A standstorm you say?

Sounds intense.

Sandstorms can tend to be, yes. Fortunately since it's a video game, all it really does is make it hard to see, and being a Pokemon game it influences which Pokemon will appear in the area.

You misspelled it, I was making fun of it, hah

Ah. I didn't even notice you misspelled it yourself until you pointed it out. Perhaps because of how dim I currently have my computer's brightness set, or because I'm just not paying close enough attention.

Patching ? Naah, why would they do that ? 16 millions idiots bought an half assed game knowing it would be a disaster, accepting it and asking for more..

You don't need to make efforts if you already have have an army of idiot protectors and people buying without using their brain.

I don't know about it being a disaster. Aside from a few quirks, I haven't had any major issues with it thus far aside from the EXP Share being mandatory.

- More linear than S/M
- Raids are unplayable without paying the online because the AI is dumb af and have shitty pokemon
- There is no exploration, no hidden places, routes are straight forward and really short
- no dungeons. The mines are just a joke.
- no champion rematch. Well, except on the league farm at the end but you have tu do 3 matches instead of one, and the champion you invited for rematching him can lose, making all that useless. Also, the champion music remix is horrible.
- no challenge in the adventure. Just with the few wild area exploration you're allowed to, you outlevel every champion.. And if you can't, you have the candy-boosted Dynamax that prevent you from losing.

See ? We can find a lot of problems about that, and even witbout crying about 66% of the dex missing.

While the dungeons are indeed lame, there's nothing inherently wrong with linearity. It helps keep the story concise, and to the point. Better than most modern RPGs that have more side quests than there is main story to experience. Side quests are nice, but should never outweigh the mandatory events of the game.

I'm also okay with there being no arbitrary champion rematch, because for all intents and purposes you're supposed to be the champion at that point in the game, and so I find it refreshing that the game actually acknowledges that for once by having Leon step down, and even places like the shop and Pokemon Center referring to you as such after beating the game. It makes you becoming champion feel like it actually happened, rather than just being an end boss that the world just pretends never occurred.

I do agree though that there's no challenge to the adventure, but that could easily be remedied simply by having the EXP Share an option in the settings that can be disabled, which one can hope they'll do come the next game.

As for some of the dex missing, there's still 400 Pokemon available, which is more than enough.

Nah. Pokemon center NPC calling you Master is from 7th gen. (Or LGPE)

i know pokemon was always linear, but there is, in this, literally TWO side quests : the letter and the fire uniform. Even Alola was more balanced with this and started to implement capture/item quests that were pretty decent (but without a quest journal, don't ask for too much...).

Oh, Did I mention the battle tower was even worse than the 7th gen Battle Tree (Boxart Legendaries allowed + Dynamax for you but not for opponents, also they are not fully EV'd), which makes the only offline post game features being either too easy (tower) or impossible (5* raids with that solrock or the useless Maractus. Enjoy getting blocked by a Gmax Dreadnaw that OS every NPC on first turn (and without focus sash, because sandstorm) and the double 6 bar shield that prevents from killing it before the NPC revives to die again so youlre out of the raid turn 3.

Nah, Even if those games have good qualities (easy to get into competitive, nature mints, eggmove transfer, a story where you, as a 10 year old, just have to play around gyms, letting the adults doing what they are meant for), we can't just ignore the bad points "because it's Pokemon".

Of course I wouldn't ignore anything just because it's Pokemon. I just don't see those things as bad points for me, whether they are for others. I for one don't care about a challenging post-game, since at that point all I care about is either moving on to an entirely different game all together, or battling people in versus matches. An easier battle tower makes this more accessible by making it quicker and easier to accumulate BP, so I'm all for that. And the lack of side quests is a refreshing change of pace from most RPGs that have too much mindless stuff that has nothing to do with anything.

I'm not ignoring anything because it's Pokemon. I simply don't have a whole lot to complain about, aside from the occasional missing TM, or the usual issues with certain items having only one available.

I can understand that, not two players have the same interrests about the licence, and all the possibilities makes Pokemon being such a powerful licence.

For someone that don't pay the online, it's a problem. Also, the impossibility of bringing your old mons is quite unenjoyable : some themed teams are impossible, Mono-bug is an horror because all interresting bugs got cut...

For the side quest problem, it never was. Having a few was already good in 7th gen, and the 8-9 quests were not really that annoying or ruining the scenario... How can "2 useless quests" Be better than "8 sidequests you can totally ignore already" ?

I'm just saying that I never considered the lack of side-quests as a problem because of how overly saturated most RPGs are with menial tasks, not because of being compared to other Pokemon games specifically.

-I mean, that's debatable. SM was super duper linear, and while the islands looked spacious, the plot stopped you every 30 minutes to force you to the next segment. It only opened up in the post-game and even then it felt less like an adventure and more like chains being broken off. SWS does it far better by not only letting you skip cutscenes, but just really letting you do your own thing. The main story is still linear, but you can easily go nuts with the wild area before the first gym battle: I spent 10 non-stop hours in it before even setting foot in the first major town. To me that's far better than SM, and I love those games despite the cutscene grips.

