Pokemon is Nintendo’s Most Stagnant and Lazy Franchise (Pokemon Sword and Shield Review)
I was expecting 10 years worth of improvements to the largest, most profitable IP in history, super-charged by the jump to next-gen …
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February 21, 2026
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Nintendo is stagnant and lazy as a company anyways so of course the biggest franchise will reflect that
Truly Nintendo treats Pokémon like the redheaded stepchild of franchises when it's its most successful by a country mile. I stopped after sun and moon when I finally realized gamefreak just does not care anymore…
Pokemon doesn't suck now. It's actually fun, SWSH included.
lack's of Pikachu evolve lol 😂
Very late comment.
I got a switch 2 years ago, it was my first Nintendo console I bought (I had second hand consoles like the DS and Wii but never owned much for them till I was an adult and had money lmao)
After going out of my way to try every main nintendo franchise (only zelda and kirby to go) I realised that by bloody far the worst is Pokemon.
It has gotten worse since the Nintendo Ds days of my childhood.
I have way more fun playing Platinum on my DS to this day than I do playing Sword, it's so shallow, boring and lazy.
Fire Emblem, Xenoblade, Mario etc have all evolved and become high end products, Pokemon has done nothing
Getting recommended this video in 2024 is extra funny, given the phenomenon of Palworld basically vindicating everything said here and proving that the ultra Pokestans who used to jump on people like SkillUp for daring to critique the franchise have always been, and will always be, a pitiful little minority. Turns out, yes, the majority audience wants this franchise to evolve.
thanks
Pokemon's combat is a really bizarre case, because it is essentially a prisoner to the competitive community. I do acknowledge that competitive teambuilding in Pokemon is very interesting, but:
1. The overwhelming majority of Pokemon players never even experience max level teambuilding, let alone playing online seriously. Keeping the singleplayer JRPG combat this anemic in favor of online battling is absurd
2. Most of the competitive community has migrated to the unofficial web game Pokemon Showdown anyway, not just to evade Dexit and etc, but because it lets them immediately assemble optimal Pokemon teams to play the thing they like without having to play a boring JRPG for hundreds of hours first
3. To be perfectly honest, I don't see any esport potential in a game where every single match is decided by team composition before it's even begun, but whatever
Pokemon games have been terrible since my tastes matured enough to realize it
Pokémon was the social phenomena that made geeks go out for a walk and touch some grass. Thats a miracle.
Yall complaining about S&S, if only you knew that S&V would be worse back then
In my opinion, if a game formula works, there is no need for a company to change it just to change it. You can improve, sure, but don't tear down the foundation if it still holds strong.
I've seen enough "experimenting" done with Paper Mario and the Mario and Luigi series to see that Nintendo doesn't want to make true RPGs anymore.
Pokemon's really the only traditional turned based RPG they've got left. And Shield has an actual background story while still giving the player the freedom to find their own. (That's what an RPG should be)
And as a fan of those RPGs, I liked Shield for what is was, not for what I imagined it could be. Because trying to innovate a franchise that has no need to change ends up breaking it.
Pocket shit
Pokémon has been garbage for 15 years.
Anyone who doesn't see that is inhaling absurd amounts of copium.
you think this is bad? you should see the new games xD
I really like the collecting aspect and the competative battles you can take part in after finishing the game. I do think the battle system has enough complexity, but the game never throws challenging opponents at you and never uses 2v2 battles. All the other points in this video I agree with. Scarlet and Violet addressed some of the issues, making the world less pointless for example. Those had other problems, though.
Honestly, I would love to see what a Pokemon game would look like that has been worked on for 5 years instead of 2. Especially now that they went with open world gameplay.
I'm a huge pokemon fan, or at least, I used to be. I totally get what you're saying, and that's why I haven't actually played (all the way through) a pokemon game in a long time. It's 2023, what I expect from a full-priced game is amazing animations, vocal performances, and a great story with gameplay to match it. Pokemon definitely doesn't meet any of these expectations, as you explained. It's a shame because I still love pokemon, just not in the state that it's in. If they release a pokemon game with actual voice acting, with fluid, robust animations of character actually hitting each other with attacks, and a story that isn't completely forgettable, in 2023, that isn't a lot to ask for a full $60 game, especially one with such a huge fan base such as Pokemon.
What bugs me the most is that the new games like scarlet and violet are "good enough" for gamefreak to stay complacent and not improve their games again for the time being, they were averagely reviewed, people didnt hate them (outside from technical issues) and sold the best ever so even if most of the criticisms pointed out in this video are still prevalent but in an open world pokemon, gamefreak wont give a fuck and just repackage scarlet and violet with a new coat of color and call it enough.
Every Pokémon game since x and y has gotten worse and worse. X/y were the worst, then sun and moon, then let’s go, then sword shield, then brilliant diamond pearl, then starlet violet. Legends arceus was decent but every other game becomes the new worst game
100% agree. Thank you saying it. I watched my gf play and had second hand embarrassment this is what she was playing. Utterly lazy and barebones of a game
No, I'm not mad at you for saying negative things about pokemon. I'm disappointed that it took you this long.
If one is past 30 and still into Pokémon, Young Adult books or Harry Potter, one is mentally diseasesd.
That double kick animation………wow just wow…..
It’s somehow only gone even further downhill since this game
based
The way I see it, pokemon's biggest problem is that gamefreak sees too many parts of the games as disposable, like in the history of the series we've seen amazing things like battle frontiers, safari zones, wild double battles, seasons, triple battles, rotation battles, inverse battles, berry farming, and now the pokemon themselves tossed aside like empty soda cans and for what? One of the most linear pokemon games ever and three years later one of the most unstable messes rivalling cyberpunk on the original model ps4 and xbox one and jedi survivor on pc?
