>The OST has its gems, like Toby Fox\'s song and Motostoke, but a lot of songs sound too cluttered (like the Wild Battle theme) or plain off, like the last phase of the gym theme with its chants.
What exactly do you mean by \'cluttered\' and \'plain off\'? I\'m not really a music buff and have heard these songs before in-game, so I\'m wondering if there\'s something up with the quality of the songs or something.
>The Wild Area and Dynamax battles have novelty, but they felt too shallow to fully enjoy.
Curious what you exactly meant by \'too shallow\'.
> What exactly do you mean by \'cluttered\' and \'plain off\'?
I found a lot of songs to sound like those. In the case of sounding \"cluttered\", tracks like the Wild Battle theme had way too many elements in them. Some were more loud or abrasive than others, especially the drums; this made them sound chaotic and confused to me, and not in a good way. I have the same complaint for Piers\' battle theme, where the drums drown out the other parts of the track to an extent.
When it comes to feeling \"off\", I\'ve found that I usually feel that way towards a song because I perceive it to have mixing issues or weird key choices. I\'d cite the two songs I mentioned as examples for the former, while I\'d cite the Gym theme\'s final phase for the latter. The chanting sounds completely unfitting for the key the song is played in, which makes it hard for me to enjoy. While the soundtrack has good ideas up its sleeve, a lot of it does sound lower-quality to me.
> Curious what you exactly meant by \'too shallow\'.
For the Wild Area, \"shallow\" is my one-word verdict on it. It\'s great to have an open area for the first time in the series, but like the rest of the game, it feels...empty, and the environment itself is a bit bland and visually unappealing. There\'s a lot of empty space, and the way weather works (changing from rain to snow or sandstorms if you take one step away from an area) takes my sense of immersion and snaps it in half. Open-world environments are typically full of different things to do, but the Wild Area offers little besides biking around and checking every den you come across, assuming you\'re not catching anything instead. In the end, it lost my interest pretty quick and I felt zero incentive to come back after I left.
As for Dynamax raids, I guess a better word would be \"uninteresting\". The battles themselves feel slow and have some frustrating mechanics (such as barriers and deliberately poor ally AI) that feel more obligatory than needed, making them less fun to play. Threats do vary a little by star system and the exact supersized monster you\'re facing, but most elements are the same across battles. It puts me off just enough to avoid raiding, and what\'s left isn\'t enough to hook me in.
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Core gameplay is great, but the rest is flawed.
Ever since entering mainline Pokémon with Ultra Moon, I always looked forward to trying out games I missed and future games especially. Unfortunately, after trying a copy of Sword, my hype was lost.
I'll start with what I liked the most: the core gameplay. It's great. SWSH takes the usual format and streamlines a lot. Overworld encounters were amazing to keep in, leaving RNG encounters optional and making the world feel a bit more alive. Battles are super fun, and getting a portable PC and easier ways to fine-tune your team (such as Nature Mints) were welcome changes. As someone who dislikes grinding, I'm not fazed by the forced Exp. Share—though I do think having an option for it was better. But the series has always tried to optimize its gameplay, and SWSH offers it at its best.
Sadly, everything else goes from decent to flat-out bad. The visuals are decent, though the draw distance sucks. The OST has its gems, like Toby Fox's song and Motostoke, but a lot of songs sound too cluttered (like the Wild Battle theme) or plain off, like the last phase of the gym theme with its chants. The Wild Area and Dynamax battles have novelty, but they felt too shallow to fully enjoy. The gyms nailed their atmosphere, but the puzzles weren't memorable and got worse as the game went on. Galar itself, while having pretty places like Glimwood Tangle, is highly linear and wasn't rewarding to explore. When I found myself playing for completion's sake instead of actually being engaged, I knew it had failed to hook me as a player. The whole game feels too empty to justify paying anywhere near its price, with a huge lack of things to do compared to past entries. After finishing the story only 20 hours in, I wasn't satisfied.
And the story is its own beast. For most of the game, you're focused solely on the Gym challenge while any hint of a bigger plot is cast off-screen by Leon, the Champion (partially why the game felt so empty). It's realistic, but we could've gotten something in its place. When it does pick up, it's so poorly executed that I actually hated it. The cast starting a riot and instantly pinning a few others as evil felt very forced, since it was done just because Leon was late for dinner over a meeting. And the normal "legendary almost destroys the world" happens because the bad guy couldn't wait one day to solve a distant power crisis. It being shoehorned into the last two hours made it feel even sloppier.
Most of the cast wasn't bad, though. You learn a lot about them as you play, especially your rivals since they actively develop and exhibit small details that give them real potential. Their main personalities don't have too much variety, but I appreciate the attempts at depth and their goals do change.
If you're really into the core gameplay and think it's worth the price, then you'll get your fill. But as a full experience with a new region, story and content to play through, SWSH is too underwhelming and I can't recommend it. 5/10.