVERY Pokémon...
Pokemon but I tell my opponents my moves first: • Pokemon but I Tell my ...
Edited by Whit: / whit_edit
Edited by Rhett: / rheumatojack
Thumbnail by Zas: / designsofzas
#PokemonSwordShield #WolfeyVGC #Pokemon
/ wolfeyglick
Watch me live on Twitch: / wolfeyvgc
Follow me on Twitter:
Music by Glitch: / glitchxcity
/ wolfeyglick

[@WolfeyVGC]

Thanks to HelloFresh for sponsoring today's video. Go to strms.net/WolfeyvgcHelloFreshOctoberYT and use code POGWOLFOCT65 for 65% off plus free shipping on your first box!

[@inkfoxthe2nd436]

Ok

[@gryphon4150]

Ok

[@pyrolysis3384]

Ok

[@meatyman0163]

Ok

[@TheNico2000]

Ok

[@redpandaplush5980]

I can understand how much these games did from a competitive perspective, but the single player experience was extremely lackluster. Story and exploration especially were really bad for an RPG...

[@Minisynapse]

As a non-competitive player I must agree, definitely not the best single player experience

[@charliez077]

yeah great point - one of the best things by FAR about SwSh is how WAY easier it is to get a competitive mon and not having to endlessly soft-reset before a Legendary encounter anymore. also Dynamax is actually pretty solid for Double Battles (and Gym battles are really cool because of it). but otherwise... MID as hell.

[@fernandovelazquez4440]

Sw Sh are games that only live from the competitive, I have the feeling that gen 9 os going to be the same.

[@micabryant4513]

competitive was garbage because the format allowed and encouraged legendary pokemon spamming

[@islandboy9381]

The Galar region's map design is worse in structure and content than Red and Blue Gameboy games that first started the series, really embarrassing. Pokemon's story was always bad except Black and White where they tried once and gave up when none of the community cared about it at the time it came out lol. I think honestly Gamefreak should just give up on story entirely and focus more of their attention on making the world as rich as possible in content/lore while having a non-linear structure in how you explore it and you can figure out the story at your own pace while battling some bosses, that's all most people care about to play these games.

[@TheGamingMalamutt]

So something Wolfey didn't touch on that honestly made me genuinely furious during my first play through of Pokemon Sword was the caves.. or lack of. There's 2 caves in Galar. Both of which are accessible within your first 3 badges. They're both REALLY short caves, with the second one being a dead end because it's just used for an introduction to Kabu. My biggest gripe about this is WHY IN THE NAME OF ARCEUS DID THEY GIVE US THE ESCAPE ROPE AS A KEY ITEM?!?!? What purpose does it serve when initially, the caves are so short the Escape rope isn't needed and any other time if you're lost somewhere like the Glimwood Tangle, YOU COULD JUST CALL A DANG TAXI

[@sanguinepub]

The point, though silly, is due to the removal of HMs. Dig and Teleport can't be used in the game anymore and to make up for this, they made an Escape Rope. It's silly, I agree, but that's basically why.

[@shankapotomus100]

Lol, some of us don't miss the endless random encounters in a maze of caves. Like the removal of HMs, I think the removal of large caves made the gameplay much less tedious.

[@harrya9458]

While it is a bit silly, I really don’t care. Like, the Escape Rope obtaining scene takes like a minute and it doesn’t clog up your bag or anything, so I didn’t mind it honestly

[@dietbald534]

@@shankapotomus100 man hasn’t heard of a repel…

[@doodlebug4360]

@@shankapotomus100 Fair enough, but what have you replaced them with? While they were tedious, at least they weren't corridors which every single route in S&S was.

[@guydooeinfinity]

5:58 Fun fact: If your defense stat is 0, then physical attacks will only ever do 1 damage to you due to how the damage formula works

[@ethanbrown6188]

Wait really? How?

[@guydooeinfinity]

@@ethanbrown6188 Hacking in an eternamax eternatus and giving it just barely shy of max def or spdef means it overflows to 0

[@Verbose_Mode]

@@ethanbrown6188 - it uses multiplication/division involving the defense stat. Multiplying something by 0 is 0, thus the calculation will spit out 0 damage.

[@Aabicus]

Missingno gonna make a comeback

[@SkyLowercut]

Fun fact: I have 1 hp. Crap.

[@BARRACUDA_X]

I personally really enjoyed Sword and Shield. I liked that there was no elite four but instead a tournament to make it seem more immersive and less like a video game and more like your journey in an anime or something

[@laylaminrir]

I had fun in sword and shield. It was refreshing. I felt like a real champion with all the characters talking about me and cheering in the stadium. that gym battle theme really hits hard when it goes.

[@pinknecro]

Lol yeah a fake scripted tournament

[@Geo-pf1fj]

agreed i Actually prefer pokemon sword and shield more than scarlet and violet just cause of dynamax

[@SylveonMujigae]

I would figure out that ALL Wild Area Pokémon would grow to level 60 just before the Champion battle. Although I would shun my Cinderace and Boltund for a duo of Leafeon and Sylveon near Raihan’s gym, I would continue to have incredible memories with all of my Pokémon.

[@Maggolando]

It absolutely is a general bad game. (Tbf the main pokemon games are all objectively pretty bad)

[@BringDaTube]

I thought retaliate was just a throw away move, but it has one of the coolest animations I've ever seen in a pokemon game. The range in quality is crazy.

[@miimiiandco.8721]

Yeah... they're so cool

[@christianberry3031]

@miimii and co. I love the animations. They are full of crazy energy beams and are interesting. Hyper beam is the bomb!

[@nib1448]

The only problem with move animations were the early route moves everyone got rid of after you beat the third gym leader. Everything else was great

[@amiiboguy7288]

I remember in my Brilliant Diamond nuzlocke, Mars’s Glameow kept spamming Retaliate on my Pokémon and it was hilarious to see the amazing animation only do like 20 damage

[@RadicalKingJames]

Wolfe mentioned how it must be difficult to animate every move for every Pokémon, which is why I think GF is designing more and more signature moves for Pokémon.

[@MJyoung35]

I love the aesthetic of SwSh. Making pokemon battles feel like a sport was perfect. My biggest problem with it was just how boring and linear it was. Edit: I feel i should expand on my comment lol. I dont think Linear is bad. Im sure we can all name games that are linear and phenomenal. But i feel if a game chooses to be linear it should offer more than what SwSh gave us. And comparing a game that came out 3 years ago to a game that came out 20 years ago doesnt help your argument lol. Gaming and storytelling has evolved since then and sometimes it feels like Gamefreak knows we're going to buy the games so they cut corners

[@amiiboguy7288]

The crowd chanting in the battle theme was freaking awesome. “We’ve come a long way from just beating up an old man in a classroom” -Failboat

[@joshurlay]

The linearity really turned me off hard

[@sonicwave779]

@@amiiboguy7288 Kind of reminds me of the clapping in the old R/S/E music.

[@AuraKumo104]

Unfortunately that's because SWSH were unpolished and unfinished games. They had good potential but Gamefreak executives pushed employees to release the game too soon and what we got is a lackluster game with little content unless you buy the expensive dlc.

[@jaydenc367]

@@amiiboguy7288 wait...what?!?

[@gaberobison680]

The route design wasn’t “fairly linear” it was atrociously so. Even Gen 2 routes felt like there was more to do haha

[@batodo794]

it's jarring how similar all routes in these games are to a straight line

[@djkenway4871]

@@batodo794with just grass patches

[@polarspectrum7222]

20:12 "Have a pokemon from your childhood you wanna play with again??? Trade it up to sword and shield -" Yyyyyyeah.... my favorite pokemon is Mismagius.... Sooooo....

[@Rodri34451]

I know that pain, bro. Mismagius (and Misdreavus) is also my favorite Pokemon and I felt bad when I saw it was cut.

[@willtankfordank1558]

The wild area was a great concept executed poorly. having the DLC be basically a giant wild area was a huge improvement

[@switchblade6]

The wild area felt more like a test for the more open world that we got in legends arceus and now in scarlet and violet IMO. Obviously not a full excuse for how lackluster it was but I feel it's something to consider.

[@LuminousArc92]

having a DLC be half the price of the base game to sell back many pokemon they cut from the dex is a scummy practice that needs to stop

[@AntiTako]

@@LuminousArc92 oh no, how dare they ask for money for new content.

[@hunbi1875]

@@LuminousArc92 yes how dare they not put all 1000 pokemon into a game and then decide to add some along side DLC. FUNFACT: YOU CAN STILL GET THE POKEMON WITHOUT THE DLC. The dlc just puts those pokemon into the game as obtainable wild pokemon.

[@C3l3bi1]

@@AntiTako yeah how they dare they rehash the same mon lol.

[@amiiboguy7288]

I actually loved the Calyrex story, he felt more like an actual character than just another side quest to catch another legendary

[@willtankfordank1558]

I didn't enjoy the main story but I loved the crown tundra DLC storyline! Calyrex Shadow Rider is my favorite mon from s/s

[@bloopertanooki415]

Crown Tundra is the best SS can offer without a doubt.

