Sword and Shield Overview

So today, I will be doing an overview of one of the infamous Pokemon games up to date, Sword and Shield. Reason why it’s infamous is its history behind it. I will go over the very first announcement from Feb. 2019 reveal, the National Dex problem, the animations and datamine that happened last year, the reputation, the DLCs, and the redemption. I wanted to do a balanced review of the game and seeing how the game evolved a year later, it is pretty interesting how it went from disappointing to a fine Pokemon game. I do want to address a couple of things going on to the game and stuff.

The beginning.

Well, Sword and Shield reveal got its positive reaction since Pokemon Day 2019. It was the main Pokemon Switch game that everyone wanted. For couple of months, all of the game trailers were all positive at this point. Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee weren’t as great as we hoped for, since it was a second remake of Kanto, and also removed most of the new mechanics, and much less connections with Pokemon GO. With Sword and Shield at the moment, it was a game that can open up more doors to see its potentials.

The first downfall of Sword and Shield.

June 5th was the last reveal trailer that got its positive reputation. Nearly a week later, we got an E3 presentation. We thought it’s gonna be the best representation of the game, but we were WRONG! They announced the cut on National Dex and half Pokemon will not make it to the game, and it got everyone to ruin their excitement. The E3 announcement on June 11th was when Sword and Shield started to get its bad reputation. Me, personally, was disappointed, as we didn’t get much answers. We only hear that they had to cut the pokemon out to do “Best Animation Quality” in time for release, which was a big no. We also saw the tree with bad texture quality and even for a beta presentation, it was a bad look. We all saw they’re rushing the game for the Holidays for Christmas, which really kills many company’s reputation and game’s quality. At the time, we all blamed Game Freak for their decision before more evidence of The Pokemon Company. I was disappointed like them and wished they delayed the game to 2020. I would think it wouldn’t be as bad if they mentioned that they would add more Pokemon later on by game updates. Still, it was a disappointment of how the game got this treatment. I wanted the game to do well. With High Quality Animation in the game, that’s what made us pay more attention to the game’s graphics and animation. It was a real bad case and we would’ve not care about the graphics or the animation as much if that wasn’t said. However, in retrospect, they had to complete the game to not have game breaking bugs, which it didn’t have. Game Freak had no choice but to admit the quality of the game, and it was sad to hear this. Generally, many of us don’t want our good games to be rushed at all, especially if it has to be on a holiday. Guess what? Video Games don’t sell very high on the Holiday season, the Hardware does. None of us want to see a game getting rushed, after No Man’s Sky, the PS1 Classic, Sonic 06 and Sonic Boom from 2014, and Battlefield V (Which the game itself is much worse) and we are afraid to see this for Sword and Shield.

The Harassment to Game Freak and my thoughts

For the first few weeks after the E3 Presentation, Game Freak’s employer, Masuda, came and said he and the company got threats and stuff for lack of Pokemon for Sword and Shield. Well, I could ignore really bad fans, I could never accept the fact that they give them death threats. Whenever something happens to any innocent actor, game devs, or writers, it is not acceptable. I could go on and discuss the bad side of the fans and everything, but I decide to not pay much attention to them. We got BringBackNationalDex hashtag on twitter, and while I agree with the idea and all, I don’t agree with what anyone at social media platform treats real people with threats and stuff. We live in an age where many people use social media like Twitter, and Twitter is the most toxic social media platform in existence. I’ve seen this happen before. What happened to Masuda and Game Freak isn’t a new thing to social media, as I’ve seen this happen to many movies or games that turn out worse. An actress of one character from TLOU 2 got threats for playing a horrible character. Kelly Marie Tran got bullied on Instagram for playing a badly written character. THere are more examples. While I do see the toxic side of any fandoms literally, anyone on the internet will do those things and think it’s okay to do this online when this shouldn’t really be done. I don’t think Sword and Shield’s dexit has the very huge split of the fandom in half that badly due to the brand not having its damage or seeing toys and stuff fall off sales. It did get bad attention as we all saw, I’ve been in much worse situations outside of Sword and Shield backlash, like The Last Jedi debacle. It was two straight years of worse, it had a huge split in the fandom and the director of the movie wanted it that way, brand lost so much money, and it was a war between fans and the studio, and it’s such a huge mess during entire 2018-2019, and I still was involved with the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy backlash during the Sword and Shield stuff so I had a harder time with the former than dexit situation. I can thank Game Freak and Masuda for understanding the frustrations and not teasing the fans. I understand and agree with the disappointments, but no harassment. It’s worse if the people who worked on the game or movie ever do any harassment to the fans like what I saw with TLJ, TLOU2, or Battlefield V. I don’t doubt that the hatred of SwSh was a bit too far, and I can make a paragraph about it, but I would like to ignore a great amount of the bad side. Still, what could’ve been done was if GF were allowed to say they will eventually add more Pokemon by updates, and not having to focus on graphics and animation, of possible, or admit more content will be available, we would’ve got a shorter and small backlash so we would’ve seen the games in better spot.

