Scottish Pokemon Impressions

I am going to lead this post off with a general confession. While I enjoy Pokemon games, I am in no way a massive fan. I grew up at the wrong time. I first played Pokemon Blue on a Gameboy Emulator and the first Pokemon game that I legitimately played when it was something current was during X and Y. Pokemon came out while I was in college and while I remember playing Pokemon the card game when it showed up in the place where I was playing Magic the Gathering, I never got heavily into it because I was more or less turned off by the massive crush of kids it brought into the shop.

So while I “get” the controversy surrounding this game, I also don’t really grok it on a deep level. I’ve never moved my pokemon from one game to the next game. I’ve only ever traded pokemon with Ashgar and a ton of random Wonder Trade connections. I fundamentally of not of the mental calculation that makes up what a diehard pokemon player is. So while there is raging about this game or “Dexit” talk on the internet… I think they are mostly old people yelling at the clouds. I get it… I am also an old man that occasionally yells at the clouds for stupid reasons. If this was your first occasion of being mad on the internet, I am sorry… you will be mad about more important things in the future.

What I see when I look at Sword and Shield is a super charming game that finally works more or less than modern 3D games do… with dual stick action and big free roam areas to wander about in. There are a lot of functional improvements this game brings to the table, like I really enjoy the wild Pokemon aspect of being able to see what sorts of critters are hiding in the tall grass. I also really like seeing significantly higher Pokemon in the wild that serve as targets for when you finally get your levels up enough to capture one of them. I love the quick button for Pokeballs, and I love that I can just tell motion controls to screw off and that unlike “Let’s Go” this one lets me play comfortably while docked with a pro controller.

While Gigantamax is a weird gimmick… I absolutely love it. I love fighting with my giant sweet monkey boy. If you chose any of the other starters, I regret to inform you that you chose incorrectly because nothing is as perfect as my monkey boy with his stick. But what I love more than anything are the weird raid like encounters that you can get into in the Wild Area. You can in theory play with a group of friends, or if you are like me and have none… the computer invents friends to play along side you.

Defeating one of these “raid” encounters allows you to catch the Pokemon in question and also rewards you a ton of candies and even occasionally TMs. I have to admit I have done nothing useful so far other than attending the induction ceremony, because I am spending all of my time wandering around the Wild Area catching critters and doing raid battles. I think at this point I have gotten four different TMs from these random raid dens.

Another adorable thing is the camping system where much like Breath of the Wild or Final Fantasy XV you can assemble a random assortment of the berries that you find out in the world… apparently into curry? Like I have issues with the fact that I am making savory berry curry but whatever. I do feel a little bad eating it while my Pokemon watches, because that just seems mean. Like I totally want to see my sweet monkey boy chomping down on food as well so he will be happy.

My sweet monkey boy sadly turned into an edgy monkey teen last night, but I am going to get through these awkward years. I am pretty sure Lime Kong is now into obscure dubstep remixes that I have never heard of. It’s okay when he reaches adulthood we will finally learn to see eye to eye again as I continue to force him to fight random strangers for fun and profit. Really the concept of a Pokemon game is sorta jacked up if you think of it. Lets try not to think about it.

And just to prove that I am still a twelve year old boy inside… when the game asked me to pick a number for my jersey I of course chose the only option. For some reason the writing up top looks like someone wrote “Asse” upside down which only serves to improve the asthetic of the 69. All in all it is a perfectly fine game and I think the grousing about it is largely without merit. The Switch is a relatively underpowered system and I more or less expected a mainline game that looked like Pokemon Let’s Go. I was not disappointed, and in fact a lot of the animations are way more charming than anything I have seen in a Pokemon game to date.

I have no clue what these cards do, so here is mine. I am not sure if this is a sort of friend invite system or what. Whatever the case you can see me as an adorable noob poke-trainer. I went for the glossy finish for extra cringe.

Also while we are trading digits… feel free to friend me up. I am probably never going to do anything that requires friends in one of these games but I like knowing that there are other players out there doing things. Switch time is more or less time when I am either playing it docked or hanging out in bed. All in all though I am pretty happy with Sword and Shield, or at least what I have played of it.

4 thoughts on “Scottish Pokemon Impressions”

  1. I find the curry thing hilarious because if this is supposed to be based on Scotland curry is one of the most loved foods here. It is not at all a shock to find them making berries or anything into a curry. I’m not at all be surprised if someone Scottish worked on it and put that in as an in-joke.

  2. Cool Post! Really enjoyed this one 🙂
    My first Pokémon game was probably Pokémon Puzzle League on the N64, although I also played Pokémon Colloseum at a friend’s place (and we swapped our games every now and then so that I could also play Mario Kart 64 and so that he could also play Super Mario 64). I also played Pokémon on a Gameboy but I don’t know if that was before or after I got my N64 and I also don’t know what game it was. Later, I played Platinum, Diamond and SoulSilver, as well as some Pokémon Ranger and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games (I love all PMD games and miss the PMD-MMO 🙁 ). SO, while I’m not a huge fan either (or one of those hardcore-pokémon-players that spend 500+ hours to catch a pokémon with the right traits, grind those EVs and IVs, then breed them to get hidden talents, more values and attacks, etc. to get a MEGA-Yanmega without evolving it or whatever), I certainly enjoyed a few games here and there on top of some ROM-hacks like Liquid Crystal or some emulator-games like Emerald.

    Anyways, I love Pokémon and watched the new game in a stream and I personally found it rather cute and beginner-friendly. It tells you how effective the attacks are (which would be great for me, as I don’t know any of the new(er) pokémon (since Gen 4)), it shares the exp between all of your pokémon which is quite neat (and I won’t have to use Exp-Share-Items or swap all of my pokémon into battle once so that they get exp as well, etc.), and there are no HMs, I’ve heard, which is really cool, as they kind of got on my nerves in some games and as they also limit the open-world-ness of the games. Now, you just face Pokémon that you won’t be able to fight, if you venture too far, I guess, so that’s cool. Oh, and I find this Giganto-, Dyno- and the-other-MAX weird… but I also didn’t like the Mega-Evolution thingy or the Z/X-move thingie… but I guess I won’t hate it too much in the games as it certainly would be useful for me and as enemy trainers use them as well. Overall, it’s a cute game and I’m looking forward to seeing more of it or even playing it myself someday 🙂

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