Let's Play Pokemon Sword, Part 5: Bede-Style Arcaheology

Last we left off, we beat Kabu and his giant fire centipede!

And we're sent off to the Wild Area, where this time around we can explore the northern part of the Wild Area. And... well, as I mentioned in the previous part, I spent a long time exploring the Wild Area and just catching shit and beating up Wild Pokemon. I do like that the weather condition keeps changing, and that the population of the Pokemon that show up depends on said weather. I do like it a fair bit... I just really wished that it was integrated into the main story a bit better, y'know? Because there's a huge disconnect between the times that I spent running around the Wild Area and the actual storyline of the game, and they really could've integrated it a lot better, pacing-wise and layout wise.

Also, I've figured out why I can't seem to get anyone to join me on the max-raid battles, or to wonder trade or whatever. The game's kind of terrible at communicating it, but apparently I need a subscription to access any of the online features? Which... which I was already genuinely ambivalent and indifferent towards in the first place, so it doesn't really bother me a lot. I'm just kinda glad that we actually do have the option to do max raid battles with NPC's or something, I guess? But man, the more I play this game, the more I realize just how unpolished it really is. And I don't want to be one of part of those Anti-Nintendo fuckers out there who send death threats to game developers and give grief to anyone who's showing any positivity about Sword and Shield... but honestly, there is a lot of messiness in this game that really end up showing that it really has massive flaws in both gameplay and story.

Oh well. Onwards to Hammerlocke, which seems to be our next huge hub city. I don't think it's quite as impressive as Motorstoke, but it does have a pretty impressive-looking giant castle with... with whatever those things on either side of the main tower are supposed to be. I know they're probably meant to evoke the appearance of draconic wings, but otherwise I'm not sure if they actually do serve some sort of practical purpose.

And as I arrive onto the big-ass dragon-head door of Hammerlocke, Bede shows up! He apparently beat up Hop and dashed his dreams or whatever. That's actually kinda awesome! The handling of Hop and Bede has been pretty suspect, pacing-wise -- Hop's shoehorned in our face way too much with very little variation in dialogue; while Bede makes such sporadic appearances that there's not much to him beyond 'he's a dick', but now this event that took place offscreen's going to hopefully change the two for the better? One can hope. Bede's not a dick who bullied our happy buddy, and Hop's going through some adversity which I hope will lead him to have some character development.

There's then a bunch of extra cutscenes, involving Bede and Chairman Rose discussing stuff about the Wishing Stars or whatever, but the dialogue is so oblique and obviously not trying to give anything away. The Chairman then gives a bit of an information dump about the energy plant of Hammerlocke, and how it funnels energy from power spots that allow Pokemon to Dynamax and convert it into energy or whatever? It's a pretty neat little concept, of abusing the energy that powers up the super-powerful gimmick of the region as something that's as practical as an energy source for cities. Which makes me think that either Rose is going to be the main villain, or that Oleanna or someone's going to take over by abusing Rose's energy plant.

Leon also shows up for a brief cutscene, talking about how Hop's probably going to get out of his funk with some soul-searching or whatever.

After that, though, it's a bit of an exploration time through Hammerlocke. The town's sort of split into two 'wings' on either side of the main center tower, and there's a bunch of neat little sidequests. The first is a random house with a karate guy and a Cottonee.. who uses the infamous F.E.A.R. strategy, where a low-level pokemon hangs on with focus sash, tanks a hit, uses endeavour, and then uses a priority move to murder everything that has a single HP thanks to said endeavour. Thankfully Cottonee doesn't actually have a priority move, making this fight kind of toothless, but it's pretty cool to see the game makers referencing something from the community.

Also, there's this whole little sidequest (well, more of an extended cutscene) where some love-sick dude wants to borrow my Applin to give to a girl, because in Galar, apparently giving an Applin you caught to another person is a sign of love or something? Of course, the game doesn't immediately remove your Applin for you, but this is how you get the Tart Apple that evolves Applin into its evolved form... Flapple! Which is basically a Bakuman, isn't it? The apple splits open into these wacky wyvern wings while the worm (wyrm?) finally reveals its true self. I'm still reserving my opinion on this thing, but I do kind of like the idea of the fact that this is basically a little worm that's incorporating an apple as part of its new biology. I don't think I'll be using Flapple in my run, but if I do find the need to have a Grass or Dragon Pokemon in my party, Flapple's probably number one on the list.