[@amiiboguy7288]

@@bloopertanooki415 If you mean story-wise, then I’d agree. Although Hop’s character arc was really good imo. But if we’re talking about EVERYTHING about the game, the designs of the Pokémon were 👌👌👌

[@maxxor-overworldhero6730]

A shame it was cut and sold to us for the price of the full price. Because I think that we all know that it was the post-game.

[@amiiboguy7288]

@@maxxor-overworldhero6730 On the topic of post game, do you think that Sordward and Shielbert could be descendants of Melli from Legends? They literally have the same personality and they look kinda similar

[@11wuzzup]

My main issue with SwSh os that it was a total of $189 for both games and their dlcs for an experience that feels like we would've payed $80 for just a generation prior

[@leestrz4153]

this! I didn't feel like the game was worth the initial cost for sword or shield so I skipped the dlc when I realized the cost of it. it's the first Pokemon game I didn't play competitively and first game I never completed the elite four.

[@scrubbingdoubles8585]

Jesus loves you

[@saricubra2867]

80$? 60 bucks or ideally 40$. Nintendo price tag is always a ripoff.

[@leestrz4153]

@@sionnachrealta5534 Xenoblade and Splatoon both feel well worth the price. Imo sw/sh do not. I don't know about PS5 or Xbox but that sounds like way too much.

[@leestrz4153]

@@sionnachrealta5534 perhaps. I can't get with the new battle pass economy. I hated the dlc economy too expansion passes and all that jazz.

[@hola-gy8te]

dear lord this generation has created such a massive split in the community in one hand, people really enjoyed this game and liked what it did on the other hand, people seem to despise it so much that they even tell people that enjoyed this gen to go play the older games instead

[@Jamman4life]

True I think back then I was a lot more disappointed and heated, maybe I had too high expectations for Pokémon.

[@baum9048]

@@Jamman4life the thing that was the most annoying for me was that the game was so easy i had to avoid fight on purpose so i dint get too overleveld

[@thefoxmoonlight]

@@baum9048 Thats like all poekemon games for me. Really, if you do everything then the games a breeze.

[@flannerysnotebook]

@@baum9048 So... Every game since Gen 1? You say this like it's a new issue. Pokemon was never hard. Pokemon Red can be beaten with no problems as long as you get a Caterpie. The franchise is easy, my Gamer.

[@weebboi9457]

@@flannerysnotebook it was till BDSP came up. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking with the difficulty spike being insane between sunnyshore and elite 4 lmao. I like to think they did this to spite people that kept saying Pokemon was easy lol

[@MarkStockley]

I wish they would finally just give a bunch of time towards developing a game. They have the true potential to make Pokemon a mindblowing exprience.

[@noodlelord17]

Tjk kill😊koylt

[@noodlelord17]

Uyjylitkuk😊gky😮😊trut😅u😮itk you ytkylitjulj

[@noodlelord17]

Ulk look

[@noodlelord17]

Tuoy😊kyktk it ut😊totiyu😊tutito

[@wvd07]

Look what they did to scarlet and violet 🥲

[@massimodalessandro108]

It's extraordinarily refreshing to see a video that is fairly positive but not toxic, you were clearly not afraid to voice your dislikes and yet you painted a very fair picture of the games while also just explaining what you did like in a way that was very enjoyable and digestible. The lack of hostility is something a lot of modern Pokémon reviews these days lack, so I really enjoyed this video!

[@cinderfeather]

He was very fair and balanced. The fact that that's rare now is sad.

[@ohhellwhereami2574]

World champ difference baby!!!

[@amiiboguy7288]

Game Freak should make a Pokémon based on the fanbase, it would be a Poison/Dark type

[@BlockishBench]

Imagine if the fanbase had even a sliver of this positivity.

[@mangosteak]

@@amiiboguy7288 You mean a normal type? The toxic part of the community is a loud minority

[@imhopelesslyaddictedtofent4266]

The pokemon company lied and said they didn’t include the full pokedex because they were focusing on improving the quality of animations and models. Many people were excited about this, and were obviously angry when they found out they were the same models they made in 2012.

[@Loner098]

I always thought that the lackluster content was because they spent most of their time developing Scarlet and Violet.

[@zekedafox-vodchannel3829]

@@Loner098 jokes on us, scarlet and Violet looks even worse on all fronts. Sorry I meant PLAYS worse as well, the technical issues are a joke

[@Kaelicles]

They never said this. They said that cutting the Dex was an inevitability considering the size that it was getting to, and implementing high quality *move* animations (i.e. the beam of water for Hydro Pump) is *one* of many reasons why focusing so much time into the National Dex wasn't feasible anymore.

[@Slavic_Socialist]

@@zekedafox-vodchannel3829 Scarlet plays just fine for me, Sw/Sh were a joke competitively. At least the textures look better in SV and you can move your camera lol

[@ReidnReactn]

@@zekedafox-vodchannel3829 scarlet and violet looks and plays worse than swsh it looks way better and runs smoother

[@Raidus1]

Remember how Dexit got announced? In a Treehouse interview, after the presentation, when someone directly asked. And their reasoning? They said they wanted to improve other things. That's the only reason a tree got this much attention. Consider the 50% price increase and everybody should understand why people got mad at GF.

[@flainfan]

Yep GameFreak shot themselves in the foot on that one.

[@thunder2275]

still is crazy that the animations look just as bad in swsh, though none were as bad as twinkle tackle

[@thorveim1174]

price increase combine with needing a new console compared to the previous generation that was on 3DS

[@hazeljoy1]

What I'm hearing is that the game was actually a lot better when using the multiplayer features. A lot of the gripes I had with the game seem to only apply more for the single player experience where I didn't have friends or interest in playing online. I'm glad there was a lot more to the game than my negative first view of it. I hope Scarlet/Violet feel like more polished, complete experiences for single players but also continue to expand upon the online features that Sword&Shield excelled at

[@KennyMatthewsMonster]

Well the online system literally didn’t work, like Wolfey touched on.

[@AuraKumo104]

SWSH had a terrible online system though that made it difficult to connect with your friends. Unfortunately, the game still wasn't very good even with online features because it was unfinished and unpolished. Online made the game a bit better but it was not remotely enough to save SWSH as a whole.

[@AbdFattah]

I may only have 150 hours in sword but I am hugely enjoying the suprise trades and online max raid battles. So yeah the online post game is quite enjoyable.

[@hazeljoy1]

@@KennyMatthewsMonster I'll take laggy weird online with a chance of real humans controlling the pokemon over trying to do a raid battle with 3 AI that spam splash with magikarp any day

[@KennyMatthewsMonster]

@@hazeljoy1 fat chance.

[@victino1684]

One complaint I have with Pokémon Sword and Shield that I don't hear enough people talk about is not being able to save and share battle videos. This was a standard feature with the Vs Recorder in the DS and 3DS games and I miss it.

[@wolfetteplays8894]

That’s why I always have a camera to record gameplay. Thankfully, the switch isn’t as much of a nightmare to record as the 3DS

[@envyLP333]

Doesn't the switch have a record gameplay button?

[@victino1684]

@@envyLP333 Not for any longer than 30 seconds

[@avataraarow]

A lot of issues like animation and design of the areas don’t even necessarily need more time. Like, you could literally just hire more people to do it. Have teams of animators work on specific Pokémon. Hire more designers and have different ones work on different areas with directors making sure there’s some level of cohesion. Obviously there’d still be some bottlenecks with actually tying everything together, but just employing more people to do the work would seriously mitigate all the “issues” that are holding the series back. There’s very little reason all these devs are forced to crunch and the games need to feel rushed. Just hire more employees, you’ll still make a disgusting profit

[@chukadoo1871]

my biggest irk with exp share is that it shares evs during training. i wouldnt mind if it just gave pure experience but if i just need one mon to have 56 def evs i dont wanna go through a bunch of party management or do unnecessary bag rummaging. small thing i know but i gotta press A/B enough in these ganes already

[@codytoeung5089]

In terms of voice acting, they could just take the Zelda approach and have them grunt. They already give grunts to the Arceus protags so it wouldn’t seem too hard. Probably a lot cheaper to have VAs just grunt for an hour compared to more complex dialogue

[@technicallygood4620]

Or even just quick voicelines, which were always going to be made for Pokemon Masters EX anyways.

[@10Piece1]

I wish they would talk in the cinematic parts

[@luar215]

Pokémons the highest grossing franchise in the world and you’re out here wishing for grunts instead of proper VA. Wild.

[@codytoeung5089]

@@luar215 I’m asking for *at least* grunts. I’d rather them be fully voice acted but they haven’t even done the bare minimum

[@ihatealderney]

@@luar215 Full VA would be far too cringe inducing if Zelda cutscenes are anything to go by. Would much prefer the grunts or a gibberish fake language

[@FatePokemon]

Crazy how Zarude’s stats aren’t good for doubles but it’s pretty incredible for single’s especially for draft.

