Do you mean the birds and titans, or did something else leak? The birds and titans were featured in an official trailer and the site was updated with their descriptions and appearances.

 

I'm all about going a few generations with no new pokemon other than new regional variants. I know it will never happen, but I'd love it. And christ I'd love to go back to just mega-evolution. I know it won't happen.

And I actually like Dynamax. I thought Z-Moves were meh supreme though. If Game Freak would just stop yanking fucking mechanics after every generation that would be great. Arceus won't destroy the Pokemon world if you have someone with a mega-evolved Salamence vs a Gigantamax Copperajah or something.

 

extremely late to the party.

...like, extremely. but i felt like sharing anyhow. i just picked up a switch and sword for the first time maybe a week and a half ago and blitzed through the game during a long weekend (reduced work shifts, huzzah~)

Spoiler: tl;dr - loved the game. loved everything about it.

Championship team:
Inteleon
Chandelure
Gardevoir
Lucario
Coalossal
Weavile

Benched mons (or pokemon who'd normally be on the championship roster if I knew there was only one shot for the Hall of Fame title screen):
Corviknight
Roserade
Mamoswine
Eternatus (hey this guy has attacks that can perfectly counter Leon's Charizard... let's not use him!)

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So, I should preface this first by saying that I haven't played a mainline pokemon game since Blue. I did the full dex, traded and battled in a school club not-quite-competitively, then lost everything one fateful Christmas when my eight year-old cousins came by and wiped out my save file. Haven't touched the game since. I followed the anime until saturday morning cartoons were no longer a thing; I read a few of the OG fanfics back in the day, but mostly I lost complete focus of the series until Pokemon GO.

Dexit? Animationgate? All the stuff people complained about adding/removing features from previous games that they loved and never saw in Galar? I knew nothing about it.

I have no idea who N is. Who Cyrus is. I have no idea what pokemon a Nebby is or why it absolutely loathes bags. I didn't know natures and hidden abilities or even berries for combat were a thing. The only reason I know IVs exist is because GO had them... and even then EVs threw me off.

So when my sister (who IS the pokefan in my family after I gave her my gameboy all those years ago... oops?) asked me to buy a Switch and Sword for her (my job gives me discounts on both) and I only managed to find some in stock a bare two weeks ago, I didn't think much of it. Problem was, she was in the middle of a Sun re-playthrough so here we had this really expensive console/handheld just sitting in its box.

So I decided to pick it up.

I loved the visuals—a 3D world of pokemon with free movement was awesome, the Wild Area even more so since camera control was included. I loved being able to see pokemon in the overworld. It felt like you could actually traverse tallgrass safely, and even if you couldnt move without tripping over a pokemon at your feet, it still felt like there was 'counterplay' and running into the damn thing was your own fault. Getting chased down by a pokemon was equally amusing, even if it did get old after a while (damned dragon-bats are fucking fast).

I like how Hop was supportive and had his own character arc going on. I read later some longtime players were a bit bored of the 'Friendly Rival' and rejoiced at Bede's inclusion but, again, it was new to me. I actually liked how the scope of the plot was more or less hidden from you as Leon and Sonia were dealing with stuff more or less behind the scenes. Even if it did mean the climax of the story sort of threw you off a cliff to deal with it, I can't say it was completely unexpected because the game did drop little hints here and there whilst you were on your Gym Challenge.

Speaking of the linear Gym system, I really liked how they gave it a plausible reason. It's not some random preteen wandering around the wild and then going, hey, let's go challenge this gym for a badge! It's an organised sporting tournament. You just signed yourself up for the tournament. Your gym challenges were (in my head) the equivalent of a play-in stage. Once the challengers had whittled themselves down you moved on to the group and knockout stages. The casual LoL player in me appreciated being able to take part in a tournament.

That said, the linear-ness did feel a bit... well, linear. I was almost sad I had absolutely no use for Escape Rope being a permanent, reusable item, because I never got lost and there were only like, two dungeons that probably even needed it. The Wild Area made up for everything.

