Board 8 > observations and questions on watching a first-timer play pokemon sword

(+) Yeah! (+)

My fiancee has been playing a fair amount of Pokemon over the last few days and it's been pretty interesting. She just lost against the fourth gym's fighting types.

I haven't played a mainline Pokemon game since Black/White, so I've been seeing lots of stuff as well. I know that Sw/Sh wasn't particularly well-received by long-time fans. I haven't seen everything myself, to be fair, so I'm definitely missing some gaps.

- Graphically this game looks way better than expected. The fixed Paper Mario-ish camera angle is really nice, and the Pokemon themselves look really good as well. I think the DS games were in this obviously awkward ugly duckling phase, where they were trying to add some 3D effects to the buildings and it looked awful. But the battles, the environments - it all looks great.

- I do have some graphic complaints. In battle, the changing camera angles can be distracting and conceal information sometimes. Then there's the awkwardness of a hand being extended to give something over, but no object appearing - that just feels lazy and unfinished. And finally, it just looks weird when someone moves their mouth and only text comes out. At least a sound? Or just have them not move their mouths?

- The handholdy-ness of it would really bother me if it were me, but the hints of which attacks are effective or not are really helpful to my fiancee. So I guess that's a nice touch.

- Musically, on the other hand, I find the majority of the instrumentation kind of painful to listen to. The only remixed tune I've been enjoying is the classic gym melody, which sounds great as always.

- Is there any point in this Dynamax thing? It only seems to appear in gym battles. And it feels gimmicky and kind of lame, though the crowd cheering is a nice touch.

- The exp share seems to be pretty nice, but are enemy Pokemon like way stronger now than they used to be? She had a level 28 guy but it would keep getting one-shotted by level 31 wilds. I seem to remember wilds being much lower in level before.

- Also, is it like insanely difficult to catch Pokemon that are higher level than you? She's had a lot of difficulty catching level 30-ish Pokemon with tons and tons of Great Balls, even when their HP has been in the red.

- When did your "rival" officially become so annoying and hand-hold-y? Am I right that he picked the weaker type against hers? I seem to remember a best friend figure appearing in B/W that did something similar, but I believe there at least was a bad guy character ("N"?) who wound up with the Pokemon that had a type advantage. That really doesn't seem to be happening here.

- There's something surreal about not knowing whether any given Pokemon that appears is new or old. I have a suspicion that Rookidee/Corvisquire is not an original, and some others I vaguely recall. But like this hideous Normal/Ground rabbit thing? The electric dog (or the other electric dog)? Who knows! The roster is just absolutely massive now.

- On that note, I do like the wide variety of types that are now available to catch. No more influxes of generic Normals and Bugs everywhere. Lots of Fire, Electric, Ground, and Fighting types, even in the first few routes of the game. More fun this way!

- When did they do away with random encounters? I love this new system.

- The Wild Area feels kind of sandboxy and meant to appeal to fans of games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing? The whole "check here every day for new handouts!" element definitely feels that way. But yeah, I don't really get it myself.
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Yes, these games changed it so it's almost impossible to catch Pokemon higher level than you. Just don't even bother trying.

X/Y is when the rivals got really shit, and Sun/Moon started the trend of them choosing the starter weak to yours. B/W you had two rivals, so one chose effective and the other was weak. N was a third rival who just temporarily caught Pokemon in the immediate area. Every fight with him was different.

Rookidee was new in Sword/Shield!

Let's Go removed random encounters and Sword/Shield kept that.

Wild Area is underwhelming, yes. The DLC wild areas are better.

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Also, is it like insanely difficult to catch Pokemon that are higher level than you? She's had a lot of difficulty catching level 30-ish Pokemon with tons and tons of Great Balls, even when their HP has been in the red.

I think because of the Wild Areas openness potentially giving you access to a bunch of Pokmon much higher in level that you would be when you encounter them, they made catching higher level Pokmon gated by your badges or something. I dont remember exactly, but I dont think youre imagining it.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

Also, is it like insanely difficult to catch Pokemon that are higher level than you? She's had a lot of difficulty catching level 30-ish Pokemon with tons and tons of Great Balls, even when their HP has been in the red.

yes close to impossible now

SeabassDebeste posted...