[@christianberry3031]

The difference between singles and doubles is astronomical.

[@RadicalKingJames]

Ironic given its signature move isn’t designed for singles lol

[@RGC_animation]

That's pretty cool! Sword and Shield are focused on double battles, so having a distribution-only Pokemon be good for only singles is unique.

[@FatePokemon]

@@RGC_animation idk they did some stuff for singles like heavy duty boots. Maybe some dev went rogue and just enjoys some smogon singles LOL

[@helion2018]

​@Professor Thinker Bro the world championship was won with a Pachirisu, does this thing have to be automatically considered good in doubles and put into OU tier now? Guess what, no, it's still bad.

[@ltjgambrose]

One huge bonus to SwSh is that it's on the Switch at all, which means that you can have as many saves as you want if you have multiple profiles. I'm super glad that I could get both Urshifu, both new Regis and both Calyrex without having to buy a whole second game or delete my playthrough for no reason.

[@TheChadPad]

Pokémon Sword and Shield are the games that got me back into Pokémon after all this time. Life had been really serious for me, and they gave me fun at a time when I really needed it. I had forgotten the magic and joy of playing a Pokémon game, or any game for that matter. I have them to thank for so much, and you Wolfe for showing me that I could play Pokémon competitively too. Having never known about tournaments, this has opened up a whole new world for me. I now have a team that I’ve worked so hard on for many months. I hope it’s viable, but I’m proud of it anyway. I will love playing with it, even in defeat. So thank you Wolfe, and thank you Game Freak for making such wonderful games and bringing fun back into my life

[@salt7936]

The last time I was ever interested in a pokemon game was 9 years ago. Over the years, all I ever saw on the internet regarding pokemon was either memes of gen 5 music or video essays of "how pokemon lost its magic". Last week, I tried out Sword on an emulator and thought "I'm gonna lose interest in 30 minutes and delete it anyway". Somehow I powered through until the first gym, and I got hooked. The hype around the stadium and the music, holy shit the music. I thought I'd be done with the game within 30 minutes, but instead I spent 30 hours roaming around, looking at new pokemon, talking to npcs for free stuff, playing around at the camp. SwSh made me fall in love with pokemon again.

[@Kurameno]

@@salt7936 exactly how i felt. The last time i truly enjoyed a pokemon game was pokemon emerald. I tried my hand on other well praised games but all i could manage to do is beat the champion. When i bought a switch in 2019, i saw a trailer for this game. I loved the style of the game and the way it looked colourful and bright. When i bought it, i didn’t expect it to suck me in the pokemon world so fast and for so long. It’s been 3 years since the game came out, and even now i’m still playing it every week. Doing max raids, re-matching characters, the galarian star tournament, collecting all the pokemon and finding all the alolan digglets. Forming a bond with new pokemon, taking out my old ones for a stroll in the dlc areas, making curry with my siblings. I also really liked the characters in the game, and i really don’t understand the hate they get.

[@ovrdedge821]

Me too! I stopped playing pokemon when X and Y came out cause I was so burnt out. But SwSh TOTALLY reignited the love for pokemon for me, and Legends Arceus made loving pokemon even better!

[@SlyHikari03]

Same

[@bonjouritsready]

Lmao the games were fucking awful

[@chiekohoki]

Your content and Sword and Shield lowering the bar of entry to aspiring VGC players is what got me into competitive pokemon. Thank you for that, and I also am a little sad to see it go. I'm excited to see what Scarlet and Violet have to offer though!

[@MJ-oi6ul]

According to leaks you can have legally hacked perfect pokemon now so no more training needed

[@codytoeung5089]

I am weirded out that they didn’t just give them the Pokémon their generic attack animations as opposed to just… making the model hop or spin

[@yogi_gs]

Even a mobile gacha game does a better job with attack animation.

[@KSprites]

As someone replaying the games, you can get an urshifu pretty early on. I thought it had to be level 50 or so but it just has to be lvl 30 or above before you enter the tower. Unless you're talking about a different last part that I've never done before

[@donder172]

10:54 I wouldn't even call them villains, they're pretty much fanboys. Of all the teams we have encountered, Team Yell is not one I consider a villain. I consider them a nuisance.

[@dresden9]

Yeah I think it was clearly a rushed game, I don't think the devs don't care, I just think they're under corporate pressure. The towns being bare bones is big evidence for this

[@MayHugger]

An issue that could be resolved with hiring more people, like a lot of people. But that costs a lot of money so- Oh wait, they’re the number one engrossing media franchise in the entire world, never mind lmao.

[@7DeadlyJinxs]

How can devs care when you're supposed to pump out pokemon games like they are in a conveyer belt without adding new spins on the overall story concept or combat system? Doing something over and over again is a sure way to remove passion even from the most committed developer.

[@jirehtheprovider]

I believe you meant TPC, not Gamefreak. Tsunekazu Ishihara has yet to improve the business ethics and development procedures of gamefrrak properly. Never forget what this video said. Without the new games, there will be no Pokemon Anime. TGC, merchandise. etc. All of them grinds to a halt without a video game running. Hence, much like Nintendo themselves, TPC are "stuck In the past" in their game designing and business models.

[@Tharja-iBW]

@@jirehtheprovider Yes there would, you create new merch based on different pokemon that we already have, you create anime based on stories we have, like the manga which has been begging for an anime adaptation for the past 25 years. and they are constantly creating new cards without new generations in mind. They have the option to slow down and let the merch sell itself but they're too far up their own ass to see it.

[@aaronwishard7093]

@@jirehtheprovider Orange Islands was because Gen 2 got delayed. Nobody cared then. The Holon region in the TCG was created because Gen 4 got delayed. The anime's Battle Frontier saga was created for this same reason. We didn't stop getting plushies just because a game got delayed. Acting like the entire industry will collapse like it's a tower made of toothpicks, built around a black hole, is completely disingenuous. Pokemon sells and Pokemon mainly sells with things other than the games. So if you make games good, people will continue to buy cards irregardless of if they're based off of Scarlet and Violet, or if we revisit Diamond and Pearl because they got delayed.

[@OmegaMuffin498]

It's really nice to hear your perspective on the games. As someone who passed up on the games for various reason, it's nice to know that people genuinely loved them. Also, why did you pronounce Regigigas's name like that 😭😭

[@Jamman4life]

I wondered that too, I feel like he's trolling.

[@louiepikmin3184]

That's just kinda part of his brand, purposefully pronouncing some pokemon names horribly wrong

[@hayleeh18]

I’m still so happy we got the Player’s Cups. The PC3 was my first experience with competitive VGC thanks to the accessibility, and it got me HOOKED. I’ve been dying to compete again ever since, but haven’t had the time. I’m incredibly excited to watch a new meta build and grow, and I’m excited to play.

[@Rodri34451]

For me, someone who only plays it for the single player experience, it was very meh. I didn't like any of the new Pokemon added except for Wooloo and Hatenna and her evolutions, the rest were from ok to bad (including the starters). Though I can see why Dinamax is better competitive-wise, I find it boring compared to Mega evolutions. Also the Pokedex cut hurt me as my favorite Pokemon and others didn't get into the game (nor any of the expansions I think, I haven't bought any of them), at least some of them could like Mawile for example. Recently I found the Persona and SMT franchise that replaced Pokemon as my favorite RPG franchise, so I find it hard to came back to it unless they make a really good game or something like that.

[@Jamman4life]

Relatable, I think Megas were cooler too.

[@jwanie366]

Really depends on what you wanted from it. As a VGC player, it’s definitely become my favorite. But for non-competitive players, I can understand why they didn’t like it as much

[@adriandiaz4624]

Same here

[@mathieul4303]

As a vgc player, gen5 was better. The vs recorder alone makes the game top tier in that aspect

[@sanguinepub]

As a Non-Competitive player, I loved it. I think the main thing I disliked was the fact I never could get multiplayer to work with my friends. The online aspects are absolute garbage and some people just have problems for no reason.

[@AuraKumo104]

I definitely disagree. Competitive is a lot more boring now because we can only use like 400 Pokémon and we had way more options to use in SM. They also removed a ton of actually useful moves like hidden power in SS so some Pokémon have even worse move sets than before. The 20 minute time also ruined online battles because now they automatically end before they are over. It is also difficult to connect to and battle your friends online. There isn't a vs recorder either, so saving battles to upload online is a hassle because you need to buy a separate device to record your battles now, which wasn't an issue before.

[@urekmazino6800]

Yeah I don't like the story at all. And sadly not a fan of the new pokemon designn either 😕

[@dayvonlouis5187]

The DLC helped tremendously but the base games were pretty lacking and unimpressive without it

[@MIBxSpartan]

The problem is that “DLC” was post game content in the old games.

