Topic: Pokemon Sword & Shield

I'm sure they'll update it eventually. In the meanwhile, I like playing these games fresh.

Everything else about these games looks sick. The sorta open world vibe. The gorgeous animations. MP raids. The kaiju Dynamaxing thing.

This is the most excited I've been for Pokemon since X and Y.

I’m disappointed in the Pokémon lock thing. Quite literally one of my favorite things to do in Pokémon is to try out different play throughs of games with Pokémon from across generations that I never used but always wanted to. They’re like my new game +’s, but this is disappointing even more so because I was hoping to do this a lot with S and S. Because SM are terrible to replay because of how slowly paced and intrusive they are.

You know, last month, before the Pokemon direct, I figured it'd be the exact opposite situation: I got the impression they were using this gen to try and get the art assets up to speed, which would take up much of the development and the game wouldn't have as many new and interesting features. I assumed I'd have to wait until either a "Sword & Shield 2" or maybe even the next generation if that's also on the Switch before we'd see them make good use of the more powerful hardware, essentially wasting the mainline series' debut on a console.

I'm glad to see I was wrong, and like Ralizah said, they could always add more pokemon via patches once they have the models done and the animations polished.

I really don't see Gamefreak doing it via patches because they didn't bother to do that for Sun and Moon with the new Ultra Beast and mythical Pokemon they added in Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon. That would have required far less effort and they didn't bother.

While not having all Pokemon (which is now one of Pokemon's charms) is indeed very annoying and Game Freak deserves roasting there, I don't feel less new Pokemon is that bad of a thing though?

I don't need too much new Pokemon, even 20-50 are more than enough. We have 800+ already, and pretty much will reach 1000 sooner or later. Do we need to hurry there? XD

At first I too was pretty salty about the lack of a complete national Pokedex in this game. And I still find the way they announced that to be pretty lame and sneaky, the more I think about it, the more I am okay with it.

Looking at the list on Serebii of Pokemon already confirmed to be in the game we can see a nice mix of Pokemon from across the generations.

Furthermore I think it very likely that the next main series title on Switch, after SwSh, will build on these games and bring more Pokemon from older generations - or, if my wish is fullfilled, we will get the non-Gallar Pokemon as part of a big DLC expansion at some point.

While people may argue that all the Pokemon should at least be programmed into the game from the start, knowing even the little bit I do know about 3D models, I know it would be a monumental task for them to make them all in one go. Counting alternative forms, plus new Pokemon and human NPCs, we are talking probably more than 1000 3D models! Plus all their textures, alternative textures (shiny) and animations. It was this monstrous thing that had me so excited to begin with and I feel they should have told us this during the Pokemon Direct, not the E3 treehouse...

But the games still look really fun, and likely to have plenty of variety to pick from.

The removal of Megas and Z-moves in favor of Dynamax is not too surprising, as having all 3 could be chaos. But I can also see these features returning as DLC or expansion content, or in later games on the Switch.

Pokemon/Game Freak have always enjoyed milking fans for extra cash and while annoying for us, I can't say it's anything more than that. So long as they do eventually deliver, and I think we can expect that eventually all Pokemon will come to Switch, but we probably will have to pay for it. #moderngaminng

I'm mixed on the Galar dex restrictions. From a development perspective, I kinda get it. Plus, I've never played the series in a hardcore manner, so I personally don't find it to be a huge deal. I've never used Pokemon Bank barring the free trial at one point and haven't bothered transferring Pokemon into the next generation since I moved some between my Gen 4 and 5 games.

On the other, I can see how competitive players, shiny hunters, and those who like moving their whole collection with them would be miffed. I've completed the full Pokedex once (Pokemon Diamond) and know firsthand that even that was a lot of work. I believe I clocked over 300 hours on that file.

@Tyranexx it will be patched in eventually. They are just trying to keep the game pure in the first couple months. I'm pretty confident it will be a normal pokemon game after a year or so

@Gravitron Fine by me. I doubt I'll even be able to pick up one of the two games at launch. XD I do plan on owning a Switch by that point, but there's so much to catch up on already. The Nintendo drought for those who had some of the recent releases on the Wii U has been nice for backlog purposes, but that time is swiftly running out.

