"A year after release, I finally started and finished Pokemon Shield. Here are my thoughts."

Maybe it's quarantine getting to me. Maybe my Pokemon nostalgia is making me unfairly biased towards the newer games. But I really need to rant because the game I just played was just attrocious. But since I have all this time, let's really break down what I found disappointing and what could have been fixed.​BackgroundI've played Pokemon pretty much from the first game, though to be honest the first Pokemon game that I had any real memories of playing was Pokemon Silver. I played every genration (skipped out on Black & White 2) until giving a pass on Shield and Sword because I was too busy with law school. But during quarantine, I suddenly found myself with a lot of time. I originally got Pokemon Eevee because of some Switch promotion and decided to finish it. I enjoyed it, after all it was just a rehash of Gen 1... again, but somehow found it to be a bit lackluster. I attributed it to the fact that it was a side game made to capture the Pokemon Go market and shrugged it off. But that got me longing to play one of the main generation games. When I found out my brother actually had Pokemon Shield last year, I jumped on it.​Now I'll be honest, my interest in the Pokemon Games had been waning for a while. I remembered X&Y to be enjoyable if a bit streamlined and predictable. I honestly don't remember much about Sun & Moon save for the fact that the Elite 4 music was a banger (I would play that on background for hours even though it was for all musical purposes pretty repetitive) and that the Tapus were intriguging. So for a while, I haven't been keeping up with Pokemon news or anything. The biggest complaint I heard about Sword & Shield was that it lacked a national dex which I could understand as being upsetting, but I'm not a big completionist or a competitive pokemon player so it didn't stand out as too bad for me. So that's where my mental state was at when I started this endeavor.​The GoodWooloo - Wooloo is a precious round boy, and nothing in this rant about the game should be in anyway misconstrued to be an argument against Wooloo's existence.Rivals - I've noticed that the Pokemon games have been playing with the multiple rivals thing for a while now. Gen 3 had Wally alongside your main rival. Gen 4 had one person be Professor Rowan's assistant which served as an ally throughout the game and then a separate main rival. Gen 5 had main rival + N. etc. etc. I liked that this game had 3 rivals that all felt distinct in personality and background. there's a satisfying resolution of your rivalry in you facing each of them during the endgame. And my friend disagrees with me, but I like Hop. He's a cheery guy, and perhaps too energetic and a little annoying but this is a game geared towards kids and in that context I like the energy.Team Yell - Don't hate me guys. I know that Pokemon has been trying to play with the villianous team since Sun & Moon with Team Skull. And for me, Team Yell is refreshing. Not every region needs some villianous organization. Not every enemy organization need to be super nefarious. I was a bit baffled by the fact that they were just Marnie's fans, but after finishing the gym in ...(checks google)... Spikemuth, I grew to really appreciate them as loyal fans of a dying town. The only thing that bothered me about them was how much wasted potentital they had!The BadNo Dungeons - Let's start with gameplay first. One thing that stood out to me as I approached the endgame was just how short the game felt. And it quickly dawned on me why. There was no real story challenge presented to me which in most games would have taken place with the villianous team. Therefore, there was no need for me to confront something besides the gym. There were no dungeons for me to figure out how to get through and to painfully conserve PP in. Even Gen 1, which is what I played right before, had dungeons in the form of Silph Co., Lavender Tower, Seafoam Cave, etc. I was expecting at least something when I hit Rose Tower and when I went to face Rose. But Rose Tower was literally three battles in an elevator and the face-off with Rose had literally nothing hindering your advance. It made my victories feel cheap and hollow. Diamond and Pearl made you traverse this huge mountain to reach the final villian and the legendary pokemon. Black and White gave you a CASTLE as your endgame dungeon.Too Linear of a Game - The lack of these dungeons and side areas also made the world feel really linear. Every route was just "ok, go through here to the next area". Ruby and Sapphire were my definitive games as a kid even though I started with Silver. Ruby and Sapphire is just chock full of hidden secrets whether it be a hidden ghost ship, or diving areas, or the Regis. These not only add length to the game, but it gives depth to the game and the game world! A temple dedicated to Bellsprouts show how the people of the world live outside of watching Pokemon Gym Battles and drooling over some undefeated champion. It took a more "show, don't tell" approach in conveying the region's history and culture. Shield, it felt like each piece of history was Sonia running out of nowhere to make elementary school level deductions about historical evidence and research that outside of the elephant knocking down the mural, had been there for decades. No one else pieced together that information before? The Galar region feels empty and hollow as a result.How to Build a Villian - I have been looking at Sword and Shield reddit posts and youtube comments for all of 1 hour and I can already see that "Rose literally not being able to wait a single day" is becoming quite the trend. Building a villian, or any character, boils down to two factors. What is that character's goal, and how is that character trying to achieve that goal? This can be as