[@redpandaplush5980]

I imagine a lot of people (myself included) missed out on this because the base game wasn't nearly good enough to warrant buying dlc

[@Sambroke]

I couldn't even finish the dlc it was so boring

[@AverageBloom357]

So basically you have to spend another $30 in order to enjoy an already $60 game? What a winner this generation was.

[@FiboSai]

If you are a VGC player, gen 8 wasn't more expensive than the previous ones, as you were forced to buy the sequel or enhanced version to compete. Those second games got replaced by the DLC, which was cheaper than a full game. For people not interested in competitive that wouldn't have bought the second game, I agree that it was a bad deal.

[@KingChiggy]

I'm glad you took a second to talk about Zarude because I am still salty about that. Having the only method of receiving the pokemon be through signing up for a news letter that not even everyone who signed up for got was so stupid, and then providing no technical support on the issue was even worse. I know I wasn't the only one who signed up for the news letter, never got it and was told by the Pokemon Company "Oh well, better luck next time fucker" and then never got another chance to get it. It's the only mythical pokemon I am missing and it still annoys me to this day.

[@gaberobison680]

I think something really important is the fact that you consider a functional basic multiplayer experience to be a good thing. That’s not so much a feature as just implementing a basic expectation for a modern title. I enjoyed it, but it felt way too fast paced and thus power crept for my liking

[@actualatom]

🤓

[@sssspider]

The biggest problem is the price. For a game as linear as Sword and Shield, with so little content in the main story, I don’t care that the switch is technically a home console - it’s a $40 game at best, there is literally nothing that can convince me that it is twice as expensive to develop games for the Switch than for the DS. Throw in the fact that the main post-game activity (raid battles) is, for all intents and purposes, locked behind a paid online subscription, plus the fact that they’re charging another $30 for the DLC, means that you’re spending over $100 to get the full Sword *or* Shield experience, which is just ridiculous. If the DLC had been included for free, then maybe you have enough content to actually justify charging $60. With regards to the story, the biggest shame isn’t even that it’s bad (which it lis), but that it wouldn’t take much tweaking to actually make it *good*. All they needed to do was go all-in on the nature-vs-industrialization theme - make the Galar mines a dark, dangerous maze instead of a hallway glittering with jewels, add in more regional forms that show the impact industrialization has had on Pokémon, make the cities super grimy to contrast with the countryside, the forests and the wild area… then it might actually be justified why Chairman Rose thinks it’s a good idea to summon an eldritch abomination to solve the energy crisis.

[@alexterry8809]

I think the biggest problem about dexit,(also someone who thought it was a good thing to lower the pokedex count) was the fact that they lied about the reason behind it. In gen 6-7 the stated the reason for the poor performance issues was because the textures where to hi-res for the hardware in order for them to be easily ported to the switch when the time came. Then they come out and lied saying that they had to re do pokemon models and textures for gen 8 and that was why we couldn’t have all 900+ pokemon. When it was proven over and over again that they are in-fact the same models from the ds. Lower pokemon count was not the problem, lying about why was.

[@JackTheBlindOrganistAndCrepey]

I love how I always mentioned this and a lot of other fans deny or minimize what Gamefreak did. Like that was my main reason to be extremely critical with them and now they want me to drop twice as much money for these titles. The low res tree was just the cherry on top and pretty small compared to them lying.

[@QPoily]

Honestly, outside of 2v2 battles performance was quite fine in gen 6-7 IME. It's also funny that many players made the excuse for GF that it was "too much work" to re-do all the pokemon this generation on-top of adding new pokemon models, ignoring the fact that gen 6 had >700< new pokemon models made for the game. If the launching title for the 3DS was capable of having 700 new pokemon models, you should be able to expect 900 new pokemon models for the Switch launch,. Like cmon, it was the most looked forward to Pokemon launch in the history of the mainline pokemon games; finally a pokemon game on a main console and they botched it in terms of quality and expectations. And yeah, they pretty much re-used the 3DS models anyways so realistically they only had to make 200 new pokemon models, or however many new pokemon there were in gen 8. Just all-around bullshit excuses both from the GameFreak fanboys and GF themselves.

[@Jollofmuncher2000]

@@QPoily too much work is the dumbest excuse ever. To make something good and great you need to make sacrifices. If you can't do it then you shouldn't be working on the part that's too much or the time doesn't allow you

[@maganhassan2627]

I don't know if they're either lying or miscommunication especially when translated to English 🤷‍♂️🤣

[@AuraKumo104]

If they wanted to lower the number of Pokémon, they should have put in more work in other parts of the game like giving Pokémon models actual textures and adding more lifelike battle animations. Instead, Gamefreak lied about their reason for removing Pokémon and they didn't add anything new to justify a dex cut.

[@maiknocon773]

it had the best customisation to date going for it tho, scarlet / violets makes me cry

[@StarNinja77]

I was so hopeful about sv's outfits until the very end. I still can't actually believe that they made the decision to add detailed face customization... And take away most of the clothing options??? I just don't understand how they thought that would be fine. I just played through swsh again and there are so many options. Jerk move gamefreak. And they still have barely any hairstyles. =/ I like customization. ;)

[@flainfan]

@@StarNinja77 well there is some logic behind it really. The outfit you wear throughout the game is a school uniform you’re character is required to wear during school and since the Treasure Hunt is a school project it makes sense that you’re required to wear the uniform.

[@StarNinja77]

@@flainfan I mean, sure you Can explain it away. But it's a video game in a made up world. The only actual reasoning is that GF just... Said so. =/

[@Zenith-SMK]

So a video idea came to mind when watching your kings rock skill link short. What if pokemon had 2 abilities? The reason this came to mind is what if cloyster for instance, could get skill link and technician, using multi hit moves the maximum number of times with a damage boost. This could be interesting

[@RadicalKingJames]

Props for mentioning the stat-clearing lady and how great it feels to make your main-game team competitive. I caught a random shiny zigzagoon before even getting the first badge that I used the entire rest of the game. Getting to make that shiny Obstagoon into a Guts-Flame Orb-Facade powerhouse felt so good.

[@michaeldiaz7620]

From a casual standpoint, they’re just really bland. The games are easy so no going back for any kind of challenge, the region is incredibly linear so no room for exploration, and the cast is pretty generic.

[@Baldtolo]

DLC for Pokémon Sword and Shield was announced less than 2 months after Sword and Shield release. This implied that DLC was planned way before the release and not after. Is it probably because Pokémon games development runs down on a timer? Yeah, probably. Thing is DLC is supposed to be expansion of the content in the game, Sword and Shield gave us vIA Dlc some stuff that should have been in the game in the 1st place (some other stuff was good for being DLC, but the majority of the DLC is clearly something that should have been in base SwSh from the beginning). Leaks say that Scarlet/Violet are also planned to have DLC, and it hurts me to think that we'll play yet again just another incomplete version of the newest Pokémon game so we have to spend another 30$ to play the game as it was intended, but it makes me sad that Pokémon is becoming with time a bigger and bigger "cashgrab company" when they are already the richest IP in the world thanks to all the things they do, and still underpay their workers...

[@furiouscorgi6614]

I direct you towards Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. They did it last generation too

[@thorveim1174]

@@furiouscorgi6614 except these werent even just DLC but a wholly separate game cartrige. but yeah i agree.

[@furiouscorgi6614]

@@thorveim1174 arguably that's worse, since it means that if you jumped to buy the first release, you now need to pay full price for an entirely separate game. At least the DLCs don't actively punish you for buying the first version.

[@thorveim1174]

@@furiouscorgi6614 true, but its not as pricey for a later comer however.

[@furiouscorgi6614]

@@thorveim1174 ... this is a game with events. Nintendo themselves have a policy that they don't want to reward people for buying the game at a later date. That's why they changed to DLC instead of third/improved versions, because now if you come at launch or later, you're still getting the same purchases at theoretically the same cost.

[@ltjgambrose]

I'd love to see a breakdown of that 13th ruleset that had mythicals. I understand a bit about VGC but I'm super curious to know what happens when you introduce Mew and Arceus.

[@Moralgo]

I'm surprised there was no mention of the cram-o-matic from the isle of armor, allowing you to essentially farm bottle caps, making constructing a competitive pokemon even easier. Am I missing something?

[@micabryant4513]

Gotta love that birb-bot

[@sjb_92]

Yeah just pump your Pokemon to level 100, not time-consuming at all.

[@Moralgo]

@@sjb_92 I mean, in SWSH it really isn't with all the xp candies you get.

[@Emma-rw8yo]

@@sjb_92 You also don't need to do this for VGC, all pokemon get auto-leveled to level 50

[@sjb_92]

@@Emma-rw8yo I know, but you do if you want to use bottle caps.

