I think team Yell were annoying roadblocks. I wish the game would let you choose at certain points, which gyms to fight first. There are points on the map where there are branching paths. But every time you were blocked by team Yell. The game was way too linear.

Wow, leave it to Nintendo to say we don't want challenging games, make easy garbage babby mode, then send their lawyers after anyone who makes a fan game w/ high difficulty as the main feature b/c it's a threat to their bottom line b/c enough of us want to play the fan one in stead. Fkk off, Nintendo.

I just beat Sword today and belong to the (probably) small group that loved it from the get go all the way to the end. I do think there are problems: no voice acting, odd plot points with Rose and his secretary, the MC never handling anything until endgame, and the bad guys having barely any set up. However, as what Pokémon makes itself niche wise, I think Sword did very well. Wholesome story, fun gameplay, and entertaining as a creature catcher game. I hope future games are better and the franchise improves as time goes on, but I don’t personally understand the hate modern entries get.

I laughed at the graphics of tiny dialga and palkia in some of these review videos people posted. lool

the man called it :O

One thing that makes a cozy game a stressful game is too difficult Achievements. Many players want to collect 100% Achievements to their games and if some of the Achievements are too time consuming (for the average player) or frustratingly difficult then many people just rage quit and never play the game again. Or they start using mods which is not the intended way to play the game. I have never used mods but some of these 'cozy games' have become so frustrating and stressful that I have seriously started to consider installing mods for them. A slower clock for Stardew Valley, etc.

I was laughing my ass off at that Mega Gardevoir sweep. Reminds me of my experience with Paradox Gallade or whatever it's called in Scarlet & Violet.

I'm only noticing now how ill fitting Bede's hair swipe animation is, his hair doesn't have physics and he doesn't even have hair that goes in his face. bro why are you always doing that, stop

SO STRESSFUL lol.

SWSH were trash IMO. Mon designs were great though.

i only went through the rose and manga chapters since i REALLY should be asleep right now -- but i need to give my thoughts (as someone passionate about this game. autism does crazy things to someone lemme tell you). that being said this is going to be long, my bad shield is my favorite pokemon game thus far despite its myriad of flaws, and the reason is its characters. swsh suffers from the major problem of "pretty decent ideas, awful execution in writing." almost every character has an incredible amount of depth and attention to detail put into them -- but the issue is that its all either out of the way info or simply implied. i think a prime example is bede and roses relationship. theres so many tiny details that really exemplify the tragedy of bedes character, and specifically how rose treats him. a favorite of mine is rose giving him a hatenna, a pokemon where youre _forced_ to suppress your emotions if you dont want to scare it off. with bede describing his endorsement being revoked as being "disowned," clearly their relationship was more than bede hopelessly chasing after a man who was kind to him once. and yet, the game frames bede as something akin to a child throwing a tantrum. im sure i dont have to explain why thats inaccurate since youve read the manga, lol bede is the main example but this extends to the league; specifically, the exploitation of the gym leaders and leon, and especially of the children. the culture of galar means its gym leaders end up as internationally recognized celebrities, and even outside of the anime this can be inferred from the games by how the matches are huge events and how everything is covered in sponsors. but then you read the league cards -- allisters rare card has his face on it, his own cards treat his supernatural abilities as something hes just making up. beas cards go into detail about the frankly abusive nature of her upbringing, her rare card showcasing her smiling -- something she considers a flaw. consider how leon has been in the league since he was 10, and it paints a vivid picture of rose and macro cosmos as a whole. but thats the thing. this is all stuff you have to go out of your way to notice or find. stuff that no one will notice unless they already like the game and its characters. and thats a part of the reason why the manga is so good -- besides the story improvements, it literally handholds you through the more complex characters. it makes it IMPOSSIBLE to misconstrue them. when reading official material i shouldnt feel _validated_ in them confirming what i already inferred about my favorite character. anyway that is to say i totally agree and swsh are good games if youre insane (like me)

You named your character "Kagada"? Bruh... 😂

I think it is the player injecting stress into the game. Nothing in the game requires you to do anything. But if you just have to plant every crop every year, harvest every forage every season, catch every fish, chop every tree, smash every stone and kill every monster you can off course go for it. But that is not the games fault. lol

