The Long Game
Progress reports on the games we just j can’t quit, q , featuring g island living in Pokémon Sword & Shield
Developer Game Freak Publisher The Pokémon Company, Nintendo Format Switch Release 2019
Pokémon’s competitive game retains its irresistible pull. It’s strong enough to ensure that Sword & Shield has sustained a reasonably healthy online community, despite a postgame that otherwise offers slim pickings. Game Freak has relied upon players caring enough about Gigantamax Pokémon to want to dive back in for sporadic time-limited raids.
The first expansion of a two-part season pass comes at a good time, then. The Isle Of Armor does away with routes and towns, focusing on a more open and topographically diverse version of the oddly contained and visually dull Wild Area. It suggests Game Freak has picked up some tips from the sandboxes of Xenoblade Chronicles and Breath Of The Wild – it even gets its own Korok Seed collectathon equivalent, as you’re asked to find 150 Alolan Diglett scattered across the Isle’s biomes. Yet it’s hardly an aesthetic match for either, nor does it boast the same volume or variety of asides.
It’s accessible once you reach the Wild Area in the main game, though it’s best to wait until you’ve become regional champion, since the low-level enemies are unlikely to be a match for even a modest squad; by contrast, once you’ve conquered Galar, the Pokémon you’ll encounter start at Level 50. Besides, you’ll need Rotom Bike’s surfing upgrade to reach a number of aquatic creatures, including the colossal Wailord.
The expansion’s story element is fairly brief: on arrival, you’re welcomed to a dojo where you’re set three basic trials to complete before you’re deemed worthy of being given custody of adorable new Pokémon Kubfu. Then you’re invited to climb one of the Isle’s two towers (the other being locked out entirely) as you face five trainers en route to obtaining an ancient scroll that determines the strengths of the evolved form of your high-kicking new friend.
But for many fans the real draw will be what comes after. Having been vocally keen to keep numbers down for future games, Game Freak has relented to online clamour to include a wider range of Pokémon from other regions. There are over 100 returning monsters here, including the likes of Porygon, Kingdra and Volcarona, while a similar number will return in the second add-on, The Crown Tundra, this winter.
It remains to be seen whether that choice will be sustainable over time from a developer that doesn’t boast the same resources as other Nintendo-adjacent studios. The Isle Of Armor shows promise for future Pokémon games, its free-roaming setting coming closer to the ideal of a Pokémon MMO than ever before. Yet on this evidence, perhaps that’s a misguided ambition: those who want more from the series than the chance to catch ’em all may feel short-changed.