"Best Pokemon games I've ever played and I played them all" my ass

I don't even agree that SwSh are the "best looking Pokemon games to date". Even DS/3ds Pokemon games were more consistent with their visuals and executed their artstyles way better than SwSh did. I'd rather be looking at pleasant, consistent and polished pixel art than an incredibly inconsistent 3d game with N64 textures in the same screen as high-quality Switch models. It's super distracting and breaks the immersion.

They docked the score of a mystery dungeon game for having too many dungeons. They criticized a dungeon crawler for being a dungeon crawler. The scores are in no way accurate

Ah, yes, a 40 hour adventure, my favorite part was when I sat on my ass and did nothing for 32 hours.

I can’t believe...out of everything she talked about...the _music_ was what she criticized. The music. One of the best parts of the game. Yeah, ok.

You know what they say, "You can't spell "ignorant" without IGN."

Remember, IGN complained that the region OR/AS has too much water. The region based on a Japanese island surrounded by water

the fact that it took her 39 hours to get to the end credits says enough for me

It has just enough water, so it’s the best game of all time.

Honestly, who takes sites like Kotaku or IGN seriously anymore? Its pretty clear they don't give honest reviews and just shower with praise whatever game they're paid to give the blandest, most basic reviews ever along with an unrealistic, bloated score. Game journalism is a joke

"Eight fun gyms" Final gym: here are my three trainers standing in a line in one room

"The wild area looks super stinky" Why does that make me laugh so much

""And i played them all"" Press X to doubt

I highly doubt that she played all the games if she’s giving high praise to such an underwhelming game

Me: I woulda given it a 9.3 Great 8 hour demo! Everyone: That wasn't a demo.

This feels like a paid review that genuinely wanted to create a meaningful criticism of the game but didn't have the chance. She pointed out a lot of things wrong with the game, even emphasizing the absurdity of how long it took the franchise to achieve these changes. She made plenty of complaints, but overall needed to mask them with desperate praise to satisfy the needs of this review.

Fun fact: IGN are the first three letters of "ignorant"

We're talking about the same people who gave 7.8 to ORAS because it had "too much water"...

She was paid Edit: My god I'm impressed how much work she put into that. I mean just think how much energy it took to think up praise for the game. Evidence for that is shown in her repeating the tutorial skip. You do that in school when writing an essay and you don't have enough evidence for it.

"Not enough time put into to the story, as per usual pokemon" Gen 5: exists

Remember, IGN gave Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky a low review after they got stuck in Apple Woods which is arguably one of the easiest levels in the game.

I like how she throws shade at other pokemon games as a tactic to strengthen her point.

I dont think they are lying tbh, this is a perfect game for 4 year olds and game journalists.

This still infuriates me. I just need to get out of my chest how GF has slowly made us used to accepting shortcomings and dissatisfaction in their games. We do we expect from future games? Battle Frontier? No Pokémon following us in the overworld? No Difficulty options? No National Dex? No A good story? No Exploration? No Good graphics? No New megas? No So what is GF doing to keep their fanbase?

Everybody: literally everything is bad except music Casey: wow everything it's soooo fatastic but music sucks

The game is horrible by today's standards, has little to none good animations, and the online meta is terrible. 9.5/10 it has a little something for everyone.

I'll go ahead and admit that I haven't played Sword and Shield myself - to me, a $60 game that seemed like it had less content than its $40 predecessor (I didn't count Let's Go) just didn't seem worth it. But I think I can say with confidence that 9th Gen, whenever that is, is going to do one of two things based on how people have reacted to 8th Gen. Either a) Masuda and the old guard, who I believe have been stepping back in general lately, are going to finally turn the series over to people who actually give a shit about it and 9th Gen is going to be a return to form, bringing the series back to the standard most of us were content with before if not going above and beyond to deliver a *real* contender for best-in-the-series, or b) this will be the start of the series' dark age, where every game is undeniably inferior to the one before it as people like Casey use their platform to normalize shortcomings in the games to the point that nobody cares anymore. My money's on this one, but I hope to hell that I'm wrong - I miss Pokemon, just not enough to invest in a lesser game. Talk shit about 7th Gen all you want, but at least it had a full Pokedex.

"SwSh is the best Pokemon game, and I played them all." All of Nintendo DS Pokemon Games: *Internal Screaming.*

What's worse, is that Pokémon Sword and Shield's IGN rating is almost higher than Super Mario Galaxy. SUPER. MARIO. GALAXY.

"Sword and shield are the best pokemon games, and I've played them all" Something is wrong in this sentence

"Pokemon sword and shield are the best Pokemon games ever!" Pokemon Emerald, Platinum, and HG SS: are we a joke to you?

