you know how i said I wouldn’t do the post game well i lied
sword and shield post game thread

oh boy i finally get to teach my guys steel beam aight thread over

it’s fine I won’t take this seriously if you won’t

i get it they’re eccentric but I can parse that from their dialogue they really didn’t need to do whatever this is

I do like how you’re travelling with piers and hop however they’re really about as smart as the npcs from the max raid battles (so not very) with the only distinction being that hop can dynamax

they also have a shortened version of the dynamax sequence which would’ve nice to have in the options seeing that the animation takes forever which makes max raid battles feel like shit to play

but briefly touching on animation
the games got amazing effects for the moves (some are ripped from let’s go like swords dance but whatever) some distinct animations for the pokemon themselves would’ve really done them justice

I appreciate the mission structure opening up to be non linear after dealing with the grass gym but it’s really just the same objective 7 more times so it doesn’t mean a whole lot

there’s nice character moments like piers being concerned for marnie in spikemuth despite the town lacking a power spot I just wish the game was a whole lot more consistent with characterisation because it was pretty spot on in 7th gen

there’s nothing more striking than a betrayal subplot with a nameless npc that doesn’t even get a distinct model or anything i’m truly taken aback

funny how they acknowledge the sole problem I have with bede

obligatory bede’s theme got me like
go ichinose really still killin it
bede could’ve honestly gone for a second rendition to his theme like the other two rivals (maybe making the piano more prominent than the synth but ik nothing about music)
but still it’s very good

something something high quality animations

this one statement that’s probably translated poorly really harmed this game’s reception

I’m indifferent to the dex cut however I don’t know if the new move special effects at the end of the day warranted the cut especially when alot of moves were cut alongside pokemon

alot of signature moves from the new pokemon seem to have amount of care people were expecting

boy literally making the dbz power up noise

I’ll keep this brief
the premise of the post game’s story is interesting (for a pokemon game)
it’s executed pretty fuckin poorly and it’s hard to care when one of the antagonists look like this

they touch on galar particles early in the main game very briefly so it’s not like it came right the fuck out of nowhere but it ends up feeling as such

all of the antagonists in this game do stupid shit and then apologise like nigga just don’t do the stupid shit

like they tried spin rose as a misguided yet well meaning villain but he ends up just coming across as just impatient and stupid, these two chuckle fucks are just complete weapons that start problems for a cause the player has no right to give a shit about

at the very least the game has characters I wouldn’t mind seeing in future games

marnie kinda feels like an afterthought
there were many pre release theories and fake leaks that seem alot more interesting but hey it’s a fairly moot point

pokemon could go for a shakeup on its formula, i know it’s foolish to believe after nearly 25 years of the same structure they would try something different but it still needs to be said

it’s kinda stupid that in every pokemon game there has to be a quota of character roles such as a “rival” it seems like anytime they try touch this sort of thing people throw a fit like RSE’s rival
it’s getting overdone now for sure but atleast it was an attempt at something else

I don’t get why people lambast the trials from 7th gen, sure they weren’t all hits and they’re a touch unfocused compared to a gym structure but it felt hella refreshing. I even hear totem lurantis gave people alot of trouble

whatever you smack up hop and he becomes the professor’s assistant there’s definitely not a character who’s done this before nope

I genuinely hope this game is a stepping stone for something alot greater a pokemon game hasn’t felt like an adventure in a while and designing the region just be straight paths didn’t help whatsoever

there’s this trend of treating the player like they’re so great for accomplishing such menial tasks that really needs to stop

as I said the series could go for an overhaul on alot it’s established traits because it’s growing tiresome

you’ll always fight 8 monotype trainers despite the type system heavily discouraging this and after the fact you’ll fight the 4 more “elite” trainers but gasp there’s a 5th one

I’m not saying pokemon should be gruelling or anything but as it stands now it’s way too easy to make easy and they are making it in fact harder to challenge yourself

yada yada bw good because they attempted something different in regards to end of the main campaign and hell colosseum and xd regardless of how good you think those games are do wildly different things from the core games

pokemon has recently taken this strange design mentality suggesting that the games are competing more for your attention than before since there’s so much other shit you can get up to
well yeah this is basically a fact however I don’t think making the games diluted...

versions of what they actually can be is the right way to buy for that attention hell it has the inverse effect I don’t think I can reasonably justify the time I’ve spent on these games

like i bought a pokemon game so i can play it not have it on the side to podcasts or whatever

I’m all for making a game accessible but this approach at it is a great way to sabotage the series if anything

but yeah that’s done for now I want the dlc to invalidate this thread but seeing the information out there rn it looks more like a bandaid

I took a different approach to making this thread instead of doing it live I slapped raw ideas into the drafts
I don’t think I’ll do this often but instead of “thing bad” that this thread would’ve been i tried be a little more thorough

if you read all this bull, cheers