Why try at all when you could take a shit in a box and people will buy it anyway? Remember, only competitive pressure gets companies to improve their products. If allowed they will low ball to spend as little as money while earning as much as possible.
@Ryoshikari "Extremely low development cost"? Source? Of course there are some examples, but aren't generalizing a little bit too much? Mario Odyssey, BotW, Astral Chain, Luigi's Mansion, etc are all far from "extremely low" cost and also high in quality quality.
on point. textures - meh, I guess there are colours music - meh, I guess there is something coming out of the speakers animations - ok, I guess things move here story - well, there is a beginning and an ending C - economic, but utter lack of genius. try again next time.
in my opinion where Pokemon Games always high quality up to sun and moon and with switch they were like lets do some mediocore anime standard budget game.
@@gamerprince-tl5hg It just seems like their development pipeline and approaches haven't moved a single centimeter since the 3DS games. The presentation, handling of assets, etc.. is absolutely byzantine.
I’m not super happy with the texture work... not super upset either, I feel like the art style does an ok job at covering it But holy shit does the draw distance pull me out of the game... for a simple looking game I should be able to see 2x as far as BotW not half as far 😓
It’s fun, but GameFreak is dropping the ball hard here. The game feels safe and lacking ambition, not even mentioning the cut pokemon and features. Either HD was a hard shift for them and they don’t think they’ll get much better, or they’ve sacrificed the core series in favor of everything else. Either way, they’re disappointing when compared to most other major Switch games, fun or not. Pokemon will apparently never reach its full potential, because Game Freak refuses to invest beyond their comfort zone, and in fact are now scaling back in certain regards. Sad to see from the most successful franchise of all time.
Random1567 Yeah, I agree. The game really could be much better. It’s no Starbound, but it really feels like some wasted potential. Of course though, the graphics don’t matter to me. They are good looking enough for me, honestly I love them and they look beautiful, (I still think Gen 2 is better as I love the style.) but I just know the Switch is capable of more. Even then, if the game hit a perfect framerate, with better towns, less pop-in, and had voice acting, this game might become nearly my favourite in the series. It’s a real shame that so many Pokémon got removed. I can understand only letting you encounter Galar’s native Pokémon, but I’d like it to include the other Pokémon if they get traded up from older generations. Even then though, I could love with it since if I’m playing a new game I don’t want to just replay Gen 1 with new locations.
I can't find the source for Game Freak saying that. Can you link me? I mean, they said a lot of other stuff, too, but that particular claim I can't find.
Gamerwave yea the video keeps saying this is the most visually impressive Pokémon game, and they’re absolutely right, but I’m not sure that’s saying much when you consider the hardware it’s running on lol
realitities2 Pokémon Battle Revolution on the Wii is the most visually impressive Pokémon game. And if we're including genre spinoffs then Pokkén Tournament, a Wii U port on the Switch, is vastly superior visually to Sword/Shield.
I'm going to be honest, it isn't really a huge improvement over Colosseum or XD: Gale of Darkness in regards to visuals. And gameplay, well, they certainly don't abide by the "Gotta Catch'em All" slogan. Well done Game Freak/The Pokemon Company, you failed to deliver the very basic concept that your entire brand revolves around. Fail.
@@davidsalazar2077 I'd go further and say that XY and SM look better. Sure this is higher resolution but it lacks visual cohesion. There isn't a unifying style.
As long as people and fanboys keep buying it, Game Freak is continue to do the absolute minimum. They can't hide behind low spec hardware anymore and now it shows.
+Nimit Nayak I highly recommend watching maxmoefoegames' recent upload of Pokemon Sword gameplay. He himself is a big fan of Charizard, but even he can't tolerate how much the game shoves this fact in your face. You'll get some good laughs out of watching it too.
I'm starting to suspect Gamefreak has literally forgot how to write Champions. XY had noncharacter Diantha, Sun and Moon literally didn't have a champion, and Leon is the most obnoxiously stanned character in the game.
It's pretty bad if you compare it to other first party games like Zelda or Mario but it's even worse if you put it side by side with the recent ports of The Witcher and, specially, Dragon Quest XI.
@@greengamerguy623 sure you are online? when i go trough the wild in offline mode it's solid but when i connect to internet it gets terrible and i'm using a wired 400/400 connection.
I'm going on a whole next level: sell off the Pokémon rights to someone like square-enix, atlus, level-5 (which all are Japanese for that reason), or to some other European Devs like cdpr, spyders or hell even the piranha bytes. And Nintendo should stop with its hardware (just like sega did) and makes its game franchises like mario, Pokémon, Zelda and xenoblade available to multiple platforms like the PlayStation, pc , Xbox..imagine if someone like level-5 develops a huge open world Pokémon game on the lines of Witcher/assassin's creed odyssey/Skyrim on the PlayStation/PC platforms..or hell even the switch can run it, albeit being underpowered. If switch could run titles like botw, xenoblade 2, Witcher 3 (even though at the lowest of low settings), dragon quest 11, I can see absolutely no reason for this 2019 Pokémon game to be this lackluster; apart from the dev "gamefreak" being too incompetent and orthodox. Or maybe too money-minded. Quite a shame that a Pokémon game turns out to be the most inferior looking, despite being the richest gaming franschise. Abandon this game so that gamefreak shall know
I mean... They helped out the Zelda Devs and look how well that game turned out. I'd say it's worth a shot. Their engine is amazing for the switch and for open world games.
@@matteste They're talking about Monolith Soft in particular because they have experience in making environments and open-ended environments look absolutely gorgeous and totally worth exploring. That way GameFreak would be able to focus on the parts of the game that they excel more at like maybe the actual gameplay content but they've spread themselves thin here for some reason when they didn't need to.
The problem with gamefreak is they have mostly no experience into other system than 3ds and past gameboy while monolith have develop game on Wii/WiiU/Switch. Sure, Gamefreak could have use help there and no one will say otherwise but monolith probally didn't have time to do it because of an upcoming new game other than Xenoblade 1, Platinum was busy with Astral Chain / Bayonetta 3 and Retro Studios is busy with Metroid. Can GameFreak improve on the next one probally but I do believe that people was expecting way too much from them.
Careful, DF. You don’t want to go insulting the Pokémon fanatics who support this game. In seriousness, it really is an underwhelming game. Especially when many of Nintendo’s first-party titles look and run better than this. But this was under the influence of The Pokémon Company, who wanted the game rushed out for the holidays in the hopes of selling a ton of merchandise. But the worst offender here is how Junichi Masuda straight-up lied to us about its development. That’s what disappoints me the most. We deserve better.
It’s really bad. I know that you have to adjust your expectations when playing games on Switch, but that close of pop in would be such a huge issue for me. Plus with the comparisons to Zelda and Xenoblade... there’s almost no excuse
@@GeekdomCentral just pray they remain whats good in sword/shield and works on the other portion of games that need to be fixed on next gen pokemon. For me fixing the national dex and popping is on top priority. Then do something to the pokemon so the pokemon can interact with the map more like swimming, bird jumping on land, pokemon eating glass blablabla
@Cloudii I typed out an entire paragraph explaining in great deal my motivations behind my comment but my phone shut off before I could post it. TL;DR of supposed comment: Deus Knight is anti-dexit. The guy I replied to tried to imply that he bought the game anyways despite his criticism which in his mind and many others means his criticism has less value. I replied because I share the anti-dexit view so his comment may as well have been directed at me. After all I couldve posted any anti-dexit comment and received the same reply. Also despite all this, a person doesnt need to be talking to you directly in order for you to interject into the conversation/discussion. Example: your comment.
@@TheGamingTeam101Tgt101they were talking about the graphics tho. This is a graphics analysis channel after all, not a game review channel. And on the graphics side they do definitely worse than "not quite deliver"
J S you meant can drop down rather than drops down, which is significantly different right? 276, this number, can you provide a source for that, was this a mistake of your, or are you overexaggerating a number to try to reforce your point in the hopes it would slide without anyone notice? because there is a 100 p difference between 276 amd 376. Pokemon SS is nothing short of a joke close to Xenoblade 2 and the video here clearly showed and even more of a joke close to the expansion Torna the golden country.
Other franchises made the generational jump to Switch or even WiiU just fine, but Pokemon is stuck 3-4 generations behind and yet gets a free pass from most people. A Pokemon with the visuals and open world like BOTW would be of the best things ever.
Botw would also be shit without the developers of Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Give Monolith Soft the development of a Pokémon game and they will do wonders.