The release and another disappointment

In August, I really liked Wheezing’s new form that got jokes for Doug Dimmadome from Fairly Oddparents. The backlash was calmed down. In November, we got ThankYouGameFreak hashtag to show how important GameFreak is to us, and to give them warm thanks after what happened in summer. Well, it didn’t last, because a few days later, everyone saw the datamines and it went the opposite to GF, and we saw no improved animation or graphics on the game as they had to say in E3. It was sad, and it was when the game was about to be released. I know the month of November last year was not really good. We got Coppa for Youtube, and it was worse, but thankfully Youtube listened to our voices so our channels are safe. I had more focus on it than SwSh. However, the problems became apparent, and it made me not want to get it. Seeing how it was rushed and saw the mess again, it was not really good. I thought it was better to wait for the game to have updates and have more content until it became more satisfying to get the game. I thought the backlash had got more quiet since summer, but after the reveal, it was back. I know there’s a phrase like “You can’t judge a book by its cover” and while true, the “High Quality Animation” they promised (or had to promise) didn’t come true, and they reuse models and animation from the 3DS games. The game I heard was all right on its own, but I feel like it’s best to wait until more announcements afterwards. Also those games were priced $60 and it was overpriced as the game has less content. Pokemon is Nintendo’s first party game, so they pretty much decided the price for the game. While the game was disappointing, which was rightfully so, the hatred and not focusing on the great side of the game was kinda put aside back then. To be honest, even if I was disappointed of the game, I never thought it was a terrible game or as bad as 2018’s Battlefield V. I was not having a bad gut feeling about it, so I didn’t really have a huge problem with the game as I could see it being more content like I said.

DLC Announcement and Redemption

Well on January 9th of this year, an announcement of Sword and Shield DLC came in! To see how more content they will bring, it opens up a redemption for the game and so my assumptions for new content was right. I could see the game improve, and so I would wait for the DLC to come out. The DLC pass is priced at $30, which seemed overpriced for two of them, like SwSh, but that’s Nintendo or The Pokemon Company’s decision of the price, mostly the former. Still, this shows up a good potential of extending the games. While it is a different approach than third pillar or sequel like Yellow, Crystal, Emerald, or B2W2, it is pretty interesting. Battling more legendaries and catching them is gonna be the most exciting thing for a Pokemon game. With more Pokemon returning, this shows a good redeeming quality of the game finally. In my opinion of the first DLC, when it came out, I thought it was okay, and while it has less problems than the main game in quality, I did wish it had more content. It was better enough to get me to play the game with an emulator, and later, getting a real Nintendo Switch. The second DLC has more content than the first one, and seeing more Legendaries added, this second part is the best DLC of the two. Well, it did being more fanservice and content, it really paid off. The overall game became more tolerable a year later, and I was happy to see this game evolve. Yes, intended to label it that. XD

Tune in for part 2 to see my review of the game itself. Also will mention the Beta leak there too. Stay tuned!