Poké­mon Sword and Shield is Re­leased

I may be an 18-year-old adult male, but I am a five-year-old boy at heart. The im­por­tance of this is that I of­ten find my­self en­joy­ing things that are child­ish in de­sign. I fully ac­knowl­edge that. How­ever, I posit that a game like Poké­mon is so time­less that any­one of any age can play it and have fun. So, I will not feel the slight­est bit of shame or self-con­scious­ness at re­view­ing a game mar­keted to peo­ple of half my size yet of equal in­tel­li­gence. 

Poké­mon Sword and Shield, which I will just shorten to Poké­mon Sword as that is the ver­sion I bought, is yet an­other game in the pocket mon­ster se­ries. As we have moved onto the eighth gen­er­a­tion of these fan­tas­ti­cal crea­tures, the de­vel­op­ers at Game­F­reak have given play­ers 94 new Poké­mon to find and catch. They have also re­moved quite a few Poké­mon from the game; this is­n’t to say those Poké­mon aren’t in the se­ries at all, it just means that they can­not be found in this game.  

Speak­ing of this, there has been quite the spot of con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the game. The most fre­quent points of dis­con­tent­ment among the “fans” are the graph­i­cal down­grade in ar­eas, the re­moval of hun­dreds of Poké­mon, and the lack of cre­ativ­ity in the newer ad­di­tions. I, how­ever, don’t nit­pick these points too much, as I am just too jazzed about Game­F­reak per­pet­u­at­ing one of my fa­vorite game se­ries of all time to cavil like an en­ti­tled child. 

As far as the game­play it­self goes, so far so Poké­mon. There has­n’t been too much changed about the core game­play – if it is­n’t bro­ken, and it def­i­nitely is­n’t, then don’t try to fix it. All that’s new are qual­ity-of-life changes and ex­tra op­tions to in­ter­act with your Poké­mon, all of which a starry-eyed, Poké­fa­natic like my­self is over­joyed to see. First and fore­most, play­ers no longer must re­mem­ber type matchups. Un­like be­fore, play­ers will see on top of the move in the bat­tle menu if it will be “su­per ef­fec­tive,” “ef­fec­tive,” or “not very ef­fec­tive,” or have “no ef­fect” at all. The move an­i­ma­tions them­selves have also re­ceived a few changes, mak­ing every­thing flashier and more im­mer­sive. 

How­ever, ar­guably the most im­por­tant and worth­while ad­di­tion is the “Poké­mon Camp” fea­ture. Thanks to this lit­tle slice of Heaven from Game­F­reak, play­ers are able to in­ter­act with their Poké­mon in a camp­site. The avail­able op­tions are to play with a ball or cat toy look-a-like, cook for your Poké­mon, or speak with them. Now, your Poké­mon won’t ac­tu­ally talk back, but a text bub­ble will pop up with their feel­ings, like, “Pikachu looks like she wants to play with other Poké­mon.” This al­lows play­ers to get a bet­ter han­dle on how their fuzzy friends are feel­ing. By camp­ing, the Poké­mon will gain ex­pe­ri­ence points and grow closer to their train­ers. 

As some­one who has sunk about a day’s worth of play­time into the game over the course of the re­lease week­end, I can say that I en­joy Poké­mon Sword. My room­mate has Shield, and we both have a great time play­ing and bat­tling with each other at every chance we get. If you have en­joyed any pre­vi­ous Poké­mon game and are in­ter­ested in Sword and Shield, I would ab­solutely rec­om­mend them, as they are the most whole­some fun I’ve had in a long time.