Shiny graphics won’t help if your being coddled like the past games. Gives us difficulty settings already Game Freak! That way you pander both to kids and veterans. I want to be able get thrash by the first gym and have to rethink my team strategy. Not go in to the championship and sweep him with one Pokémon.😑
"Other franchises made the generational jump to Switch or even WiiU just fine" I guess you don't remember the 7th generation of consoles. Developer especially the Japanese struggled with HD games. They are just now getting the hang of it with the late PS4 games, but they are still struggling Developers like Square Enix are even have a hard time Here is a quote from an investor Q&A they did in 2018 "Concerning HD games, the number of third-party development studios in Japan capable of creating console games is on the decline, and we are struggling to recruit developers. Recruiting resources overseas and collaborating with overseas development firms is going to be key. " This is why portable system are so big in japan than the west Only 2 years ago Gamefreak was a handheld developer. Now they are being dragged kicking and screaming in the HD console space to develop games. We all been comparing games made developer with years of experience for developing for HD consoles.
Back when I first played Pokemon in the late 90's on the game boy, I always dreamed of what a real console version would be like. Over 20 years later... This is so disappointing.
Most of us have dreamed about it. By now, we should already have a game where you can battle like in the anime by giving your pokemon voice commands. But instead, it's the same old game, just with upscaled graphics, but same old boring animations, which don't even contact with the opponent. Well, thinking about it, I guess lots of people would whine and attack Gamefreak even worse if they did change the battle system. Just look at how aggressive final fantasy fans are because the games aren't "round based" anymore.
Pokemon Stadium was the first console game and on the N64 too. You could even play the Pokemon games on the SNES, N64, and GameCube with the adapters too. Granted it's not quite a full console Pokemon game/s but still fun. GameCube had original Pokemon games as well that's pretty fun too. :)
Eddie Brock At least the developers of those games don’t lie saying they need to cut content in order to improve animations when in reality the animations are copy and pasted from the 3DS
@@cahan7033 lmao. Ur serious as well. Cut and paste is what it is. Cod and fifa especially and the others say hi to that. XD. Like them games dont drop anything. Also I did say the list goes on. Acting like pokemon is an exception is pretty lame.
@@eddiebrock118 Call of Duty, Far Cry and Fallout have all changed and dropped things with favorable to mixed reception, though. Fallout 76's problem is terrible optimization, Far Cry's is that it's getting more and more stale even with the changes, and the same applies to Call of Duty. Pokemon is on a completely different level.
You clearly forgot to check the Wild Area while connected to the internet when measuring performance. It drops frames constantly! Around 20fps all the time. It’s a nightmare.
A graphics and tech review gives a far better review of a game than that IGN "review" which constantly praises basic features and ignores major flaws. Hmm.
Q is legit. Don't trust the media. Source? Some random reddit post? The Pokemon score is way to high but i don’t think it was bought, the reviewer had just way to low standards.
@@ChrisBa303 And the individual reviewers are all employed through IGN. They don't have the final say in what they write. Are you naive? How old are you?
yea idk, this game just looks really underwhelming graphically, especially compared to breath of the wild which, being a launch title, is still surprisingly one of the best looking games on switch actually let me correct that, botw is technically a WII U game, so it's even more embarrassing
@@yusuf8938 No they don't lol. The 2 aren't even comparable because they have different architectures and, clockspeeds, and core counts. The only thing we can confirm is that the switch is stronger
Switch is a bit more powerful in handheld mode. Docked mode it's like 3* more powerful than the Wii U. BOTW on the Switch was actually a somewhat rushed port and handheld mode runs better than the Wii U.
Why so much mercy points for this game. How about people actually start asking for ambition out of these games? Every single Pokémon game is the same old crap, they can’t even let you choose between being a kid, an adult or an elder character and that shit is long overdue.
Exactly. We SHRED EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, etc... when they excrete a turd of a game with baffling game design and technical decisions. But Gamefreak? We can't criticize them or we're 'entitled' or 'spoiled'.
@@RicochetForce People have been asking for it. The problem is that millions of parents and little kids are going to buy Pokemon no matter how shit the actual game is, so Gamefreak doesn't care. Also, with TPC forcing Gamefreak to make games every year they're kind of screwed. Combine Gamefreak's poor devs + annual releases and this is what we're going to keep getting. Unless the casual market stops buying the games nothing will change.
@@BELDAM808 Whether it's just a game or not, lying to your fanbase isn't excusable. You can't say that there will be no National Dex so that the models and animations will be improved, release the game using 99.9% reused 3DS assets, and expect fans to not notice that. And Game Freak defenders like to misconstrue argument into "the developers are working very hard" and "most people don't care about the National Dex, so what's the issue?" The problem isn't the lack of a National Dex. The problem is that Game Freak's reason for not including the National Dex turned out to be a lie. I would have absolutely no problem if they said that they had a deadline to meet and thus, had little time to bring over every single Pokemon. That would be a far more honest answer.
@@BELDAM808 They're asking for $60 for people's hard earned money. This is a faceless, heartless, shameless corporation. They do not deserve sympathy, respect, or be spared from criticism.
Imagine apple advertises a new iPhone. In their statement about said new phone they have to cut features to improve performance. That is sword and shield in a nut shell.
When I was a kid playing pokémon red, I was always dreaming about the future when we could play pokémon games that were just like the anime, with fully voiced encounters with trainers and stories to go along with them, animated battles that seemed like struggles instead of RPG numbers rolling down and densely packed environments with pokémon popping up from out of trees, behind bushes,... And the switch feels like it finally has the power to do this. Instead they just kept repeating the same cycle that they always do: Add a bunch of features that aren't that interesting or fun, just because every generation needs to introduce something new, create large, empty spaces filled with random spawns and uninteresting NPCs and just add some extra pokemon. Technically, it's so bad, even compared to let's go eevee/pikachu, and it does nothing with the gameplay or story to justify it.
@@MrCG35 Not even to mention the Piers singing. Which only gets worse when consider gen 5, either would be the Village bridge song, or Roxie's gym in B2/W2 who even was translated outside of Japan (SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED SINCE GEN 6?!). The only thing I wanna see is a competent game.
*DF, talking about the starter selection cutscene:* "It's beautifully animated" *He says as the Sitrus Berry falls into the lake with a weak splash effect and no ripples in the water*
DF is pretty objective most of the time. From a performance perspective, I wouldn’t pick anyone else for a “review”, since DF actually goes in depth on the performance and graphical side of things.
Ironically the recent trend has been to emphasize Eevee itself over any of its evolutions, much like how Pikachu is constantly in the limelight and Raichu the ignored stepchild. Which is to say Pokemon's current path has been one of deliberate non evolution.
"Pop in is minimal" Every character not hidden by an object is clearly popping in when you get closer than 50 meters. You dropped the ball on that one.
@@deanthorpe1684 I dont really have to explain myself. But I just got a switch when the new version came out. Out side the older games like Smash and BoTW . Games I wanted to play was Pokemon , Daemon x machina, and Astral Chain. I was looking at pokemon since the last new pokemon was Black/white. My favorite is silver. Just Picked up 3ds for Soul silver and Fireemblem .
@@deanthorpe1684 it's my opinion. We are looking for different things. The national dex is a big thing for me. I've wanted a full fledge pokemon game since beginning. I don't think Gamefreak is capable of that as years have gone by. And some of my favorite pokemon been cut. This type of thing should be made clear at the announcement.
@@ShimaS-0079 fair enough, you won't get a full dex without this game though even if its not full on its own. I feel they spoke about the lack of national dex before pre-order was available though? Not 100% on that. I very much expect that content will be added over time, and that with the inclusion of the replacement for the national dex that they are doing and the next game will have players where they want to be. I understand that this isn't enough for many people. I just personally don't feel that's a reason to hate on the game and that you do indeed continue to get (in hours played and enjoyed) extremely good value for money with all pokemon games with sw and sh looking particularly tasty in this regard
That would cut their profits by 100k to 1 million. You have to understand, they are just an indie company. You can't afford to lose 1 mio if you only make billions /s
Account for Reasons I just finished DQ11. I don’t think I can go from that game to this back-to-back. Sun and Moon were pretty big steps up from X&Y IMO, so hopefully the next Pokémon outing on Switch will deliver the same step up in quality, if not more so.
RogelioDelaToro I agree that the games have trended towards disappointing for some time now, and I agree that X&Y are glaring offenders in this regard. Sun and Moon came after X&Y though, and I thought those games were pretty good. Not perfect, but ‘perfect’ is too high of a bar. So I’m hopeful the next one will be better. Maybe this is naive of me, but what difference does my naivety make? I have no control over the quality of the games, so I choose to hope they are good. That doesn’t mean I’m defending this one, and it definitely doesn’t mean I’m playing this one (I’m not). I just hope the next one is good, regardless of how likely that may be.