I mean this is IGN who came at Hoenn for having 'too much water' :l

Mainstream reviewers then: Despite being a highly budget game the gameplay experience is not as good as it should. 6/10 Mainstream reviewers today: OMG you can use right stick to move the camera and X button to jump! 10/10

IGN be like Luigi’s Mansion 3 “can’t invert the Y axis, 8/10” Pokémon SWSH “Oh look, Pokémon. 11/10 game of the century.”

Remember, this is the same review team that reviewed Jurassic World Evolution low BECAUSE your main focus was to build a park, a game where it literally is all about building your own park.

"Sword and shield are the best pokemon games" X and Y are 10 times better but ok But we all know that 4 and 5 gen are the best ones

Did they spend 25 of those 40 hours trying to figure out the Gym puzzles?

The worst part is they gave New Horizons and Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition lower scores. And according to them, SWSH is also almost as good as Smash Ultimate. Even though SWSH was just clearly lazy, whilst the Smash devs went all out for the game.

Don’t let this distract you from the fact that IGN rated 7.8 for “too much water”

*Reviewer lists several negatives that she has to go out of her way to excuse* "9.3 out of 10"

The thing is that every pokemon game is a product of its time, but sword and shield it's the only one that looks outdated since the announcement. I aways complain with my friends that these games have a lot of problems that in any other Nintendo games should be inadmissible and they always said things like "comparing with the old titles is a good game", "what matters is fun", "if you don't like, you're not a pokemon fan", "game freak have low employees, they do what they could". Now just imagine if Rock Star announce GTA 6, with ps3 graphics, playability like the ps2 era but with little adjustments, a service when you have to pay to pass weapons and cars from past games, a shitty story, with a meaningless dlc... No one will like it. It's about time to pokemon players realize that if they still paying for any garbage game freak throw us, they'll never do something we can say "that's the evolution of pokemon", because they still filling theirs pocket with your money with doing little effort... Seriously pokemon is the greatest brand of the world, and they put the B team to do the game, when team A do a new IP that nobody buy

"We are gonna cut the Pokédex because we want to prioritize quality over quantity" Well... *Where the heck is my quality!?*

"SwSh are the best Pokemon games." Gen 5: exists

"I've played them all" that's the biggest cap I've ever heard.

She seriously brings up that you can move the camera with the right joystick as one of the positives? That's like a basic fundamental that's in every 3d game ever now, are you serious?

“Best pokemon game,and I played them all”.So you didn’t played Emerald,HGSS,Platinum and BW2,huh?

12:05 they could've let Bede be the first dual-type leader (Psychic/Fairy), the chance was just sitting there.

Sword and shield are unfinished, shameless cash grabs of a once loved series. It really separated the fans from the fanboys.

So the budget for Sw&Sh went to bribing IGN for a high rating.

Did S&S Deserves a 10/10? Short Answer: NO! Long Answer: HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELL NO!

"Best pokemon games I've ever played.. and i played all of them" So. How much did they pay you? Depending on your answer maybe even I'll sellout

Anyone else remember their ORAS review video where they ranted and raved about how perfect the games were before all of a sudden dropping the "Too much Water" complaint in the last 5 minutes?

I was insulted when they give B2&W2 a terrible score... But giving SWSH a higher score? That's even more insulting.

i just don't understand WHY it is so hard to ask for better quality from such a successful company, like it really just blows my mind

I honestly miss the secret grass encounters, it gives you a sense of "ooh what's it gonna be?! " When you first play

I doubt Casey has ever played a pokemon game in the past

Obligatory commentary: "You cannot write ignorant without IGN".

They gave it a 9.3 because the game didn’t have that much water. The missing 0.7 of the score is because it had some water.

I feel like the review was written out of spite towards the Dexit crowd. How any Pokemon fan could sit there and say these are the best in the series, after playing them all, is in denial.

Ironically the music is probably the thing that has the most creativity and effort in these newer games

When you realize fans make better pokemon games than gamefreak now.

Isn't this the same woman who said the latest Fire Emblem game was Heroes for 3DS with Corrin? Well, that explains a lot.

"Where are the glaring problem's? There aren't any!" Wow I gave never seen someone so blatantly wrong.

Honestly, I feel like visually, generations 4 and 5 have the best graphics. 3D doesn't nessecarily mean better graphics. sometimes, 2d sprites have a certain charm and life that a 3d model can lack. so I feel like looking at 3d as an upgrade doesn't really hold up. 3d can pretty much either help, or hinder a game.

