would you be open to posting your critique on swsh? im curious :0

sure! i'll go proper capitalization and punctuation mode just to make it more comprehensible. also i ramble so here's a readmore

To get to the point, SWSH is in my bottom three Pokemon games and if I didn't have a generational challenge run through all the Pokemon gens going on, I'd probably never start another file on it and let it collect dust like Ultra Moon.

I'd talk about what I liked and didn't like in full but idk if you want that exactly? And also this is gonna be long as hell anyways and I don't wanna fuel any "Wow you made this THIS long?? You care too much!!" thoughts. So I'm just gonna jump straight into what I think is definitely the main problem behind the scenes.

So. NatDex.

I'm just going to say that honestly? Cutting out the National Dex was a long time coming. We're up to over 800 Pokemon now, with their shinies and gender differences, all these different forms, and what, only 200 are gonna be used in a gen at a time? With everything else needed to be ported into the game? Yeah no, they had to pull the plug on that eventually. And honestly, I don't mind. I'm the type to replay old games constantly, so if I want Gliscor on my team, then I can just go boot up a Sinnoh game. Sure, I'll be sad if Gliscor continuously doesn't make the cut in future games, maybe even mad, but it's not the end of the world.

That's not to say there are no issues with how it was handled, the PR for it was awful. Saying it was for the sake of animation was a gigantamax mistake.

But here's what I absolutely hate when people put their two cents in. "Gamefreak fucked it up! Gamefreak was lazy! Gamefreak intentionally bastardized the game by taking out the National Dex because they don't care!"

Like... I'm not saying Gamefreak are completely innocent in every tedious thing about Pokemon, there's that disaster with the ORAS battle frontier, which iirc was totally them. But... think about it for more than two seconds.

Pokemon has had a yearly mainseries release for over a decade now, with one break for Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon, developed by Spike Chunsoft, to take the holiday release in 2015, and if you count the DLC being the unofficial "third version", then 2021 is the first time Gamefreak isn't releasing a new game, and that's debatable since Legends is coming out in Janurary 2022. While games with similar popularity like Mario and Zelda have years between their games, usually with spinoffs to keep people entertained. So basically, Gamefreak has been working nonstop on Pokemon, with the pressure of releasing an entire game in a year, with not many breaks I assume. And there are multiple reports of burnout and crunch time in order to get these games out, because god forbid we let an actual spinoff come out for people to take a breather on.

If anything, the problem is with TPCI, not Gamefreak. TPCI, which has everything on a tight schedule, and who has more money than DISNEY apparently, yet they still need to wring as much money out of people as possible, as soon as possible, and they clearly don't care about what it takes to get to that point.

So with all of that? I think it's insanely tone deaf to go "Gamefreak intentionally ruined my game because they're lazy bitches who can't be bothered". Because this is clearly the ultimate result of all the burnout.

Of course the game looks half finished in some areas. Of course the animations are mostly carried over and just touched up on. Of course they couldn't do a whole lot. Of course there was no National Dex. With that development time and crunch, they need to cut a TON of corners. All that stuff in the beta wasn't dropped because Gamefreak yawned and shoved it aside, it was because they literally could not feasibly put it all in and make it work as a fully functional game in time. This is the culmination of the past decade's burnout, and this is what I would expect from most Pokemon games from now on if this keeps up.

So yeah, I hate most Natdexxer takes on the game because they're incredibly tone deaf. But then I also hate when people smugly go "Well, SWSH sold MORE than most Pokemon games, so ACTUALLY it's sooooo much better than you think and it has no problems whatsoever, and pointing out any problems with it is an evil and awful thing you should hate yourself for :)" Like... first of all, ya don't think that maybe has something to do with the Game being worth $60-90 on a TV console as opposed to $40 on the 3ds? And second... it feels so dismissive of the actual problem. It almost feels like instead of "ugh gamefreak is so lazy", it's "um, there's nothing wrong with how SWSH was made and there's no problem with the yearly releases! They're all the same quality and there's nothing wrong behind the scenes whatsoever, silly!" And while yeah, there's not much WE can do about anything, I'm not trying to sound holier than thou or that you shouldnt buy the games for your kids or yourself or anything... it's just that it's not good to act like there's no issues either. Unfortunately, those seem to be the two opposing sides for the large part, and it's exhausting because the main problem is unaddressed.

tldr: i hate people calling gamefreak lazy and harassing them over it, or acting like people criticizing the game are evil and daring to pick apart perfection, when the game is Like That because of crunch time and poor work environments