As someone with an abusive mother... I like both versions. In SM, you can see how twisted and far gone she is. And when she's defeated, she finally acknowledged Lillie and her growth. Calling her beautiful... got me in all honesty. As for USUM, I liked the fact that she just wanted to stop Necrozma out of sheer SPITE for taking her husband away and breaking her family apart. Granted, she did a lot of work on her end to do that but still. Do I find frustrating Lillie's and Lusamine's relationship starts mending off-screen? Absolutely! But that cutscene after you defeat Ultra Necrozma always felt to me like the START of their relationship mending. I wish it was done on-screen but I did like that a start happened. And it gave me faith that my own mother could turn a new leaf. And she did. That's why I like both versions. At the end of the day, Lusamine redeemed herself. USUM just gave her a chance to do so. Could have been done better? Hell yes! But a start is something and... I appreciate that.

I think they should’ve made a major story expansion and found a way to give a definitive explanation for lusamine’s abuse and let necrozma be the bigger villain.

I find the game is only as stressful as you allow it. If you start comparing yourself to some of the videos and players on RU-vid videos it can get stressful. I find that by not comparing yourselves to the " I fixed the Community Center by my first Winter" players, you loose alot of stress. I just played at my own pace, and by year three had most everything more or less finished or unlocked. By year four I had four candles from grandpa, and now on my 7 th year, I'm just goofing off until my console gets the 1.6 patch, and making a steady profit.

I am very sad that the "special versions" of the games died out. After all, Crystal, Emerald and Platinum where all superior to their base games. And while Black and White 2 where also waaaay better than the first versions, I wish there would have been Pokemon Grey. Basically all stuff was there. I also don't really consider the announced Z-A a part of that game or as a extension of them, as it will be more like Arceus, which didn't have much in common with Diamond/Perl/Platinum... Having said that, I feel the thing that X and Y suffered the most from was the weird pace. The time between some of the badges is just insane! And there were way to many "friendly protagonist NPCs" imo. Those parts always dragged way too long.

Theres so much wasted potential w/ the galarian birds + dyna tree hill as a whole!! I refuse to believe that tree exists without containing any lore on purpose.

1:30:00 F

Honestly at the end when you're brainstorming Legends games both time periods would probably involve us playing as a Pokemon just because PLA seems to imply pokeballs are newer tech and PLA likely took place less than 200 years ago? Magearna's existence arguably could contradict this but its also possible pokeballs were inspired by that mon's appearance and not the other way around. Like Game Freak may be able to create a convenient excuse or how our player character is able to catch Pokemon without needing Pokeballs (like some type of magic item Arceus gives us) but that's about it. Like other ancient people that had Pokemon by their side are implied to have effectively just befriended a wild animal rather than truly "own" those Pokemon so we'd definitely require some plot convenient nonsense to explain how we can have hundreds of these creatures willing to follow our orders. Otherwise the only other logical conclusion is to be a Pokemon because we know Pokemon do work together without capture devices being involved.

I really enjoyed your video despite also liking Pokémon shield. That being said I wonder how you feel about Pokémon Scarlet and Violet and it’s dlc. Despite encountering a few minor bugs, I enjoyed Pokémon scarlet and especially the dlc a lot more than I did shield and it even got me to complete all 3 Pokédexes in the game which I’ve never bothered to do in any other Pokémon game

20:06 ngl, I actually got all of the fairy gym’s answers right, and it’s because I luckily chose the right time to read the league cards. Sometime between receiving Opal’s league card and fighting her at the gym, I decided to finally check out the league cards looking for lore details. Her favorite breakfast and favorite color were on there lol 😅

I have a love/hate relationship with Pokemon Sword and Shield.

The story recap wasn’t really necessary~

While I love gen 8 and 9, I feel the main problem is that the creators aren't being given enough time by the company. Galar's story definitely feels like it needed a few more passes, and Gen 9 is a mess performance wise, and both of these could almost certainly have been fixed if they weren't rushing the games out basically unfinished. I'd rather wait for a good product made by healthy, happy people than a mediocre one made by exhausted and overworked ones. Also, I assume the Hammerlocke thing is just for challengers, not normal people.

the halo caster? WHAT

bring back XY audio quality

man I love gen 8 but the story that was there felt rushed an honestly unfinished. the thing that bothers me the most, is Bede has so much depth and they just kinda....did nothing with that? aaa also, its not "bayday" in masters EX his voice actor actually says his name out loud and its just "Beed". Bede's namesake is after beetroot, and his character developement nods to this as well. and I want to add we learn about Bede being a former orphan long before the mural. its on the back of his trainer card that he gives you in galar mine 2.

