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Pokémon Sword & Pokémon Shield (2019, Switch)

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Well, Unova already had a Battle Subway, so naturally, Galar has to get the Battle Bus Replacement Service.

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Pokemon Sword & Shield was the third game aside from Link's Awakening Remake and Luigi's Mansion 3 I played at the Gamescom.

At the beginning I want to say that the last Pokemon game I played was the Black Edition. I completely skipped X&Y and Sun&Moon. Mostly due to beginning to dislike handhelds as well as a feeling of stagnation from the Pokemon series. Thus, I don't exactly know if all of the following "features" are actually new, but for me they were.

The demo allowed the player to complete the Galar water gym. You fight 3 trainers, solve the puzzle and are kinda guided through type effectiveness through the choice of Pokemon of the trainers. It immediately stood out to me that you get additional information about your attack, its effects, the type of all your Pokemon and the type of the enemy Pokemon from the attack screen and the team screen. Since there are just way too many (and now for me now unknown) Pokemon, I found this to be extremely helpful. The gym also has a new healer person now, so you can just heal your whole party in the gym whenever you want. The gym leader battle then featured a Dynamax fight. Well, to be honest, I didn't find it particularly interesting. It was just unnecessarly flashy and time-consuming due to longer attack animations in my opinion. Overall however I am still interested to get back into Pokemon - if only for the reason that it finally is available on a home console and that I can play it on TV. :p

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That feature was introduced in Sun and Moon. It got mixed reactions at the time of it's reveal.

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14 hours ago, GenericAperson said:

That feature was introduced in Sun and Moon. It got mixed reactions at the time of it's reveal.

I take it you're referring to the game telling you what's "Super Effective" or not? While I still think it'd be preferable to have that toggable for a story play through, I'm fine with it as a feature for when I play competitively.

That said, information about the state of battle was low-key the best QoL feature Sun/Moon introduced. Not having to remember how long weather, terrain, Trick Room, etc. has been going on is really useful.

21 hours ago, ThiophenSJ said:

Since there are just way too many (and now for me now unknown) Pokemon, I found this to be extremely helpful.

The irony here is that Sword and Shield will almost definitely have less Pokémon available than Black and White did.

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13 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

The irony here is that Sword and Shield will almost definitely have less Pokémon available than Black and White did.

So few? I mean, I of course heard about all the buzz that Sword & Shield will not feature a full national dex, but I kinda imagined that they'll cut maybe 100 or 200 pokemon, which still leaves us with many left.

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Looks like Prima are doing an official guide.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pokémon-Sword-Shield-Official-Strategy/dp/1911015664/

Also looks like Piggyback, who did some AMAZING guides years ago (I had one for Final Fantasy X), have a listing for an Official Galar Region Pokedex guide. Although it's unavailable at the moment.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pokemon-Sword-Shield-Official-Pokedex/dp/1911015710/

The thing that makes me a bit suspicious about these listings though is that why would Prima make one guide and Piggyback make the other? I think the Prima one IS legit though, as it's also listed on Game.co.uk. Also, does anyone know what they actually mean by "Official". Are these licenced by Nintendo/Game freak or something?

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6 minutes ago, Sckewi said:

Also looks like Piggyback, who did some AMAZING guides years ago (I had one for Final Fantasy X), have a listing for an Official Galar Region Pokedex guide.

Yeah, Piggyback and Versus were easily the two best guide makers back in the day. As you said, the Piggyback Final Fantasy guides were awesome. I still have all mine on the bookshelf and the Final Fantasy VIII one will be soon seeing some use again when the remaster hits.

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Niiice, it must be nice to have a collection of them! I still have the FFX one somewhere, although my dog took a bite out of it at some point and a bunch of the pages have a corner missing lol. xD (I should add he was a very good dog and was just playing. xD)

Edited by Sckewi
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7 hours ago, ThiophenSJ said:

So few? I mean, I of course heard about all the buzz that Sword & Shield will not feature a full national dex, but I kinda imagined that they'll cut maybe 100 or 200 pokemon, which still leaves us with many left.

That would leave it in the 700-ish region. Which is a ridiculously large amount of Pokémon to fit in one region.

For comparisons sake. Sun/Moon had 385 different Pokemon you could catch in Alola. And only 301 of them had an actual Pokédex entry what with a full National Dex being unavailable for the player to obtain.

I'd be amazed if Sword and Shield has more than 649. (The amount of Pokémon you could catalogue in Black and White) Especially if @Serebii's hunch about problems transferring Pokémon models to the Switch engine is right.

Edited by Glen-i

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4 hours ago, Glen-i said:

That would leave it in the 700-ish region. Which is a ridiculously large amount of Pokémon to fit in one region.

For comparisons sake. Sun/Moon had 385 different Pokemon you could catch in Alola. And only 301 of them had an actual Pokédex entry what with a full National Dex being unavailable for the player to obtain.

I'd be amazed if Sword and Shield has more than 649. (The amount of Pokémon you could catalogue in Black and White) Especially if @Serebii's hunch about problems transferring Pokémon models to the Switch engine is right.

I'm expecting it to be in the 400-500 range tbh

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13 hours ago, Sckewi said:

Looks like Prima are doing an official guide.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pokémon-Sword-Shield-Official-Strategy/dp/1911015664/

Also looks like Piggyback, who did some AMAZING guides years ago (I had one for Final Fantasy X), have a listing for an Official Galar Region Pokedex guide. Although it's unavailable at the moment.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Pokemon-Sword-Shield-Official-Pokedex/dp/1911015710/

The thing that makes me a bit suspicious about these listings though is that why would Prima make one guide and Piggyback make the other? I think the Prima one IS legit though, as it's also listed on Game.co.uk. Also, does anyone know what they actually mean by "Official". Are these licenced by Nintendo/Game freak or something?

I thought Prima shut down? The Amazon page doesn't mention them at all and that it's being published by The Pokemon Company In which case it would be official.

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That's... really strange, I genuinely have no idea why I thought it was Prima lol. xD Thanks for the help. :)

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I don't know whether it's just because I'm more familiar with the region its riffing, but is it me or is this region much more reliant on lazy stereotyping than previous ones?

Also, do carnivores really just throw sausages on top of a curry?

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4 minutes ago, Ashley said:

I don't know whether it's just because I'm more familiar with the region its riffing, but is it me or is this region much more reliant on lazy stereotyping than previous ones?

Also, do carnivores really just throw sausages on top of a curry?

yes and yes.

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I knew it, Sobble's the best because it don't need no support! Nerdy Team Setup Joke!

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14 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

I knew it, Sobble's the best because it don't need no support! Nerdy Team Setup Joke!

I think I'll pick Sobble actually. I've already pre-ordered the game, but I'm seeing bundles here that come with plushies for 5 euros more. So I may upgrade and get the Sobble one.

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I want it to be a Galarian Cubone, but we've already had Alolan Marowak, so that's not happening.

Fighting is it's type and it has the Steadfast ability.

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Could it be a Galarian Farfetch'd (or evolution)? I'm kind of seeing a leek right at about the level where it's beak would be...

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21 minutes ago, Julius said:

Could it be a Galarian Farfetch'd (or evolution)? I'm kind of seeing a leek right at about the level where it's beak would be...

You're not the only person who's theorising that. If it is Farfetch'd related, than my money will be on an Obstagoon style evolution, because Farfetch'd's stats are an utter joke and it desperately needs the boost.

Although it'll be strange for it to drop both of it's Normal/Flying types, so I'm guessing it's both a Galarian variant and an evolution, much like Linoone and Obstagoon.

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