Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

This generation has enormous powercreep. As much as Gamefreak said they were going to focus on game balance this Gen, Dynamaxing on its own has completely busted the games Meta.

And then there are the legendaries.

Zacian and Zamazenta have a BST of 720, the same as Arceus, and above stuff like Kyurem, Mewtwo, and surpassed only by Primal Groudon/Kyogre, Ultra Necrozma, Mega Mewtwo and Mega Rayquaza.

The catch is to get to this they have to be holding an item, otherwise their BST is 670, same as Kyogre and Groudon.

But then there's Eternatus, a Poison/Dragon with a BST of 690, the highest any Pokemon has ever been that isn't called Arceus, and without being in some kind of supplementary form, like Kyurem, or Necrozma etc..

And even THAT has an alternate form (That you cant use thank christ) that has a base stat total of 1125. That is likely the highest you will ever see in the franchise.

And sweet mercy its unusable.

So yeah, the power creep we knew is gone. No more Landorus spam, stuff like MEgas…..now we just have a few Pokemon with stats to rival Arceus (An already VERY dangerous Pokemon even in banlist tiers) and a lot of regular Pokemon that excel in certain ways.

The downside of having them excel in certain ways, is they will likely falter in every other way, leaving the all-rounders to cover battling the legendaries.

Depends, it contributes to a more aggressive meta but due to it, it also power creeps many of the older Pokémon even further. The stats and abilities many of the pokemons have this generation are pretty absurd and Dynamaxing has created a meta centralized around it that focuses on snowballing advantage and randomness.

I am making progress through the game. I have a conundrum from a teambuilding standpoint, though. My team consists of Cinderace, Coalossal, Obstagoon, Galarian Stunfisk, Galarian Weezing, and Galvantula. I have a Grapploct in my PC boxes, and all of my Pokemon, including the Grapploct, are early to mid 40s in level. Should I swap out anything on my team for the Grapploct, or should my team do fine? I am about to take on the seventh gym (who's type I won't spoil just in case.)

So I finally finished the post league story and messed around with the post game content a fair amount. Overall I enjoyed this game and it was fun. The games have progressively gotten faster paced over time, and I’m glad that this game continued that with its battle, although I wonder if the constantly present story will turn replays into a slog. The QoL changes are nice and appreciated however.

Pokémon games are weird to me because I have a big soft spot for the franchise but from an overall perspective the games are never what I would call great or innovative (atleast not at this point). They’re near consistently just good fun and I think that applies here as well. So in the end I think this game is good for a Pokémon game and a small needed step for future games and improvements. It has its grating and notable flaws (as all Pokémon games do), it’s pacing drops off half way for me, and many of the characters feel very underdeveloped and explored.

By the end I only really found Hops development to be cute but also generic. We’ve already seen several rivals go through his arc. Most notably Bianca who follows a near identical change and development.

It would really depend on their moves in terms of type coverage of who you face. A poke with a strong water move could take out half of your team so keep that in mind.

@-Green- you can turn on an option that lets you skip story bits

@Galenmereth well, I’m still on my first playthrough so I don’t want skip any events. But I assume once you turn that option on, you’ll be able to press a button to skip them.

Question.

If I level up and it offers for me to learn a new move, and I say no, can I still exchange for that move later like other forgotten moves, or do you first have to learn it and then forget it before you can exchange for it?

Hey guys is there any word on a patch coming out anytime soon? Would I be fine just playing it now?

@JayJ A patch for what?

The game plays fine.

Unless you absolutely need the mouse cursor to be removed from the credits to enjoy the game.

I wouldn’t mind a future update for the online tbh

Man I just saw this and this is super cool! Makes even more reason to do camping

Imagine packing up and noticing at the last second that there was a wild shiny pokemon among your pokemon.

@darkfenrir I love the little details like that. Can really tell the developers were trying to make a love letter to the fans. I rushed a bit through the story, but now I’m taking my time exploring and there are so many secrets and call backs hidden through the game.

really? that's good feature, to be honest, i don't like camping much, i prefer the poke pelago from gen 7.

Yeah a lot of things about Sw/Sh sound amazing. I love the idea of TRs bringing back the resource management aspect of TMs from older games. Honestly the weak story is even a pro to me, because I'm not too crazy about Pokemon games having an involved story. I'd rather them let me just do my own thing.

I usually wouldn't condone this because it's kind of sleezy from a business perspective, but I really hope this game gets a third version that fixes the issues like the limited dex, the lack of online features, and the EXP-share (or they could patch them in)

Yes.

However, if you later evolve that Pokémon, and the evolved form no longer has certain moves as part of its moveset (when leveling up), then I would imagine not. This would mainly affect a lot of stone-evolving Pokémon, particularly those that no longer learn moves when leveling up, though this may have changed as I have not thoroughly examined the movesets of the Sword/Shield roster.

You don't need to learn the move itself to be able to remember it later, as the move tutor also allows access to all moves from prior levels. If you say, catch a Pokémon at Lv. 50, you will be able to make it "remember" any moves from prior levels.

I almost never buy "third versions" of Pokemon games. I bought Yellow, but that was... pretty extensively changed.

Rarely buy the remakes, either. Made an exception for Soulsilver, but I just ended up selling it. Johto was never my favorite region.