Pokemon has been around for a long time. Since Pokemon Red and Blue hit American shores in 1998, the series has become a worldwide phenomenon. Many of the kids who started playing the first couple generations of Pokemon are adults now, as old if not more so than Pokemon itself at 25, and as such, their relationship with the games isn’t what it once was. Setting aside the controversies that plagued Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield before launch, something about this entry has felt different for older players. It may well be that they no longer feel like they’re the plucky youngster setting out on their journey to catch ‘em all and be a master — instead, they feel like the more experienced rival.
The rival trainer is someone introduced early in every Pokemon game. While later games had groups of friends and sometimes villains acting as rivals, the earliest Pokemon games had a single, seasoned rival each — and that seasoning tended to be quite bitter. Gary/Blue Oak and Silver had mean streaks a mile wide, and felt largely ambivalent towards most of their Pokemon (with a few humanizing exceptions). Much of their character arcs were learning to set aside their arrogance and connect with their fellow humans and Pokemon. Real players are much more diverse (and receptive to Pokemon being a game) than that, but older fans are undoubtedly experienced and generally don’t view Pokemon Sword and Shield the same way a newcomer would.
At over 20 million sales, Pokemon Sword and Shield have cast a wide net over the Pokemon community. Now that the expansions have come and gone, getting into the endgame and building up a competitive team made of creatures from throughout the franchise has never been easier, and the global bout to become Pokemon Master rages on. A lot of experienced fans would add that, unfortunately, this has eclipsed the rest of the game. Players simply can’t catch ‘em all in Pokemon Sword and Shield. Even after all the expansions added, there are still a couple hundred Pokemon missing, and for players who have built up connections to their favorites, that can make what’s left ring hollow.
Old rivals did not exclusively use Pokemon as tools, no matter what they claimed. Gary showed a subtle fondness for his initial few Pokemon. He even seemed to mourn his Raticate’s death at the Pokemon Tower, though this has never been explicitly confirmed. Still, Pokemon Red and Blue hammered home that this was not his norm. Such difficulty viewing Pokemon as much more than tools and the adventure to obtain them as a means to gain strength only seems to be encouraged by Sword and Shield.
While stat training and plentiful levelling items means any Pokemon is viable to a point, making it in the online arena requires either finding a team that works, or renting Pokemon. As great as the system is, renting may be the most indicative feature of this mindset in Pokemon Sword and Shield; now, there’s no need to bother making a team the best they can be. Anyone can just use someone else’s better team, and realizing that is shows how much magic around the journey, not the competitive nature of it, has been lost.
Along with the mechanical shifts comes an odd narrative change as well: Pokemon Sword and Shield seem to treat the player like a rival. Story-wise and conceptually, experienced players never lose any fights they enter despite being new to the Pokemon world, and are made to feel even more superior thanks to the constant struggles of their main rival Hop. He is the champion’s younger brother — an obvious parallel to Gary being Professor Oak’s grandson — but far less successful.
Even though he is ostensibly defeating gym leaders the same as the player, he is portrayed losing fights constantly, even to other rivals and random grunts. This has the bizarre effect of shifting the status of an underdog from the player over to Hop, with players more in-tune with the one-step-further rivals of old. Pokemon Sword and Shield aren’t very difficult, but with this altered perception, they seem easy to beat.
Any Pokemon fan can tell that it has changed a lot over the years, but only experience and age will make one appreciate all that change. The old guard may now feel like competent but aloof outsiders as Pokemon continues to grow and step into unknown territory. Feeling like the smugly superior rival isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but unless the next Pokemon game leans into this and lets players tell rivals that they’ll “smell them later,” it may be better to try and recapture some of the old wonder and uphill fighting lost over the years.
Pokemon Sword and Shield are out now for the Nintendo Switch.
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