"It's got a little something for everyone." - a paid off IGN reviewer

40 hours? How many times did she blackout

Pokemon black and white were my first games followed by hg/ss and hearing her call sword and shield the best game physically pains me

I have a suggestion for Pokemon gyms. Instead of set types, they could do "themes" or "pokemon of a similar inspiration or species." Example: A trainer has a thing for rat and mouse Pokemon......so....they'll have a raticate, raichu, gen 8 Pikachu clone, Pikachu special gigantamax, and a watchog. (Even though watchog is based on a groundhog, it's pre-evolution has "rat" in its name. That's the only exception made.) Or, a trainer that loves the color purple, so their team only consists of purple Pokemon. Or, a trainer only has Pokemon that have similar inspirations. Either based on design, or general theme of the Pokemon, or whatever mythology it's based on. And your starters, there will be 4 of them. The regular 3, then maybe.....a steel type. Only 1 Pokemon is super effective to it, the other 2 are neutral. If you did electric, you'd be at the biggest disadvantage picking a water starter....2 weaknesses. Or, have it be normal, but every single gym leader knows fighting moves, and most wild Pokemon know fighting moves, and can effectively counter your wild starter. So, then, if your starter has no weakness to the other starters, everyone else can counter it, and each starter can learn 1 powerful fighting move to counter this starter. So, picking the normal starter would be extra hard mode. As everyone will have a counter, and all trainers will be quite abit smarter than usual. Switching out, and trying to destroy your normal starter. For the other starters, plenty of trainers on route may have counters, but only some gym leaders will. If it's too easy, your rival will always be abit stronger, level wise and be pretty smart. They will always pick the starter strong against you. In the event you pick the normal type starter, you rival will pick which ever Pokemon learns a fighting move the quickest. And their starter will be at their third stage sooner than yours. So, your rival will be very smart and work very hard. BUT, there will be some restructuring in order to ensure that your rival, and gym leaders don't cheat. (Illegal moves, insane legendary Pokemon out of nowhere, etc) However, some trainers in the wild do cheat.....why? They don't have the same code of discipline and honor as a gym leader, and may not be as hard working as a gym leader, you, or your rival. So, some trainers will cheat. They may have some somewhat crazy pokemon, (legendaries will rarely show up in a cheater battle. Most of the time it's a very, very rare set of pokemon that are all shiny and somehow have pokerus....you can't catch pokers from them though, it's a cheater strain. Or this cheater trainer has all starters. The Pokemon may also possess illegal moves, and will always have the rarest ability possible.) With this cheater trainer, pokemon will often be evolved earlier than they should, or have illegal moves. Though, this trainer isn't very smart at all. They either have stupid or predictable attack patterns, or just pick a stat move because it's strong against your type. However, if you lose to these trainers, there's no penalty. No money lost, and you're able to rematch the cheating trainers as often as you like. They pay more than regular trainers, give your Pokemon a little more XP than any other trainer, and will change their Pokemon at times. Going against cheating trainers is actually rewarding to you. The more you beat them, some tougher and more honest trainers will show up in either pokemon centers, or a field closest to them. They hear about you continuously beating a cheater, and offer an optional battle. This battle is the motherload! Powerful Pokemon used by a smart trainer who switches out when they see fit. They pay very well, too! You do lose money if you lose, but these advanced trainers will stick around if you win or lose. You can only beat them 3 times. When you do, they will give you a battle/strategy type item which will be very useful, and that specific trainer will leave. These advanced trainers will be abit weaker than your rival and somewhat less intelligent, but stronger than most trainers you encounter. They're your reward for beating a cheating trainer 10 times. They pay better than the cheater trainer, and give more so than them, but you lose some more money if you lose to them. These advanced trainers are secrets, they don't show up in regular play.

And people wondered why I gave up on Pokemon. Way too many shills who are willing to look pass the game's downfall in quality for awful business practices, obvious betas and of course, "DLC later on that's way more pricey then it should be.". Pokemon has effectively devolved and will continue to devolve and nothing will ever change. Just abandon ship and play Bug Fables instead.

IGN is EXTREMELY biased and unfair when reviewing a game. PMD2 Explorers of Sky are given 4.9 out of 10, and they didn't even make it past Apple Woods. ORAS is given 7.8 out of 10 because of "too much water." But then, you take a game like Pokemon Red? EZ 10 outta 10, on nostalgia alone, save the fact that the game is riddled with bugs, glitches, and the strongest type in the game has no real weakness. Sword and Shield is just active bias.

Her comparing the graphics of SwSh to other pkmn games is like giving someone a $100 guitar and someone else a $1000 guitar, yeah no shit the $1000 sounds better.

Hell Sword and shield aren’t even the first Pokémon games that you could skip the tutorial. You could decline the catching tutorial offer all the way back in gold and silver.

"9.3 No more water xdddd" -IGN It's obvious that Game Freak and The Pokemon Company paid them a shit ton of money so they could make a positive review.

IGN review scores depend on how much money they are paid.

