Now we're going to cover the shinies of the eighth generation, the first generation to be on the Nintendo Switch, and... despite the rather stellar average shiny quality in Generation VI and VII, I actually think Sword/Shield wasn't that good in terms of shinies. Now I've already gone on record on saying that Sword and Shield really felt unpolished, rushed and gimmicky, and this isn't helping my impression of it! Anyway, on to the reviews!
Ehhh, all right. Could've done better. I find that the lighter shade of green makes all four members of this line distinct enough, but they aren't my favourite. I really felt like Rillaboom's brown parts could've changed a bit more. It's going to be something common with a lot of the Gigantamax forms, but I really can't tell the difference on G-Max Rillaboom from this art.
I really like Raboot! The dark grey of his head and hands contrasts very well with the white 'sweatshirt' fur, and it's a really great contrast compared to the basic, regular Raboot.
Shiny Scorbunny and Cinderace swap their white fur for gray, and their red-fire fur for orange, and that's pretty neat I guess... I just really can't bring myself to be excited about Cinderace at all.
A pretty fun design choice here! Shiny Sobble's line has all the yellow and green accents uniformly changed to a neon pink; while the main colouration of the body goes for something more... well, more 'neon' in terms of having this grayish-blue series of tones. I really do like regular Sobble's line, but this does fit a lot with Drizzile's whole 'punk paint' aesthetic, and even the special agent assassin theme of Inteleon. It's just that he's now a cyberpunk-style agent instead of a James Bond classy one.
I really can't tell what's going on with the Gigantamax form, but I'm going to assume he just has the same colours as shiny base-form Inteleon.
Pink Skwovet is... all right. The brownish-pink shiny Greedent is also all right, but feels a bit more mundane compared to his pre-evolution.
OH! Very nice. A lot of these early-route birds give us extremely underwhelming shinies, but the Rookidee line gives us a great one. Regular Rookidee ditches the blue and moves the yellow from the belly to the wings and main body. The end result makes it feel a lot more subdued, but still pretty awesome-looking.
But, of course, the most obvious but no less impressive designs are shiny Corvisquire and shiny Corviknight, both of which ditch the dark blue raven outfit and go full-in with the Steel-type, becoming a metallic-gray bird. I particularly love the accents on shiny Corviknight, which really highlights a lot of the details that are otherwise drowned out by the regular colour scheme -- especially that 'beard'! And Gigantamax Corviknight becomes extra-badass by swapping the red mini-drone feathers with yellow. All in all, a huge winner.
Very cool. Shiny Blipbug might be the exception to this all because it's a bit hard to tell that he's changed without really looking at the secondary colours, but shiny Dottler and shiny Orbeetle turning into purple looks amazing and very striking compared to their original yellow and red. A cursory Google search tells me that purple ladybugs likely don't exist, but they do show up in many different colours other than the usual red.
I do think Orbeetle being a non-existent but commonly-believed shiny colour fits its bizarre UFO look, and being sci-fi purple works amazing with the Gigantamax form. The neon baby blue lights in particular contrast much more clearly against the muted lavender of the main body, highlighting the giant 'face' better. I really don't appreciate Gigantamax Orbeetle enough. I think it's because the artwork and the 3D models tend to drown out so much of the details, but G-Max Orbeetle does have a lot of cool additional details around his face, huh?
Sometimes a shiny doesn't need to be too fancy, like shiny Nickit and Thievul here, who go for the very obvious 'silver fox' pun. It's a very simple but striking design, and I honestly wished that the default looks for Nickit and Thievul actually looked like this. Always felt like this line in particular looked too mundane, and perhaps changing their colours a bit would've made them stand out more in my mind. To be honest, I forgot these existed until I was preparing the images for this article.
I really like these two. Shiny Gossifleur goes for a colour scheme that would be pretty basic for a Grass-type Pokemon, but it's so distinct compared to her regular one. The fact that the shades of red and green chosen are rather pale and pastel-like fits with the whole 'shiny' thing very well, and makes for a strikingly different design.
