by Brian Shea
Throughout the history of the Pokémon franchise, each entry has introduced incremental new features and experimented with new mechanics to support your primary goal: traveling the world in search of the rarest and most powerful creatures. Pokémon Sword & Shield carry on this tradition, debuting a new wide-open area and supersized Pokémon in battles, without sacrificing the elements that made the series such a hit in the first place. While not every aspect of this new generation is perfect, Pokémon Sword & Shield bring several crowd-pleasing elements to deliver an outstanding new installment.
Introduce a new region and generation of monsters to a home console for the first time in the Pokémon series
With big towns and bigger Pokémon, the sense of scale is impressively displayed with crisp graphics. The moves have never looked better, but the animations are still behind the times
Sword & Shield’s town themes are among the series’ best, but the digitized Pokémon cries and lack of voiced lines feels more antiquated with each passing entry
Pokémon continues to be one of the most approachable role-playing series thanks to an easy-to-navigate world, simple turn-based battles, and a friendly difficulty curve
The compelling formula of simultaneously building your collections of monsters and gym badges has proven timeless, but the new additions and enhancements show Pokémon isn’t done evolving
Moderately high
Read the full reviewIf you are a fan of Pokemon, check out the latest Pokemon Sword and Shield games and accessories available at GameStop.com.