Shaaria stared up at the towering opponent before her, reaching the top levels of the Wyndon stadium. The energy of the stadium was intense, with the crowd cheering, the announcer hyping up the proceedings, and the knowledge that an entire country was watching her from their TVs at home.

She'd give them a show.

"Code, return!" Shaaria commanded, thrusting out her right hand, holding a Pokéball in it. The Salazzle in front of her grinned briefly before she was consumed in white energy and vanished; she knew what was about to happen.

And so did the crowd: as Shaaria held the Pokéball down and to her right, energy transferring from the bracelet around her wrist into the ball, the cheers from the audience reached a new peak. Code's pokeball glowed with a brilliant pink light and swelled to three times its size in Shaaria's grip, and she tossed it up briefly before catching it, a determined look on her face.

Yelling "DYNAMAX!" loudly to play it up for the crowd, Shaaria tossed the ball up again, where it hovered in the air. Directing it with her magic, she swept it in a circle around her body as she turned to the vast empty space behind her, seeing herself on the Jumbotron at the back of the stadium. Directing the flying Pokéball with a one-handed gesture, she hurled it through the air, and it burst open before it even reached the ground to release the creature within.

Glowing red, Code the Salazzle landed on the turf and reared back, her whole body swelling and growing in rapid bursts. She let out a cry that grew deeper the larger she got, first reaching to the bottom of the Jumbotron, then the top of it, and then the top of the stadium. Flexing both arms, Code roared out as a wave of energy swept from her, ready to put an end to the tournament match, eyeing the similarly-sized opponent at the far end of the arena.

Turning back, Shaaria clenched a fist with determination. It was time to bring this bout to an end.

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The SFW alt of the previous picture. Guess who beat Pokémon Shield earlier this year? The last mainline game I played was Gen 2, so going straight from 2 to 8 was quite a jump. I have some Thoughts on the game, but I'll put them at the bottom of this file.

Yes, I did catch a female Salandit, named her Code, evolved her to Salazzle, and taught her Attract. Partly for the memes, but it also worked really well and she was in my party to the end of the game. Pretty much every 'mon she hit with Attract lost at least one turn to it, which is more than I can say for Shiu (my starter Sobble/Drizzile/Inteleon) who never actually landed confuse at any point on the moves that could inflict it. Even when other 'mons landed the confuse status, nobody ever lost a turn to it in my entire run, on my side OR the opponent's.

Shaaria is me, Salazzle!Code is currently Just A Salazzle™ but if I find the need to use her again she might get some personalization. : p
Art by  xizzdot.
Pokémon Shield and all the stuff relating to it belongs to the Pokémon Company.

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As I said, the last mainline game I played was Gen 2. (Gold, I think) I've heard plenty of complaints about the series and wanted to play a more recent one to see for myself. That meant either SwSh or S/V, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I went for SwSh for two reasons: the stadiums and the soundtrack. Pokémon is a series that rarely changes its formula, because its target audience never changes: children whose parents have money and are willing to buy them all of the related merch. Adults with disposable income are a nice bonus for The Pokémon Company I'm sure, but they aren't who the games are made for or targeted to. So the idea of a game that radically changes its theme by turning Pokémon gyms and battles into a spectator sport seemed like a really good way to breathe new life into the series. Also the gym leader battle theme rocks.

Plus, some of the bigger complaints I'd heard about SwSh were things I didn't really care about. Since the last game I played was Gen 2, I really did not give a damn that you couldn't import 'mons from previous games. (I honestly don't understand the appeal of that anyway) I also don't care about the multiplayer features because I don't have any friends to play with that's not an aspect of the game that appeals anyway.

So, armed with a small discount in the form of the Switch Online vouchers, I grabbed a copy of Shield (and Super Mario Wonder with the other voucher, which was excellent) and decided to give it a shot. I wouldn't try to fill out the 'dex, I'd just play through, build my team, and try to have fun.

There are definitely some very questionable design decisions, such as not being able to customize your character's appearance, change clothes, or even change the sound settings until you reach Motostoke. These things also cost money, but fortunately, that was never really a problem for me (after getting the incense that doubles money drops from trainers I made sure to use it at every opportunity). There's also a real lost opportunity for customization since you can't pick which uniform to wear into the stadium (fortunately Shaaria isn't bound by that restriction in the above picture), and you can't change your ball-throwing animation (I hear that S/V lets you do this though).

Which honestly brings me to the overall theme of my feelings about SwSh: missed opportunity. The game feels incredibly empty. I remember in Gen 2 you'd commonly arrive in a new town and you'd have to do a Thing before you could challenge the gym leader. Go to some nearby cave, tower, or other mini-dungeon, usually. Even if it wasn't required, it was at least a thing you could do that was available at that time, like the Gen 1 power plant or the lab on Cinnabar Island. SwSh doesn't have that and is extremely linear. They want you to pad out the game yourself by putzing around in the Wild Areas (which are pretty neat, but there's only two) or doing the 'fluff' activities like camping. The game feels very... empty, as a result, especially with how tiny the towns are. Ballonlea is, what, two houses, a Pokémon center, and the stadium? Even Pallet Town is more populated than that! At least the mushroom forest aesthetic looks kind of cool.