Oh and I wasn’t over leveled or ev/iv trained I was on level and some of my Pokemon were under level and I just leveled my Pokemon with candy so I tried my best to be on level with the npcs the only thing that would be considered broken is I used 2-3 potions per battle which are broken but if the npcs can use potions in battle then so can I

One big issue I have with Leon is he’s the unbeatable champion but he doesn’t feel powerful I know we can’t make Leon actually unbeatable but I wish his team actually felt unbeatable I literally only lost one Pokemon in the entirety of the championship brawl and that’s only because I let my Pokemon die

Rose’s plan was stupid sure he stopped the tournament but once eternatus is stopped the tournament continues and Leon literally promised to help rose so rose literally became a criminal for nothing

1:46:44 "dubbing is one language is fine when it's English/Japanese then having subtitles for the rest" is an absurd statement. It's like having no dub at all imo so not that ass when you have 9 languages going on with transaltoin already.

Rose is the stupidest villan in the series.. he almost destroyed the planet to preventvand energy crisis that wont be seen in over 30 human generations...a 1000th years...there was literally no reason for him to sumon Calamity Ganon to the world Seriously...there was such and easy fix remove 2 zeros from the timeline, say that constantly using machines to heal pokemon, feed them and people, heating, housing and so on has become exponentially more energy consuming...and that there will be a regional if not global energy crisis in 10 years, but that no one includong the profesors see the danger...then you get a team plasma sort of situation but without Gethsis being a bait and switch...have league representatives or gym leaders be in cahoot with him even leon ...you could have him making the battle tower as a redemption ...and have Sonia develop a tech that allows "pokemon battle energy" to be harnesed solving the crisis...and have the next terrastalization be a side effect from that tech, a tech based on Z crystals and Megaevolution....there was a chance ro link several gens gem mechanics into the plot of the game, you could even limit mega and z to postgame soing a bait and switch on the playerbase....

Just the fact that they don't even have text bubbles blurbs like most indie games bothers me so much. It makes the game feel so dead

not to be mean, but do people really watch 3 hour video critiquing a game? Just a genuine question

Dude. Piers name is the only thing you pronuncied well

You're not being nitpicky, you're being thorough. And I, for one, appreciate it. Thank you for this excellently researched and well-crafted video. TPCI and GameFreak are companies that may never change, but that shouldn't prevent fans from observing the cracks in their methods nor should it stop critics like yourself from talking objectively about the products we're being sold. Again, thank you. And great work.

