Pokémon Sword and Shield

[Captain Cadaver]

I don't think we ought to consider Pokémon a first party title. Mario Odyssey looks and runs great, with tons of callbacks and nostalgia, but also a lot of new, original content. Breath of the Wild is arguably the most ambitious Nintendo game ever and while it had frame rate issues at launch, they fixed it and it runs pretty smoothly now.

SwSh isn't on that level. I know they aren't technically developed by Nintendo, but Pokémon is associated with the brand. It should be on that level but it isn't.

What makes it even more insulting is that Nintendo have every reason to give the Pokemon franchise as much attention as they can. It's second only to Mario as far as video game sales and is the most successful fictional franchise worldwide when it comes to factoring in all other products such as the anime, manga, toys, etc. You'd think they'd be giving it the same kind of treatment as other Switch games like Mario Odyssey and Breath of the Wild, yet Game Freak seem to be getting so little funds, time, top tier staff or all of the above to even replicate the quality of decade old titles at this point.

In other news, an old piece of information, but data miners found Mega Evolutions and Z-Moves coded into the game:
https://www.gfinityesports.com/article/3292/pokemon-sword-and-shield-mega-evolution-returning-in-isle-of-armor-and-new-pokemon-confirmed

Still none in Isle of Armor, though it may be they'll appear in the Crown Tundra DLC. Not absolute confirmation when Gens 5 and 6 had a lot of unusable items coded into their games, though I guess Game Freak were aware of how much of a flop their Gigantamax gimmick could be.

 

[Classic Adamas]

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