This has been a fascinating debacle to follow as someone who last played in B/W and was hoping to finally come back for Sword/Shield.
My approach to the series is this: I'm probably only going to play one Pokémon game a generation, if that, so I want to make it count. (The once-a-generation pacing of most Nintendo IPs sits very well with me.) Most of the problems with Sw/Sh don't affect me directly. "Dexit" is objectively a failure to deliver, but I've been out for so long that it's not worthwhile for me to transfer anything, much less pay for Bank. The lack of a big graphical/technical jump from the 3DS isn't something I would notice, as again, I haven't played since B/W; all the 3D models are new to me. The disparagement of the story as being as bad as Fire Emblem Fates—well, it tells you how little I weigh that sort of thing when I adored Fire Emblem Fates, and anyone who takes a swing at that game clearly doesn't share my priorities.
So you would think that I'm still enticed by the game despite all the problems that unambiguously look like bad news for longtime fans. The art style looks great, the British-inspired setting is extremely appealing, and I don't mind at all that it looks like a handheld game in HD, so to speak, when the HD UI is clean and crisp. The ironic thing about all the scrutiny of Sw/Sh is that I'm paying closer attention to Pokémon than I have in nearly a decade (and here I've got to add: I think the upset Pokémon die-hards have, by and large, been exceptionally civil and informative in explaining their grievances, which is why I'm finding them more credible than the unshakable optimists accusing them of toxicity).
But the more I read below the headlines, the more I see that does concern me: like all the talk about linearity, cutscene density, the removal of reusable TMs, the nebulousness surrounding Pokémon Home that has led everyone to sensibly assume it will be an exploitative Bank-like subscription scheme, the purportedly lacking postgame. (I dropped out after B/W in the first place because the postgame already felt thin compared to D/P and lost my interest quickly.)
Other things, I can't have an informed opinion about: I haven't played since Exp. Share was a held item, so I don't know how it played out in Gen 6/7 or how severe the over-levelling was; but while I don't see the sense in flattening the difficulty balance for everyone even further or removing the risk of rotating low-level Pokémon into battle, I was likely to want this toggled on anyway, since I hate grinding. I can imagine, though, just how upset I would be to have certain options or expectations stripped away in a series I actually did care about—like if Fire Emblem's difficulty design drifted ever further towards wrapping around casual accommodations like the undo button and auxiliary battle grinding. Everyone who has played a series for a long time has certain habits or favoured play styles, and while mechanical changes will wreck them from time to time, the more you accommodate, the better.
So as a potential returnee, I'm looking at it like this:
I'm in the market for my first and perhaps last Pokémon game in a long while—and it's becoming clearer to me, the closer we get to release, that Sw/Sh may not be the right game. And as someone who still has a 3DS on hand, I've been meaning to ask: if I play just one game since B/W to scratch the Pokémon itch, what should it be?
Because my impression, from reading about the state of Pokémon all week, is that I shouldn't be looking at the 3DS at all and what I should really be hunting for is an old DS cart of B2/W2. (I don't know if people recommend going same-colour or opposite-colour for those.) But given that Gen 4 and 5 were already a bit samey for me despite the total roster overhaul that came with Unova—and that this was supposedly the series at its peak—I'm not really sure what it would take to ever make me fall in love with any of these games. I was hoping that multiple generations of small, incremental refinements would add up to something truly fresh, and I'm not convinced that's happening.
I know Sw/Sh hasn't come out yet, so I'm still waiting to see if it's better than it looks for a player in my position. But we've been through this circus before. It wasn't long ago that I saw the hedging pre-launch optimism about Anthem peel off one layer after another as the reality of the release set in, or witnessed how beta players saw the problems with Battle for Azeroth coming from a mile away. I think I have to bet on the pessimists here, as they're the ones that seem to be thinking ahead about how this game might feel long-term.