- The Wild Area feels kind of sandboxy and meant to appeal to fans of games like Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing? The whole "check here every day for new handouts!" element definitely feels that way. But yeah, I don't really get it myself.

I can only assume you've never touched a mobile game in your life because this is clearly inspired my mobile games

SeabassDebeste posted...

- Is there any point in this Dynamax thing? It only seems to appear in gym battles. And it feels gimmicky and kind of lame, though the crowd cheering is a nice touch.

it's the worst part of the game and the worst of the recent 'gimmicks' imo. I played 10 minutes of the final expansion before realizing it was centered around Dynamax Raid battles and quitting the games forever

My own extra point to insert about SwSh; I loved the "no fucking around" nature of the game. You go straight from one gym to the next with very minimal bullshit. If the battles posed a single bit of challenge to compensate for this they'd be the best Pokemon games. Alas.

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Aw I really liked the dynamax battles, especially the raid dungeons in the second DLC. Me and my friends played through them until wed caught every legendary. Only downside is if youre lumped with NPC trainers as they were all terrible.

I will admit dynamaxing in battles was kinda pointless though, although I liked that you could dynamax whoever you wanted without having to equip an item to them like Z Moves or Megas.

And I thought the music was great! Marnies theme is my favourite Pokemon song for a long time.

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sword and shield music managed to be worse than XY, which is notable

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This one's been my favourite Pokmon game. I don't really care about the story parts, but it made so many quality-of-life improvements and made creating teams and battling online much less daunting.

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This gen's theme is the UK. As a general rule, if the Pokemon feels very "pip pip cheerio" it probably came out this gen

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MoogleKupo141 posted...

I think because of the Wild Areas openness potentially giving you access to a bunch of Pokmon much higher in level that you would be when you encounter them, they made catching higher level Pokmon gated by your badges or something. I dont remember exactly, but I dont think youre imagining it.

There are two gates. If you don't have enough badges, the game won't even let you try and catch some high level Pokemon. Even if you do have enough badges, the catch rate of Pokemon that are a higher level than the Pokemon you have out is very low.
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SeabassDebeste posted...

- Also, is it like insanely difficult to catch Pokemon that are higher level than you? She's had a lot of difficulty catching level 30-ish Pokemon with tons and tons of Great Balls, even when their HP has been in the red.

- When did your "rival" officially become so annoying and hand-hold-y? Am I right that he picked the weaker type against hers? I seem to remember a best friend figure appearing in B/W that did something similar, but I believe there at least was a bad guy character ("N"?) who wound up with the Pokemon that had a type advantage. That really doesn't seem to be happening here.

I found this out the hard way but apparently yeah. The level difference between the Pokemon you have on the field and the Pokemon you're trying to catch actually affects the capture rate. I swear if I wasn't bald I would have torn my hair out trying to understand why I threw every single great ball in my inventory and couldn't even catch something that was paralyzed and with a sliver of health.

Also Hop is trash, he's my least favorite rival in the series. Some people like him because he has a fairly diverse team and changes up his roster (and shows some development) through the game. But uhh.... I just hate the way he talks to the player. He has his own goals but he projects his goals onto you, and goes on and on about how his dreams are both his and your dreams. I hated that aspect of his character.


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Hop is at least better than Hau from Sun and Moon but yeah he's still a loser.

Marnie is <3 though. And Bede is finally a legit jerk for a rival again which is really great to see.

fiancee just asked me if she needs a water type. she's approaching her fourth gym. which just made me realize - have they done away with HMs? her corviknight has fly, but she can fly without using it
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SeabassDebeste posted...

fiancee just asked me if she needs a water type. she's approaching her fourth gym. which just made me realize - have they done away with HMs? her corviknight has fly, but she can fly without using it

They did away with HMs last gen

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i'm all for the convenient of not having to shackle a pokemon with shit moves, but that seems really sad. the idea you could actually use your pokemon outside of battle to do practical stuff really felt like it brought the world together!
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HMs have always been an awful mechanic no one liked (until they were gone). Gen 7 replaced it with something else that keeps the field exploration portion, but Gen 8 uses the aforementioned level gates and the bike upgrade instead.