You put him in the "realized potential" section, but to me, Hop's arc is still one of the biggest examples of wasted potential in the game. As it is now, it's just a half-baked mashup of Bianca's and Hau's arcs that doesn't do either the "giving up battle and becoming a professor" or "being overshadowed by a famous relative" aspects as well as them On paper, some things work. Hop trying his best and still not being able to live up to Leon's reputation, but finding what he is good at instead is an interesting idea for a rival, but like I said, both of the main aspects of his arc are done better by prior characters and all Hop does is mash them together in an uninteresting, and sometimes incongruous way. To me, him choosing to become a Professor of all things is the most emblematic part of his wasted potential. Because... why a PROFESSOR? He says that he likes to help people, but what about being a Professor specifically is about helping people any more than, say, a firefighter? Hop could come out and say that he wants to be the next Ball Guy and it would fit just as much as his claim that he wants to be a Professor At no point do we see Hop develop any interest in academic research. Hell, half of the time Sonia shows up to talk about the history of Galar, Hop tries to rush things and steer the direction back to battling anyway. If we take the Isle of Armor into account, then he's not even particularly GOOD at helping or making observations about nature, since he drags us around the island making no progress because he doesn't know the difference between nectar and honey and doesn't think to slow down for half a second. It feels like they only made him a Professor to force a parallel with Sonia, making him the Sonia to our Leon, but it just doesn't make any sense for his personality or interests for him to choose that particular career path What gets me is that you actually present the solution to it at the end of the video: Pokemon Battle MANAGEMENT. The game is constantly telling us about how Hop studies battle tactics in order to beat Leon. He's the one making comments about our use of Super Effective hits or Critical Hits. He's always going on about things like perfecting his throwing technique. The fact that he changes his team up shows his willingness to experiment with various tactics. So why not make him a Pokemon Battle TEACHER? And if that's too similar to Cheren in B2W2 or you don't think it makes sense given that Galar is the only region that inexplicably does not have a Trainer School, then a COACH to expand upon the parallels to modern sports. As it stands now, Hop makes it all the way to the finals for Gym Challengers and loses and just... gives up having anything to do with battle as a career forever, and I don't think that that makes any sense for him at all. He's a GREAT battler, and what better way to utilize his skill, deep knowledge and passion for battle tactics, desire to help others, and deepen the sports aspect of the game than making him some sort of coach for aspiring Gym Challengers? Compare that to Bianca, whose decision to become Professor Juniper's assistant at the end of the game is actually developed throughout the game. Even after our first battle with her, she's more amazed at the power of our Pokemon than the outcome of the battle, showing early on how her interest is in the actual Pokemon themselves and not necessarily combat. She's always asking questions about the world around her, and in Chargestone Cave we see her stay behind and spend time with Professor Juniper, giving us the implication that they're bonding offscreen and talking about the realities of being a Professor. She also brings up the idea of being a Professor before the postgame where she makes her decision. Hop has none of that, and at times actively goes against it by not really caring that much about Sonia's research And while Hop's relationship with Leon is still decently well done, I still find it weaker than Hau's similar desire to escape from his family's shadows, and it drives me nuts how often people completely miss Hau's whole character arc and act like Hop having essentially the same core conflict, but with a different outcome, is groundbreaking. To an extent I can understand why, because SuMo's presentation of it is a bit weak (and I say this as someone who's loved Hau since SuMo, but even I'll admit that his arc was done much better in USUM... and was the only arc that was better in USUM), but reducing Hau down to just a happy-go-lucky rival with no real depth while building up Hop is such an insult to Hau and I see the fandom do it constantly People forget that, like Leon to Hop, we are not Hau's endgoal; Hala is, and as such Hau's main goal isn't to be a Champion, but to be a Kahuna. The biggest difference that I find that makes Hau's story more compelling than Hop's to me is that Hau is ALREADY living with the aftermath of Hala's shadow. It's told to us in various NPC dialogue and explicitly in the SuMo postgame, but Hau's father literally left the entire Alola region and his whole family because he was sick of being compared to Hala, abandoning his young son and wife (who we can find in Hala's house) because he couldn't handle the pressure of being seen as a Kahuna's son. Hau is growing up in a broken home, and all he wants to do is succeed where his father failed, not by running from Hala's shadow and tearing apart his home, but by besting Hala and overcoming his shadow entirely. He mentions in the SuMo postgame that being the Champion is something he'd want to do to show off to his father if/when he ever sees him again, and I've always taken that to mean that he considers the Champion title to be an impressive feat that proves that he's left Hala's shadow that he can actually obtain right now, since we're told that the position of Kahuna is for life (so he can only become a Kahuna once Hala passes away) And because people miss that context, they miss the entire point of his characterization and progression. Hau's cheerful nature is a FACADE. Gladion calls it out when you first meet him. He says that Hau IS strong, but he's kneecapped by not taking battles seriously. Why? Because he's afraid of losing to Hala even if he does give the battle his all, failing to overcome the same pressure as his father that caused him to tear their family apart. He's afraid of failure, so he chooses not to try all that hard, giving himself an excuse if he loses by claiming that he wasn't really doing his best anyway, so of course he lost. This way, he doesn't have to take responsibility for his failures and risk becoming disillusioned like his father did. Lillie's kidnapping is his turning point in both games, where he realizes that by not taking things seriously and trying to minimize his responsibility for failures, he's set himself up to ACTUALLY fail in situations that require serious effort. And it's through this that he learns how to actually overcome Hala as a Kahuna, because a Kahuna isn't just a good battler, but a local leader who bears responsibility. This is part of why I like USUM's additional scene with Hau in the Hau'oli Cemetery during Mina's trial, because he makes it more explicit that his way of doing things before was also hurting his Pokemon, who wanted to win for him but lacked his leadership to do so. It demonstrates how he's changed and how he's learning to reconcile "having fun" with responsibility, how his prior justification of "having fun" wasn't actually fun for anyone and just an escape mechanism to avoid a possibly unhappy reality Hop's relationship with Leon isn't even bad, and I do find the idea of him ultimately FAILING in his goal where Hau succeeded to be an interesting twist that could have set him apart, but in comparison to Hau they just don't DO anything with it to relate it back to the themes of the game, and it ultimately comes across as just setup for the nonsensical Professor career swap. There was so much potential to expand the idea into the more sports-oriented aspects of Galar by showing Hop wanting fame and trying to be more showy, marketing himself as Leon 2.0, and trying to make his own fanbase the way that Marnie has Team Yell all in an effort to get his family's attention only for his fans to leave him after a catastrophic loss to Bede rather than just having him lose to Bede offscreen and then feeling bad about being worse than Leon for the rest of the game. They could have tied him more to the "strength" themes that they claim to have by showing him as the SHIELD to Leon's SWORD, with Leon having the offense and power, but lacking the tactical prowess that Hop has, and Hop coming to realize that a slower and more analytical approach can be a different kind of strength when compared to his prior rushing around trying to catch up to Leon. This could all come to a head in Hop choosing to become a battle coach/manager, accepting that he doesn't need the same fame that Leon has to be his equal by taking a less showy job, becoming the shield who protects and helps the newer Gym Challengers in contrast to Leon's sword that inspires them to take action The end result for me is that Hop ends up lost in the mess of rivals in SwSh, all of whom really fail to live up to their full potential from interesting concepts in my eyes, but at least Marnie and Bede don't actively make me want to rip my hair out the way that Hop's decision to be a Professor does. He's ultimately a victim of SwSh's overall shoddy and rushed writing the same as everyone else, but Hop is the character that I find the most frustrating because the ideas are there, they just aren't pushed to the level that they could be and that's what makes him the biggest waste of opportunity in my eyes