Meanwhile, shiny Eldegoss is another plant-based Pokemon that goes for a very autumn-themed vibe, with shades of browns and oranges. It's a very pleasant difference from how the original colours are. Again, like Nickit and Thievul, I actually think I like these colours significantly more than their regular ones.
Nice. Black sheep are like, kinda-sorta real-life shinies, so shiny Wooloo going the obvious and just swapping the black and white really makes for an adorable shiny. I actually don't like shiny Dubwool, though. I feel like this becomes messy in a way that the reversed version in regular Dubwool didn't.
I like this one a lot, too! It's a similar sentiment to the fact that so many blue frog Pokemon turn green when they become shiny, which is kind of a hilarious reversal on how the stereotypical colour for frogs is green. Shiny Chewtle and Drednaw also go for green, a colour more associated with turtles. I'm not sure which one I like more -- shiny Chewtle's neon green is a gloriously cheery one, but I do also really like the more rough-and-tumble dark green they give for shiny Drednaw. Not much to say about the Gigantamax form, it translates the shiny form of the base Drednaw pretty well.
Actually quite disappointing. The colours look rather different if you put them side by side with the original Yamper and Boltund designs -- original Yamper is much darker-brown like a stereotypical corgi and this one is a pinkish shade; while original Boltund is dark grey with a much less neon shade of yellow. But these two are a great example of shinies that technically change but it's not apparent unless you put them side by side.
All of these are pretty great, and I think the fact that most of the line changes just part of the body but not all the coal makes for a very interesting shiny design that highlights the coal piles and distinguishes it a lot more intensely from the base body. I do find it interesting what the designers consider as 'real' coal, and which is the more... is 'organic' even the right term? But the parts of the Rolycoly line they consider as the 'main' body as compared to the shell or the toes.
Shiny Carkol is probably my favourite, with the wheel-legs looking very distinct. I actually really like this shiny line, the more and more I look at it.
Actually another very amazing series of shinies, I love that they went for the very obvious 'red apple/green apple' as the shiny design, and... the almost monochromatic design is a nice contrast to the bright red-and-green contrast of the apple and the worm in the original Applin. I really like how much the green apple parts blends with shiny Applin and Flapple's worm bodies, and I appreciate that they even changed the shade of green in shiny Appletun to make the whole thing look rather pleasant overall.
For the two cousins introduced in the Paldea expansion, they go for a completely different vibe and go for the 'golden apple' theme with shiny Dipplin and Hydrapple, which is even more striking. It makes the syrupy theme these two evolutions have going on call back to the yellow-golden goop from the older Gigantamax form, and as much as I like the green apples, I do enjoy the more epic/legendary vibes that these golden apples are giving off.
Oh wow, wholly disappointing. Shiny Silicobra and Sandaconda barely look different. I'm not sure what colouration I would've preferred, but I think they should've either changed the inflatable hood into something much more obviously different, or change the inner body.
Pretty cute! Cramorant isn't a Pokemon I think about too often, and likely to be one of the last things from Galar that I remember, but orange Cramorant is a very nice, distinct colouration from the original.
Another excellent set of shinies. I have the same complaints about regular Arrokuda and Barraskewda with Nickit and Thievul where the colours are a bit too dull and 'real-world'-y, but making them coloured more fancifully makes these two stand out a lot more. I feel like the lavender-blue works very well on the fishies, and while shiny Arrokuda looks very distinct, I feel that shiny Barraskewda benefits a lot since the now-purplish fish head ends up causing the orange fins (which are retained from the original) to feel far more contrasting.
Not the worst shiny, though not one that I like all that much? Shiny Toxel is neat in that I think I like this two-tone colouration of shocking pink and lavender compared to the original shades of purple, but the three different flavours of shiny Toxtricity just swap dark purple for a lighter shade of it. It's all right, but I honestly wished they had gone for something a bit more daring. Swap the purple into blue and yellow respectively? Neon green, which is both a lizard and a 'punk' colour? I dunno, I think they could've done more here.
I get what they're going on for the shinies here, and I'm... I'm not sure it works all that well. They just change the dorsal plates and sometimes the legs from dark red to a shade of blue-gray. I think it works best on the shiny Centiskorch, though I'm not sure if the colours are a nice, interesting way to show how some animals have wildly differing colours on their ventral and dorsal sides (like the cancelled Pokemon Haneii!) or if the colours clash a bit too much.