To further rub salt in the wounds, these games cost about double (they cost $80 CAD now and used to cost $45 cad) what they used to and on top of that have dlc ($40 to $45), now I understand that some people think that it's a better alternative to third versions, and I have two completely different ways to say "no it isn't"
The first way is to look directly at the price to someone who just HAS to have them all. The game itself is already near double what the games used to be, (I know this is because they are on home console, but a home console version shouldn't have less content compared to their handheld counterpart) and the dlc adds to that price tag another 50%, so in other words, if you, like a total sucker bought sword, and it's dlc, congratulations you paid about $10 or $15 less than… buying what both the initial two AND the third version used to cost, and that's not even counting the other game which doubles the price, switch online, and a pokemon home subscription, or more accurately, pokemon prison for those pokemon that still to this day haven't gotten in a single switch pokemon game.
The other way is to look at it from is the perspective of the guy who just wants to play their definitive pokemon experience. Now in the past, sure it stung not being able to play for a year or two, but in the end you paid for the one game you wanted, plain as day and simple as a square, now that same person, to get their definitive pokemon game this generation, has to buy the initial game and the dlc which, unlike third versions doesn't actually solve any of the underlying problems of the initial game (ie, a poor difficulty, crappy story, ect) and costs more than… just one game.
Modern pokemon isn't satisfied with having worse and less content, it wants to be more expensive as well. Yet the general consumers just eat up all this garbage and make it sell like hotcakes as if their standards for quality just drop when they hear that they can look at charizard on the trendy hd handheld.
a very hot 3 years late take – Zanzarah was the best pokemon-esque game, and i honestly hoped that pokemon will one day evolve into a real time combat. Since turn based games are really slow and utterly repetitive (nothing bad with that), it made sense for them to be on hand hold platforms – it's something u play when u just want to kill time while u r busy with something else (traveling, for example). But it's been years, a bunch of games were released, u'd think there is SOMETHING happening there – they gave it 3d graphics, , aaaaand ultimately it's the same game as before, fundamentally the gameplay has not changed one bit – turn-based grindy rpg where u have to look at the same (mostly uninspired) animations 100 bil times
I mean, all of this is true yet I still had a nice time playing an unchallenging nostalgic game with pretty colors where every problem can be solved by little monsters shooting water out of their mouths.
I do want to point out. Pokémon is not a Nintendo ip. I mean the games do come exclusive to Nintendo systems, but are made by a third party company so Nintendo has little to no say in the development of Pokémon games.
Pokémon feels like the same game from the 90s.
This didn't age well 😂
This aged well. Scarlet and Violet just cemented this idea, at least when it comes to visuals and polish.
Little did he know that Scarlet and Violet would be much worse
Maybe it’s time to play real good Pokémon game? Shin Megami Tensei )
Not a Nintendo game bro
The assumption that Pokemon is a stagnant and lazy franchise should age well by now. From Google Trends and YouTube subscribers, they're really on a roll. Pokemon anime as it was for 25 years are ending, and the S&V release was a jolt needed for the "PokeNostalgia" wave.
I’d love for him to go back and review Legends Arceus and see his thoughts on what that game improved
Funny this got recommended to me a couple weeks after scarlet and violet.
Before SwSh, I would completely disagree, after SwSh I start to agree but just a little and after BDSP, I wholeheartedly agree. Pokemon games nowadays are horrible. BDSP is just utter garbage, trash and worst of the worst.
Monster hunter stories 2 puts pokemon to shame. Better in everyway story, gameplay even the types of monsters.
Reupload this lol
A video that is aged like fine wine!
You should see what they're paying for in 2022
Skillup: complains about the downside of something
Pokemon Fanboy: but that's how its always been!
That's his point
I played this alongside my kids, seperate saves and they fucking loved it. It gave them the feeling i had 20 years ago and its awesome to share that with them. I also wait til Pokemon games are on sale, not payung full price for name recognition.
Surprisingly it’s the fan base that refuses to make the game evolve. It’s competitive vs non competitive fandom at all times.
Trash review still 2 years later…….
1000% agree with this. I grew up playing pokemon and it was one of my fondest memories staying up all hours of the night witha flashlight tucked in my neck playing pokemon red on the gameboy underneath my blanket like the kid from neverending story. I've since owned one of the versions of every mainline pokemon release except the switch games. Sword and shield had a tremendous amount of potential for Gamefreak to evolve the series, but instead it highlighted the tired and stale design philosophy and that they have become a lazy one hit wonder company that doesn't have any imagination or inclination to innovate. I haven't purchased any of the switch games because I will not support them any longer unless they go back to the drawing board. I've been feeling the same way about nintendo as a whole for a while now. I'll never forget that it took over a decade and signed petitions from fans for them to finally bring earthbound to a vc. I could write an entire thesis paper on how nintendo is a shit company now. It's sad to see Gamefreak going that way as well.
One of the major reasons I have trouble getting back into Pokémon.
The last awesome Pokémon content to me was Pokken Tournament. The spin-offs definitely have the biggest strengths than its yearly repetitive turn based combat. X and Y was my last mainline game and ever since then, nothing “new” in this franchise has convinced hope for the future of its continued formula.
Unless the franchise tries something new, Pokémon remains one of the most overrated franchises. Doesn’t mean I hate it but it’s hard to applaud the games when nothing new happens.