@@Ballislife32 The second worst was black and white. They saved that game by releasing black and white 2. But somehow I doubt they'll do that with sword and shield.
This comment doesn't make sense as this game isn't "wide". Something with a lot to see but little to do would fit this comment better. This game has little to see AND little to do
The main problem in this game isn't the graphics, the main problem is the short linear and unchallenging story. Then we have a battle system where the mons still just wiggle on their spot and don't even make contact with their targets. The animations are disappointing, especially given the reason they gave us for cutting half the pokemon. And I'm a guy who loves eye-candy. 90 billion dollar frachise and this is all they are willing to spend money on.
Honestly I liked towns in the previous games a lot more. Most of them had interesting scenarios, interesting characters, and a lot of content. These new towns don't have that much.
They need to try the wild area online, cause that dips and stays abysmal, especially when there’s weather effects. The amount of times it literally freezes briefly is ridiculous.
I find it hilarious these games havr always included the massive ever growing pokedex now its on a console and the first thing they do is cug it in half.
Not just simply cut. It's like they used a random numbers generator to pick who stays and who doesn't. Too many good pokemon gone, probably forever, and lots of useless shitmon still present.
Seriously, this came to my mind, too. Fog exists in games to help with horrible rendering distances, or poor background textures, not to add graphical fidelity. The Silent Hill HD re-releases tried to remove the fog, but it just highlighted all the rough spots in the game's graphics. They took a design limitation and turned it into a mood-setting effect to great success. The N64 Superman game used fog, and it just made it awful to play (among other things). In SW/SH it's anything but impressive.
I feel like these games are missing out when it comes to story. Imagine a game like this or a pokemon mystery dungeon game now with a story as good as explorers of time or something.
I watched some playthroughs and now don't wanna spend money on this... This looks boring as hell... What's the point of removing the main content from a collecting game???
So they can force people to transfer their pokemon into Pokemon Home which requires a $5 subscription while they wait for a game that has their favorite pokemon in it. Fun Fact: Luxray hasn't been in a Regional Dex since 2008. So a Luxray fan would have their favorite pokemon stuck in a subscription based Pokemon prison for YEARS.
@@thod8820 It just made an already extremely easy game just even easier. Now you can literally just rely on one powerful Pokemon and button mash your way through most of the game due to this game naturally having you be overleveled at every point unless you try to speedrun through it.
Thod tbh i dont feel any balance :/ it feels too easy almost as if the game is playing itself half the time, i still enjoy it just not as much as i thought i would
@@thod8820 Sun and Moon and to a lesser degree X and Y were also balanced around EXP share. The only difference now is I have to painstakingly try avoid experience whenever possible if I don't want the game to be literally effortless. Not even hard. Effortless.
@@AntiRiku to be fair mate you can power through any pokemon game with a single pokemon and quite a lot of people think grinding pokemon individually is boring and time consuming padding if you will the amount of times I left Bibarel as my HM slave in Platinum is absurd. Would have used him with the new exp share as he'd always have a fighting chance if they sort out the balance for the entire game like other RPGs with shared experience do then it'd be a non issue
@@paulclinton6414 The folks at IGN NVC are literally paid to say nice things about big gaming companies, so honestly I think I can live with them thinking I'm ignorant.
Ye it's a fair review. What's amusing is that the haters still take it as an accepting enough review to start with all the over the top exaggerated negatives.
My favorite graphics, music and gameplay style was Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, with Pokemon Black and White having the best spritework and being the second best in charm, but that's just me.
The only thing I truly can’t get over is the draw distance Everything else is “OK” in handheld mode and Pokémon has never been about graphics BUT that draw distance is a continuous reminder that I’m playing a game
Ridly Lupin First off, that’s was a long ass rant lol Those are all valid criticisms. But I want to point out... I was only speaking for myself. Not the community as a whole. I can see why more hardcore fans are upset but I also think we’re going to see each game get exponentially better just like on the 3DS. Personally, I don’t need a story where I save the world every game. Team yell does suck, would have been better w/o a team imo. And Even though some of my fav Pokémon aren’t in the game it’s also the reason I’m actually using the new ones... haven’t done that this much since gen 3. The wild area is a tease... but a damn good one and a step in the right direction. I hated Z moves, didn’t care for Megas “too similar to digimon imo” but I’m actually enjoying Maxing far more than I thought I would. I don’t think the game is great... but I do think the game takes steps in all the right directions I’ve wanted for years. Albeit “half steps” And as bad as no one wants to except it... yes they could have put ALL the Pokémon in this game BUT there will come a day that isn’t realistic for yearly released games. And they will never switch back to every other year... they make too much off merchandising for that. I am sorry you aren’t enjoying it more though. Hopefully they give you want you want in the next game 🤞
"Oh but why do you compare xenoblade to pokemon? It's not fair" they're on the same system and have the same restrictions and tech. The fact they used the quality as an excuse to the dex cut is what got us all into this trouble, had they shut up none of this outrage would've happened
Exactly Breath of the Wild would also be shit without Monolith Soft. They deserve more credit. Nintendo should give them more recourses to work with. They can't even work on their own IP'S anymore. Only 40 people were working on Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
@@lute1215 thats crazy them being on limited staff still being able to make some of the best rpgs for nintendo and you can see their expertice helped make breath of the wild game freak is stuck in the past probably using the same engine from the 3ds ones with hd
Yes please. I hate their stupid anime waifu looking new game character designs. Something cuter like Pokemon + their awesome worlds would be an improvement for both franchisees
That's quite bad logic considering if you play on PC the performance can go 120 fps and beyond no matter if the game is indie or triple A, so by that logic even BOTW and Mario Odyssey are worse than some (bad) indie games on Steam...
@@Owlero And yet, way more impressive looking all the same, to say nothing of how much deeper it is. Large, fully explorable cities vs empty town facades.
They were really careful with who they sent early review codes to.. Normally most critic scores come in before the user scores. The games been out for over 48 hours, still only 20 critic scores on Metacritic. That's not suspicious at all..
Pokemon SS is already in-game day 1 on Yuzu emulator. Pretty sure that in a few months its gonna run better than the original switch version, not to mention higher resolution and higher framerates
This was very informative, thank you. I really want to like Sword and Shield, and I totally understand that it was always going to be simillar to other mainline games. The thing is it's just an okay title because it's glaringly obvious that they could of done better but just didn't. Game Freak themselves at the release of X and Y said they rendered everything in HD for futurproofing. So we know they're lieing when they say they redesigned everything because of what they told us years ago. Then they use that lie to justify cutting 52% of Pokemon, GTS, megas, and z-moves. Isn't it funny that the only parts that feel they live up to Switch's potential are completely brand new? Game Freak is expecting people to pay AAA money on a full fledged console with all the higher costs but they delivered a 3DS game in HD. That's why it's meh. Mechanically they could have done more, story-wise they could have done more, cinematically they could have done more, they shouldn't have dropped 52% of Pokemon and the GTS, and the art assets needed more then a quick touch up here and there. For the price of the game, and the price to get a Switch to get into the game you're just not getting your monies worth. And you don't need to play the game to know that. There's no ground-breaking story, or super-cool new thing that really changes Pokemon gaming. It's a 3DS game in HD.
It's made even worse when compared to Xenoblade X. That game was also made in 3 years. ...On a much smaller budget. ...When Monolith Soft was still borderline indie. ...And had only made one game prior. ...While they were helping make BotW. Can they just PLEASE hand the core games over to Monolith Soft? I'd DIE to see what they'd do with Pokemon.
![[4K] Watch SpaceX Catch A Starship Rocket From Space!!! #IFT5](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pIKI7y3DTXk/mqdefault.jpg)
The production value is just too low compared with the revenue these games are generating.
I'm sure you would know all about that Mr.Monopoly
If only Pokémon co didn’t have to invest so much in merch and tcg and anime
Why try harder when people buy your product anyway.
Why try at all when you could take a shit in a box and people will buy it anyway? Remember, only competitive pressure gets companies to improve their products. If allowed they will low ball to spend as little as money while earning as much as possible.
@Ryoshikari "Extremely low development cost"? Source? Of course there are some examples, but aren't generalizing a little bit too much? Mario Odyssey, BotW, Astral Chain, Luigi's Mansion, etc are all far from "extremely low" cost and also high in quality quality.
