I think the show needs to figure out what it wants to be. Is it a celebration of what was accomplished this past year? Or is it a marketing event? There were moments that hinted that the show could be the former - Reggie's speech and the orchestral performance at the end were personal highlights - but on the whole it felt like a vehicle to pump out advertisements disguised as the MTV movie awards while also claiming to be the Oscar's.

@tokyoslim That's actually pretty crazy. Even crazier is that a Sony exclusive has essentially monopolized the baseball video game genre for the past decade. Imagine if NBA 2K or Madden were exclusives, it would be insane. Hope this leads to more recognition for San Diego Studio. These are among the most consistent games produced, and are legitimately good simulations of baseball (tedium and all).

@lotias We were playing on Wifi on the chromecast, as we were trying to replicate conditions that the average consumer would use for review. He has fast internet for our city's standards, and it was rough.

So I was able to play on my friend's press copy shortly before it was released into the wild. Theoretically, that meant the servers should've been at peak performance. Visually I was actually pretty blown away by how good things worked, but the input lag made things unplayable. I mean that literally. Camera controls with input lag confused my head so much that I got terrible motion sickness and couldn't keep playing. It also made lining up shots extremely difficult, since it's hard to fine-tune your aiming when your cursor isn't responding immediately to your touch. I think as a proof of concept it's pretty remarkable, but definitely not ready for practical use yet.

@mbun said in Pokemon Sword/Shield (Switch):

They just needed to evolve that, so the Ride Pokemon are actually your Pokemon

100% agree. I have this idea in my head where instead of a ride-call system, each Pokemon you catch has innate "field abilities." For example, water pokemon of a certain size threshold will allow you to surf, flying pokemon allow you to fly, etc. That way you still need to build your team to explore the world, but HMs don't take up a spot in your moveset. There could even be more secretive abilities. Imagine if ape-like Pokemon gave you an ability to climb mountains/trees to reach hidden areas and get hidden items, or if psychic Pokemon could let out a pulse to temporarily freeze all Pokemon/trainers in the field to give you safe passage. I feel like that would be a great next step, but it would require a substantial overhaul of the basic game structure.

Finished last night. I really liked it, but I also always like Pokemon games. That central loop will never not be fun to me, and I think this is the strongest batch of new pokemon since gen 4 in terms of design. That said, when all is said and done it felt more like a 3DS game than a Switch game. To be fair, I remember feeling that way about X and Y when they came out - sure, there was a graphical leap, but there were still several sections where your character movement was limited to 8 directions. Here, we got the baby step of having camera controls in the wild area (!!), but we're still limited in how we experience the rest of the world. The gating in this game is also frustrating; I'm not sure why there are caps on the level of pokemon you can catch, or why the only thing preventing your progress through certain areas is Team Yell arbitrarily deciding no one can leave. Call me old fashioned, but I miss the days of HMs requiring you to explore environments in new and exciting ways.

The most egregious flaws in this game for me have to do with sound - the music has some solid compositions, but the synth quality is BAD. I'm about 90% sure it's the same synth set that was used in the 3DS games, and even then it was starting to show its age. The game needs real instruments. It also needs voice acting. I never thought I'd care about this, but the cutscenes felt really dated without it. Some of the NPCs in this game are genuinely charming and are able to display a surprising amount of personality with a limited set of facial expressions, but they would be much more memorable if they had voices to express their character.

The scene where Piers saves the day by throwing an impromptu concert could've been a really funny moment, but fell completely flat because there were no audio or vocal cues to accompany his actions.

The "vocals" used during the gym and championship battles are very unnatural sounding, and annoy more than they inspire excitement. This all added up to me playing the game mostly on silent, opting instead to catch up on podcasts.

Despite the flaws, I don't think the game warranted all of the vitriol it's received. Yeah, it's a bummer that I can't raise a Meganium, but it felt like there was more variety on a single route in this game than any prior. The developers clearly put a lot of effort into making sure that this Dex is varied, allowing for the opportunity to build a wildly diverse team regardless based only on what you can catch or trade for in-game. I've never been one to complete a dex, but this one actually feels doable to me. I also don't buy the reused models criticism - sure, the wire frames might be the same, but these are designs that haven't changed since the Pokemon were created, so it's fairly obvious to me that they would maintain the same geometric shapes. How they are rendered and animated is clearly very different from what was in the 3DS games - if they weren't, we wouldn't have this gem (

). None of this is an excuse for the myriad of other flaws and archaic/simplistic game design, but those ultimately don't detract from the fact that this game is fun to play. If you're a fan of the series or a newcomer, I think it's still worthwhile to play this game. If you were never a fan, well, this certainly isn't going to change your mind. Hope the next one reaches for greater heights, but I'm still happy with my time in Galar.

Pokemon is a juggernaut that can't be killed. 6 million copies sold in its first week - a week that only encompassed Fri-Sun sales.

@spikewolf_26 I heard there was a show in the works but as far as I know nothing's come of it yet. I will once it comes out, though.

About halfway to Motostoke right now and really enjoying my time with this game. Surprising amount of love for the later gens, especially gen 5. In general, I think the new designs are really good - some of the best and most varied since gen 3, IMO. That said, my Sobble just reached its final evolution... idk if I can keep this thing in my party. Trying to figure out where their head was out in the progression of this evo-line. My god. I never look at starter evos before I play because I like the surprise, but holy christ, why.

@e_zed_eh_intern I had a pretty solid grasp of everything I think by the end. I even had a feel for which directional inputs I needed to get certain combos on my weapon of choice. I also started taking advantage of the "rescue" feature at the end instead of burning items like I did throughout the rest of the game. The Royal Edition included three extra bosses at the end that made the final gauntlet pretty brutal but, again, I think this was to the game's benefit. That said, I get not coming back to it any time soon. So much good stuff coming out right now. The backlog isn't getting any smaller.