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Pokémon Sword Discussion (Nintendo Switch) [game]
 
Pokémon Sword on the Switch
8.5/10 from one rating

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11/16/19, 14:46  
 
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@Secret_Tunnel
You get a ton of experience candies thrown at you by doing raid battles. 5 star raid battles also have at least 5 perfect IVs for breeding, and the free Pikachu or Eevee you get for having a save from Let's Go has 6 perfect IVs. After progressing in the battle tower you can get a visual for your IVs, and also purchase items to EV train or even change the nature of your Pokemon. You can also find Pokemon in the wild that are glowing and they usually have several perfect IVs. Also, Pokemon from raid battles can have their hidden ability. Not sure if that is always guaranteed but its there.

My one annoyance with all of this is that you can't pass on the gigantamax factor to a child. Only the Pokemon you catch from the raid can GMax and some of the GMax forms seem rather powerful.
11/21/19, 07:31   
Just passed the third gym and I’m back out in the Wild. This game is basically consuming my Switch time 100%.
11/21/19, 23:04   
Battle Tower Singles beaten. Way easier and shorter than I felt it should be. Only took about 50 wins all up to finish it, and didn't even use a minmaxed team. I just used the team I beat the league with and modified their stats as I got bottle caps and mints from doing the battle tower.

Also I have all Pokemon I can actually catch in Sword now. Waiting on a few exclusives from Shield (when my girlfriend actually gets around to catching them for me) and a Grookey which I should have by weeks end. Sitting at about 70ish hours and have everything I need for the review. Gonna have to wait a few weeks though because study for the year is almost over.
11/27/19, 02:18   
I too have been catching and fighting the Pokémons. First Pokémon game since the Nintendo DS, so I'm not burnt out on the series and am having a good time.
11/27/19, 12:29   
I got my sixth badge, and this area may have been my favorite of all the Galar Region so far. The atmosphere and music were just spot-on. I am now traveling down Route 9. Really digging this latest entry, it’s been a blast. (Unfortunately not a Blastoise, though)

@Hinph

Nice, welcome back!
11/27/19, 16:20   
The Pokemon designs in the new expansion look so cool and are really making me want to try this, but I'm just not sure if I have patience for the low difficulty or in-your-face story. How are you guys liking the game now? Still playing it?
01/19/20, 03:52   
I beat the game and the post game the other day. Now I need to really sink my teeth into the battle tower.

I find that the wild area changed a lot for me some I beat the game, and I find some changes to be frustrating. I beat my first 5-star raid though today and after three shakes I just lost the catch. Frustrating too.

Any tips on mad raids, catching them, and finishing my dex?

And what did you all think about the story? I thought it was generally poor. So much of the action is missed, some of the 'enemies' at the end were illogical, and Hop was generally annoying. I didn't like that he'd constantly interrupt my progress only to run ahead. I did like Hop's growth aspects though and Professor Sonia's too. There were positives.
01/19/20, 06:09   
Edited: 01/19/20, 06:17
Still loving my first Pokemon game.

The game was so easy then the third gym kicked my ass. Ate up a ton of my items, and killed all my Pokemon except my last, with 1 hit to spare. That fucker. All that wasted XP.
01/19/20, 06:52   
@carlosrox

This is your first Pokemon? Congrats! What's your team right now?
01/20/20, 05:41   
@DrFinkelstein
Best way to do raids is to cheese it for the most part. You can reset as soon as a red light appears if you use Wishing Stars and just keep doing the reset until you get a purple beam for a rare raid. Also if you fail to catch the Pokemon you can just reset the game to have another attempt.
01/20/20, 17:19   
@Secret_Tunnel For me, the best part of the game was easily the co-op raiding with friends. Otherwise, I think the best word I'd use to describe the game is "underdeveloped," and I don't just mean because of the PokéDex. In any case, there are ways to have the game put up a fight if you want a challenge, such as switching up your team a lot so that none of your Monz are leveling a bunch. I wouldn't consider this to be an artificial challenge either, as part of the appeal of these games is trying out different Monz and seeing what they can do; this isn't like, say, skipping Heart Containers in Zelda games. Nothing to help with the shallow story though.