-The AI is braindead and I want to throw dodgeballs at them really badly, but I have a feeling they deliberately did that in order to force the player to think for themselves. Any 1-4 Star Raid I can solve with ease once I think hard and pick a countertype. It's only the 5-stars that are dumb due to the absurd amount of shields they have, and those can be dealt with still, but it's really annoying to deal with the time limit... I don't think it's them forcing online though, you can easily grab a IRL friend and do it if you know any, and Pokemon always pushes IRL communication in every game (I'm still mad ORAS didn't give us online contests to make up for the shitfest that game was)

-The Wild Area has enough side spots and other places that opens up as you get the bike water upgrade, which at least introduces new pokemon and berries. The routes are basic though, there's no denying that. I don't mind a few of them like the ones near Nessa and Milo's gym, or the route to Wyndon (Thank fuck boring ass Victory Road is dead), but some of the ones like that Desert route really blow.

-TBH, the league rematching is just a fancy Battle Dome/E4 replacement, and I honestly don't mind it, though I really wish that you could customize it freely, instead of inviting a person and having the risk of them lose to a CPU. It's pretty poor, but I still enjoyed it more than any E4 rematches since Pearl since I got sick of fighting the same four people over and over. At least SMUSUM did a cool thing with random champions.

-If you ignore candy, you'll absolutely get bodied hard by the late-game leaders and bosses. I've played Pokemon for years, dealt with the awfulness of ORAS's dumbing down and USUM's cheap difficulty spikes, and I found SWS to be fairly good for a Pokemon difficulty. Piers in particular crushed 4/6 of my team due to his ace mon, and the Champion battle brought me down to my last mon and drained all my revives even with some candy used to make my Inteleon 65.

It's not nearly as easy as some of the other games, so overall I felt it was a very well-made and fun adventure, and in terms of base pairs, I'd happily replay SWS over mostly anything after Ruby and Sapphire. They're currently my favorites, even though third/remake versions are almost always better. And since the whole alternate director deal is going on with the DLC, I'm truly hopeful that will deliver the experience I'm expecting out of stuff like Platinum/HGSS. Since USUM was really bad about that and ORAS felt like a stab in the heart. I still think it's pretty absurd for people to get so mad about this game, considering how bad ORAS was as a remake, or how XY was pretty much responsible for lowering the content in general due to all the pokemon needing 3D models and much of the XY dev time going to that. I love my Braixen and Kalos mons, but I still feel that region was done poorly.

My own, personal legitimate issue with SWS: the absolute biggest IMO, is the lack of a freaking versus recorder. It's just gone, not even an explanation. It's been a staple since Platinum and VGC events and online tourneys even can use it to verify matches, so it seems bewildering that they'd cut it. But it seemed I was the only one who cared as everyone else was mad about their starters or GTS being gone... I love Sword a bunch, but that will forever bug me just like the national dex being gone from Gen 7 did, but non-alolan dex mons being catchable IN-GAME. I really hated how USUM had all the legendaries but no dex entries for a single one of them which made that whole sidequest worthless. I truly hope they bring it back or at least have a workaround for recording move-by-move summaries for tournies (The 3DS recorders didn't even let you save the battles locally, so it was dying out even then)

Well, SnS are new games, but hell, just replay it. When you arrive to the first gym city, you have to go to a place that is litterally 40 steps right to the entrance. And you have the professor's Yamper interrupting you THREE TIMES so you don't get lost on a straight line ... Also, the two "other roads" You can go without following Yamper are dead-ends...

Also, Hop is always here to stop you every town you visit, and even on routes, just to tell you "Booh, I lost, i'm the shame of my family. Let's battle !"

The wild area is only good when you have the water upgrade (7th gym) and just frustrating before. Oh, there is a really cool pokemon here, I want to catch it ! Oops, it's level 31, and i'm blocked to level 30 for capturing...

Even if you don't mind it, champion rematch is a thing that's always generally appreciated and asked for. Especially lore-wise : a champion have to battle you depending on your badge number, so to fight them at their real level, it was a nice point. Adding it in SnS, yea, they did, but that was poorly implemented. "I trained a fun grass type team to battle Milo, let's invite him... Oh, he lost against Raihan.... Too bad, I can't rematch him and i'm forced to do matches for nothing...

Without any candy and anything, I beat ALL the game without even dynamaxing and grinding... " Your pokemon loves you and resist diying... Three turns in a row". "Yea, but that means you abused camping".. Well, it's the 8th gen feature, so I did played around it... If qi knew that would have made my pokemon immortal....