[@QPoily]

Dexit is still a point I can't get over. Especially considering the easily refuted and lame excuses surrounding the reasoning behind it. It could be the best game ever but Dexit is just such a shitty decision and the chaos that it caused within the community was absolutely infuriating. The amount of dismissive and flippant counterarguments towards the people who were upset about the decision made me realize just how illogical the significant vast majority of the Pokemon community is and how accepting they are of decisions that are actually a detriment to their own gameplay quality. It was really sad to see the conversation devolve into this cesspool of toxicity of people trying to shutdown any form of criticism like they were personal attacks. Also I -really- hoped that these games would've been more like PL:A. I also really hoped for a more 'dynamic' and grand feeling battle camera perspective, similar to the GC games; Colosseum & XD. The way the battle camera worked in those games made me feel like I was truly in an intense battle. The close-up relatively static camera we got right now just doesn't invoke that same feeling. In terms of competitive stuff they did improve on thingsr regarding making it easier to get competitive pokemon, but IMO those improvements aren't enough to make the games GOOD good.

[@komarunaegi7460]

I think your comment is a little loaded. Both sides of the Dexit argument were toxic and irrational. I HATED so many people on both sides with a passion. And I say this as someone who didn't like the National Dex cut like you did. BOTH sides had so many immature, awful, dismissive people that always resort to insults or ignoring any genuine argument you want to make. If you disagree in ANY way with someone who hated the Dex cut, you're tossed a lot of rage and instantly labeled as a "bootlicker" no matter what you try to say. If you disagree in ANY way with someone who was okay with the Dex cut, you're labeled a troll or a hater. There were some people on both sides that were civil and willing to have a conversation, but you're wrong in saying the people against the Dex cut are the ONLY ones that were a "cesspool of toxicity trying to shut down any forms of criticism like they were personal attacks." BOTH sides threw personal attacks, ESPECIALLY the people who hated the Dex cut. It made me embarrassed to even have the opinions I did because people would lump me with the thousands of whiny, angry manchildren that wouldn't know how to have a civil discussion if it saved their lives. I'm still against the Dex cut, but the community as a whole has so many infuriating assholes on all stances of this. It's why I've learned to just distance myself from any side and stick with my own opinions, trying to find the few people that are actually chill and mature enough to talk them out with. Even if they have the total opposite opinions as me! That's how you learn to understand different perspectives and broaden your ways of thinking. But that can't happen if everyone's a pretentious jerk about it.

[@QPoily]

​@@komarunaegi7460 I don't disagree that both sides had toxic shitbags in them. The problem is that one side must've started it and the other side must've reacted poorly to it. Whichever side did whichever is hard to pinpoint but that doesn't change the fact that the anti-anti-dex-people people absolutely fanned the flames with the way they reacted. NONE of them were able to separate message from the messenger otherwise YOU would not have been afraid to have the opinions you did out of fear of being labeled some kind of ad hominem attack by the anti-anti-dex-people people. That alone shows just how much of an immature toxic cesspool the conversation ended up being as well as just how obnoxious this mindset has become across the internet where any form of criticism is instantly seen as bad by the toxic fanboys because they've seen what the toxic messengers look like so they instantly shoot down the level-headed messengers as well, resulting in some level-headed messengers becoming increasingly frustrated and ultimately turning into toxic messengers themselvse. Who'd have thunk that trying to keep people quiet and essentially pressure them into staying silent out of fear of being labelled bad things results in frustration. I was the person you mentioned; the level-headed guy who'd go "look, it's fine if this problem isn't important to you, but it is to me and anyone else who finds out themselves they can't play with their favorite pokemon in the new games after buying the games". I was the guy who tried help people see that the message is separate from the messenger and that there's plenty of level-headed folk who hold the opinion that Dexit sucks. I was only met with more flippant and dismissive bullshit. Not only that, the flippant and dismissive garbage only became more and more prevalent and it became reddit thread after reddit thread of the same dismissive arguments being used which were already refuted in the previous reddit threads. It got REALLY tiring and it became seriously frustrating at some point. I'm not ignorant to the fact that toxic messengers can result in people becoming petty and contrarian in response to them. That too is an unfortunate and evidently human reaction. But that's a completely unempathetic and irrational response at the end of the day, one that should not be encouraged or accepted at all, least of all to even the level-headed folk voicing their criticisms. So yeah, I mainly blame the anti-anti-dex-people folk. The amount of times I've seen them say "I'm tired of all the negativity on my pokemon frontpage" like a spoiled and entitled child who feels like the subreddit should cater to ONLY content THEY like, or just the mere amount of times I've seen the umpteenth regurgigated and repeated "b-b-but it's for competitive reasons, you guys just don't understand!" has made me lose hope for this community. And truthfully the pokemon debacle was the last drop for me. This phenomenon you and I are aware of is not unique to pokemon. Follow any community that has something controversial going on related to a game and you will see this same obnoxious cycle at play: 1: Criticism floods in, mixed of level-headed and toxic messengers 2: Bunch of dismissive responses flood in either in response to the toxic messengers (because people can't separate message from messenger) or just general legitimate fanboy behavior 3: level-headed folk either dip out or turn toxic themselves 4: shitshow of continuous inflammatory remarks as well as inflammatory insinuations keep being made between sides causing a significant drift between them 5: Now the contrarian side is on edge and less tolerant of future criticism, often resorting in them using a bunch of illogical and character-attacking statements in order to dissuade people from voicing critique Don't take my comments as being OK with toxic messengers. But being against toxic messengers means being against TOXIC messengers, not ALL messengers. And the contrarian folk do not understand this hence why I lay the majority of blame at them and why I have turned into a more impatient messenger myself. Because I've seen this shit happen in SO many communities and it just keeps repeating itself. So damned annoying.

[@MoonSarito]

Sword and Shield aren't perfect but they definitely weren't that bad, I believe the "Dexit" and the fact that we couldn't bring our favorite Pokemon into the game anymore was what generated the most hate. I know this because I was one of those, I literally lost all desire to buy the game when I learned that I couldn't bring my Typhlosion that I've kept with me since I played Soul Silver.

[@Maigus224]

Pokemon Sword and Shield on total Switches sold 21.85%. Pokemon Sun and Moon on total 3ds sold 21.48%. Did not include ultra and dlc and this does not acount for multiple switch's or 3ds's purchased. Though sword and sheild did sell better, at a percatang its not by much. This can mean that the main reason S and S sold more was because of the sales of the switch rather then the game its self.

[@foamingstuffye3951]

Hey Wolfey, awesome as always. And maybe my first post on your channel not sure. In every game since gen4 I've always had a competitively, theoretically at least viable team with all the proper training, breeding, IV and so on but every time the bar is simply too high for me to enter any actual online battles, if any existed in the game. You say that the Sw/Sh expansion made it so much easier for wannabe-players like myself and while I recognized the potential, it still wasn't enough to give me the push to do it. You also mentioned rental teams, something I was actually not aware of. Could you maybe talk us through how you approach competitive pokemon in the actual game, with rental teams and training and so on?

[@theillusionist1494]

I do want to point out that, with the exception of Sylveon, the new evolutions in Sword and Shield were the first time we got new evolutions for older Pokémon since _Diamond and Pearl._ As someone who loves seeing older Pokémon get new coats of paint, that was a HUGE selling point for me.

[@Squirtle_Squad_Supremacy]

They were evolutions off of regional variants but yes.

[@tmagety8924]

I disagree I would prefer if the originals got evos aswell instead of just their galar forms.

[@Squirtle_Squad_Supremacy]

@@tmagety8924 mhm I agree

[@adammorin2955]

Tbh their original forms were so bad they needed a regional variant. They can’t just have one form being 302 or something to 540

[@Aquilenne]

​@@adammorin2955 Not all of the originals needed a regional variant to be worthwhile. Imagine if regular Linoone got a regional variant meaning Obstagoon didn't have the dark type, but instead got to keep Extremespeed and Belly Drum.

[@ivenstorm]

Pokemon-wise no. The main issue I had with the games was the story. There could be an event happening in one area, but the NPCs will tell you to focus on your gym journey. Like.... no.... half the reason I enjoyed the earlier games was the random events that took me away from the story for a little bit. The gym leaders aren't going anywhere, I can fight them at a later time.

[@ilovet5926]

Yes, exactly! I hate being forced into gym battles and such, which is why I am excited for Pokémon S/V to let you “choose your own path” so you won’t have to fight the gyms immediately.

[@ivenstorm]

@@ilovet5926 I don't mind the idea, but what bugs me is, at least from what I've heard, there isn't any scaling. So if I go face gym 2, gym 1 is still going to be the same levels.

[@ilovet5926]

@@ivenstorm Yeah… i’m just planning on overleveling, or following the “correct order” of gyms.

[@casual3123]

I never thought about it until now but yeah, rental Pokémon were huge for the meta game and gotnay people I know into competitive play or just online battles in general.