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wait, what? i always liked HMs. i think that waterfall and whirlpool were shit additions, but the big issue with HMs was more that they were bad moves rather than that they existed
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SeabassDebeste posted...

wait, what? i always liked HMs. i think that waterfall and whirlpool were shit additions, but the big issue with HMs was more that they were bad moves rather than that they existed

the ones that are good moves are still accessible as moves, and their gameplay functions for the most part still exist. It's just that the parts that were annoying like needing an HM slave are gone.

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yeah I'm actually in the camp that prefers HMs, just because it's cool that your Pokemon are able to do stuff outside of battle. if they were going to fix it what they should have done was make it so that HMs didn't take up a move slot. instead of making it a move that is used in battle, each Pokemon could just have one type of HM exploration ability it was capable of learning. it'd be awesome to see your Pokemon actually use Fly or Cut outside of battle. and even if they didn't want to give Cut/Fly animations for every Pokemon that'd be fine too. I mean, the current iteration in Sw and Sh doesn't even show anything happening either, the screen just fades to black when the Corvinight Taxi comes and picks you up. so even if it was exactly the same visually the only thing that would change would be the flavor. I guess the one argument against this style of HM "fix" is that you'd still have to carry around at least one flying type to be able to use Fly, but... in that case, just have the Taxi option available to players who wish to use it.


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the problem with the field move solution is that it still puts a big constraint on teambuilding. You can't make the ingame teams you want completely if you ALWAYS need a Water type and a Flying type as two of the slots. Especially when some games had up to 8 of things.

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Between reusable TMs and accessing storage anywhere, they could've kept field moves and made it manageable by just making it so you can overwrite them like a normal move instead of needing the move deleter. It'd still be a bit of pointless busywork, but better than the way it used to be.

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Requiring you to be in a specific place in the map in order to delete HMs was to prevent little kids from getting permanently stuck somewhere. Depending on the game there are other ways to get yourself stuck though they usually require way more intentional setup than just deleting an HM and releasing a pokemon at the wrong time would

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WazzupGenius00 posted...

Requiring you to be in a specific place in the map in order to delete HMs was to prevent little kids from getting permanently stuck somewhere

how? HMs were always reusable, and if you deleted one in some random cave you could always just add it back (I don't think there were any HMs NFEs could learn that evolved forms couldn't). There was a separate safeguard system to try to make sure you couldn't get stuck at like Sootopolis by releasing a Pokemon (though you could get around that if you tried) too

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If somebody traded a pokemon with an HM move to you, and you never actually received the HM yourself, you wouldn't be able to add it back.

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Oh yeah, that was the other point I forgot to address. Adding a system where you had to have an HM disc in your inventory to use it, or pigbacking on the restricted release logic the center uses would be a much smoother, more friendly system than the nonsense they had instead. The first is pretty intuitive, seeing as how the game already gates you based on badges earned

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HMs are so bad

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I like the Pokemon Ride thing, it's cute

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HMs are really bad and I am glad they stopped existing.

HMs COULDNT be removed except for at a move deleter, which, while it sanity-checked the game (in an improbable scenario, so you wouldn't delete Surf somewhere on an island then wonder trade away your Surfer without a fishing rod in tow to catch a new one) made it really annoying to lug around a Bibarel and Tropius to cover all fronts.

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Earthshaker posted...

HMs COULDNT be removed except for at a move deleter, which, while it sanity-checked the game (in an improbable scenario, so you wouldn't delete Surf somewhere on an island then wonder trade away your Surfer without a fishing rod in tow to catch a new one) made it really annoying to lug around a Bibarel and Tropius to cover all fronts.

