About time I shared my thoughts on SwSh, so here we go:
New Pokemon: mostly okay with them. Not enough of them though, as expected, and not enough Galarian forms either. 23 years of Pokemon now and still no damn dolphin Pokemon? Mind boggling. Dragapult, Frosmoth, Grimmsnarl, G-Weezing and Appletun are the cream of the crop in my eyes. I also like the design of Orbeetle, Copperajah, Obstagoon, Toxtricity, Falinks and Grabbloct. Fossils are a nice concept but seriously awkward to look at. Hatterene is slowly growing on me. Others like Eiscue and Coalossal are just fugly.
Metagame: was looking like Toxapex, Aegislash and Excadrill for days, but some of the new Mons have decent/good stats and movepools. Aegislash also got nerfed. I think Ground coverage looks pretty important. Also keen to play with some cool combos using Polteageist's Tea Time, Appletun's RIpen ability, etc. Blunder Policy seems pretty broken if you just spam OHKO moves like Fissure and either KO something or get an Agility boost. You Smogon banhammers won't like that at all! And Heavy Duty Boots finally giving some Pokemon some Stealth Rock reprieve?
Graphics: pretty darn awful. Looks like a HD version of Sun and Moon with some N64 graphics splashed in here and there. Characters are blocky, foliage is meh, swimming pokemon not making ripples, drawing distance seems short and things pop out of the ground. But this topic has been discussed to death. And SOME areas do look pretty. Just not the Wild Area so much.
Animations: Yikes. At least Gamefreak are leading by example and showing the world how to recycle?
Nitpicks: Fishing for a Pokemon in a stream and then suddenly the battle screen is a dirt field with no water in sight?? Lazy perhaps?
Difficulty level: seems a little too easy with no way of turning Exp Share off. And I'm not sure I like the fact that you can't catch certain levels of Pokemon unless you have certain gym badges. Seems like it's forcing you to play very linearly. And you'd hope you wouldn't find a high level shiny!
More metagame: I’m a little concerned about the seemingly skewed weather setters for this meta. Sand gets Gigalith, Tyranitar, Hippowdon, Sandaconda. That's 4. Hail gets Abomasnow and Vanilluxe. Sun gets Torkoal and Ninetails. Rain gets.....only Pelipper?? So rain, sun and hail REALLY need some new setters if we are able to use them competitively. Especially since there are so many Pokémon in the Galar dex with weather dependent abilities. Including Barraskewda. And yes I know other Pokemon might get Drizzle but looking at the new Pokemon there's basically only 2 new water types and neither look like rain setters. Maybe something like Vaporeon will get it.