Game Freak is that kid in school who's forever satisfied with a passing grade.
Only if that kid is a billionaire now
on point.
textures - meh, I guess there are colours
music - meh, I guess there is something coming out of the speakers
animations - ok, I guess things move here
story - well, there is a beginning and an ending
C - economic, but utter lack of genius. try again next time.
in my opinion where Pokemon Games always high quality up to sun and moon and with switch they were like lets do some mediocore anime standard budget game.
Game freak is bunch of scam artists. So is Nintendo. Both work for the biggest group scam artists: Investors.
Wasn't always that way.
The game feels like a 3DS game but in High Definition. The game doesn't feel like it was made for the Switch in the first place.
Not really. There are screenshots of people running Ultra Sun and Moon in HD. It runs far smoother and looks far cleaner than this.
It's possible that it was originally a 3DS game
@@RicochetForce but it's not BOTW levels of graphics so it's automatically trash. get with the times bro.
@@gamerprince-tl5hg It just seems like their development pipeline and approaches haven't moved a single centimeter since the 3DS games. The presentation, handling of assets, etc.. is absolutely byzantine.
@@RicochetForce garbage.
In my opinion, the annoyingly low res ground texture ruins the look of some areas of this game.
Not to mention the tree textures that are right up in your face as you walk by them. Really odd texture priorities here.
Could these issues be fixed by patch updates?
I’m not super happy with the texture work... not super upset either, I feel like the art style does an ok job at covering it
But holy shit does the draw distance pull me out of the game... for a simple looking game I should be able to see 2x as far as BotW not half as far 😓
From the moment i left my house in game i thought this..
Mike Hunt no Game Freak never patch
"Aimed at the enthusiasts"
Don't hold your breath......
It’s fun, but GameFreak is dropping the ball hard here. The game feels safe and lacking ambition, not even mentioning the cut pokemon and features.
Either HD was a hard shift for them and they don’t think they’ll get much better, or they’ve sacrificed the core series in favor of everything else. Either way, they’re disappointing when compared to most other major Switch games, fun or not. Pokemon will apparently never reach its full potential, because Game Freak refuses to invest beyond their comfort zone, and in fact are now scaling back in certain regards. Sad to see from the most successful franchise of all time.
If you hear them in interviews they're stuck in the past and stubborn
I think they did bite more than they could chew, by trying to make three games at the same time without increasing the team.
@@dan_loup They could've known that if they planned well though
Sounds like severe mismanagement to me. The current president is supposed to be stepping down right?
Random1567 Yeah, I agree. The game really could be much better. It’s no Starbound, but it really feels like some wasted potential.
Of course though, the graphics don’t matter to me. They are good looking enough for me, honestly I love them and they look beautiful, (I still think Gen 2 is better as I love the style.) but I just know the Switch is capable of more. Even then, if the game hit a perfect framerate, with better towns, less pop-in, and had voice acting, this game might become nearly my favourite in the series.
It’s a real shame that so many Pokémon got removed. I can understand only letting you encounter Galar’s native Pokémon, but I’d like it to include the other Pokémon if they get traded up from older generations. Even then though, I could love with it since if I’m playing a new game I don’t want to just replay Gen 1 with new locations.
I for one am happy that the Gamecube is still getting games.
Even the Gamecube had better graphics than this, just look at Metroid Prime
@@nameunknown9393 or even Zelda OoT especially the fricking tree.
Dom DeLuise 64*
This is a Switch game though..
Jimmy Mackinnon - You wear a helmet, yes?
Gamefreak: "we needed to cut Pokemon, since we needed to make all new models for them."
Data miners: "No, you did not do that."
datamines can't determine that unless they literally diff'd the model files and it's 100% identical. From the sounds of things that isn't the case.
raze2012 they are lol
@@raze2012_ Most of the models are the exact same, some of the models got little touch ups.
I can't find the source for Game Freak saying that. Can you link me?
I mean, they said a lot of other stuff, too, but that particular claim I can't find.
Not to mention some of the "cut" pokemon are still there in the code and they even have dynamax models despite their lies.
Gamefreak learned CUT!
Gamefreak forgot *half the Pokemon* !
Sean H Gamefreak learned FLY!
Gamefreak flew over all the fans needs!
😂😂😂😂😂
@J Prez one can only hope
Someone tells Game Freak that the game is on Nintendo Switch now, they're still into 3ds
GameFreak thought that the Switch would flop well into the consoles life
They're doing it on Gameboy advance*
Gamerwave yea the video keeps saying this is the most visually impressive Pokémon game, and they’re absolutely right, but I’m not sure that’s saying much when you consider the hardware it’s running on lol
realitities2 Pokémon Battle Revolution on the Wii is the most visually impressive Pokémon game. And if we're including genre spinoffs then Pokkén Tournament, a Wii U port on the Switch, is vastly superior visually to Sword/Shield.
@@Blah3210 I love me some N64 models in Battle Revolution and Paper Backgrounds in Pokken.
"One of the best looking games in the series" That bar was pretty low to begin with, that's not much of a compliment.
I'm going to be honest, it isn't really a huge improvement over Colosseum or XD: Gale of Darkness in regards to visuals.
And gameplay, well, they certainly don't abide by the "Gotta Catch'em All" slogan. Well done Game Freak/The Pokemon Company, you failed to deliver the very basic concept that your entire brand revolves around. Fail.
Gogiga Gagagilasaurus Let’s Go looks a lot better than Sword and Shield
peter geary I swear “gotta catch em all!” hasn’t been the slogan for years and even then it was just the English slogan.
@@davidsalazar2077 I'd go further and say that XY and SM look better. Sure this is higher resolution but it lacks visual cohesion. There isn't a unifying style.
@@L-Thatcher even Pokemon Battle revolution had better and more fluent models.
As long as people and fanboys keep buying it, Game Freak is continue to do the absolute minimum. They can't hide behind low spec hardware anymore and now it shows.
Cough cough Bethesda 😉
Philo Nerd like death stranding 👀😉👍
nobody hides behind low spec hardware, it's not like gameboy games developers were all lazy.
logos paint GF didn’t know how to compress anything which is why Iwata needed to help them fit in Kanto in G/S
Sorry homie, the fanboy term doesn’t really apply here
The game sells enough with KIDS for them to justify not caring.
Let me sum up the game in 2 lines:
Have you heard of our lord and saviour Leon, it is said he is undefeated and that he has a Charizard too.
Nimit Nayak 😂😭👏🏿
+Nimit Nayak I highly recommend watching maxmoefoegames' recent upload of Pokemon Sword gameplay. He himself is a big fan of Charizard, but even he can't tolerate how much the game shoves this fact in your face. You'll get some good laughs out of watching it too.
I'm starting to suspect Gamefreak has literally forgot how to write Champions.
XY had noncharacter Diantha, Sun and Moon literally didn't have a champion, and Leon is the most obnoxiously stanned character in the game.
And did you hear that he gets lost very often?
*laugh track*
@@BennyGoId I absolutely adore Charizard but I'm so sick of this. The poor lizard probably misses all his friends.
It's pretty bad if you compare it to other first party games like Zelda or Mario but it's even worse if you put it side by side with the recent ports of The Witcher and, specially, Dragon Quest XI.
Dq not a port
@@LOLxUnique DQ XI is a port.
@@LOLxUnique
It's a re-release with extra content but the core game is essentially the same, so it's even worse for Pokémon, you get the point.
I was aware that they built dq from the ground up for switch
Axel Vera yeh man I get you
Game Freak have been getting away with minimal effort for far too long.
Try the wild area while online, frame dips and hitches everywhere.
Not for me get better internet dude check your router or something
@@greengamerguy623
Frame dips have nothing to do with internet speed. 😐
I've seen the same frame dips on my brothers Switch lite and we have a 100mb internet connection
@@greengamerguy623 sure you are online? when i go trough the wild in offline mode it's solid but when i connect to internet it gets terrible and i'm using a wired 400/400 connection.
@@MrHBDk
Switch is capped to like 30 something.
Nintendo used a shitty online chip
The fact that Astral Chain exists on the same console is laughable.(I think that games graphics are amazing)
Xenoblade X ran on the Wii U at a stable 30FPS, and it was the single biggest hand crafted open world at the time.
Doesn't quite deliver? What a shock.
People wanted Pokémon: Breath of the Wild, but got Pokémon: The Wand of Gamelon instead. 🙁
You give this game too much praise.
@@noobtubephails 😂😂😂😂
🤣😂
Pokemon Red Dead Redemption would be epic
@@leinadyon Instead of using pokeballs you just lasso them and drag em behind your Rapidash
So basically GameFreak should ask monolith for help lol.