[@EddyWriter_]

As someone who didn't enjoy Sword and Shield as much as I wished I could but still more than I thought I would, it's interesting returning back three years ago with Scarlet and Violet around a month away from release. My two favorite parts of Sword and Shield were definitely all the new Pokemon/regional forms/designs and the great additions to the game in a competitive sense (great new moves, abilities, items and overall convenience for creating a competitive team through raids, the digging duo and more added later in The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra). Raids were actually one of the best parts of Sword and Shield in my view and I'm glad to see them return in a better state for Scarlet and Violet. As a side note, I also think many people gloss over the memorable soundtrack in Sword and Shield! I still remember jamming out to the gym leader theme each time I heard it like it was just yesterday.

[@viola8422]

Spikemuth is kinda suppose to be a hallway from what it's based off,but doesn't mean it shouldnt have nothing to do.

[@RGC_animation]

A depressing town is one thing, but when your whole town is a SINGLE hallway, that's another level of depressing.

[@viola8422]

@@RGC_animation p its suppose to be like a ally way,um idk exactly what there called but its suppose to be brimming with stuff to do. There's just nothing to do,it being a hallway tho is literally the point

[@charliez077]

a perfect example of CUTTING EDGES (I guess because of time restraints mostly but IDGAF, I paid full price for the game. BDSP made by the inexperienced-as-hell ILCA is even way worse)

[@viola8422]

@charlie z tbh this is like nothing next to the rest or the gameing industry. Releasing games that haven't been polished what so ever is the industry norm now a days. Pokemon is der been limited to make profits higher but never hid like the CoD lows

[@charliez077]

@@viola8422 well sure, we can compare with stuff like CoD. but guess what - we can also compare with great Switch games like BoTW, Super Mario Odyssey, Luigi's Mansion, Xenoblade 3... and that comparison is really sad for SwSh (BDSP even more). at least Legends is solid, tho the graphics = just bad.

[@HopefulBlue]

3:00 *people were mad that GF said they were cutting the dex in favor of making higher quality models/animations, but ended up reusing all the old models and most of the old animations.

[@HopefulBlue]

13:00 At least he sorta brings it up here

[@JackTheBlindOrganistAndCrepey]

Personally, I don't think he empathizes it enough. Majority of the people who disliked this game and Gamefreak currently was because of this lie, but it always get glossed over for the outrage over the low res tree. I'm just tired of people misconstruing others' disappointment. People were angry that Gamefreak made a false promise to polish the graphics with NEW and FROM SCRATCH models. The dumb N64 tree and Dexit was what the lie was trying to hide from the public.

[@HopefulBlue]

@@JackTheBlindOrganistAndCrepey Precisely. What's more baffling is that footage from Distant Kingdom was used later in the video, someone who was extremely vocal about GF cutting the dex for higher quality animations and models.

[@j800r_aswell]

Simple answer, no. From a person who came in late (while 3DS was current) Sword is my favourite along with LA. All the hate the game received had my approach it cautiously. I was shocked. It was awesome.

[@BrendanGeormer]

They were shallow games that underdelivered on their promises, which also didn't listen to the playerbase's feedback on what they wanted. Additionally, in order to get the rest of the content for the game, which even if it were included would still be less substantive as a whole than the DS-era games, one has to pay an extra 50% ontop of the price of a full-fledged AAA title. On the other hand, there were a lot of new steps that added things to the games in QoL aspects, such as the wild areas, more access to boxes, seeing pokemon in the open to choose your encounters, more exploration and the ability to do collectathons for those who like that, and VAST improvements to the ways one can make a roster for competitive to make it less daunting and more approachable to get into.

[@Ember-Rodriguez]

Glad others made the most out of it, cant say I ever found any enjoyment passed the first week or so. Can only hope that scarlet and violet can reignite my love of the franchise.

[@chrisk1458]

Dude if u don't like competitive online battles, it's just your nostalgia hope that makes these woke child games fun to you for a short time

[@Homerboy44]

Have you tried any of the spinoff games yet, like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon?

[@Ember-Rodriguez]

@@Homerboy44 Not the new one, it any good? loved the older ones and my favorite game was pokemon ranger

[@CritsVG]

@@Ember-Rodriguez If you still have a 3DS, I'd absolutely recommend trying Super Mystery Dungeon, it's a really great game with a great story and just overall a ton of content. Ofc the original DS titles (Blue Rescue Team, Explorers of Sky) are absolutely amazing. The newest one (DX) is a remake of Blue Rescue Team, so it still has a really great story and a unique artstyle, but imo it's still more of a handheld-intended game rather than something to be played on the big screen.

[@Homerboy44]

@@Ember-Rodriguez Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon is indeed a good successor. Take a look for yourself if you want.

[@neet0burrit035]

I hope ScarVi have a good, fun, relatively accessable competitive scene. I've always been on the periphery of VGC, but I haven't actively played since gen 6. I really want this game to bring me back into it

[@gavinfarr9381]

11:32-11:49 Gosh, imagine if instead of recording the actual dialogue, all the characters just said their name over and over. “Hop! Hop hop hopop. HOP!”

[@iceneko9170]

eh. idk about "most beloved". I bought both version of the game, as I did with most of the previous entries. but I couldn't even make it through sword. The lack of a good story and the extreme letdown the extremely linear paths and empty wild areas left on me burned any motivation i had to continue after like the fourth or fifth gym.. And I adored the sound design and art design (in the towns). this isn't an uncommon story. and Id be curious to see the statistics in the game's activity when compared to sales. sword and shield was great for the competitive audience but really let down its casual audience. and I think that could really be felt through all the negativity surrounding it. even if you ignore the controversies.

[@alecbormia4523]

Maybe not competitively but the base game is just boring and uninteresting. The wild area idea is cool until you realize the Pokémon that appear never changes just rotates to different areas. So once you’ve seen all the different mons in the area and have either caught them or decided not to there’s literally no point in ever going back there. There is one enjoyable part of this game: and that is that piers rocking out without any voice acting is hilarious. He straight up looks like a mime and it’s the funniest thing in any Pokémon game. But something tells me that was not supposed to be funny on purpose. And Pokémon camp. That part was actually very fun. Most of my gameplay was Pokémon camp and waiting to get to a good spot to camp again.

[@Purgatog]

One of the best things was the approach of fixing up competitive Pokémon. I built a VGC team with a Regigas that I caught in one of the gen 4 games over 10 years ago, and a Weezing I found near my local gas station in Pokémon Go.

[@lemonamon]

1:45 "You're telling me it can't run an open-world pokemon game?"... well this aged well

[@mreevee7785]

Yeah because sv run like shit and its still not the switchs fault

[@lemonamon]

@@mreevee7785 yeah ik its not the switch's fault i just found this quote funny

[@lpants0]

This game cost $60, the dlc is $30 and online for a year is $20 so in total $110 so if you do the math this game is meant to be 2.75 times better than a $40 pokemon game. So is it 2.75 times better?

[@mathieul4303]

Long answer : no, it's not

[@WadeVillines]

I would be fine if we "reverted" to sprites. If they used a similar art style to Octopath Traveler, I think it could turn out more visually impressive than any of their art styles since X/Y.

[@peterboyland5172]

I agree. Sprites may look less glossy, but they still look better.

[@horizon92lee]

The sprites in black and white are x1000 more expressive than the 3d models currently

[@7DeadlyJinxs]

That's never going to happen. The moment they do, they will take a reputation hit like they did with diamond and pearl remakes. Gamefreak will always be known as the only AAA studio to fail so badly that they had to go back to 2d.

[@giorgiox97]

I really enjoyed goin through your analysis, and being like 98% into the same pov of yours for all the themes you touched here. The only one theme i think it's actually different for me is the Crown DLC, which i found really nice in storytelling and lore, not so good for gameplay tho. But ye, i see your point with the dialogues and stuff here too, not the best choice

[@williamenciso9198]

I know this video is old but the Zenyatta joke got me rolling. I appreciate your sense of humor Wolfe.

[@Fancy_Bear]

These games with the dlc included cost far too much to have just been "okay"

[@Meanlucario]

I'm going to be honest, I've only seen videos on SnS until earlier this year, when a friend loan me their copy of Shield for us to play together. I'm not even that far in (I entered Hammerlocke for the first time a few days ago) because my friend was busier than we thought he was going to be. I'm much more of a casual player than the competitive, so the story matters to me more than most viewers here (and Wolf if he/you are reading this). I'm playing Ultra Sun and just roll my eyes at the mess of that story, so SnS aren't the only Pokemon games I don't like the story of. At least Guzma was fun. Not a fan of what I saw online or experienced so far. I 100% agree that the games need more development time. According to Wikipedia, there has been at most a year between game releases (7 release gaps in total), and none since Sun and Moon. The developers need more time to make these games, and they are popular enough so that their sales won't take much of a hit if so. I completely agree with Wolf there. The tree was (mostly) due to dexit and the reason given was the graphics and sized. And made flaws in either more significant than usually since they were used as the reason for pokemon not being in the game. Personally, the wild areas feel half-baked, with the level limit on catching wild mons being an indication of that. I will argue with Wolf that toxic fans are in almost any community, and the whole shouldn't be punished for the franchise's popularity working against it. I didn't like dexit, but harassing developers (or anyone for that matter) helps no one. Be civil about your issues and direct them to the people making the decisions and be polite and reasonable. One thing to mention about the ability patch: It was bugged (hopefully fixed by now). Using it on a mon from gen 3 or 4 game will make SnS think it's an illegal pokemon. I pray GF has fixed that by now.

