Pokemon Sword and Shield

         Hello! Before I go into the main topic I wanted to add a little bit to my anime post; I was checking a few flash drives I have to see if my list of watched anime was on any and I remembered another flash drive I have stored away. It’s a transformer flash drive, it’s Ravage but it transformers into a rectangle and is a working flash drive. It’s pretty neat, you could have it sitting on your desk and no one would know that it was a flash drive. Anyway, I check it and low and behold it had a version of my list on it. Judging by some of the anime I’ve been able to date it looks like I stopped updating it around 2013, 2014 and the past few weeks I’ve just been adding shows to it that I know I’ve seen and randomly remembering other ones and I mean RANDOMLY. Like I’ll just be going about my day and some random anime will come into my mind. It might be just a bit of the plot or one word from the title and I have to go Google it to figure out what it is but like, why? Why am I remembering this? How does my brain work exactly? I’ve added about two and a half pages worth of titles to my list. Any who, on to my main talking point.

            A guy I work with has been getting into the Pokemon games lately, he hasn’t played them in years so he’s been kind of shotgunning his way through the core franchise to catch up to Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl. He had to skip over the 3DS games since he doesn’t have a 3DS but he has just bought Shield and him talking about it got me curious as to what I was doing in Sword. I know I was trying to catch just about everything I could and specifically trying to get all the Galarian forms of Pokemon. I’ve never been one to try and do the whole national dex but I try to get all the legendaries and mythical Pokemon in the games and the starters and put all of them in my Home box.

            So, what have I been doing in Sword? Having a lot of fun actually. It started out with getting all the Galarain forms that I could. Not too bad, gather all the little guys together, Sirfetch’d, fuck, let me go do that. Still need a Galarian Ponyta and Corsola but I think I can get them from @NEETproxy. Then I started getting all the Sword “exclusives” together in case the guy from work REALLY wants them. Then I was thinking about it and I messaged work man saying if he wants to, he can send me the other two starters I don’t have when he starts Shield and I’ll breed them and he can have all three right at the beginning of the game. Okay, okay, what else can I do? When I started the game I was at the final Regi’s cave, I could go do that. Went and got the electric one, go back to Peony, hey look at that, all these legendary quests are done. Credits credits credits, hey! No they’re not, here’s another one! So I’ve been farming the Dynamax Adventure looking for Necrozma. I have one in my Home box that I might be able to finish the quest with if I transfer it (FYI, can't do that. Doesn't count.) but I also need a few other Ultra Beasts I didn’t get earlier so I’ll just keep grinding for now.

            For the most part I’m enjoying myself. The DLC really helped Sword and Shield. In my Pokemon tier list I made, X and Y were higher than SwSh but now I think SwSh just edged out X and Y. What little I have played of Shining Pearl, before Sword distracted me, reminded me why it’s my favorite generation and why I like the Crown Tundra so much. I love exploring the land. I love running into other NPCs and gym leaders out in the world and interacting with them as people and not just another person to beat and never seeing again. Stuff like going into Wayward Cave, finding Mira and helping her out are things I love doing. There’s no reason to go to Wayward Cave, you might not even know where it is or have ever been in it if you’re just focused on completing the main game. In SwSh, after doing most of the DLC quest, Leon calls you up and says he’s putting together this Galarian Star Tournament and what it is, is you and most of the other NPCs you meet in a doubles tournament. The gym leaders, your rivals, I think even Peony is there, there’s a couple of “?” people, I have yet to fight them but I don’t know if they’re actually a mystery pair or they just didn’t feel like adding another team. It’s fun, I enjoy it, it gives me something to do in between the Dynamax Adventure. I loved chasing down the three legendary birds and catching them, Articuno is still an asshole and I ended up masterball-ing him.

            The raid fights is what I wish the Lusamine/Nihilego fight was in Sun and Moon. When Lusamine was fused with Nihilego I remember thinking “oh shit, I’m gonna get to fight her to save her” but no. The dialogue stops, and she throws out a Pokemon. Like why? What? Huh? I’m almost certain if they were to remake Sun and Moon that’s how they would handle it but, that is very far off, if at all. Also, if they remake some of these next games I think they should do just one game. X and Y could finally have its Z. Sun and Moon could be either Stars or Eclipse. I feel like either name is good but sun, moon, eclipse kind of makes sense and there’s a Star Wars game coming out with the subtitle of Eclipse and we know how much game companies like to put in effort for their titles. (Bioshock Infinite, Halo Infinite. Ass Creed Revelations, RE: Revelations. Also also, curious why this “eclipse” is so important in this Star Wars game. It’s Star Wars, there’s probably an eclipse somewhere every single day, why’s it so special?)

            So yeah, I’m having a pretty good time with Sword right now. This is the most fun I’ve had with the end game of a Pokemon since Platinum. There might not be as many things to do as in Platinum but there’s just about as many things as I, personally, participate in. The main game for SwSh is pretty linear and there’s not much to it really but the wild areas and DLC are great. I think it’s a good balance between the handholding Game Freak started in Sun and Moon and free roaming that older players would enjoy. The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra are a little small but they’re dense and it can be extremely tough to know if you’ve explored a whole section of the area or not. As I get older it’s like, I just want to hang out with my Pokemon and explore you know? Playing Shining Pearl and there’s some kid in a forest with three Weedles that challenges me to a fight. I clean his clock and now what? He’s in the middle of a forest with no protection. What the hell? That’s not great. I just want to travel the world, explore places with my Empoleon, smack some Pokemon that think they can eat me and track down legendaries. I’d like it if they did the raid fight style against legendaries in the future. Like, I’m trying to capture this really rare, powerful Pokemon, why exactly am I only using one Pokemon? I should be using them all at once. That could be how you set up your party, you have a tanky Pokemon, a healer type, a DPS or two and something that does status effects. Maybe you have six Pokemon but it’s only feasible to command four at a time. I’m super hopeful for Arceus in January. It seems like my kind of thing, just trying to document all the Pokemon of the region and explore every where.

            So what have you been up to? Are you still playing Sword and/or Shield? Going through Brilliant Diamond and/or Shining Pearl? How do you like to play Pokemon? What is your ideal, what do you see yourself doing in the Pokemon world? Leave a comment, I’d really like to know and I’ll catch you all later.

        @AztecSauce