Raid battles were really fun up until I hit 4-5* raids. Not because I didn't have the 'mons to challenge them, but because of fucking GENTLEMAN MARTIN AND HIS COSMIC POWER SOLROCK. There's just something wrong when I prefer a magikarp over that piece of shit. Stop self-buffing yourself and take down the fucking shields!!! I have since learned after I finished the game that I am far from the only person with this opinion.

Also, while I naturally gained levels up to around 55-60 by the time I hit endgame, once I realised just how many EXP candies of all variants I had acquired simply hunting pokemon using the raids (since I didn't know what False Swipe was and had a bitch of a time keeping pokemon I wanted from fainting), my primary team pretty much shot up to high 80's in general and 100 for my raiders. But I tend to overlevel in pokemon anyhow, this just made it easier.

I did feel that Gamefreak could have done a bit better on some of the animations. A few made sense; generic swiping motion and some shiny effect thing that hits the other pokemon. But stuff like Tail Whip just made me go, wut? But for the most part I liked them and even play with battle animations on to this day, even though I'm just farming. Raid battles are slightly annoying, especially when some sort of status effect hits all four pokemon and it goes through them one-by-one. Couldn't they just condense it all? Multiple 'debuff' animations go off and the box goes "Pokemon A, B, C had X lowered! Pokemon D was uneffected!" and be done with it?

Character customisation was really really cool as well. Even if I wish there were a bit more clothing options, what was there sufficed for the most part. Fashion is the true endgame, after all. I also probably spent more time playing with my trainer card than I probably should have.

Other, misc thoughts:
• Battle Tower is freaking hard. I never learned of actual battle mechanics or meta (my experience with Red/Blue could be summed up as, who could force out the Mewtwo and start forcing it to burn up Recovery first?)
• Unlocking IV Judgement was quite possibly the worst thing I could have done. I took one look at my 'main team' and despaired.
• I have a bad habit of selecting 2-3 STAB attacks and one utility move on each of my pokemon. I first realised it was a bad habit when my sister looked over my shoulder one day and asked me where my 'coverage moves' were. She then stared at me when I told her that's why I switched out mons. In retrospect, this is probably why Battle Tower was freaking hard.
• I felt really bad for completely stomping all of Hop's hopes and dreams. I felt like a horrible, horrible person.

One final final thing is I am also a tremendously cheap person. $55 is way more than I would normally pay for a game and most of my online games are F2P. My sister more or less paid for the game and console, but she had no interest in online play or the DLC, so my experiences on that front are pretty much nil. That said, I've been hearing 'okayish' things about Isle of Armour (mostly that the entire DLC is one ginormous Wild Area) and the upcoming Crown Tundra seem to have some good expectations going into it. If I'm understanding it correctly, the expansion pass covers both of them for something around $30? Since I'm cheap, I'm more likely to try to sway my sister into grabbing it but if it's good enough I might just buy the damn thing myself, which is a huge commitment in my mind. Worth, yay or nay?

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Alas, as of this writing my sister finally finished Sun and we basically swapped games. Switch was also nice with that you could have multiple save files through the use of multiple accounts, but she didn't seem to care that I'd wipe out her Sun file (which is why she doesn't care for online play—she likes the games, but she doesn't battle competitively or make a full effort to complete the pokedex. half the dex is just as good to her).

I'm honestly interested how she sees the game since, unlike me, she has played pretty much every game that's been released. The online reviews have been mixed between longtime players and I'd like to know where she falls on it. She has just gotten past Motostoke after her first night and the first thing I heard from her when I came back from work today was, "I spent way too long in the Wild Area..."

So far, looking good o.o-b

 

Don't know why, but the fact that Eiscue bobs in the water by it's Ice Cube head changes my opinion of it from derpy little pokemon to Greatest Pokemon of it's Generation.