[@cmonkey3698]

you should know that sword/shield, BDSP, and LoA were all made by different teams, so they really have 3 years of development. that being said it still isn't enough time.

[@kereminde]

@@cmonkey3698 BDSP wasn't even done by Game Freak, if I recall correctly - which is why it "felt" different. (Also possibly why it was so *strictly* a remake.)

[@iantaakalla8180]

If there is one bright spot about BDSP, it is that no one can strictly blame Game Freak anymore for bad decisions. BDSP sucked under ILCA, so it really is a timing thingy. That being said, it is sad that Sword and Shield’s best quality is (along with Legends Arceus) the beta game for Scarlet/Violet.

[@kereminde]

@@iantaakalla8180 In a sense, isn't this always the case? The 'current game' winds up being a beta version for the next one, except for massive redesigns... Red/Blue/Yellow (in the NA market mind)and then Gold/Silver/Crystal? Even in the second generation there was a sense I picked up of how Crystal was a more refined experience of G/S. Along with Emerald and Ruby/Sapphire. And Platinum with Pearl/Diamond. I feel like the games often refine themselves slowly until they try new systems - and only then are there breaks in "Generation". We've only had tweaks and changes to the core of the battling since the Special/Physical split. (I want to say that was Gen4? Hazy on it.) We've had *gimmicks* layered on top but the core has been exempt from massive changes. Mega Evolutions, Z-Moves, Dynamax... now Terastalyze. It's hard for me to think of very many large gameplay changes which weren't "locked in a Generation gimmicks". Quality of life changes, or small shifts which make it easier to work on things? Yeah. But anything really major? I dunno... I rather think the game's been in Beta up until Gen 5, and now we're just getting permutations and flavor changes. ... I should note, this is not a problem for me. But it means I get puzzled when people expect the next Generation to be truly revolutionary. Or is upset when it's not like a whole new experience. The games have been the same at the core for a *while* now.

[@artsykero]

I agree with a lot of the criticism in this video, not sure why people refuse to criticize a multi billion dollar company when small indie studios push out higher quality products. The Pokémon and character concept artists are doing great, but I can’t praise the developers at all when the end result is the bare minimum. It’s a shame we will never get to see a Pokémon game that has the amazing quality it deserves. Visuals aren’t everything but is it too much to ask for unique Pokémon animations? And Character animations that don’t seem like they’re puppets?

[@thesegundovolante]

Game Freak aren't a multi-billion dollar company, they are making games for Nintendo who take most of the profit and set their deadlines. It's Nintendo setting unrealistic expectations on GameFreak which is the problem. Nintendo want a new game every year no matter what state it is in, because it isn't their franchise and if its bad then Game Freak get all the abuse, like you're doing now

[@nintendope8837]

Feels weird that it was 3 years..

[@DemonArcMonster]

5:25 the reason I was able to play comp was because of the rental system and I hit master ball tier within 1 month of learning VGC, made me appreciate competitive pokemon and learn the true depth of the games systems as a whole. 10/10 addition.

[@micabryant4513]

Now do it with your own ideas.... Doing it with over peoples handwork and ideas is so cheap....

[@Zhijia494]

@@micabryant4513 don’t be so fucking elitist. Of course the people that put time into the building of teams is appreciated. But the rental system is amazing because it lowers the skill ceiling. Making a good team takes time and being able first to learn how to play competitive and then maybe making a team is much more fun to a lot of people. People that have the time, expertise and motivation to make teams: Go for it! But that is a small group, by opening it up or casualizing it you make the game live longer and more people enjoying it

[@JennyJewels]

I picked up sword for the first time this week beat it and my thoughts are, its way too easy to over level, the story is lacking and the raid battles can be frustrating if you don't have other people to play with/ lack nso, another gripe i have is i played pokemon black recently, that game is so good it places healer trainers close by too an area you have to complete so if you're running on empty you can heal up instead of having to fly to another town or bike there when you're not over leveled like i made a point not to on my reset of the first playthrough

[@Conical187]

I don't know how you did it, I've had the game on physical copy since day 1 and I can't bring myself to play it. It's so boring to me.

[@JennyJewels]

@@Conical187 its just another pokemon game ive played them all its basically muscle memory

[@neonthehedgehog12]

3:18 And, that is a shame and unwarranted, but you can't control everyone that used the hashtag. They weren't some hivemind movement. For frame of reference for anyone curious, people were entirely upset with Sword and Shield because the National dex( a dex that ensured all past pokemon can be used in the game even if they aren't catchable) being cut was under the excuse that better animations and better graphics was the reason for the cut, THIS is why the nintendo 64 graphic tree was a point of discussion, it was proof of poor effort (which at the time this big title was being made by half of gamefreak, the other half working on little town hero, a financial flop). That and the pokemon having their 10yr animations made simple that putting in at least more than 400 from the 1000 halved pokemon wouldn't have been difficult, but they cut them anyway trapping people's favorites behind the pay wall of pokemon home which is basically a holding cell that forces you to pay monthly for absurdly little mb cloud storage to hold your pokemon that they wanted to bring in using dlc and what they didn't tell us was if it wasn't your favs turn to be in the game, then tough luck, and with no game for most of them to transfer too people are, till this day, are forced to pay to keep their pokemon alive there until they're included ( as there is no way to transfer them out, some still didn't make the cut with scarlet and violet), which worsened the controversy. The games sold well cause it's pokemon! Of course it sold, people would buy these games for their kids as well no matter the issue, that didn't mean the games weren't poor effort, glitchy messes suffering from animation issues ranging from pop in, constant disconnects online and slow down as well as reusing animations and models from the 3ds which made the cut more absurd as they could've just pull the models and animations from the 3ds to fill the national dex, So again, why was the pokemon cut but your still expected to pay full price and more? Take a stance and criticize it all you want it's not important now, the time has passed, but it WAS a scummy practice that needed attention brought to it even if you personally view dexit as unnecessary and didn't participate, BE FAIR. Don't bother talking about it if your just gonna bring up the negatives, skim over it and not also talk about the greedy practice of low effort, lies and dlc gating that GameFreak practically got away with then. Thank you for anyone reading.

[@Jamman4life]

You know I forgot the reason the people made fun of tree and animations was because of the Dex cut.

[@neonthehedgehog12]

@@Jamman4life If it wasn't for them claiming to give us better, then i feel like no one would have been that upset. Things are much better off with scarlet and violet now.

[@Jamman4life]

@@neonthehedgehog12 Yeah I kind of forgot everything it feels like memory of hatred has been unlocked by reading these comments also I just wanted to say nice pfp!

[@neonthehedgehog12]

@@Jamman4life Thank you! The pfp was a gift.

[@kae1971]

i still wish we had mega, z move and everything. It's fun having g max and all that, but I would've love for us to compete with our literal best against each other. Then having to use the limited strats.

[@LeWafelaar]

Soooo... National Dex AG on showdown?

[@cinderfeather]

Let's be real. Cinderace's Pyro Ball is one of THE best animations in the game. It's pretty great. Hyper Beam was pretty intense too. And the designs of the Gigantamax Pokémon were ALL really great. Chonkachu was fun, Floofy Eevee, Long Cat Meowth, Butterfree's beautiful wings, GIANT Grimmsnarl was scary, Hatterene took the girl locked in a castle to new heights as a GMax Pokémon, Lapras' form having music notes was super pretty, Charizard looks straight badass, Cinderace, Inteleon, and Rillaboom all taking their THING like the Pyro Ball, being a sharp shooter, a drummer to the extreme....they were all AWESOME! And the music is some of the best ever! I can really see why these games had such good longevity. GameFreak cared enough about them to give them long shelf life. And I appreciate that.

[@teobaldolendario8880]

These arent the reasons Sw/Sh had a longevity at all, it was the frequent updates mainly.

[@PurifiedShino]

I think Gen 5 has the most hard hitting music there is.

[@ChangedMyNameFinally69]

People are allowed to praise other generations GenFivers

[@anon3631]

I love the trumpets of Gen 3

[@MarioSonic46]

Gens 2-5 hit EVERYTHING hard.

[@ChangedMyNameFinally69]

@@MarioSonic46 Based

[@nwut]

@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 stfu he didnt say anything

[@maxantubegaming]

I'm on the exact oppesite side of "dexit". I think Pokémon games have too many Pokémon in them. While Legends Arceus is my favorite for many reasons on of them is that 242 Pokémon felt actually possible to catch and it made me feel like I was working towards a goal. The same goes for Let's go and I hate those games to death, the writing is god awful, the animations are the worst and the music/sound effects becomes super repetitive after a while. But I still love them because it's just fun to work towards filling out a complete Pokedex. But then you look at Sword/Shield Pokedex and you realise there are 400 Pokémon. This makes it feel impossible to even begin trying to fill it out. I would much rather that the developers stick to 150-250 Pokémon per game and focus on making all other aspects better.

