Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 2: Wilderness and Cityscapes

Last we left off, I went through what's basically an extended prologue through Wedgehurst, a.k.a. Tutorial Town. Weare introduced to a bunch of the main supporting characters, beat Hop's ass like three times, met a mysterious foggy wolf, got a letter of recommendation and got waylaid a lot by fluffy sheep. Dang those Wooloo!

And... yeah, I've been playing through this game a fair bit, and I did spend a good chunk of it sort of just exploring the Wild Area. It's... it's pretty neat. The actual game balance and the gimmicks of Wild Area is a discussion for another day, but as an actual experience? A combination of the free camera and the Pokemon moving around in an environment that's decidedly a lot less cartoony than Let's Go is... it's actually phenomenal. For all the gripes that I have with this generation's games, I have to admit that the Wild Area felt genuinely awesome to traipse through, and knowing that this is obviously a proof-of-concept to something more spectacular (and hopefully far more inclusive in the amount of Pokemon they include) in the future is pretty damn neat!

The Wild Area itself actually sort of stretches through a good chunk of Galar, and at the moment the only one accessible to my character is the huge patch between Motostoke and Wedgehurst. This huge chunk of Wild Area is divided into further sub-sections with names like Rolling Fields, Watchtower Ruins, Dappled Grove and the like. It's pretty neat, and each of the areas seem to have kind of its own theme. Some parts are hailing and have ice pokemon, some are clearly closer to the ruins where the Golurk and Golett are walking around, some are populated with ghost Pokemon... it's pretty neat.

There are also clearly larger Pokemon like Onix, Golurk, Palpitoad, Galvantula and Xatu just sort of wandering around outside the grass, clearly far more powerful than anything my team has, and the game warns me that these are pretty fucking powerful, good luck challenging them. I think I can't capture them until I have the appropriate badge? Which is kind of stupid, but even more stupid is the game allowing me to catch a level 50 Abomasnow before the first gym and sweep the entire first half of the game, so I can see why they did that.

There's also a large amount of older Pokemon in the Wild Area, I feel. The only Generation VIII Pokemon I encounter, I think, was the Gossifleur that I immediately added into my party, or the Skwovets that fall out of the berry trees. Something I really do appreciate about the Wild Area is how interesting the Pokemon's behaviour are. Some -- like Machops and Tyrogues -- are far more aggressive than the other creatures there. Some are just content to wander around, and some will actually run away from you.

There's also the whole Dynamax Battle stuff, which I'm happy to note that you can actually do run without connecting online. The game just shoves a bunch of AI trainers for you. It's gimmicky as all hell and feels like something that belongs in a mobile game or something, but I don't hate it. I just am really indifferent. The visuals are neat, if nothing else, but ultimately it's just a regular battle with some extra steps. My first Dynamax battle was a giant fuck-off Pidove, and let me tell you something -- there's just an inherent amount of hilarity in seeing a massive monster burst out of a rocky circle and it's a giant pigeon with dead eyes unleashing a distorted cuckoo. Also hilarious is whatever the fuck that noise my giant dynamax'd Sobble makes. Great job on the game makers, by the way, for the cry-distortion with the Dynamax Pokemon. That's pretty cool. Basically, Dynamax is both Mega Evolution and Z-Moves rolled into one, and you can only do it (as I understand?) in the Wild Area and gym battles. Again, very gimmicky, but the visuals are neat.

Speaking of which, I did a couple of Dynamax raids and the absolutely over-the-top Tokusatsu-villain-exploding-in-a-huge-fiery-ball-of-death animation as the Dynamax Pokemon loses and reverts back is just amazing.

There are also these random NPC's that sell you stuff based on the 'W' you have, which I think stand for watts? That's the currency of the Wild Area, and you use them to buy stuff. Like cooking ingredients for the curry minigame, or "TR"s, which... are one-use TM's. What is this, 1996? In all seriousness, though, having there be one-time-use versions of the TM's actually has been a neat little challenge that I'm happy we got back. I am so relieved when Generation V gave us infinite TM's, which made post-game Pokemon team-building so much more painless, but in the same vein it also takes kind of the thrill and resource management of the first four generations away when you run across a moderately-useful or extremely-useful TM early on and you have to angst on who to use it on. Having both TM's and TR's... it's pretty great, actually.