Other than that... there's a clothes store, and another cafe where you can do daily battles to get some of the many, many miscellaneous items in Pokemon's history. The game might not have enough space for all the 800+ Pokemon, but they sure do for random items! There's also a little girl that asks me to deliver a letter to her boyfriend in Ballonlea. My friends assure me that this is going to lead into an interesting side-quest, so I thought I'll mention it here.

Eventually, I make my way to the Vault, which is a small castle-museum thing on the West side of the city, where gym leader Raihan is waiting. He gives a brief speech about Hammerlocke and Leon and Sonia and whatnot, before letting me in, and what's inside the Vault is... it's sort of a holy-looking chamber with four massive tapestries, and I do really like how different the art style of the tapestries look, like they really did come out from another time. What we learn is honestly not much, and I feel the dialogue is a bit clunky compared to some of the other 'let's do an introdump about the history of the region and its cover legendary' sequences in other games, but I'm not going to complain too much. Basically, two kings fought against the Darkest Day (obviously a time where Dynamax Pokemon ran wild) with a sword and a shield, and everyone's surprised that there are two heroes.

And the game treats this as some huge, massive revelation, but I dunno, it's not like this seemed to be some sort of highly-hidden history? It's not like the Ultra Beasts in the Alola games where the lore of Ultra Beasts is hidden in a single dusty tome in an old library and everyone's trying to piece together and figure out how the legends of the island guardians and the extra-dimensional jellyfishes awork together; or the respective plots of the Sinnoh and Unova games where so much about their respective legendaries are lost through time and we learn about them from either ruins or old shrines. I dunno.

Anyway, not gonna complain too much. There are two heroes, a sword and a shield, and it's meant to be a huge revelation, but it doesn't matter now because the plot then none-too-subtly shoves my character out of Hammerlocke to continue on with my gym challenge.

And so I head west-ward through Route 6, where a bunch of Team Yell grunts are... blocking the way so that a clearly-not-sleeping Silicobra isn't disturbed, and only by asking nicely can you pass through. Okay? Unfortunately, apparently Hop and my character are rude shits, and instead of asking nicely we just challenge the Yell grunts to a fight, beat them up, send them running away, and Silicobra just slithers away. Okay? I'm not sure what the hell went on there. Are they trying to make Team Yell sympathetic? Or are they just supposed to be morons or something? I know they went for a similar approach with Team Skull and that worked out wonderfully for a bait-and-switch that Team Skull are just sort of punks and not villains, but Team Yell really felt like they're just doing whatever, y'know?

Hop is... pretty depressed, and it's definitely a neat way to take his character. He sort of mumbles how he's trying to figure things out before buggering off, and the old lady Opal, who we saw briefly in the gym-leaders-in-the-stadium scene, shows up and makes some cryptic remarks about how you should have fun in your Pokemon journey. Okay? Maybe Opal's going to be the cool old mentor to Hop?

Also, Silicobra's cool. I wasn't quite sure what the bugger was supposed to be in the cutscene, with massive nose-holes and a pouch-neck, but apparently it's not a "silly cobra", but a "silicon cobra", which means it's a ground-type snake that swallows sand and stores it on its neck-pouch, and based on its Sand Spit ability, any time it gets hit, it sneezes out the sand it's storing on its pouch to create a Sandstorm effect. That's kinda cool, actually, and I didn't think we would get another adaptation of a non-venomous snake. But here we go with a desert-dwelling snake that has a neat little twist to it. Not my favourite, but Silicobra's neat.

Route 6 is basically a bunch of cliffs with more ruins and standing stones, There's a fair amount of random creatures here, like Helioptile and Durant and Torkoal and Dugtrios, but most striking is, of course, the Galarian Yamasks! Which look remarkably similar to the Unovan Yamask, and I've been spoiled about the existence of. But instead of a golden death-mask, they have... a little block of concrete with a crudely drawn tail on it? I originally thought that this was going to be a Spinda or Unown thing where there are multiple variants of Yamasks with different runes, but they all just hold the same tail rune. Which... okay? Its dex entry is surprisingly dark, too. Quoting the Sword dex entry: "A clay slab with cursed engravings took possession of a Yamask. The slab is said to be absorbing the Yamask's dark power."