[@SomeGuyOnline320]

I bought sword 3 days ago and already beat it, it felt so much shorter than other games

[@Lokahri]

The Voice Acting Thing caught me off guard while starting Sword and Shield... you had this mega hyped intro trailer, in the big stadion with thousands of people in it and a caster and nobody says a goddamn word, music stops und you have to read??? wtf

[@superhume]

A lot of the issues these games have seem swept under the rug because "they werent an issue for me"

[@charliez077]

yeah I agree. I do respect Wolfey's opinion and I myself liked some stuff about SwSh (Dynamax is imo underrated tbh, I def prefer it to Z-moves), but he seems to gloss over quite a lot of legit negative stuff. I do wonder a little whether he's a bit biased since he's kinda intertwined with the Poké brand as a top VGC competitor....

[@micabryant4513]

@@charliez077 no..i don't believe for a second the guy is shilling

[@Acecard-jl2py]

I heard a theory that SwSh was originally made for the 3ds because gamefreak was too afraid that the switch wouldn’t sell well. But the switch sold enough that they changed courses and quickly made it for the switch. It explains why the graphics are so subpar. I doubt this is true, but it’s an interesting thought.

[@marcusjc0bl0l]

15:48 that would sound so wrong for a pokemon player who doesnt do competitive 💀

[@imsteviee4010]

They brought back my love for Pokémon. Being able to construct a competitive team within a couple of hours effortlessly was amazing.

[@TheRibottoStudios]

they really are making building teams for competitive players SO much easier. I did a few online battles with SwSh and forgot how much I loved competitive play. I think next time I might want to do more battling with Scarlet and Violet. Terastallizing looks to be a great way to try and get a lot of unique pokemon into the competitive scene.

[@imsteviee4010]

@@TheRibottoStudios yeah, bottle caps were basically the best thing ever. Raids made it so you could get a 4 or 5 perfect IV pokemon with its hidden ability in 5 minutes lol

[@cinderfeather]

I've never done competitive battling it scares me. But seeing so many videos about VGC via Wolfey through sword and shield makes me wanna try it.

[@imsteviee4010]

@@cinderfeather it's fun. And doing it on the ladder let's you ease in cause there are rankings. So a lot of the people you'll play will end up being beginners as well.

[@sylveonresistthemetagame3222]

Dexit was a problem. They got rid of a lot of good tailwind users, leaving us with whimsicott as the last reasonable choice. Then they banned whimsicott from ranked because too many people were using it. They got rid of a pokemon to fix a problem they directly created by getting rid of pokemon. This shows me they had very little vision for the competitive scene. This tailwind issue is just an example that can be applied to many interesting and desirable playstyles that got snuffed out or funneled into cookie cutter uncreative play. There are more issues beyond moveset availability in terms of competitive balancing but I'm not about to write a book on this game. I played one of those 3 day 45 match events for swsh. I fought at least 30 dusclops that weekend. Dexit is why im drowning in dusclops. Trick room was way too powerful this generation. I'm not even getting into the problems with the gen8 mon, I'd be here for hours. The first 2 months of this game were fun and interesting. I think dynamax has some merit to it, but it got stale very quickly due to the miniscule pokedex and slew of overpowered mutants people refer to as "gen8 pokemon". Stuff like dracovish and galarian darmanitan are super cool, but they only serve to balance dynamaxing. Outside of a game with dynamaxing their easily obtainable overwhelming strength hurts the balance of game. If future games are going to be succussful competitively, Power Escalation Freak will have to either leave these mon behind in this gen or completely rework them, robbing them of their identities. These are just a pair of examples of swsh overpowered nonsense. Also they got rid of snatch. What's next? Quick guard? Why? There is no good reason. They have only made the game worse by taking out such a stellar move. Oh also they changed the mechanics around confusion when confusion was perfectly balanced over the span of many gens. Max moves shouldn't infilct statuses that skip the victim's turns. Nerfing the status outside of max moves should not have been their unsuccessful attempt at balancing that poor decision. Give me snatch back.

[@CyanicCore]

👏

[@lnsflare1]

Phrasing!

[@samuelmartin117]

The competitive was fun, the main story was so easy. To much hand holding through the story.

[@babekonig]

i liked this vid so much i subbed! i’m gonna watch some more of your vids after i finish this one. 💕

[@StarlitesExotics]

I have thoroughly enjoyed your content through the last few years. It's thanks to you that I've wanted to dabble into competitive Pokémon.

[@BaconNuke]

The biggest disappointment to me about the Wild Area is that when I saw it revealed in a trailer I assumed there were multiple areas, or that routes were now replaced.. but nope.. random snow in the desert area for no reason.. it is jarring.. also having some weather conditions just be.. locked.. is boggling to me.. I know the DLCs exist but I never bought them, and now it's too late since so close to S/V The cities at least having more buildings in the background did kind of help me tbh accept they were towns.. except of course Ballonlea actually was an example of past towns that were "hey lol 3 houses" Spikemuth was interesting.. only for the gym challenge but when you wanna grab maybe the trade or the items that are at the end of the path it was dumb since they change nothing along said path, not even random NPCs to just say.. something.. to break it up Animations.. could have had some effort for maybe physical attack animation, special attack animation, status (maybe just shares with one of other two), and getting hit.. but nope.. only have getting hit and then.. wiggle for any attack, except for edge cases like Falinks No Retreat, Eternatus Eternabeam, the Wolves moves.. God seeing what is actually in the DLC makes me regret not playing it but.. the base game was both what I was fine with and also what I expected the DLC to be like (ie more of the same quality) so I guess if they do DLC for S/V I will buy it.. or if they just make stuff like ability patches actually available I will use them.. that would be fun to actually use some HA instead of "guess this is the lesser of two evils with normal abilities" But speaking of raids.. please don't give us Martin and his Solrock again.. BDSP... yeah... it says something when the official sources came out near the start of it's hype that tournaments would still be in Sw/Sh.. Speaking of tournaments, I still find it so wholesome that there are adult tourneys and child tourneys instead of "lol everyone fight in our kids game, it will totally be all kids" and awkwardly handing a full on man a tiny Pikachu lanyard or something

[@charliez077]

the weather stuff is jarring indeed. I do remember first time visiting the Wild Area WAS actually exciting bc before this we had never experienced a 3D area in Pokémon. but revisiting it in 2022... it is SOOO ugly lol.

[@afarensis9720]

In the end, I enjoyed Sword and Shield. It was a super fun experience and I sank a load of hours into it. But the rushed plot really let me down personally, especially since it really had a great foundation to work with, with awesome characters and an interesting setup, only to be super undeveloped towards the end. And I wasn't a huge fan of the Expansion Pass, because even though I loved the content it added, I really felt like a lot of the stuff should have just been in the original game. Having to pay an extra half-game price for that didn't really feel right imo. I had the same problem with Ultra Sun/Moon, because I enjoyed those games way more than the originals, but having to buy another game just to get a completed experience isn't exactly cost-friendly. But overall, I think the games were overhated as hell. Definitely had some aspects that deserved criticism, but the hate was overblown

[@samcortez420]

I just hope that Scarlett and Violet have something to do post game because I was really disappointed with Sword and Shield's lack of a post game.

[@charliez077]

sadly lack of postgame has been a staple - XY, SM and SwSh all have terrible postgames. only Legends: Arceus stepped things up.

[@cortster12]

It had its issues, but I had a lot of fun with Sword and Shield.

[@hillaryclintonsleftboob2143]

Would u be open on doing a series like this for every main title game?

[@sammcmc9888]

I could deal with him pronouncing Galar wrong but holy shit he pronounced Regigigas so terribly to the point where I think it might have been intentional.

[@Im_Him.]

As the first Pokémon game I’ve ever played (I had played fire red before but that was on an emulator) I loved all the actual battle mechanics and the whole theme of the game was great my only problems with the game were the low effort graphics and animations, I understand that there’s a lot of Pokémon to animate but this time the dex was cut in half so there was way more room than ever to get this done. Things like the camping make me so sad because I’m not rlly interested in it but it looks like they put way more effort into that than the actual combat for the game. All in all I sunk over 700 hours into the game and still mostly enjoyed it

[@ramstab]

You are the only reason I have ever thought about playing pokemon competitively, back in sun/moon. i should get my hands on scarlet and build some teams

[@Maplie]

26:28 bro the Ranger games were insane lmao maybe one day we'll get a remake so fans can break their Switch screens like we did on DS

[@electro740]

@7:25 finally someone else says it pokemon has never been hard regardless of exp share

[@nervosuu]

Now I want the Scarlet and Violet to have Banio Kazooie voices