How Pokemon Gen 9 is Handled After Sword and Shield May Define the Franchise's Future
Like many of Nintendo's game franchises, Pokemon has been churning out new mainline and spinoff titles for quite a long time. While many older games are considered to be classics by long time fans of the series, newer titles have been under much harsher scrutiny.
It is easy to argue that the criticism of the latest mainline Pokemon titles, Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield, is warranted. After all, these games were some of the most expensive mainline Pokemon games available for purchase with many players finding their adventures filled with glitches, bugs, and some questionable game design choices. Many also found the story to be lackluster compared to previous titles, and this is all despite in being a generally well-received generation.
Fans were also not fond of how expansion content that is usually added on with a definitive version of the games such as Pokemon Platinum were instead locked behind two expensive pieces of DLC. Despite the amount of disappointment behind these decisions by the Pokemon Company, the good sales of these games and their DLC could mean bad things for future Pokemon titles if continued. This can only really be known for sure, however, once the ninth generation of Pokemon is released.
One of the biggest controversies with Pokemon Sword and Shield was the removal of the national Pokedex. This meant that there were many Pokemon that simply couldn't be ever found or caught in Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield with them also being barred from being transferred in via Pokemon Home.
While there were a few updates that went alongside the DLC releases for Sword and Shield that brought over some older Pokemon, there still were many that were left behind. With Junichi Masuda responding to these complaints, it is very possible that Pokemon Home might be stuck as a forever home for many Pokemon raised by players since the third Pokemon generation. The apparent reasoning for the lack of national Pokedex is to force players to get to know the new Pokemon and get close to them, but many Pokemon games has the national Pokedex as a late game feature. This means that players will be able to enjoy the main game with their new Pokemon and bring their old party after the main goal is completed.
If the national Pokedex does not return in Pokemon's ninth generation, it's more than likely that players will never see every Pokemon within one game ever again. That is at least until Pokemon GO catches up to the main games in the amount of Pokemon implemented. With some less popular Pokemon, this could also mean that they could be considered retired and never be used in a mainline game again.
There are a lot of Pokemon fans that agree that the two best parts of generation six were the fairy-type and Mega Evolution. While Mega Evolution wasn't used as much in generation seven with Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon due to the new feature of Z-moves, Mega Evolution was still made as an option for players that unlocked it. However, both of these new battle options that changed up Pokemon battling were made completely unavailable in Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield.
This wouldn't be the first time a battle mechanic in Pokemon was retired, such as triple battles and rotation battles that were introduced in generation five. However, many competitive and casual players were quite fond of Mega Evolution and Z-moves. It was clear that Galar's dynamaxing was the replacement for these mechanics, but many felt that this new mechanic was inferior to the mechanics that were no longer available.
Despite Pokemon GO fully embracing Mega Evolution, its possible failure to be implemented in the generation nine games could mean the end of it and Z-moves for the Pokemon franchise. This means that the interesting new forms and lore behind these special forms and abilities will likely be forgotten and never seen on the Nintendo Switch.
It used to be tradition for Pokemon games to be released in pairs with a separate third game eventually coming out with a more polished experience alongside more content for players to experience. While this tradition has been broken for a long time, Pokemon Sword and Shield instead have DLC that needs to be paid for separately from the main game. The content of this DLC contains more Pokemon, more characters, and more story that many players feel that they should have gotten in the base game instead.
The Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLC seems to have sold rather well on top of Pokemon Sword and Shield's already impressive sales. This could lead to an echo with the release of Pokemon's ninth generation with content that was previously available in base games being reserved for future DLC instead, which could cause full Pokemon experiences to become more and more expensive down the line. It could even be possible that entire features like Mega Evolution and the national Pokedex that players want again could be locked behind this paid DLC. Pokemon fans that are still buying the mainline games would likely buy this DLC in order to get whatever resemblance of their old Pokemon experiences back for the Nintendo Switch, but that's not exactly consumer friendly.
When Sword and Shield were released, players found them loaded with bugs and glitches that were easy to perform and replicate, which was also true for the releases of the Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra DLC expansions. While many were patched out eventually, it did not shine a very good light on the games and their DLC. If this attitude is continued when the ninth generation comes out, it will become expected for every generation after to be an absolute mess upon release. With there being players that are unable to connect their Switch to the internet for whatever reason, there will also be many people unable to get the patches needed to make the game run as intended.
While patches are expected in the modern day of gaming, obvious bugs and glitches should be fixed before a game is released. Even in 2021, players are finding more and more glitches in Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield that give off a bad impression. It would be a shame to see this to be the norm for the rest of Pokemon's life span.
Pokemon Sword and Shield are available now for Switch.
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