If they wonder trade their surfer away, they can just keep wonder trading until they get a new surfer.

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Hbthebattle posted...

the problem with the field move solution is that it still puts a big constraint on teambuilding. You can't make the ingame teams you want completely if you ALWAYS need a Water type and a Flying type as two of the slots. Especially when some games had up to 8 of things.

MariaTaylor posted...

I guess the one argument against this style of HM "fix" is that you'd still have to carry around at least one flying type to be able to use Fly, but... in that case, just have the Taxi option available to players who wish to use it.

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man this grapploct thing is p terrifying
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Terrifyingly awesome.

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mnkboy907 posted...

If they wonder trade their surfer away, they can just keep wonder trading until they get a new surfer.

It was more an issue in the earlier games, where you wouldn't be forced to pick up the Surf HM, and could get stuck somewhere where you couldn't even teach anything Surf since you didn't have the HM. HGSS actually has a failsafe in place in Cianwood where a guy gives you a Tentacool if you only have one Pokemon, but that doesn't help you if you never picked up the Surf HM in the first place.

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I gotta confess, I mostly started coming in this topic since I picked sword up myself, too.

My team, um, sucks. I only got through gym 5 by spamming revives cuz all my decent anti-fairy pokes are out on a job until noon tomorrow.

Such is the price of having a bunch of my gen 5 endgame standbys not evolved yet along with a Noibat and a Rillaboom.

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i've definitely noticed that the pokemon you want to use are very often not the ones that work

like toxel and swirlix and noibat are supercute but just had terrible performance in battle. she was suck using the hideous ground rabbit and still is stuck with stunfisk, which has a truly terrible design

corviknight, the 3rd form grass, and boltund are great though. and i suggested she just use gyarados as well so she could have some water coverage as well.
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Hms are good because they're one of the only ways to gate progress. The way they were handled wasn't always great, but "moves you need to explore" are great.

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Toxel and Noibat fall into that category where the first form is tough to use and not great but once you get it to evolve you're golden.

pjbasis posted...

Hms are good because they're one of the only ways to gate progress. The way they were handled wasn't always great, but "moves you need to explore" are great.

totally agreed - it's also a cool way to world-build
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Toxel is a baby Pokmon. It's evolution is very good though and it's not that hard to get, especially with EXP share. Noibat evolves later but EXP share saves you once more.

Steiner posted...

My own extra point to insert about SwSh; I loved the "no f***ing around" nature of the game. You go straight from one gym to the next with very minimal bulls***. If the battles posed a single bit of challenge to compensate for this they'd be the best Pokemon games. Alas.

Now this is certainly a hot take. Especially when the game has very little content instead.

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Toxel's evo is fucking great, a total triumph
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ctesjbuvf posted...

Now this is certainly a hot take. Especially when the game has very little content instead.

the gyms are the best content so I just wanted them to have some challenge and less fucking around with villain teams. they delivered half of that!

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I'm getting smacked around pretty badly. A side effect, methinks, of no water type I want to use being anywhere.

Maybe that mistakefish Water/Ice fossil will do the trick.

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so my fiancee has beatwn rhe eight gyms and is mostly chilling catching/raising eeveelutions before finishing the game

it's really sad how flareon's stats are still messed up so that the best fire moves are kind of weak for it
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Flareon does get Flare Blitz. But, it isn't the best of moves for in-game.
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Flareon has always been useless in competitive play too partially because of this. Most Eeveelutions have had use, only the Gen IV duo rivals Flareon for the bottom spot.

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You tellin' me a mono grass and mono ice type aren't good?

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i had hope that they'd come out with some cool physical fire moves! the special split killed gyarados in gen 2 but he was incredible again with the physical/special split. i even saw something that looked like a male gardevoir using a strong physical psychic move!
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Mono grass didn't stop things like Tangrowth from being good!

It's a shame ice is probably the worst typing overall. It absolutely sucks on the defensive side and almost all ice types have defensively oriented stats for some weird reason.

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