That said, knowing you as I do(n't), I don't think this game is for you.

@DrFinkelstein Playing raids in co-op with friends makes them easier (and fun!) than playing them with the worthless CPUs.
01/20/20, 18:17   
@Mop it up

I appreciate the direct un-recommendation! I've enjoyed Pokemon games in the past, and I love some of the new designs here, especially in the DLC reveal:



But yeah, I dunno if I'd have the patience for this haha.
01/20/20, 20:56   
I beat the regular part of the game. Hear there's extra bits post-ending, but I'm probably going to pass on them. Which is interesting because before the end I was raring to go catch them all!

My quick thoughts (and then back to work):

I loved the first 70% or so of this game (except Hop) in a similar way to loving Pokemon Blue. It brought me back to that fun of young adulthood, probably mostly because I didn't take it super seriously and I named all my Pokemon cute little nicknames and really cared about my team. Been a while since I played a Pokemon game with that mindset. So that really had me enthralled.

The last 30% of the game
, though? I started kind of hating it. The Dark gym/town was awful and like an afterthought, and the ending felt both epic and totally anticlimactic at the same time somehow. It was weird.

All in all I'm glad we bought it and I played it, but it really fell short by the end and that dragged the whole experience down. I'll tell you what really seemed to mess things up for me: The other gym challengers. The fact that there were so many NPCs who were "trying" to beat the gym challenge and failed (and QUIT) made everything feel off to me. It was like the game was trying to make me look like I was special, but none of these gyms required much skill, all it took was not-quitting. Even stupid idiotic Hop could beat them for goodness sake! So what's up with all the quitters? Why did they even join the gym challenge if they were unwilling even to level their Pokemon an extra 4 or 5 levels so they could beat the gym leaders?

I know this "complaint" goes back to the original games, where how-is-Brock-a-Gym-Leader when he only has two Pokemon and they are so low level, but this game took that weird feeling and magnified it ten fold for me.

@DrFinkelstein

Yeah, Hop was the worst thing about the whole game. What a terrible friend AND terrible rival. "Come on, let's go do this thing together" he constantly shouted as he ran off alone. I hated him for 99% of the game.
01/20/20, 21:25   
Edited: 01/20/20, 21:25
@J.K. Riki

To quote Tim Rogers's strange, meandering video on Pokemon from a couple months ago: "Everyone in this world loves this hobby. However, you are the indisputable best at it because your character pretty much read a blog post about the existence of common sense."
01/21/20, 01:43   
J.K. Riki said:
I know this "complaint" goes back to the original games, where how-is-Brock-a-Gym-Leader when he only has two Pokemon and they are so low level...

Canonically, in Kanto, a Gym Leader will only use as many Pokémon on his/her team as the challenger has badges. So when you meet Brock you have no badges, so he only uses two PKMN. But as you collect more and more badges, the gym leaders use more and more PKMN when you challenge them.
01/25/20, 00:35   
A word of warning, there have been some early reports of hacked Pokémon transferred in from Home causing people's games to crash if received through a Surprise Trade, which will then continue to cause the game to crash any time you try to go online using the Y-Comm. May want to avoid Surprise Trades for now.
02/15/20, 22:31   
@Mop it up

That’s a bad surprise!
02/19/20, 01:23   
I have finally started writing my review...after procrastinating it since the start of the year. For some reason this has been the hardest review to write even if I love the game more than the previous two mainline entries.
02/19/20, 11:32   
@Pokefreak911

Good luck!

You love Sword/Shield more than the last two entries? You mean Ultra Sun/Moon and OG Sun/Moon? Or are you referring to X/Y and combining all the Alola Region games together as one?
02/20/20, 06:39   
Edited: 02/20/20, 06:40
@GameDadGrant
X/Y and SuMo. You can count USUM as mainline but I refuse to even play them just because of how much distaste they leave in my mouth from even existing. Maybe one day...
02/20/20, 11:31   
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