Pokémon Za!

It’s worth noting that the lead up to Sw/Sh was a complete disaster. Dexit (and the strange lies/excuses around it) was the biggest part of course. But there were also things like a 24 hour “live feed” of the region that barely showed any Pokémon during it (with only the Galarian Ponyta at the end being the “brand new” reveal of the whole show. Whoever was in charge of hype marketing had NO idea what they were doing lol

Wait... so thats why sm and usum are so annoying we are not protoganost but 3 person watcher

The only thing I remember from playing Pokémon X&Y when I was a kid was me rushing the story, mashing all of the dialoge boxes, because my English back then was really bad once I had completed the main campain I spent the year exclusively playing PVP.

the games felt empty, the graphics upgrade didn’t feel like it justified the cost going up while the content went down p, and the stuff that would be post game content in other games ended up as DLCs, put me off of the switch games

Game freak is the worse company of all time. They're so lucky pokemon has a crazy good fan base. They can't even give us voice acting in 2024 yet

Galar is the epitome of wasted potential, hope for a legends game to salvage it a bit in the future.

Pokemon Sword and Shield fit into the genre of what I like to call the ideal fanfiction media, where there’s something about the characters that has great potential but the narrative does not at all explore the interesting characters, which leaves fans the ability to do that themselves in fanfiction. For statistics, on AO3 (the premier fanfic website) around 1/10 of fanfics about pokemon are about SwSh (6922/63183), only beaten out by the more general tags of All Pokemon Media, The Pokemon video game series and the Pokemon Anime. Furthermore, Leon and Raihan are both in the top 10 written about Pokemon characters. I’m not going to say that this doesn’t somewhat have to do with some fans thinking they’re attractive, but it also speaks to how much fans perceive a depth in the SwSh characters that just isn’t explored in the games. Leon for example has a genuinely really compelling set up to his character - an ‘unbeatable’ champion who is worshipped by everyone around him, including his own brother, until he finally loses - that’s just not explored? Fanfiction then provides a way for people to give their interpretations of how Leon reacted to being beaten and losing something his entire life revolved around, or his past relationships with Sonia and Raihan that go widely ignored by the games etc. Hop too has this, though the game at least tries to explore his character, but there still exist gaps for fans to explore in regards to his possible feelings of jealousy towards the player or Leon, particularly when he loses to the player in the Champions Cup. While SwSh not living up to its potential does massively bring it down as a game, at least it’s created some interesting character concepts that people can explore in fan works

Said it once and I'll say it again purple jynx just doesn't look right.

You've definitely earned a sub. Hearing someone who is a long time fan like me express such profound and vividly conveyed disappointment with this game in such a comedic and well written and researched manner is a breath of fresh air. Cheers