Camping is also neat! It's basically like Pokemon-Amie or whatever they called it in VII, and I'm all for anything that basically allows you to interact with your Pokemon. This time around, you camp and you have all six members of your party all running around the campsite and you can play and interact with them by throwing a ball or waving a little cat-tease toy and stuff. Sobble and Yamper are adorable, and honestly, if nothing else, I'm enjoying a lot of the flavour stuff from Sword/Shield.

Anyway, what can I say about the Wild Area? It's pretty cool. I love the watchtower area in particular.

After the Wild Area, I have to enter Poke-London Motostoke City, which is this combination of steampunk aesthetic and a general rustic feel that a lot of UK cities have. It's basically the super-huge Lumiose or Castelia City of the region, and hoo boy is it a huge city! Parts of it are still blocked off, and parts of it open up as you progress through the gym challenge registration cutscenes, but it sure is a big city! The trains going around in the background, the ridiculous gigantic gear-elevator contraptions that allow you to travel from the 'lower' parts of the city to the 'upper' parts, the fancy looking walkways and railways, all of the fancy posters with Chewtle or Octillery or whatever in the background... Motostoke's a pretty city.


As per usual, Hop, Sonia and Leon show up at various points in the city to basically none-too-subtly nudge you towards progression with the plot, and that's basically the gym challenge. After being distracted by reinventing my wardrobe and spending all of my money in the clothes shop, I also get distracted again making the League Card. Which is basically the same thing as your Trainer Passsport in previous games, and it really shouldn't be something that entertained me this much, but the fact that you can modify so much of the stuff in the League Card from background to effects to expression to the actual pose -- and one of the poses available is the fucking Takeshi Hongo henshin pose from Kamen Rider. Considering how I absolutely ignored the equivalent to this back in the past couple of generations, I do admit into spending a bit more time than I thought I would with this little gimmick.

Anyway, the gym challenge registration moves on a bit slowly. Some dude with purple clothes and white hair bump into Hop and is a Grade-A douchebag, and what I assume is going to be yet another rival, quasi-goth shy girl Mareanie Marnie make a brief appearance here. Ultimately, though, my character ends up being directed to the Budew Drop Hotel.

At which point... plot exposition! Sonia gives us this story, pointing to a golden statue of a hero with a sword and a shield which he apparently wielded against a gigantic Pokemon during the "Darkest Day", and Sonia none-too-subtly notes that no one knows what the hero's sword and shield looks like. They're Pokemon, of course. They're the legendary doggos. It's a neat little backstory to the legendaries of the region. Nothing too new or groundbreaking, but at least it's a tie-in to the Dynamax stuff.

Oh, and I also meet Team Yell, the region's villainous team. And while I thought Team Skull from Sun/Moon would be the epitome of ineffectiveness as far as villains go, Team Yell take it to a whole other level. They're not even criminal punks in the way Team Skull were. They are just straight-up sports hooligans running around with face paint, weird double-horned trumpets and fold-out posters, and they're all cheering for Marnie, the goth girl competitor. They're pretty pathetic fighters, and after my character (and Hop) clear them out, Marnie shows up to chew her rowdy fans off. I get the feeling like Marnie comes from, like, a small town or something, and she just has a bunch of childhood friends or cousins that are just waaaay too supportive.

So the next day comes, and the stadium... the scene is basically one huge cutscene as Chairman Rose makes this whole speech about how this 'season' of gym challenges is about to happen. I was very ambivalent about likening the gym challenge into a sports tournament, but I acknowledge that the execution is a pretty cool idea. Even cooler, of course, is the cutscene with pretty cool slo-mo close-up shots of seven of the eight gym leaders slowly walking into the battlefield, and each one being introduced in turn. I've seen some of them (like huge buff baby Milo) in promotional materials, but this is the first time I've seen many of them. The most notable one, I feel, is Opal, who's an old grandma with a huge... huge whatever-the-fuck that thing on her neck is called.

And then all of the competitors sort of pour into the stadium, with the camera, of course, focusing on my character. We all wear silly sports outfits, which I'm personally not a big fan of. At least the game gives me a way to customize it and buy a cooler-looking football jersey.

Still, it's a pretty cool cutscene that really sets up the gym challenge and makes me feel pretty dang pumped up to challenge these gym leaders and go through their stadiums and whatnot. It's certainly an interesting move that I don't think Pokemon's done before -- sure, you'll have a gym leader or two show up earlier in the story and be an NPC, but I don't think we've ever had a vast majority just straight-up spoiled and shown to us.