Then we have Team Yell, a.k.a. "the lamest Team in all of Pokémon history". I get it, the game takes place in Not!Britain, so the Team Of The Day is basically "Pokémon Football Hooligans", but they are by far the most laughably pathetic Team in all the games. They mostly just block your way (and not even that well, they have to liberally use invisible walls and dialogue triggers to actually stop you) to keep you on the intended linear path. I caught a Machoke outside of Hammerlocke specifically to deal with them, and boy did he ever (he oneshotted all but two Pokémon in Spikemuth, Marnie and Piers's teams included, though for those fights I did have him Bulk Up a bunch first). In a series where the Team Du Jour is typically bent on world domination or something, Team Yell is like a five-year-old on the sidelines saying "I wanna be a Team when I grow up!"

The actual 'plot' of the game feels like someone at TPC had the nearly-completed game and went "oh crap we need a plot outside of the Gym Challenge" and hastily shoved in the most half-assed story involving The Darkest Day and Eternatus. Rose's motivations make no sense and the resolution is just "oh well you beat me in a Pokémon battle I guess I've seen the error of my ways now". The postgame is no better. Bede just kind of exists, Marnie is just another Team Yell member, and Hop I mostly remember for one-shotting his Cinderace in every single fight after the tutorial.

However!

The gym battles lived up to my expectations, and they're clearly where most of the game's budget went. They have lots of little touches, like the gym staff wearing the stadium's uniforms and having the gym's logo show up on the fight-intro screen. The gyms are notable and worthwhile spikes in difficulty, and the leaders were consistently the most difficult fights in the game for me, as they should be. The Fire gym lived up to the hype of the NPCs as I went into the fight with Kabu down 3 'mons (thanks to one fight involving 8 out of 10 rounds of "The {wild Pokémon} used Bite! {My Pokémon} flinched!") The wild 'mons and the trainers on the routes were rarely threatening especially since they had 1-2 Pokémon max, but the gym leaders had full teams, powerful moves, and - my favorite part - bait.

On the surface it seems simple enough to do the gyms because they wear their typings on their sleeves, and Pokémon typings are easy to manipulate in your favor. Except that the gym leaders are built with the expectation of you doing this and several of them have clever counters. I had a real "Oh sh-" moment at the ice gym because I forgot that Lapras is an Ice/Water type, and she promptly oneshotted poor Dynamaxed Code with a Max Geyser; I had to go into panic mode and send out Shiu (my Inteleon) to tank hits until Dynamax wore off. Leon's Charizard outspeeding Shiu at the end of the game and nailing him in the face with Max Overgrowth was a masterstroke - because of COURSE the Champion is going to expect you to use a Water-type Pokémon against his Fire-type one - made all the sweeter by Shiu surviving with about 8% of his max health (putting him into Torrent) and one-shotting the Charizard in return.

It also helps that the gyms are visual spectacles with a unique introduction. There is no split-screen 'versus' intro like there is for every other battle in the game: you walk on the pitch, spread out, and hear the crowd starting to hype up before the Gym Leader Battle theme kicks in. It really makes the fights feel special, to say nothing of the venue. You really have a crowd there watching you. The gym battles are a spectacle (as they should be) even before Dynamax comes into play. As a mechanic it's not that interesting to be honest, but visually? 👀💦 And again, this is clearly where all the game's budget went: each leader having their own unique ball-throw animations and Dynamax animations is an excellent touch. Raihan being a maniac with his Rotom out and a dual-battle gimmick for his gym was an excellent choice.

I also appreciate that the finals brackets at the end bring back some of the gym leaders, even stronger than before. Nessa's Drednaw was incredibly scary. It would have been cooler if you could see some of the other fights pan out (even in cutscenes) but the budget wasn't that good. It also would have been a great twist if the first gym leader was back and suddenly much stronger, but I'll take the second one instead, sure. After the interruption of the Hastily Thrown-Together Plot, the champion battle against Leon is a fantastic final boss: he's tough and, as mentioned, lays a trap with his movesets. His battle music is great and beating him really does feel like an accomplishment (he got me down to just 2 Pokémon at one point).

So ultimately, while I did have fun, it feels like it could have been so much better. The gyms and gym battles were the highlight of the game, hence why I decided to get a picture set in one of them. The rest of the game is very forgettable for the most part for being so linear and empty. The QoL is nice (infinite-use TMs, permanent EXP-all, accessing the Boxes from anywhere, fast-travel is always available, HMs are gone, etc), but too much dev time went to fluff like camping and the side jobs (I did exactly one and was so underwhelmed I didn't do any more). The three rivals - Hop, Marnie and Bede - are largely half-assed, but I do like Hop's character development away from the stereotypical rival and changing to "I'm going to become a Pokémon researcher instead". That probably could have been fixed with more screen time for each of them. Bede giving up on being the hotshot rival and becoming a new gym leader would have been better if he was less of an unlikeable prat. And Marnie just kind of exists.

In the end, I did enjoy it (though not enough to get the DLC). My final team was Inteleon, Salazzle, Machoke, Bewear, Thievul, and Jolteon.
The Bewear I caught with the intention of her being my Fighting-type pokemon, but then she didn't learn any Fighting moves so she just became a tank instead thanks to Fluffy. The Jolteon was perpetually underleveled as I caught an Eevee early on, hunted around for a thunder stone, and only much later thought to look it up and discovered I'd missed it in the first wild area. Whoops! At least the permanent EXP-All helped him catch up a bit but he was always behind the rest of my team. The Thievul was the first non-starter Pokemon I caught and was my main Dark type user.

Anyway, I doubt anyone has read all this, but that's my thoughts on the game. Enjoy  xizzdot's fine work! Their upload is here: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58505694/