Also, only Piers was a tough battle... The rest was easy af. And it's for just one reason : each leader only relies on his Ace pokemon, when Piers relies on all his team. Not for nothing he's the best Galar trainer after Leon... But SM/USUM got a lot, lot more hard battles : totem pokemons and their SOS, Beast Lusamine, Normal type chqmpion and his full EV'd anti-starter Smeargle , Ultra Necrozma, even the prof as the league boss was not that easy... After a game like that, SnS were just boring in terms of challenge.

The VS recorder was great, but it was cut because... Reasons ? Tbey don't even know what they are doing.... Their interviews were only damage control "we don't put difficulty becajse players wouldn't be able to beat the game" "We put an AI that makes a lot of mistakes so the player is thinking he's improving in terms of skills" "People never turn exp share off, so we force it" "We cut the pokedex for better animations"..

No, litterally, Game Freak needs more time, but Pokemon Company is horrible and asks for a game each year... I miss the times where Pokemon Company used to make more merchandise with one generation, instead of foncing rushed and half assed games...

People don't turn off EXP Share my ass. I utterly loathe EXP Share, and turn it off instantly the moment the game ever hands it to me. And if people were to ever argue against doing that, I would point them to this game as an example of why it's important to disable the damn thing. Because then you wind up with a game that's difficulty boils down to the challenge of spamming a button because you're too over-leveled for anything to matter.

Yea, I know it's bullshit, but it comes from Game Freak's SnS Director, not me.
I am also disabling it each time since gen6 so... (Yea, G6 was too easy with it.. And nobody told you you can disable it...)

Not just because of being over-leveled, either. One of the best parts of a Pokemon adventure is the experiences you have with your Pokemon. Battling with them, and watching them grow. This doesn't happen here because I also like to keep my levels constantly even. Resulting in me only using my lowest-level stuff that takes forever to catch up because my higher stuff is still leveling, and thus not being used. After catching a few Pokemon, I only got to see my Scorbunny once or twice before it evolved, and only a handful of times as a Raboot before it evolved into a Cinderace. That's not satisfying, and it doesn't allow me to feel like I'm raising the Pokemon, or experiencing an adventure alongside them. Well, except for the one or two Pokemon I'm actually using in 99% of battles without change because I'm trying to get them caught up.

That's weird, because I found the game's difficulty to be quite dishearteningly easy throughout most of the game, with most of the experience being utterly mindless right up until the sudden level spike of the last couple battles. This though all stemmed back to the EXP Share, which was causing my levels to be way too high, especially because of areas like the Wild Area having so many Pokemon to catch. This resulted in me doing some EXP prevention by having two separate teams. One for catching Pokemon, and one for everything else. Alas, even doing that, I was constantly over-leveled until about the last hour of the game.

My experience with the game was having sobble fully evolved before the first gym. The remainder of the game devolving into a hilarious bloodbath with snipe shot/ice beam/shadow ball/acrobatics/some other filler I can't remember.

My experience with the game was constant stress that I was over-leveled, because of my mentality towards RPGs of always hoping I'm under-leveled instead.

Its a feature.

Is that so?

Bug/feature is an old programming joke, disregard my snark.

I hate it myself, but don't see Gamefreak doing anything about it. Is hugely annoying to go from seeing active dens to seeing N64 fog.

I tend to take words too literally to catch jokes like that, unless it's an established inside joke with a friend, or something of that nature.

Fair enough. As a tip, you can get infinite money from buying luxury balls from the watt trader and selling them. Dens drop a lot more watts after you clear the champion.

I'm well beyond the main story, and have plenty of money with little left to spend it on. I think there's still a few TMs to buy, but I haven't bothered since I'm yet to have a need for those I don't yet have.

You can EV train in this game with vitamins.

I've just been using Pokejobs for that.

Also, using a "power" Item makes the EV training via jobs easy.
Power item + 24 hour job of the corresponding stat is 252 Ev.

Yeah, I considered getting the power items for that purpose, but at the end of the day I'm not sure how much it would really help since I'm more often than not going to be sending at least a few Pokemon off to get training from the jobs, so if one is getting that bonus but not the others, it won't really speed anything along. And getting several of each power item just in case would amount to excessive battle tower matches for BP that could be spent on other things. I read though that it can also stack with Pokerus to make the jobs work even faster, but I'm yet to get that.

Kind of forgot about those. Did actually use that feature in sun/moon, but couldn't be bothered to wait in this gen.

I'm convinced that tropical area in the first DLC will be daytime/sun only, so at least that won't have the stupid fucking rain that the current one seems to have a hard on for. It seriously won't stop raining!

We'll just have to wait and see on that one.

I somewhat doubt that they will fix any of the things that people are not enjoying about the games unless it affects stability or gets rid of certain exploits that people discovered, like changing the date while searching for players at a MaxRaid battle to quickly get the Poké Jobs timer down. At least it seemd to have been handled that way in the last gen.

Nonetheless, it was a terrible design choice from the beginning.