2/5 ★ – sheldoman's review of Pokémon Sword.

I've been a long time fan of the pokemon series and I was very excited for these games when they came out. But I ended up being pretty disappointed with it. It's not a terrible game, but it's not nearly as good as it could be. It's a Pokemon game that uses the core mechanics so that's an automatic pass for me so I'm going to focus on the things that are new/different about Sword compared to previous games. First off there are a bunch of new pokemon and I'll be honest, I don't really love any of the new ones. Boltund and Yamper are kinda fun. I think Alcremie is fun and the different forms are cool enough. Zacian looks cool. I do like the new Galar forms and the new evolutions for old pokemon. Sirfetch'd is good. But a lot of the new pokemon kinda suck. Like all of the starters have a cute first form but dumb looking final forms. The new dragons are all dumb looking. Camping is fine but I think I preferred poke pelago and the one on one stuff in x and y. Seeing the pokemon interact is fun but the cooking mini-game is kinda dumb. Gigantamax/dynamax is not a system I like. It's dumb that you can only use it in certain situations and I hate that a lot of the pokemon able to gigantamax aren't capable of doing it unless you give them special soup only available in the expansion. It's just a worse version of mega-evolution where they don't give you any of the items needed to do it until you buy the expansion. Oh and related: the max raid dens are so frustrating. It's a dynamax pokemon vs you and a team of 3 random computer players (or random people if you connect to the internet and can find anyone who wants to join you). The way it works is you have ten turns to beat them or else you lose, and if any of your team faints 4 times, you lose. The computer players are SO USELESS. They'll send out Magikarp and Togepi and other pokemon that can't do anything and die in one hit. If they do send out a semi-useful pokemon it's always the worst type matchup possible and the enemy can still one-shot them. The worst part is that the fights are generally pretty easy but the random computer trainers will sabotage you every chance they get. Overall though my biggest problems with this game is that it feels too small and it's just too easy. Like when I first got to the Wild Area I was so excited because I thought that most of the routes would be like that. But it's the only area like that in the main game. Most of the routes can be ran through in like 2 minutes. Especially since you can avoid all of the random encounters if you watch the grass. And you never have to backtrack to heal because the game is so easy. They give you an overabundance of items and no trainer in this game puts up any challenge. I didn't have a single pokemon even faint until the dragon leader's gym (the last gym) and I never once lost a fight. And I was kind of under-leveled for chunks of the game. It's not terrible though. I like the atmosphere of the game with all the UK language. I like how lots of the npcs are obsessed with the pokemon league and talk about you as a challenger like as if you were a sports star. The expansion definitely improves the game as it gives you more pokemon options and gives you bigger maps to explore. It's hard to rate because if I'm comparing it with other Pokemon games it's pretty low but in general I didn't hate it. For me it just feels disappointing and it feels like the games are heading in a direction that I'm not a fan of.