So, now that the Pokémon Sword & Shield review embargo is up, I'm going to talk about my first impressions. I've not finished the game, these are just my first impressions, spoiler free.

So, overview. I generally really love this game. Sure, it does have valid criticisms, and I will get to those shortly, but the overall experience is a delight. A lot has been done right to modernise these games and make them better tailored to folks who want to play seriously.

I have seen the complaints about graphics and framerate and stuff, but in practice it looks really nice. Sure, it's not the highest benchmark of animation quality etc, but the colours, area designs, character designs, and lighting all really sell the aesthetic.

Nice out the gate choices they make including giving you a shop to customise your appearance in your starting town (plus cash to buy an outfit), letting you skip tutorials, letting you catch Pokémon before being taught how, letting folks in the know skip some hand holding.

Yeah, it may suck that not every Pokemon ever is here, but I honestly have not seriously felt the loss myself yet. The variety of monsters on show, even from early game, never had me scrambling for cool stuff to pop on my team.

So, let's talk about some issues. You can't catch Pokémon that are above the level you can get to obey you based on gym badges, which is a super weird choice. Them not obeying you would already have been a deterent. It makes the wild area feel less initially open than hoped.

The wild area isn't breath of the wild, you can't sprint to a high level area, luck out on a catch, and try to speedrun the game by hoping your monster obeys enough. It does feel like you're discouraged from going to those tough areas even if you feel you can handle them.

Also, super weird choice, you can't change audio settings until you find a specific NPC, which is super weird.

No ability to turn off exp share sorry, at least not one i have found so far.

If you've been following me playing Pokémon the past year, you'll know I got really into shiny hunting. So, i have been trying to learn through play what may or may not work for shiny hunting.

The biggest shiny hunting disappointment, no over world visible shinies.

Overworld visible shiny pokemon was one of my favourite aspects of Let's Go Pikachu, and it's a shame it's gone. No chain combos, no SOS, so far random luck and egg breeding are the only methods I could find.

However, and this is super interesting, Overworld Pokémon persist between game save and reloads.

If you see an Onix perhaps in the wild area, one with that yellow glow that says it has special stats, save next to it, and reload the game, it will still be there.

That fact is different from Let's Go, where reloading would load in a bunch of new spawns.

Anything which hasn't spawned won't be consistent, if you save, 30 secs later see a gyrados, reload, wait 30 secs, no guarentee it'll spawn again.

Already spawned mons stay during reload.

Considering spawns persist beyond save and reload, including mons with the yellow glow of good stats, I do wonder if this might be a method to retry shiny encounters. Save before every encounter, if shiny reset iof needed, might it still be shiny?

Back to more generalised thoughts, I really do love the early game monster spawn variety, it does away with a lot of filling your team with filler just because.

Oh, let me just get this out there, the hate over visuals and animations and reused models etc is completely 100% overblown. Those people declaring this a shitty terrible poorly made unplayable game are exaggerating what may be at the core legitimate issues.

The wild area, while a really cool idea, does struggle a little bit visually. Not enough to be a huge issue, I am still glad it's there, but it's the area the game has most trouble with running for sure.

For anyone who needs to play one handed for accessibility reasons, Pokémon Sword & Shield supports one handed play, without the motion requirements of Let's Go. That's really nice to see.

Raid battles are a lot of fun, and a big challenge, but I'm unsure how much of that was because the AI helpers kind of suck. Didn't get a chance yet to play with others.

RE EXP share difficulty curve, my team on a first playthrough has so far been about the right strength for each gym, not massively overlevelled but not struggling either. Folks wanting more of a challenge may need to impose their own rules like set mode etc.

For folks worried about framerate, Sword and Shield run infinately more consistently at theirt target framerate than the 3DS games did in their chug heavyt double battles etc.

So sure, I miss the national dex like everyone, and I wish we have shinys visible on the overworld like Let's Go, I wish I knew right now what shiny hunting methods were available, and I wish the wild area was a little more open to speedrun ideas, but overall I'm loving it.

Oh, to clarify an earlier point, you can fight overlevelled pokemon in the wild area for exp, just not catch them. It is a valid method for getting a quick level boost if you're up for a challenge.

Other things that are nice moves forward for the series, move relearners and deleters at every pokemon centre, with zero cost to use them, takes all the frustration out of accidently not learning or deleting a move you needed.

Escape rope as a permanent item is awesome.