simple as Team Rocket's "Get rich in money and pokemon by terrorizing the public to do so" or as complicated as Team Plasma's (or really Ghetis') "pedal some humanitarian shit that people will eat up to let my organization grow and to attract followers that will ultimately result in me gaining power." They can have altruistic reasons (Team Aqua and Magma) or just be pure evil (Team Rocket). The unifying factor in most of the villians that we remember is that they are competent and that we have encountered them enough times to really understand their motivation or get thrown off by a clever curveball. Rose accomplishes none of this, because we don't know anything about his motivation until literally the endgame when we go to Rose Tower and for the FIRST TIME IN THE FUCKING GAME, he talks about the need for endless energy. Say what you want about Lysander being an obvious villian hamfisiting that information down your through with all the subtlety of a bulldozer, but at least he laid out his grievances and motivations for us to see! The whole time during the Rose Tower segment, with his employees and Ophelia going on about "we won't let you interefere with Mr. Rose!" all I could wonder was "interfere in what?" That shouldn't be a question that I should have near the end of the game. That lack of indication is also what makes the curveball feel so lackluster. Why should we care when literally nothing he has done all game has done anything to affect us?Team Yell - I already said I liked them, so what gives? Because they have so much potential. Dynamaxing is this phenomenon in the Galar region that has both affected its entertainment in the form of champion battles and had some interesting energy implications in the source of its wish stone mining and Rose's monopoly on the energy sources in the region. Team Yell hails from a town that has literally been Detroit'd due to the lack of a power spot. Their city and economy is in shambles due to no one being interested in their Gym battles. Team Yell would have been the perfect curveball if Nintendo really wanted to work with a non-vilianous team as they could be in direct opposition to Rose who wants to manipulate Dynamaxing. Perhaps they know other negative effects about Dynamaxing besides the economic side affects and that could challenge the hero's perspective. What if instead of the Champion being the hero of the game (Lance, Steven, Cynthia, Alder, and Leon) it was a gym leader this time in the form of Piers? The economic inequalities that result from the inequal distribution of resources would have made for a really interesting aspect to be explorered. But in the end, Spikemuth is a linear town where you literally just go straight."Show, Don't Tell" - I said this in respect to showing the history and culture of the region, but much of the story could also heed this advice. Many of the plot points are told to you either in the form of Sonia coming up with deductions and giving you history lessons or Hop telling you that his brother has solved another problem. Pokemon randomly dynamaxing in the middle of Hammerlocke would have made a really interesting mid-late game dilema for you to get involved in, but instead it is solved offscreen by the undefeated champion Leon.Champion Leon - I'm going to be honest, I just disliked his character. Anyone that constantly refers to themself as the "undefeated champion" seriously needs a reality check. And I'm not asking for every champion to be stoic badasses (Lance, Steven, Cynthia, Diantha) but if you're going to make them self-aggrandizing you can at least do something interesting with their character. They made Alder a depressed man with a mid-life crisis, that was interesting.The Music - The lack of an Elite 4 really hurt this game in the music department. Literally one of the only things I remember about Alola was the music whether it be the Elite 4 theme or the Tapu theme. The only really stand out piece in Sword and Shield is the Slumbering Weald theme with the what I assume was meant to be howls in the background in the form of a synth. The most dissapointing thing to me is that the Champion theme doesn't feel extremely distinct from say the Gym Leader's theme. All of them are pretty techno/synthy with cheers in the background. You know who did have a distinct theme? Piers!I was going to type a whole other section on specific fixes, but honestly it would have been just a rehash of my earlier points. So here's the brief summaryAdding dungeons in Stow-on-Side (revealed by the falling murals), Spikemuth, Rose Tower, and the Final showdown with Ross can add depth to the history of the region, Team Yell, and Rose as a villian.Rose's actual ambitions, whether it is shown in a altruistic, villianous, or misguided light, needs to be revealed (or at least hinted at) much earlier on.Have the player interact in more events. You can still have Champion Leon be the undefeated Champion and have the player help out too. There were some major story beats such as the Pokemon randomly dynamaxing in Hammerlocke that was just brushed aside.I'm all for playing around with existing tropes. But if you're going to prominently feature the Champion as more than a stoic badass, you can at least make him a little more three dimensional. Show that he is still good natured and kind, but that his arrogance has gotten to him a bit.In the end, the game felt rushed and hollow. The world felt bare, and there was no proper build up in the story. It was bad even by Pokemon standards. I'm not asking for every Pokemon game to be social commentary, but even Gen 1 felt like it had more well rounded and deep. In order to feel a bit more fun and challenge in my life again, I am now going to go study for the Bar Exam which I am actually looking forward to after playing this hogwash of a game. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/2UlCuk4