There's also a specific order that the gym leaders have to be challenged in, unlike how things seem to go in Unova or the supplementary fiction (where the gym leaders all have different teams depending on the amount of badges you have), apparently the Galarian gym leaders duke it out to make sure which one of them are part of the 'minor' and 'major' league, and since all Galarian gym challengers have to register at Motostoke, it means that there's kind of a set route for most challengers to go through. First up is Milo in Turffield, the grass type gym leader.

Anyway, I continue on to explore the city. It's a huge city! There's a bunch of things to look at, a bunch of neat little buildings and details. There's some little girl who's missing her Minccino, there's a Wynaut playing hopscotch, there are a bunch of random Onixes and Corviknights and Mandibuzzes in the city, there's the train station that I would've arrived in Motostoke from if they didn't make me walk through the boonies... Motostoke's neat to explore, and the visuals are sure cool.

Overall, though, after exploring Motostoke and beat Hop's ass silly as I venture on to Route 3, the route Westward of Motostoke. En route there, I capture a bunch of interesting new faces, like the Galarian Zigzagoon (which we've seen before) and Rolycoly (which I totally forgot about). Rolycoly looks great in motion, by the way, which is a running trend I've been seeing throughout Generations VII and VIII, where some of the Pokemon just have 2D artwork that doesn't look great when they're standing still. Rolycoly actually grinding around like a bizarre unicycle is a lot cooler than the formless lump of coal with an eyeball that he initially seemed to be.

Among the new encounters in route 3 is a Corvisquire, who's just perched in a pretty cool way on a rock, slowly glaring at me until I whistle and it swoops in to attack. This is Corviknight's pre-evolved form, and as I quickly discover from its position in the Pokedex, Rookidee turns into Corvisquire, which in turn evolves into Corviknight! It's actually a pretty neat little discovery, because I had absolutely no idea that Corviknight was the regional bird.

MY NEW BABY

Sonia also gives me a bit of a talk about how Chairman Rose owns a huge chain of factories and stuff, and everyone in the world seems to like him a lot. Not sure if we're going to explore his large amount of factories a lot, though. After all, I'm not sure if we're going to have a pollution-is-bad moral or whatever. Also, that white-haired rude kid that's joining the gym challenge is apparently sponsored by the Chairman. I would scream about nepotism, but then arguably my character and Hop is also benefiting from nepotism as well.

While making my way through Route 3, one of the random trainers had a brand-new pokemon called a Sizzlipede, which is a little flat centipede with a mustache that also breathes fire. It's Magmaw. It's Magtail. I NEED one, and apparently the Pokedex tells me that it's found in Route 3. It's also the rare encounter of the route, and I wasn't sure which patch of grass it hangs out in (the western half of route 3 had a lot more Rolycolies, the eastern half had more Zigzagoons and Vulpixes) and it took me almost 45 minutes just sort of going through the grass trying to find Sizzlipede.

But I did get one, and I love it. It's Bug/Fire. It's a fire-shooting flat centipede with a mustache. I have merely seen a fraction of the eighth generation, but suffice to say that this is easily one of my instant favourites.

Seriously. Look at this thing. It's like a flat centipede, it's got adorable angry eyes, it's got a mustache made out of the centipede's fangs, it's the very rare type combination of Bug/Fire (only Volcarona had it before, right?) and it's got cute little glowing heat rings on its underbelly. I love this thing.

Which ended up with a bunch of evolutions! Sobble evolves into Drizzile, which... is not what I expected. I don't like this form as much as Sobble, and I'm curious what he'll turn into in the end, but apparently Sobble ends up being kind of a punk, with his head-fins covering his eye in an emo-style, and his hands and feet being painted neon-green. And also he now attacks by lobbing fucking water balloons. It's... it's something all right, and I guess we're going to have a British street-punk final form? Not what I expected or wanted from Sobble, but to be fair, I don't know what I did expect Sobble to turn into. He's all right. He'll grow on me, I guess.

My original Rookidee evolved into Corvisquire, and Blipbug evolves into... Dottler, which is like, some sort of bizarre dome-shaped thing that I suppose is inspired by the ladybug? Surprisingly, it's now Bug/Psychic, and one that seems to be geared defensively. We'll see if I keep Dottler's final form around. It's certainly interesting, and I do love that they're definitely being a lot more experimental with the early-route creatures.