I'm going on a whole next level: sell off the Pokémon rights to someone like square-enix, atlus, level-5 (which all are Japanese for that reason), or to some other European Devs like cdpr, spyders or hell even the piranha bytes. And Nintendo should stop with its hardware (just like sega did) and makes its game franchises like mario, Pokémon, Zelda and xenoblade available to multiple platforms like the PlayStation, pc , Xbox..imagine if someone like level-5 develops a huge open world Pokémon game on the lines of Witcher/assassin's creed odyssey/Skyrim on the PlayStation/PC platforms..or hell even the switch can run it, albeit being underpowered. If switch could run titles like botw, xenoblade 2, Witcher 3 (even though at the lowest of low settings), dragon quest 11, I can see absolutely no reason for this 2019 Pokémon game to be this lackluster; apart from the dev "gamefreak" being too incompetent and orthodox. Or maybe too money-minded. Quite a shame that a Pokémon game turns out to be the most inferior looking, despite being the richest gaming franschise. Abandon this game so that gamefreak shall know
Or you know, Genius Sonority.
I mean... They helped out the Zelda Devs and look how well that game turned out. I'd say it's worth a shot. Their engine is amazing for the switch and for open world games.
@@matteste They're talking about Monolith Soft in particular because they have experience in making environments and open-ended environments look absolutely gorgeous and totally worth exploring. That way GameFreak would be able to focus on the parts of the game that they excel more at like maybe the actual gameplay content but they've spread themselves thin here for some reason when they didn't need to.
The problem with gamefreak is they have mostly no experience into other system than 3ds and past gameboy while monolith have develop game on Wii/WiiU/Switch. Sure, Gamefreak could have use help there and no one will say otherwise but monolith probally didn't have time to do it because of an upcoming new game other than Xenoblade 1, Platinum was busy with Astral Chain / Bayonetta 3 and Retro Studios is busy with Metroid. Can GameFreak improve on the next one probally but I do believe that people was expecting way too much from them.
Careful, DF. You don’t want to go insulting the Pokémon fanatics who support this game.
In seriousness, it really is an underwhelming game. Especially when many of Nintendo’s first-party titles look and run better than this.
But this was under the influence of The Pokémon Company, who wanted the game rushed out for the holidays in the hopes of selling a ton of merchandise.
But the worst offender here is how Junichi Masuda straight-up lied to us about its development. That’s what disappoints me the most. We deserve better.
I'm just waiting for Verlisify to have the balls and say that this video is full of lies.
We know it's coming😒
@jesus barrera Maybe theyre just frugal as eff...dont wanna share the wealth.
Absolutely agree.
The lies!
The crazy pop-in alone is what would prevent me from getting this game.
the range is just too close man, you look at those ports (botw wiiu port, witcher) then look at pokemon, like whats wrong with them man
I got the game and I think its playable in handheld, the docked mode is making me too sad when I look at it. But beside that the game is fun weirdly
It’s really bad. I know that you have to adjust your expectations when playing games on Switch, but that close of pop in would be such a huge issue for me. Plus with the comparisons to Zelda and Xenoblade... there’s almost no excuse
@@GeekdomCentral just pray they remain whats good in sword/shield and works on the other portion of games that need to be fixed on next gen pokemon. For me fixing the national dex and popping is on top priority. Then do something to the pokemon so the pokemon can interact with the map more like swimming, bird jumping on land, pokemon eating glass blablabla
It's annoying but it doesn't ruin the game for me.
Smash Ultimate: Everyone is here!
Pokemon Sword and Shield: Some of them are here!
"Less than half of them are here!"
“Not even whole Kanto, which we love to milk to death”
i cant believe you didn't show framerates for the wild area!
DigitalFoundry really pulled their punches, they knew that badmouthing the new pokemon release would make the fanboys rabid.
Fps in wild area are just fine as long as you don’t turn on online communication
When actual tech experts expose the embarrassing level of effort GameFreak’a put into this asset flip of a game.
They were def pulling punches
Tom is actually using very soft language. These revelations demand harsher language.
It's only $50 in my country (in a certain shop if you're a member), the proper price for this game lol
@@RicochetForce It called keeping it professional.
*Pretends to be Shocked*
*SockedPikachu.png*
No fr
I bet you still bought it though
@@joshuaijaola2145 I didn't. So whats your next illogical and dismissive statement that tries to undermine people's criticisms gonna be?
@Cloudii I typed out an entire paragraph explaining in great deal my motivations behind my comment but my phone shut off before I could post it.
TL;DR of supposed comment: Deus Knight is anti-dexit. The guy I replied to tried to imply that he bought the game anyways despite his criticism which in his mind and many others means his criticism has less value.
I replied because I share the anti-dexit view so his comment may as well have been directed at me. After all I couldve posted any anti-dexit comment and received the same reply.
Also despite all this, a person doesnt need to be talking to you directly in order for you to interject into the conversation/discussion.
Example: your comment.
"Switch's Next-Gen Pokémon Doesn't Quite Deliver"
Understatement of the year, folks.
mjc0961 the games still great tho sooooooooooo
It seems to me more like they didn't put the effort and money a new console Pokemon game deserves.
@@TheGamingTeam101Tgt101 no they're not
@@TheGamingTeam101Tgt101they were talking about the graphics tho. This is a graphics analysis channel after all, not a game review channel. And on the graphics side they do definitely worse than "not quite deliver"
@@TheGamingTeam101Tgt101 yeah, they are...
the PRIOR GEN games
When I see Pokemon Sword or Shield I can't help thinking "man, MonolithSoft really did a spectacular job with Xenoblade Chronicles 2"
Xenoblade 2 drops down to 276p resolution. We're talking about PSP game levels here, back in 2005...
And remember, XC2 could still have even been better.
J S you meant can drop down rather than drops down, which is significantly different right? 276, this number, can you provide a source for that, was this a mistake of your, or are you overexaggerating a number to try to reforce your point in the hopes it would slide without anyone notice? because there is a 100 p difference between 276 amd 376.
Pokemon SS is nothing short of a joke close to Xenoblade 2 and the video here clearly showed and even more of a joke close to the expansion Torna the golden country.
@@joebilly3719 Look up the Digital Foundry analysis of Xenoblade 2, 276p is correct
@@joebilly3719 he fight. 276p b wet lower 20fps
Other franchises made the generational jump to Switch or even WiiU just fine, but Pokemon is stuck 3-4 generations behind and yet gets a free pass from most people.
A Pokemon with the visuals and open world like BOTW would be of the best things ever.
It doesn't even need to be a BOTW. That's expecting too much from Gamefreak
Botw would also be shit without the developers of Xenoblade Chronicles X and Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Give Monolith Soft the development of a Pokémon game and they will do wonders.
Shiny graphics won’t help if your being coddled like the past games. Gives us difficulty settings already Game Freak! That way you pander both to kids and veterans. I want to be able get thrash by the first gym and have to rethink my team strategy. Not go in to the championship and sweep him with one Pokémon.😑
"Other franchises made the generational jump to Switch or even WiiU just fine" I guess you don't remember the 7th generation of consoles. Developer especially the Japanese struggled with HD games. They are just now getting the hang of it with the late PS4 games, but they are still struggling
Developers like Square Enix are even have a hard time
Here is a quote from an investor Q&A they did in 2018
"Concerning HD games, the number of third-party development studios in Japan capable of creating console games is on the decline, and we are struggling to recruit developers. Recruiting resources overseas and collaborating with overseas development firms is going to be key. "
This is why portable system are so big in japan than the west
Only 2 years ago Gamefreak was a handheld developer. Now they are being dragged kicking and screaming in the HD console space to develop games. We all been comparing games made developer with years of experience for developing for HD consoles.
@@tyrcipher8811 The PS3 was a pain in the arse to develop for with respect to the XBOX 360, that was why early games didn't look much better than PS2.
Back when I first played Pokemon in the late 90's on the game boy, I always dreamed of what a real console version would be like.
Over 20 years later... This is so disappointing.
Most of us have dreamed about it. By now, we should already have a game where you can battle like in the anime by giving your pokemon voice commands. But instead, it's the same old game, just with upscaled graphics, but same old boring animations, which don't even contact with the opponent. Well, thinking about it, I guess lots of people would whine and attack Gamefreak even worse if they did change the battle system. Just look at how aggressive final fantasy fans are because the games aren't "round based" anymore.