Which means... holy shit, Yamask, who is canonically the ghost of a human person turned into a Pokemon, now has the misfortune of being possessed by a random cursed clay slab that's just apparently this horrifying, parasitic cursed entity that's drawing energy out of Yamask! One can hope that the relationship is less parasitic and more symbiotic.... Also, Galarian Yamask is Ghost/Ground, which... yeah, I agree with that one random commentator on my blog that spoiled Galarian Yamask to me. It sure does look more like a Ghost/Rock creature!

There are also MASSIVE Diglett statues in the distance, which I thought was cool, and I had the pleasure to meet my first Generation VII Artist, who's this crazy sculptor that wouldn't look out of place trying to cosplay as Jack Nicholson in The Shining. I don't tend to comment on generic random trainers, but the Artist's look is just so psychotic-looking, I love it.

And also, I meet Cara Liss! Throughout my walk through Route 6, I find fossils. But instead of something like the Dome Fossil or the Root Fossil, these are called "Fossilized Bird" and "Fossilized Dino" or whatever, and apparently these are half of a fossil. And because apparently in Galar the scientists are far more insane and irresponsible, Cara Liss talks about how her machine's going to reconstruct what these creatures originally looked like... and it seems to be a nod to the quack-paleontology that ended up with falsified fossils like the Piltdown Man? Except instead of publishing a fake record to get fame and fortune, Cara Liss combines two fossils together to make abominations. I got Arctozolt, a creature that's half electric-bird and half ice-dinosaur, and... my god look at this horrifying abomination. It's like someone clicked randomize on Spore! Its Pokedex entry notes just how wretched this thing is. It's Electric/Ice, but the reason it's even electric-type at all is that the bottom half generates cold and the upper half ends up shivering so much it ends up creating electricity.

What the fuck!

No, seriously. What the fuck. There are apparently four different combinations to be made out of two 'upper halves' and two 'lower halves' that are apparently version exclusives, but, still, what the fuck. The concept is pretty neat, but this just feels so random and the resulting fossil creatures look like such tormented abominations. I'm not sure.

Also, as I venture on through Route 6 and the Wild Area, two evolutions happened. Locomotive, my Carkol, finally achieves her final stage, Coalossal, which is... a funny-looking duck-headed rock kaiju with a pile of coal on its back. It's still Rock/Fire, and... and it's pretty neat! I wasn't sure how I feel about Carkol, and I definitely still like Rolycoly the most out of the entire evolutionary line, but Coalossal does feel like a neat looking badass rock monster. It's not my favourite out of the creatures in my party, design-wise, but I definitely like it a fair bit!

And my starter Drizzile has evolved from an emo sad punk into... Inteleon, the... secret agent Pokemon? And it's this slender, noodle-limbed lizard-man with massive fingers, a cape that unfurls into wings, and apparently it's based on James Bond in a way, hiding and shooting people with guns and stuff? It's got Snipe Shot as a mold-breaking water-type attack, and it's got a neat animation with its finger guns, but I'm genuinely not sure how I feel about this final evolution. Maybe it'll grow on me? It's certainly not what I expected Sobble and Drizzile to turn into for sure, and... and I genuinely don't know what to make of this. Part of me likes aspects of Inteleon, but another part of me feel like the design is just kinda weird. I'm still somehow un-spoiled of what the Generation VII starters would turn out to be at the time that I saw Drizzile evolve. So... uh... yeah, it's sure something.

The next town is called Stow-on-Side, and it's... a pretty neat desert market town, with a modest bazaar in the center of it. It's not particularly big, but I do like what little we got to see here, with the humans and Maractus running shops, Digletts just hanging out wherever, little alleyways and steel tarps that I can explore behind, that random kid who's sticking his head inside a Bronzong (no, really)... and some dude on top of a rooftop who trades me a Hatenna called Fringe for a Maractus. Shit, I ain't got any use for a Maractus, but I did like what I saw form Bede's Hatenna. Hopefully it's got more powerful evolutions! And if nothing else, it's a cute new buddy.

Hop waylays me and talks about his new strategy... and surprisingly (and it took me a while to realize), his strategy involves dumping all of his Pokemon. Other than Raboot, of course, but that even includes Wooloo, his starter! Granted, his Pokemon are still kinda shit and un-evolved, with the Toxel and Silicobra being particular pushovers, but you'd argue that those have far, far better typing than his pure-Normal Wooloo or his pure-Flying Corvisquire do. It's interesting, and I'm curious to see where the story takes Hop.

I defeat him soundly, of course, and he sort of runs away in depression, talking about how he's failed his brother and his family. Grandma Opal shows up again and sort of mutters about how "the champion doesn't need anyone to defend him, we all know he's strong". Which... which would actually work a lot better if Opal actually said it to Hop instead of my character, y'know?