Heh. Maybe I'll stand a chance of actually "catching them all" in this iteration of the series, now that there won't be a thousand of the little buggers to amass in one game.

To be perfectly honest, I'm actually really happy that Z-Moves and Mega Evolutions are gone, as I was never particularly a fan of either mechanic.

Hopefully they have a fair mixture of types in the game. Replaying Gen 4 reminded me how much of a pain an imbalance in available types can be, but this could be even worse in SS depending on the amount of them

I have a hunch that GF isn't planning on letting your pokemon be abandoned forever. I think their idea with Pokemon Home is that you can store your pokemon in Home, and when a game comes out that DOES support your pokemon, you can bring it in.

Yeah. Before, leaving a Pokémon species out of a game would literally mean your pokemon could not leave your older game, ever, because Pokémon preservation had to be handled game-to-game.

Now with a dedicated universal storage system, they can pick and choose which pokemon appear in what game, and not leave any individual pokemon stuck in the past forever.

This could also help shake up the competitive scene, by rotating the available species with each "season" (generation).

I’d put more weight in Pokemon trying to use balance as a justification for limiting options of Pokémon in the game if they actually were decent at balancing the game. The fans have to lay out systems for that instead and meanwhile Gamefreak introduces stuff like Mega Rayquaza and Min-Maxed Legendaries to completely power creep the game.

Edit: Actually you know what, was probably a bit too inconsiderate there. They do atleast have systems as to how strong Pokémon should be Stat wise depending on how they evolve and such. And they do try to take into consideration how many types and play styles they introduce each Generation and such. Wouldn’t say they’re good at balancing based on the stuff they continuously introduce and the huge powercreep the franchise has had since Gen 4-ish, but they’re organized and do try.

@Morpheel That's a reasonable way to look at it, certainly! They were already largely doing that in VGC in the years they limited it to the regional Pokedex and to Pokemon caught or bred in that game.

Though I still think the plan is to release Sword and Shield with the Pokemon they have planned and then either in a DLC expansion, or in a future game on the Switch, using the same engine, reintroduce the remainder. I think they will use unreleased older Pokemon as an additional lure to bring people to newer games.

I hope however they don't follow the 3DS route of not updating previous titles. If we get, for example Sword 2 and Shield 2, I hope Sword and Shield are updated to allow those additional Pokemon to exist in them, rather than forcing players using the newer games to play with a special "old" rule set and ban list.

To Pokémon, DLC = New Game

@-Green- It has long since seemed as though they balance based on the VGC rules only. AKA double battles. Many things that were totally busted in singles were far less OP in doubles. For example, Mega Lucario was banned in Smogon's fan rules for single battles but wasn't nearly as impressive in VGC of the same year - and was largely outclasses by other Megas.

I feel like the powercreep might kind of be a symptom of just having so many pokemon out there. They have tried to simultaneously appeal to fans of older generations and boost older pokemon that had lost relevance, and in the process they kind of created a hyper-arms race.

I think this had to happen for the competitive scene at some point. Just like how card games have rotations of active expansions, Pokemon's competitive scene can't really sustain thousands and thousands of Pokemon growing into eternity. I'm sure it's been a drain on development resources as well, and if they are allocating those resources towards things like the Wild Area, I'm all for it.

Noticed that as well actually Heavy. Gen 7 especially introduced a good amount of abilities that excel greatly in double battles. Still the powercreep they do is crazy as of late despite their attempts to balance. Wish they let us just do double battle in game whenever we wanted instead of finding specific tag partners.

Edit: Yeah it’s a game of one upping themselves each Gen, but realistically speaking iKhan, Pokemon has never been much of balanced game. Bar Gen 2 and maybe Gen 3, every Gen of Pokémon has contributed big Powercreep into the game. In many cases not even involving older Pokémon at all,

You know, I really like the comparison to rotations in card games. Especially how Pokemon handles their card games. And with Pokemon Home now, you can keep your collection there, and when your Pokemon come back into rotation you can bring them over.

So some Pokemon are "out of rotation this season" for Sword and Shield. But let's face it, there will be more Pokemon games in the future, I don't think anyone questions that. So when the next games come around, they can bring more Pokemon in and rotate others out.

For completionists, Pokemon Home could well have a "Master National Pokedex" or something.

Yeah, looking at it this way, I really like the idea.

Good call @iKhan