We only got 10% of that dream console Pokemon game, maybe the next Pokemon game will be 20% of what we always wanted if were lucky.
There are. They're called pokemon Colloseum and Pokemon XD: Gale of darkness, made by genius sonority for the gamecube.
Pokemon Stadium was the first console game and on the N64 too. You could even play the Pokemon games on the SNES, N64, and GameCube with the adapters too. Granted it's not quite a full console Pokemon game/s but still fun.
GameCube had original Pokemon games as well that's pretty fun too. :)
Pokemon Cut, Copy, and Paste
Sadly that applies to a bucket load of games. NFS, FiFa, CoD, Farcry, fallout etc the list could go on for along time ffs.
Here's a new trilogy idea, since they are running out of naming conventions
Pokemon: Cut
Pokemon: Copy
Pokemon: Paste
Eddie Brock At least the developers of those games don’t lie saying they need to cut content in order to improve animations when in reality the animations are copy and pasted from the 3DS
@@cahan7033 lmao. Ur serious as well. Cut and paste is what it is. Cod and fifa especially and the others say hi to that. XD. Like them games dont drop anything. Also I did say the list goes on. Acting like pokemon is an exception is pretty lame.
@@eddiebrock118
Call of Duty, Far Cry and Fallout have all changed and dropped things with favorable to mixed reception, though. Fallout 76's problem is terrible optimization, Far Cry's is that it's getting more and more stale even with the changes, and the same applies to Call of Duty. Pokemon is on a completely different level.
i mean...this looks like an upscaled 3ds game
which considering the developer isn't surprising.
Just a reminder 400 Pokémon got removed for this.
Wrong, 400 pokemon are in the game , thwy removed far more.
@9600GTMAN Including Hidden Power, Return and Pursuit. I miss the latter one so much.
Only half the pokemon are programmed into the game? Why isn't the game half the price?
@@gingersnaps6941 greed
@@ShouldOfStudiedForTheTest wait, did they really cut all those moves? Their claim that they focused on competitive play is even more ridiculous now
At first I was like "Pshhh SwSh don't look that bad" then you threw in Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade footage and now I'm biting my nails.
Xenoblade X makes it look even worse. 154 sq. miles of absolutely seamless exploration, and it's drop dead GORGEOUS.
Aside from resolution, starfox adventures on gamecube looked better than this and ran at 60fps!
Keep in mind it was made by Rare, while not having too open areas. But yes, it was better than this ne3 pokemon game.
Super Mario Odyssey on Switch looks better than Sword Shield
yessss or F-Zero GX
@@alinepiroutek8932 I'm struggling to think of a Switch game that looks worse than Sword & Shield.
RicochetForce Ark: Survival Evolved? 😉
P-p-pop in is minimal???
"For this part at least."
Whew.... Almost thought you guys went IGN. But once again, an excellent analysis
Me : The pop in can't be that bad surely
*Watches video*
Me : "O..Oh.."
yeah we have n64 levels of pop in/field of view here.
Yeah, N64 textures, draw distance and draw distance. But we keep being told we're being overdramatic.
I am shocked how bad it actually is. Man. Shield and Sword suck!
You clearly forgot to check the Wild Area while connected to the internet when measuring performance. It drops frames constantly! Around 20fps all the time. It’s a nightmare.
This game needed another year in develoment to be finished, just like my missing Volcanic support.
Payne 96 I dont think a year longer development with gamefreak would have made any difference.
@@ChrisBa303 😂😂
I was NOT expecting to see you here😂
@@zwartesoep2010 I am transcending the boundaries of a childrens card game.
Krakatoa!!!
Another thing that was missed in this: Pokémon aren’t scaled properly in battles. Wailord is an obvious example to see this in action
harbenm I was devastated to see my girl all small and such, made me sad :((
Groudon would look so dumb. Can you imagine?
Which is a particularly mystifying problem considering one of Let's Go's few positives was the meticulous attention paid to the scaling.
Raymond Throne
The scaling in Let’s Go was awesome. Onix ftw
@@raymondthrone7197 Let's go is far more polished than these games
A graphics and tech review gives a far better review of a game than that IGN "review" which constantly praises basic features and ignores major flaws. Hmm.
Not sure if you are aware but IGN sells their scores....and they have for many years now.
Q is legit. Don't trust the media. Source? Some random reddit post? The Pokemon score is way to high but i don’t think it was bought, the reviewer had just way to low standards.
@@ChrisBa303
I have no source. Simply my own observations for the past 10+ years. Inform yourself.
@@ChrisBa303
And the individual reviewers are all employed through IGN. They don't have the final say in what they write. Are you naive? How old are you?
According to the latest IGN NVC, anyone who does not agree with their 9.3 score is ignorant.
yea idk, this game just looks really underwhelming graphically, especially compared to breath of the wild which, being a launch title, is still surprisingly one of the best looking games on switch
actually let me correct that, botw is technically a WII U game, so it's even more embarrassing
A Wii U isn't that far off from a switch tbh
Even more? That have almost the exact same clock speed. The Switch isn't necessarily more powerful in any capacity.
@@yusuf8938 No they don't lol. The 2 aren't even comparable because they have different architectures and, clockspeeds, and core counts. The only thing we can confirm is that the switch is stronger
Switch is a bit more powerful in handheld mode. Docked mode it's like 3* more powerful than the Wii U. BOTW on the Switch was actually a somewhat rushed port and handheld mode runs better than the Wii U.
Filbertfriend um the switch is way more powerful than the Wii U, there’s no way Fortnite would run on the Wii u
Draw distance is unreal.pop in BABY!
Dreamcast had less pop in.
@@paulclinton6414 yap
This is legit 5th-gen era pop-in lmao.
Honestly, Sword and Shield (and the Let's Go! games) look like Sun & Moon rendered at a higher resolution.
Why so much mercy points for this game. How about people actually start asking for ambition out of these games? Every single Pokémon game is the same old crap, they can’t even let you choose between being a kid, an adult or an elder character and that shit is long overdue.
Exactly. We SHRED EA, Bethesda, Ubisoft, etc... when they excrete a turd of a game with baffling game design and technical decisions.
But Gamefreak? We can't criticize them or we're 'entitled' or 'spoiled'.
it's a game.
like honestly it's just a game. not a big deal.
@@RicochetForce People have been asking for it. The problem is that millions of parents and little kids are going to buy Pokemon no matter how shit the actual game is, so Gamefreak doesn't care. Also, with TPC forcing Gamefreak to make games every year they're kind of screwed. Combine Gamefreak's poor devs + annual releases and this is what we're going to keep getting. Unless the casual market stops buying the games nothing will change.
@@BELDAM808 Whether it's just a game or not, lying to your fanbase isn't excusable. You can't say that there will be no National Dex so that the models and animations will be improved, release the game using 99.9% reused 3DS assets, and expect fans to not notice that.
And Game Freak defenders like to misconstrue argument into "the developers are working very hard" and "most people don't care about the National Dex, so what's the issue?" The problem isn't the lack of a National Dex. The problem is that Game Freak's reason for not including the National Dex turned out to be a lie. I would have absolutely no problem if they said that they had a deadline to meet and thus, had little time to bring over every single Pokemon. That would be a far more honest answer.
@@BELDAM808 They're asking for $60 for people's hard earned money.
This is a faceless, heartless, shameless corporation.
They do not deserve sympathy, respect, or be spared from criticism.
Imagine apple advertises a new iPhone. In their statement about said new phone they have to cut features to improve performance. That is sword and shield in a nut shell.
When I was a kid playing pokémon red, I was always dreaming about the future when we could play pokémon games that were just like the anime, with fully voiced encounters with trainers and stories to go along with them, animated battles that seemed like struggles instead of RPG numbers rolling down and densely packed environments with pokémon popping up from out of trees, behind bushes,... And the switch feels like it finally has the power to do this. Instead they just kept repeating the same cycle that they always do: Add a bunch of features that aren't that interesting or fun, just because every generation needs to introduce something new, create large, empty spaces filled with random spawns and uninteresting NPCs and just add some extra pokemon. Technically, it's so bad, even compared to let's go eevee/pikachu, and it does nothing with the gameplay or story to justify it.
The intro to Sword and Shield (with Chairman Rose speaking) so, so badly wants voice acting, but alas...
It’s a shame, really.
Gen 5 and the promise that was made during XY made me so excited for the games that came after...
@@MrCG35 Not even to mention the Piers singing. Which only gets worse when consider gen 5, either would be the Village bridge song, or Roxie's gym in B2/W2 who even was translated outside of Japan (SERIOUSLY, WHAT THE HECK HAPPENED SINCE GEN 6?!). The only thing I wanna see is a competent game.