I am disappointed that shiny Gigantamax Centiskorch didn't follow through, though, just keeping the altered claws and not the dorsal plates.
I've never liked Grapploct and Clobbopus all that much, but I'll acknowledge that they've amazing shinies. Grapploct was always the nicer-looking one even in base form, and shiny Grapploct is this very nice shade of lavender-gray, orange, and even keeps a little white border around his orange 'visor', which ends up giving him a somewhat different 'face' compared to the original.
Shiny Clobbopus goes for a rather stereotypical red-white-and-yellow luchador vibe not too dissimilar to Hawlucha, and also looks pretty great next to regular Clobbopus. Great jobs all around.
Very interesting choice here where only the cups change colour, while the inner tea-ghost glob entity doesn't. This ends up with shiny Sinistea and Polteageist having a lot less clashing colours just like the shiny Applin line up above, and ends up a very pleasant and distinct design.
The idea here ends up making all the colours for the Hattena line go from bright-bubblegum ice cream into paler shades, removing the bright blue almost entirely. It makes the line a bit more boring in my opinion, though it does make shiny Hatterene in particular look a bit more sinister with those glowing eyes. Good effort.
And while their fellow fairies above go for a more subdued look, the Impidimp shinies go all-in on being utterly loud, bright and ridiculous, and they rank very highly in my book for good shinies from Generation VII. Shiny Impidimp swaps the pink for a bright shade of neon blue, while keeping the dark-pink highlights in his ears and neck. The mask becomes bright white, and the end result is such a distinctly different colour scheme that still fits the chaotic vibe that this line has.
Shiny Morgrem does the same, keeping the purple 'pants' but changing most of the skin bright blue. The hair, however, becomes bright white... and it's clear where they are going for when the line evolves into Grimmsnarl and Gigantamax Grimmsnarl, where all the hair-armour ends up transforming into white, making them into hauntingly white oni/ogre monsters. One of my favourite shinies in this generation for sure.
Oh, I have a shiny Milcery. I don't really like shiny Milcery all that much, the cream becomes white (which is not very noticeable) and the eyes become black. I do find it funny how creepy this ends up unintentionally looking.
I do like that they kind of said 'fuck it' with the fifteen dozen Alcremies and just made all the shinies a single gray-with-white-tips colouration, and only the decorations end up mattering for shiny Alcremie's alternate forms. I think some of the colours work much better than others, but not by much. I do find it really interesting -- I've never cared much for Alcremie until I actually caught a shiny Milcery, and since shinies are such a commodity it actually took me a while to think which version looks nicest when it's evolved.
Gigantamax Alcremie adds some extra gray and black colourations to the layers of the wedding cake. It's all right.
Hee hee, I like this one. Regular Falinks looks very sharp with its primary colours, with a dominant yellow shell and red spikes. The yellow gets moved to the spikes now, with the shells being brown now and I feel it ends up with a rather pleasant variation that kind of looks like some kind of a chocolate dessert. I like it.
There are many, much more colourful sea urchins out there other than the classic 'black', so I'm honestly very disappointed that all they changed was Pincurchin's butt-nose.
I'm not sure what I'm expecting, but I'm a bit disappointed, honestly. I can tell shiny Snom's grub-face is lime green, and that lime green gets translated into the highlights on shiny Frosmoth's wings and eyes, but... but that's it? I kinda wished that even if it's bright green they wanted to use, that they leaned a bit more into it.
Very nice. They go for a darker shade of gray for the rocks for shiny Stonjurner, and I think the flip around the shades of grey with the accents.
Huh, this is kinda cute. Eiscue is right up there in the list of Pokemon I really always go 'man, I forget this exists', but this pink penguin with a pink ice cube head is pretty neat.
Actually all right, and honestly the green-gray main body with the extra purple 'hair'-ears makes both forms of shiny Indeedee feel a lot more interesting than their regular ones.