Anyway, I go up and look at the massive painting or whatever that Stow-on-Side is famous for... and it looks like children's graffiti made with crayon. Which... okay, that's unexpected and kinda neat. But after that it's gym time!

There's very little buildup to this gym. Unlike the previous three, we don't meet Bea, and she has about the same amount of personality as Brock in the original GBC games, which is to say that she's just a serious fighter. Her gym, bizarrely enough, is... it's a giant pachinko machine, and you ride around in a spinning wheel thing and get punched around by boxing gloves. It's a cute mini-game, even if I don't think it fits the theme of a Fighting-type gym or Bea herself particularly well.

The gym's otherwise pretty simple, for the simple reason that I brought along my Corvisquire with me. Which evolves into a Corviknight upon slaying the third gym trainer's Hitmonchan and Hitmonlee! I don't really like using the starter birds, and I don't remember when the last time I used one (it was probably when I Nuzlocked one of the GBA or DS-era games) but Corvisquire has been an absolute unit in going through this game, and as a Steel/Flying final giant knight bird, my Corviknight does look pretty damn badass.

Bea has four Pokemon, and... it would probably be a decent challenge if I had used any other members of my team, because the rest of my team quite literally has nothing super-effective against Fighting types. But Corviknight just absolutely swept the entire party with nothing but Drill Pecks. Hitmontop? Drill Peck. Pangoro? Two Drill Pecks. Sirfetch'd? Critical Drill Peck.

I really need to figure out how to turn my own Farfetch'd into a Sirfetch'd, by the way.

Surprisingly, Sirfetch'd wasn't the Dynamax Pokemon for the gym, but instead it's good ol' Machamp! Who ends up GIGANTAMAXING and... okay, that's kinda neat. He does look like that four-armed muscle alien from Ben 10, but with weird orange energy flowing through the cracks on Giga Machamp's veins, and his wrestling briefs are now wrestling yoga pants. It's a pretty decent design, I feel, not really altering Machamp's inherent design too much while still looking like a decent power-up (it's not just red steam like Pokken). Unfortunately, Giga Machamp doesn't even get a single hit out because my Corviknight also Dynamaxes and one-shots this thing.

I know Corviknight can also achieve a Gigantamax form, and I'm curious how I go about achieving Gigantamax forms for Centiskorch and Corviknight. I've been feeding Centiskorch some dynamax candies, but even at a maxed-out 'dynamax level' Centiskorch can only dynamax. It's kinda puzzling. Maybe I have to reach some sort of story point to do so?


With Bea out of the way, a bow-wark heralds the arrival of Sonia and her Yamper... and then there's a huge explosion! Apparently Bede's stolen Chairman Rose's Copperajah (it's Cufant's evolved form!) to literally beat up the crayon mural, because he thinks... uh... he thinks it'll give him wishing stars and the chairman will be pleased or something? Bede's kinda dumb. The resulting fight goes about how you expect it to, except this time it's Centiskorch murdering his full-Psychic team with Bug Bite. Bede's evolved all of his Pokemon other than the Ponyta, but honestly, they all go down pretty easily. Hattrem's adorable, though! She looks like a cute little anime mascot. I'm a fan. Is this the final form, or does she have a third stage? I don't know!

Bede goes fully crazy and stuff, and... and I kinda wished we spent a bit more time with bede before this, y'know? Maybe have him show up a bit and interact a bit more with us, and show just how desperate he is to impress the Chairman instead of just being a condescending prick? The game does show this to us, but I genuinely do feel like it's like the bare minimum of scenes. Chairman Rose shows up with security guards, arrests Bede and strips him of his challenger status and... and I'm curious if this is all we're seeing of Bede? Since his team hasn't fully evolved yet, I don't think so. Maybe he'll break free and end up becoming a straight-up antagonist. That'd be neat.

And... and all that is sort of for naught, because when Rose buggers off, apparently the kaboom that Bede and Copperajah did before was enough to shatter the mural, causing it to collapse... and reveal two massive statues of Zacian and Zamazenta and two princes. More of the same revelation, honestly, and I kinda wished that we had combined the Hammerlocke Vault scene and this one together or something, because Sonia's speech does end up feeling redundant since it's another revelation of "oh, there are two people! And the sword and shield are POKEYMANS!" I might be going a bit too harsh about this because the storyline's so easy to guess. Sonia basically speaks a bit... and next up, I have to head on East to Glimwood Tangle, easily my favourite area in the game so far. I've gone through it at the time of writing, but I figure I'd cover it alongside the city that we reach at the end of the area.