Play shin megami tensei v when it comes out, it’s the series that inspired Pokémon and it’s basically your whole thing here
15:49 onward, how come there seems to be a ton of framepacing stuttering issues that are not showing up on your on-screen measurements?
*DF, talking about the starter selection cutscene:* "It's beautifully animated"
*He says as the Sitrus Berry falls into the lake with a weak splash effect and no ripples in the water*
“Gotta Catch ‘Em A-...”. Oh wait. You can’t.
Gotta Catch Some Of 'Em!
Gotta catch them all Galar Edition!
Gotta stop hating
you could never actually catch them all in past games but in this game you can find every pokemon in the pokedex in the wild
@@Penguin1569 Oh damn thats an amazing improvement, that might actually be worth the dex cuts.
Reggie: Heres a pokemon that looks like an apple.
4Horsemen of The Apocalypse 🤣
But reggie doesn't work anymore
Hey you leave Reggie out of this!
He's retired!
@@Kimarnic 😭
+4Horsemen of The Apocalypse Doesn't that title already go to Bounsweet (introduced in S&M)?
wow full 3d in 2013? truly revolutionary
DigitalFoundry always defends a game no matter how messy it may be, but even they can't defend this disaster
>always defends a game
Nah go back and watch the video they made on Ark.
LORDORBY always defend a Nintendo game*
DF is pretty objective most of the time. From a performance perspective, I wouldn’t pick anyone else for a “review”, since DF actually goes in depth on the performance and graphical side of things.
Manuel Koegler they’re rarely objective when it comes to Nintendo, almost anything gets praise
Battlemage?
13:10 "Is it the next evolutionary step in Pokemon, then?"
Purposely over footage of Eevee?
Ironically the recent trend has been to emphasize Eevee itself over any of its evolutions, much like how Pikachu is constantly in the limelight and Raichu the ignored stepchild. Which is to say Pokemon's current path has been one of deliberate non evolution.
What Game Freak pulled off here is truly embarassing!
Xenoblade 2 clips almost look a gen ahead lol
@FeelsModMan party pooper
"Pop in is minimal" Every character not hidden by an object is clearly popping in when you get closer than 50 meters. You dropped the ball on that one.
Looks like someone didn't watch the video before commenting
The fact that this game costs as much as AAA ps4 or xbox game is ridiculous
I was so hyped for this game at announcement. Its really disappointing
No you weren't. You never planned to buy a pokemon game did you?
@@deanthorpe1684 I dont really have to explain myself. But I just got a switch when the new version came out. Out side the older games like Smash and BoTW . Games I wanted to play was Pokemon , Daemon x machina, and Astral Chain.
I was looking at pokemon since the last new pokemon was Black/white.
My favorite is silver. Just Picked up 3ds for Soul silver and Fireemblem .
@@ShimaS-0079 I think if you wanted a pokemon game there's nothing lacking here that should change your mind but OK.
@@deanthorpe1684 it's my opinion. We are looking for different things. The national dex is a big thing for me. I've wanted a full fledge pokemon game since beginning. I don't think Gamefreak is capable of that as years have gone by. And some of my favorite pokemon been cut. This type of thing should be made clear at the announcement.
@@ShimaS-0079 fair enough, you won't get a full dex without this game though even if its not full on its own. I feel they spoke about the lack of national dex before pre-order was available though? Not 100% on that. I very much expect that content will be added over time, and that with the inclusion of the replacement for the national dex that they are doing and the next game will have players where they want to be. I understand that this isn't enough for many people. I just personally don't feel that's a reason to hate on the game and that you do indeed continue to get (in hours played and enjoyed) extremely good value for money with all pokemon games with sw and sh looking particularly tasty in this regard
He missed out on mentioning all the reused models and animations from the 3DS games.
There's nothing wrong in re-using stuff to be honest.
They had to hold back the graphics to make sure every pokemons would fit on the cartridge....
Oh wait
I didn’t expect the amount of jaggies.
Imagine a franchise as big as this cannot afford a few voice actors to voice their games? Ridiculous.
That would cut their profits by 100k to 1 million. You have to understand, they are just an indie company. You can't afford to lose 1 mio if you only make billions /s
Going from Dragon's Quest 11 Special edition to this I am so disappointed
Account for Reasons I just finished DQ11. I don’t think I can go from that game to this back-to-back. Sun and Moon were pretty big steps up from X&Y IMO, so hopefully the next Pokémon outing on Switch will deliver the same step up in quality, if not more so.
@@noahallison4079 this is their 3rd game on switch. i doubt it will get any better from here
RogelioDelaToro I agree that the games have trended towards disappointing for some time now, and I agree that X&Y are glaring offenders in this regard. Sun and Moon came after X&Y though, and I thought those games were pretty good. Not perfect, but ‘perfect’ is too high of a bar. So I’m hopeful the next one will be better. Maybe this is naive of me, but what difference does my naivety make? I have no control over the quality of the games, so I choose to hope they are good. That doesn’t mean I’m defending this one, and it definitely doesn’t mean I’m playing this one (I’m not). I just hope the next one is good, regardless of how likely that may be.
@@Ballislife32 The second worst was black and white. They saved that game by releasing black and white 2. But somehow I doubt they'll do that with sword and shield.
Wide as an ocean, shallow as a pond.
Probably the best description in the comments so far.
I really don't see how that applies. Perfect for No Man's Sky, but, this game is just clumsy.
@@lum26akua28 maybe u miss understand his point of view.
@@eddiebrock118
Or maybe he's wrong. Maybe we can work that out through conversation.
This comment doesn't make sense as this game isn't "wide". Something with a lot to see but little to do would fit this comment better. This game has little to see AND little to do
I know graphics don't matter as much to a lot of people but for me, good graphics are needed for games where explortion is a big game play feature.
The main problem in this game isn't the graphics, the main problem is the short linear and unchallenging story. Then we have a battle system where the mons still just wiggle on their spot and don't even make contact with their targets. The animations are disappointing, especially given the reason they gave us for cutting half the pokemon. And I'm a guy who loves eye-candy. 90 billion dollar frachise and this is all they are willing to spend money on.
I'm having fun exploring the region so far dispite framerates issues
That or I have low standards
@@peenSuperLoser The art style is a big factor too. Maybe it just hits the spot for you.
Honestly I liked towns in the previous games a lot more. Most of them had interesting scenarios, interesting characters, and a lot of content. These new towns don't have that much.
Watching this in disappointment in how Scarlet and Violet performs
Yeah, I had to go back and check if it really looked as bad. Something clearly went wrong during dev of Scarlet/Violet
They need to try the wild area online, cause that dips and stays abysmal, especially when there’s weather effects. The amount of times it literally freezes briefly is ridiculous.
I find it hilarious these games havr always included the massive ever growing pokedex now its on a console and the first thing they do is cug it in half.
Not just simply cut. It's like they used a random numbers generator to pick who stays and who doesn't. Too many good pokemon gone, probably forever, and lots of useless shitmon still present.
Out of all the reviews for Pokemon Sword and Shield, this is the most honest and precise review.
@6:31 "the more taxing effects like fog..."
Silent hill on the ps1 "lol"
Seriously, this came to my mind, too. Fog exists in games to help with horrible rendering distances, or poor background textures, not to add graphical fidelity. The Silent Hill HD re-releases tried to remove the fog, but it just highlighted all the rough spots in the game's graphics. They took a design limitation and turned it into a mood-setting effect to great success. The N64 Superman game used fog, and it just made it awful to play (among other things). In SW/SH it's anything but impressive.
7:03 “Kahntrahvahsee” Luv it. 😁
I feel like these games are missing out when it comes to story. Imagine a game like this or a pokemon mystery dungeon game now with a story as good as explorers of time or something.
What amazes me is this game doesn't really look better than Pokémon gale of darkness a game made in 2005
That game and before than colloseum had already great cast shadows.
Yeha the tech broke down allright
Pokemon: Got'em
"Towns are often lined with boarded up shops" - I dunno that kinda sounds like rural England to me : p
I watched some playthroughs and now don't wanna spend money on this...
This looks boring as hell...
What's the point of removing the main content from a collecting game???
Money!
So they can sell it back to you with ultra sword and ultra shield
Bruh, Pokemon was boring before this game
So they can force people to transfer their pokemon into Pokemon Home which requires a $5 subscription while they wait for a game that has their favorite pokemon in it.
