Magical Friends Media Presents…

Gryll's Reviews and Rants

Episode 03: The Pokémon Sword/Shield Problem

Gryll waved to the nonexistent audience and said, "Hello, everyone! I'm Gryll, and today, we are going to talk about the new Pokémon games that are going to come out in a couple months!"

"So, it's my understanding that these new games are receiving a lot of backlash from fans and online critics alike. To my knowledge, this controversy goes as far back as the Nintendo Treehouse Live presentation for the games. During that, the heads of development for these games have revealed some information that didn't sit well for fans of the series."

"Now, you guys might be wondering why it took me so long to comment on this matter, especially considering how much I love Japanese media." Gryll just shrugged and said, "Well, I guess it's just because I don't care that much."

"That's not to say I don't care about Pokémon, because I do. Pokémon was my childhood. They were the first games I ever played growing. Heck, HeartGold and SoulSilver are one of my top 10 favorite games of all time! But honestly, at this point in my life, I don't feel the need to support the franchise that much."

"To me, going on the Internet and tearing apart a game just because there are a couple of things I don't like feels childish, even though thousands of people have done it already. However, I would still like to speak my mind on the whole situation."

"First off, the National Pokédex movement. Fans went nuts after the devs announced that they wouldn't include the National Pokédex in Sword and Shield for the first time ever. The internet burst into flames, sparking an entire movement amongst the Pokémon community."

Gryll starts leaning against a table as she says, "For me, however, I really don't care. Pokémon for me has never been about collecting every creature I get my hands on; it was always about the adventure, traveling far and wide across beautiful landscapes, training to become the very best. Catching 'em all was just a perk."

"But that's not the problem people have with the new games. Their problem is the reason why the devs got rid of the National Dex. You see, the devs said during an interview that they won't include the National Pokédex is because they can't make high-quality animations for every single Pokémon. At face value, this makes sense. They must be at, what, a thousand Pokémon right now? Making animations for every single Pokémon ever released would take forever. However, it doesn't take a lot of digging to find out that this simply isn't the case."

"See, it turns out that Game Freak released a bunch of pre-rendered assets for every Pokémon out so far. That way, when they release a game for a high-definition console (i.e., the Switch), they can just import those assets. Now, if the developers said that they would be recreating every Pokémon from scratch to make sure that they all look amazing, then it would be okay for the most part. However, it has become increasingly obvious that some of the animations featured in the new games are reused from previous installments."

Gryll shrugged and said, "So, why is Pokémon doing this? Personally, I think it's because they want to stick to their one big game per year schedule. If they decided to delay the release of the games, which are slated to come out near Christmas time, then their plans would be ruined, because they picked that time to release the games in order to make more cash."

"Pokémon is the highest grossing franchise of all time, and it's easy to see why. Pokémon has set a standard for itself, but the bigwigs that run the show don't get that. They simply want more money, and so they've decided to lower the quality of the new games in order to use less money. They know that it doesn't matter how awful the games look; people are still going to buy them."

"But Game Freak's lame excuse isn't the only problem," Gryll said, crossing her arms. "Everywhere you look in this game, there's something wrong with it. Dynamaxing is a dumb gimmick, and they don't even bother including any of the older gimmicks. The routes in these games are more or less just hallways. The Wild Area is poorly executed, and it should have been the standard for routes in this game. And Team Yell… what do I have to say about them? They have to be the worst evil team ever."

"So yeah, Pokémon Sword and Shield might be the worst triple A games to come out this year. The only reason I'm even considering buying the games is because I promised to review them for you, which I still plan on doing. Then again, we all may be totally in the wrong here. Game Freak may still wow us when the games come out. But for me, I won't be holding my breath."

"Well, that's about it. This was my rant about the upcoming Pokémon games, and I hope you hated it."

The End

Special Thanks

Illusion Fox Reviews by Matthais Unidostres

Kirby H by DokiDokiTsuna

Brain Dump by hotdiggedydemon

DistantKingdom (YouTube)

HAL Laboratory

Game Freak