They do just enough to make 'full belly' shiny Morpeko to look different. The middle part becomes completely white, and the left side of the body goes a shade browner compared to the original yellow. Cute!
I can't even tell you if 'hangry' shiny Morpeko is different at all, though.
All kind of disappointing. Shiny Cufant just looks a bit washed-out. Both versions of shiny Copperajah changes just enough of the highlights, but I felt they could've done more than just 'one shade lighter'.
The Galarian patchwork fossils all become almost monochrome, with the 'Vish' head getting some nice shades of purple, but I really like that they have this 'old-school magazine photograph' vibe to them going on. It really does both make a very striking difference from the loud, clashing colours of the original fossils, and it almost makes for a deceptively cohesive fusion betwen the various parts, yeah? Dracovish aside, I think the other three fossils end up looking almost like their colour schemes flow well into each other?
Oh, I used one of these in my playthrough of The Indigo Disk DLC, and... and I think I'll reiterate my opinions while playing through that DLC with shiny Duraludon... I wasn't even aware I caught a shiny until the game informed me. Now the little highlights technically is a bit bluer, but I literally had a shiny specimen surrounded by several regular ones and I couldn't tell. The red line on top of the head changing colours is a bit more obvious, but it's such a small detail that I can't really even tell you.
Thankfully, whether it's the Gigantamax or the evolution, Duraludon's upgraded forms have much better shinies. Shiny Gigantamax Duraludon swaps the windows of its building from blue to orange, while shiny Archaludon ditches most of the red and orange highlights, changes his pillar parts from silver to gray, and changes his bridge parts into a different shade of blue. This is actually what my mind thinks of first when I type 'Archaludon' because I spent most of my playthrough seeing this colouration.
Not my favourite shinies, but ones that are very neat. They justlean on a shade that's a bit more blue compared to the more green shades of the original Dreepy line. I also really like that they changed almost all of the highlights and markings from pink to yellow, which is particularly vivid in shiny Dragapult. I actually wished the altered head colour gets carried over to from shiny Dreepy to Drakloak and Dragapult, though.
For the box art legendaries, they didn't do anything super-fancy... and I think this is what they should've done in the first place. Zacian just becomes... well, cyan. Her primary colour becomes fully cyan, and all the pinkish highlights get turned into dark blue. I feel that in both her depowered and sword forms, shiny Zacian is 100% far more superior than the original design.
I like shiny Zamazenta a bit less than shiny Zacian, but it's also, I feel, a much more cohesive design compared to the original. I've always thought that the original Zamazenta, particularly her unpowered form, to look rather messy and this alternate colouration really does rectify it. I think having only one other shade to compete with also makes the Behemoth Sword and Behemoth Shield on both shiny wolves look much more regal, as opposed to the original colour palettes where they kind of blend into the multiple colours.
Shiny Eternatus goes for a dark-pink, almost red colour. I think all the legendaries in this game might be shiny-locked? Either way, being blood red isn't a bad choice for a monstrous murder-dragon from space.
The entire line of kung-fu bears just have rather bad shinies. I think the two base Urshifu forms look the best, but that's faint praise.
Okay, that's very bland. Shiny Zarude just has his belly markings go dirty.
Shiny Regieleki's got a slight change; the bands go from blue to white. It does admittedly make him look very noticeably different compared to all the legendaries here that come after Eternatus, but damn.
Again, barely different, unless you put the sprite side-by-side with the original.
Also barely different.
Okay, shiny Spectrier is the only one DLC legendary with a decent shiny, with the purple mist mane going into a nice shade of red. Couldn't they have swapped the colours of Glastrier and Spectrier, though? An black-maned ice horse and a white-maned ghost horse?
Barely different. Damn, what is it with these DLC legendary shinies being just a shader off? They're all pretty disappointing.
I would assume that Glastrier and Spectrier would also become shiny if the horses fused with Calyrex are shiny, but I can't find pictures of them.
I can tell you that this is a brighter shade of pink than the regular Enamorus, but it's also extremely disappointing. What, they couldn't do the obvious and swap the snake and the humanoid/turtle colours? Though it does make her consistent with her brothers for comparison. Very disappointing.
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