Fun Fact: Luxray hasn't been in a Regional Dex since 2008. So a Luxray fan would have their favorite pokemon stuck in a subscription based Pokemon prison for YEARS.
doesn't port all the pokemon and reused models and lame animations :(
This game just isn't worth $60.
Josh Spicer 40$ at max
It’s so disappointing... hopefully next year they should learn from their customers rant!!!
Nintendo Addict I want diamond and pearl remake👏🏿
no one gonna mention how exp share isnt optional :,(
The game is apparently pretty balanced around it, but yeah, I feel ya'..
@@thod8820 It just made an already extremely easy game just even easier. Now you can literally just rely on one powerful Pokemon and button mash your way through most of the game due to this game naturally having you be overleveled at every point unless you try to speedrun through it.
Thod tbh i dont feel any balance :/ it feels too easy almost as if the game is playing itself half the time, i still enjoy it just not as much as i thought i would
@@thod8820 Sun and Moon and to a lesser degree X and Y were also balanced around EXP share. The only difference now is I have to painstakingly try avoid experience whenever possible if I don't want the game to be literally effortless.
Not even hard. Effortless.
@@AntiRiku to be fair mate you can power through any pokemon game with a single pokemon
and quite a lot of people think grinding pokemon individually is boring and time consuming
padding if you will
the amount of times I left Bibarel as my HM slave in Platinum is absurd. Would have used him with the new exp share as he'd always have a fighting chance
if they sort out the balance for the entire game like other RPGs with shared experience do then it'd be a non issue
Game Freak is so lazy.
It is a 9.3 game. If you disagree, you are just ignorant according to the folks at IGN NVC.
@@paulclinton6414 The folks at IGN NVC are literally paid to say nice things about big gaming companies, so honestly I think I can live with them thinking I'm ignorant.
You guys do know that he is scolding IGN and NVC right?
@@paulclinton6414 pretty sure this is sarcastic right?
Finally, an unbiased review of this game that doesn't feel the need to overstate it's controversies. Thank you Digital Foundry
Ye it's a fair review. What's amusing is that the haters still take it as an accepting enough review to start with all the over the top exaggerated negatives.
Why can't we just give Pokémon to a competent dev that actually wants to try? It's so sad.
Would cost money, can you imagine what it would feel like cutting a million from a billion?
"You remind me of an old saying, about how beauty is only skin deep."
what's new in gameplay aspect?
My favorite graphics, music and gameplay style was Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver, with Pokemon Black and White having the best spritework and being the second best in charm, but that's just me.
I just can't wait for the next versions, based in the USA. Pokemon Gun & Pokemon Kevlar
Ultra sword/ultra shield for the same price as these games. And the suckers will keep buying every time.
USA was already done...Well specifically New York, but I see what you mean.
They already exist. Most fans ignored that because of absurd reasons like an Ice cream or the trash bag.
The only thing I truly can’t get over is the draw distance
Everything else is “OK” in handheld mode and Pokémon has never been about graphics BUT that draw distance is a continuous reminder that I’m playing a game
Ridly Lupin
First off, that’s was a long ass rant lol
Those are all valid criticisms. But I want to point out... I was only speaking for myself. Not the community as a whole. I can see why more hardcore fans are upset but I also think we’re going to see each game get exponentially better just like on the 3DS.
Personally, I don’t need a story where I save the world every game. Team yell does suck, would have been better w/o a team imo.
And Even though some of my fav Pokémon aren’t in the game it’s also the reason I’m actually using the new ones... haven’t done that this much since gen 3.
The wild area is a tease... but a damn good one and a step in the right direction.
I hated Z moves, didn’t care for Megas “too similar to digimon imo” but I’m actually enjoying Maxing far more than I thought I would.
I don’t think the game is great... but I do think the game takes steps in all the right directions I’ve wanted for years. Albeit “half steps”
And as bad as no one wants to except it... yes they could have put ALL the Pokémon in this game BUT there will come a day that isn’t realistic for yearly released games. And they will never switch back to every other year... they make too much off merchandising for that.
I am sorry you aren’t enjoying it more though. Hopefully they give you want you want in the next game 🤞
"Oh but why do you compare xenoblade to pokemon? It's not fair" they're on the same system and have the same restrictions and tech. The fact they used the quality as an excuse to the dex cut is what got us all into this trouble, had they shut up none of this outrage would've happened
Of course it isn't fair. Pokemon is worth 90+ billion dollars, compared to whatever few millions monolith soft does with xenoblade.
Let monolith soft do the next pokemon then we will se a real upgrade
Exactly Breath of the Wild would also be shit without Monolith Soft. They deserve more credit. Nintendo should give them more recourses to work with. They can't even work on their own IP'S anymore. Only 40 people were working on Xenoblade Chronicles 2.
@@lute1215 thats crazy them being on limited staff still being able to make some of the best rpgs for nintendo and you can see their expertice helped make breath of the wild game freak is stuck in the past probably using the same engine from the 3ds ones with hd
Yes please. I hate their stupid anime waifu looking new game character designs. Something cuter like Pokemon + their awesome worlds would be an improvement for both franchisees
@@MegaKirbySuperstar They had to outsource the art design of the blades. Their own art designers were working on Breath of the Wild.
Game doesn't look nearly as good as Persona 5 or Ni No Kuni (PS3 games from much smaller franchises) woefully low effort.
or even Yokai Watch 4 which is on Switch
If you want a game with a similar idea (catching and battling with monsters), but much better fidelity look at World of Final Fantasy.
Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth (low budget PSVita game) looks even better than this.
"pOkEMoN aRen'T aBoUT gRaPHiC aNyWay"
HAH imagine paying for a 60 dollar that performs worst than an 20$ indie game
While I agree with you, the logic used to justify it is dumb. Some $20 games have better performance than Zelda and that doesn't make them better.
The performance was pretty good though
Yeah, but it's fun.
If it's not fun, why bother?
That's quite bad logic considering if you play on PC the performance can go 120 fps and beyond no matter if the game is indie or triple A, so by that logic even BOTW and Mario Odyssey are worse than some (bad) indie games on Steam...
It will be 40$ in 2 months. It will get the Let's Go treatment.
Dragon Quest XI makes SwSh look like a joke
Not really. It's much more blurry than this.
@@Owlero And yet, way more impressive looking all the same, to say nothing of how much deeper it is. Large, fully explorable cities vs empty town facades.
OWLERO It looks way better than this, much better textures and models. And it’s a better game.
@@disclaimin It would be nice if you could actually SEE what you're exploring.
@@georgie9303 That's subjective. You haven't played Pokemon yet so you have no basis for that.
lol if people would just stop buying shit quality games, even the devs know it
@Walther Penne No, this game is just shit.
@@cookieface80 it's pretty good to be fair
as a pokemon game
the technical issues are a bit glaring sometimes though
They were really careful with who they sent early review codes to.. Normally most critic scores come in before the user scores.
The games been out for over 48 hours, still only 20 critic scores on Metacritic. That's not suspicious at all..
Pokemon SS is already in-game day 1 on Yuzu emulator. Pretty sure that in a few months its gonna run better than the original switch version, not to mention higher resolution and higher framerates
Soulsilver ?
This was very informative, thank you.
I really want to like Sword and Shield, and I totally understand that it was always going to be simillar to other mainline games. The thing is it's just an okay title because it's glaringly obvious that they could of done better but just didn't.
Game Freak themselves at the release of X and Y said they rendered everything in HD for futurproofing. So we know they're lieing when they say they redesigned everything because of what they told us years ago. Then they use that lie to justify cutting 52% of Pokemon, GTS, megas, and z-moves. Isn't it funny that the only parts that feel they live up to Switch's potential are completely brand new?
Game Freak is expecting people to pay AAA money on a full fledged console with all the higher costs but they delivered a 3DS game in HD. That's why it's meh. Mechanically they could have done more, story-wise they could have done more, cinematically they could have done more, they shouldn't have dropped 52% of Pokemon and the GTS, and the art assets needed more then a quick touch up here and there. For the price of the game, and the price to get a Switch to get into the game you're just not getting your monies worth. And you don't need to play the game to know that. There's no ground-breaking story, or super-cool new thing that really changes Pokemon gaming. It's a 3DS game in HD.
It's made even worse when compared to Xenoblade X. That game was also made in 3 years.
...On a much smaller budget.
...When Monolith Soft was still borderline indie. ...And had only made one game prior. ...While they were helping make BotW.
Can they just PLEASE hand the core games over to Monolith Soft? I'd DIE to see what they'd do with Pokemon.
"Reinstate the national dex." They already said that they won't. This is the norm now.