Pokemon Sword/Shield: Born to Be Wild
Caitlin,
I’ve been playing Pokemon for over 20 years. It’s the franchise nearest and dearest to my heart, and yet as the years go on, I tend to wonder if I’ll ever truly be “over it”. Every generation has had something that gripped me in one way or the other. The original games are cemented as pioneering, all-time classics. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl opened up the series to the internet. Pokemon Go brought a new experience to everyone’s phones, and it feels like Pokemon Sword and Shield are finding ways to meld all these experiences together in the Wild Area and its Max Raid Battles.
The Wild Area really feels like GameFreak is testing the waters with the much-requested open world Pokemon game fans have been clamoring for for years. You can finally explore the Pokemon world, freed from the top-down, overhead perspective that’s been a series staple. Trotting around on my bike, evading overpowered Pokemon and seeing just what this expanse had to offer completely distracted me from playing the actual story. With an abundance of experience candies and strong Pokemon at my side, I was completely overpowered and had to send a couple Pokemon to my PC for a few hours while the game caught up. And you know what? I didn’t care. I was having too much fun figuring the game out.
The sense of community and discovery in this huge chunk of the Galar region is something I haven’t felt in a core Pokemon game, yet echoes Pokemon Go with Max Raid Battles. In Max Raid Battles, you and three other trainers fight to take down one Dynamaxed Pokemon. It’s up to you to take it down how you want to take it down, but the game definitely has trappings of an MMO deep in these mechanics. Filling roles and finding out what Dynamax moves do what has had me breed certain Pokemon specifically for these battles.
GameFreak truly seems inspired by what Niantic did with Pokemon Go, and I sincerely hope they refine these systems over the years and don’t drop them after this generation. My first experience with both the Wild Area and Max Raid Battles was the night the game came out, surrounded by friends playing the game in the same room. That could be part of how and why these new additions hit me the way that we did, as it gets harder and harder to locally keep in touch with the people you care about as we get older. Pokemon being this great equalizer is something I’ve always counted on the series to do for me and my friends, be they local or far away. In that respect, this Sword and Shield are the strongest games in the series – I’ve never felt more comradery in a core Pokemon game.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Pokémon Sword and Shield piece without bringing up the National Dex. Back in the Pokemon Black and White days, I took painstaking lengths to make sure all my favorite Pokemon from years prior transferred over. As the years and generations progressed, fewer and fewer Pokemon made the cut. Learning to cherish the memories I have of the games I’ve played and the experiences I’ve made instead of holding on to “stuff” has been a huge part of my personal journey over the last few years. For me, not having my old reliables meant I had to change up how I played the game. This sense of experimentation and restriction has led to me having damn near two dozen great Pokémon I swapped in and out for constantly. This isn’t to say that my experience is the only valid one, but learning to let go does put my mind at ease.
However upset these yearnings make us, perspective is important. Pokemon is far more than an RPG. It has movies, card games, anime, more plushes than you can count, and a treasure trove of other industries it has to keep in check. That isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be upset – far from it. We should find ways to channel that frustration that doesn’t involve asinine online petitions and irrational tweets. This toxic environment doesn’t just turn people away from the “cause”, but the games as a whole, too. This entire game is centered around the old guard passing the torch to their young successors. Gym leaders, professors, even champions learn to step aside and let the next generation step up to the plate. Based on who’s playing Pokemon these days, I hope the older players learn to take that to heart. This may not be the most mechanically sound or feature-complete game in the series, but it’s going to be a lot of people’s first times. Don’t be a jerk about it.