Route 3 terminates at the entrance to the Galar Mine, which I'll be exploring in the next part. It's the pretty gem-encrusted mine that shows up a lot in the trailers for Sword/Shield, and I'm genuinely surprised at the sheer amount of time that has elapsed since starting my adventure and reaching the first gym, because, shit, I haven't even reached there yet! I've always felt like it's like, a couple of towns and a Viridian Forest analogue before you reach your first gym (or trial) in most generations, and this... this took a while. I'm not complaining, because, shit, I'm having one hell of a good time playing through this game.

My current party so far, and this is definitely subject to change:


Bobble the Drizzile's probably here to stay, and I love Magtail the Sizzlipede so much that I wasted half an hour hunting him, and those two are probably the most safe. I'm also kind of a fan of Nightwing the Corvisquire, who's... who's kind of boring, but also pretty useful. I know he turns into a Steel/Flying creature and that's a pretty neat type-set. The other three, though? Bookworm the Dottler is something that I'm reserving judgement until I see her final form. I love my bugs, but I already kind of have Sizzlipede and so far she's not been impressive. Cassie the Yamper is adorable as hell, but she's also very slow and her Nuzzle doesn't do a lot of damage even to things she's strong to, so I'm not sure if the adorable corgi-ness is going to justify keeping her around (it probably will). Charcoal the Rolycoly is... he's actually pretty great in the same way that Geodude is great in early-game routes in the games that you find it in. He's moderately useful to shore up my weaknesses even if I sic Corvisquire and Drizzile on most of the things I meet.

Anyway, next up... we're going into a cave, and we'll see if the Zubats made it into Galar!


Random Notes: 

• Dottler and Rolycoly are basically on a short-list of Pokemon that I might swap out. I did consider Gossifleur, Nickit, Galarian Zigzagoon and Pancham to swap them around with. Considering the ease of experience grinding, I might still actually do so. 
• A bunch of random key items I have:
• The headphones, given by some dude in front of the record store, which apparently allows me to adjust the specifics of the volume of the things in the game. "It can change the loudness of the things around you!" My god, this is a realty-warping device!
• A portable box like Let's Go, which allows me to swap Pokemon in and out of my box. Kinda makes an already easy game a lot easier, IMO, since this basically means that you have a portable Pokemon Center wherever you go. I have resolved to not abuse this feature. 
• Poke-uber The Corviknight taxi service, which is basically Fly.
• Escape Rope, which is now a key item that I can select from my bag and is apparently infinite-use. An interesting update!
• Is curry, like, a huge deal in Britain? Serious, genuine question. Like, I'm pretty sure I associate India or Japan with curry more than any country in Europe. 
• Some of the shops in Motostoke are vinyl-record shops, which are actually what TR's stand for: Technical Record. It's hilarious that the one-time use TR's are straight-up noted to be vintage, although it does raise a whole lot of other questions about what TR's and TM's are. Are they, like, music records that somehow teach Pokemon how to use Payback and Bullet Seed? 
• One of the NPC's in the registration center is the Ball Dude (Ball Guy?) who is a dude that I think is meant to be a mascot or something, he walks around with a giant expressionless Pokeball as a head and hands you Pokeballs. This is amazing. 
• You can choose the number on your jersey, any number as long as it's three digits. It's a neat little feature. 
• Insert your own "Pokemon's new villainous team is a toxic fanbase" joke here, because I'm not going to make it. 
• They did spoil all of the types that are represented among the gym leaders, and one of the clothes shops that's a bit to the Western side of Motostoke sells uniforms for all of the types that aren't represented by a gym leader. The Ghost and Poison outfits are pretty cool!
• Random trivia about the gym leaders: Nessa's got little life preservers on her feet which is just so hilarious considering how sleek the rest of her design is; Kabu is from Hoenn, and Raihan loves selfies.
• Perhaps the most surprising creatures that made it past the Galar national-dex purge to me are Qwilfish and Delibird. I met Qwilfish among the four Pokemon that showed up in my max raid, and one of the trainers in route 3 had a Delibird. It's glorious, and I'm happy that Nintendo at least seems to be picking both obscure and popular Pokemon for the Galar Dex at least. Trubbish, by the way, also made the cut, being an uncommon encounter in route 3, and oh boy I could already see the frothing anger coming from the anti-Unova parts of the fandom.