Speaking of which... there's a little side-quest I've embarked to evolve my Farfetch'd into a Sirfetch'd, which was the main reason I picked Sword in the first place. I've been assured by my friends that it's not a level-up, or a trade evolution, but something that I have to figure out. They also assure me that by this point in the game, I could definitely have gotten a Sirfetch'd already.

And my first instinct is... obviously, it's an item evolution, right? So I went back to the route that Farfetch'd showed up in, and Farfetch'd is kind of one of the more uncommon encounters, so I had to spend some time encoutering them and then catching them and then checking to see if they're holding a Leek -- a held item that's been around since forever but was never utilized because Farfetch'd is kind of not a very powerful Pokemon. Surely it's an item evolution, right? He evolves with the Leek?

...turns out it does jack shit. I mean, I'm not angry, I did basically hand my Farfetch'd a tailor-made weapon that boosts its critical rate, but it was a significant amount of time spent that didn't really accomplish what I set out to do.

So I guess it's a move-specific one? Like how Piloswine evolves when it learns Ancient Power? I'm not quite sure what move would turn Farfetch'd into Sirfetch'd, though. Swords Dance, maybe? Does this duck learn Sacred Sword? Those are the only real knightly moves I can think up of. Or maybe it's something far, far more bizarre. I mean, we've already had a Pokemon that evolves when your freaking game system is upside-down. I dunno. I am committed at this point to not spoiling myself, so that's definitely going to be an interesting journey.

This has been a neat little journey. It's a bit cutscene-heavy, and I do feel like Route 6 could've stood to be a bit longer and maybe throw in a desert-themed Wild Area segment or something. But I really do like the vibe of a small desert-side town with a bazaar built next to the massive Diglett statues and whatnot, and I generally do love the vibe of Stow-on-Side in general. I did come off as a bit too negative at some points in this let's play, but hey, I call it like I see it. The parts of the game I like, I'll praise, and the parts of the game that I dislike, I'll knock down.

Current party:


Considering swapping out either Boltund or Coalossal for either Toxel, Hatenna, Yamask or Silicobra, I think. I kind of want a bit more of a variety in my team building.


Random Notes:

• Speaking of weird evolutions... evolving Milcery into Alcremie involves you finding the specific held item (which I got from a cafe) and then spinning around with a Milcery in the party. Which... at least the item sort of gives you a clue, talking about how "Milcery will spin around" or something. I'm actually genuinely surprised that, yes, this is the case. That's pretty cool!
• I did try my hand out at a bunch of random mini-games:

• The Rotom Rally is neat, and it's sort of the obligatory race-game that most 3D Nintendo games seem to have in some way or form. So far I've only done it like once or twice and got a TM out of it. 
• The Poke-Job thing feels like something from a mobile game, where you just send some of the critters in your box out for a job. The little blurbs for the job is neat, and we've got a similar feature in the Poke-Pelago in Sun and Moon. Since the Nursery apparently doesn't give your Pokemon experience points, this is how you gain 'passive' experience points for the pokemon you don't use or something? It's 
• I'm not going to do the Poke Jobs thing too much, though, for the simple reason that when your Pokemon return, they just get stacked wherever in your box, which sort of means that I have to re-move things around and that's pretty annoying.
• There's a second Pokemon Nursery in the Wild Area, which I felt is a bit redundant, but okay. 
• In Pokemon Shield, you fight Allister the ghost boy instead of Bea, and looking at screenshots of Allister's gym, the whimsical, wacky nature of a spinning Polteageist theme park game does fit a childish ghost-type leader a lot better. 
• I suspect that the designer team having to code Allister and Bea into two different games ended up with them deciding to not have any of the version-exclusive gym leaders do anything outside of their gyms. Poor resource-strapped game developers!
• Copperajah is... it's an interesting design. I'm not sure how I feel about it. 
• There's a bit of a "old history versus progress for the masses" theme to Bede's rant as the other characters confront him, but it goes by so quickly and devolves into Bede's desire to impress Rose that it doesn't land as well as it could've. 
• I do like that the statue of Zacian and Zamazenta are actually not holding the stylized anime swords and shields they have in the artwork, but far more... rudimentary looking ones.