Sees SW/SH at 9.3 Sees HG/SS at 8.5 *Confused screeching intensifies*

Sword and Shield are the worst Pokemon games

They gave SW/SH a higher score than Xenoblade Chronicles DE? What the hell man.

This just screams "Paid Review"

0:59 the last time I was left in a state of “pure child like joy” when playing a Pokémon game was back in Pokémon black and white because almost every Pokémon you encountered was new and you didn’t know what was coming next. in that game I was eagerly awaiting what came next, in sword and shield I was bracing for it

As a pokemon player that is British, I am (and always will be) upset that the place that I live was made into a region that I thought would be as good as the rest, if not better. But I was wrong. There is so much they could have done (both with graphics and gameplay) but now my region will always be the 'bad one'.

Imagine saying Sw/Sh are the best games in a world with HG/SS and the Unova games.

"And I've played them all now please let me see my family."

Ok i can tell that this is complete bullshit. I recently played Platinum,Black 2 and HeartGold for the first time (208 in 1 rom card) and let me just say that by the time I finished Platinum, I had around 50+ hours + the time I spent exploring the battle frontier which boosted it up to 65+ hours from grinding, re-battling the Elite 4 and filling my national Dex, which is what you should expect for a post-game HeartGold was amazing because of the introduction to Pokémon following you. By the time I finished the main game, I had over 45+hours and by the time o finished the Kanto part of the game, I had over 75+ for the amount of time it took for me to grind for Red, including the time spent in the battle frontier again.( what can you expect with that banger of a battle theme) For Black 2, it was a long one. That was hard one. The massive level gaps, the constant Audino grinding sessions, the amount of personality given to characters (especially N) made it a lot of fun! And by the time I beat the champion for the first time, I had over 60+HOURS OF GAMEPLAY ON MY FILE. Then we had black tower, white tree hollow, Satan(Cynthia) and N. My boi N... The amount of character development he got from B/W 1 really shows and makes N a really memorable character (with a GOD-TIER BATTLE THEME). So by the time I did all that, I had well over 85+ hours of gameplay on it. And I had a lot of fun with all 3 of these games! In conclusion, compared to these Legendary games, Sword and Shield are complete doo-doo crap and don’t deserve to be associated with those legendary masterpieces legendary, and that Casey is just full of shit

Pokemon has fallen into that popularity where the fan base is like ‘I know it’s probably mediocre and not worth it, but I’m gonna buy it anyway’

"x is bad, but y makes up for it" Don't take this out of context.

And thats why they can play Isle of Armor first. Yesterday we get "We Saw 30 Minutes of Pokémon Sword and Shield's Isle of Armor DLC" article on IGN. Fun fact: in this article you can read that "The Isle of Armor expansion was already being developed before Pokémon Sword and Shield were released". So instead polish main product they start working on more paid content.

I think one of SwSh’s biggest problems had to be the fact that Gamefreak simply didn’t know what to do with all that space. For its entire history, the window to the Pokémon world has been confined to a small screen on a portable device. Making the sudden jump to a picture capable of fitting a flatscreen TV has made its growing pains all the more apparent. Pokémon has remained stagnant all these years because it managed to find a formula that works. However, we are in changing times in the world of gaming. Pokémon could get away with packing what seems like a lot into a small space, but now that it has all this creative freedom with more screen room and fully 3D graphics, they feel without direction. I can only hope that we’ll get the gen 4 remakes next year, and the fact that they won’t have to be nearly as original in their design will give them time to recuperate and really learn where they can improve. In retrospect, it might’ve been unfair of us to expect the most stellar performance from these games. That said, the criticisms that have been brought forward are no less valid, and should most definitely be used in deciding the future direction.

Gamefreak spent the entire Budget on Bribing the Reviewers.

"Let's Go looks significantly better than SwSh and has a lot more polish and shine; its art direction is more cohesive and attractive and has things like unique backgrounds in battles, something that SwSh fails to match" THANK. YOU. Finally someone who actually understands game developing. Let's Go might not be your ideal game because of its artstyle, but it's technically and graphically superior to SwSh by miles. Quality is objective.

Mystery dungeon puts a new spin on Pokemon, they actually hired writers for once, the sprites hold up today, and feels like a breath of fresh air IGN: 4.9 I think IGN is short for IGNorant

Sword and shield have been the only games that I have not bought in my entire life, why because I don't want to give my money to them, I don't know if I'll ever buy another pokemon game. It's really sad for me since I played all of the pokemon games and versions, even the ranger and mistery dungeon games( btw, amazing games with way better stories than the main line games ).

i completely forgot about the gym challenges. they werent memorable whatsoever

"The *40-plus hours* I've spent with Sword and Shield have left me comfortable with calling them the best Pokemon games I have ever played" 40 hours isn't much when it comes to Pokemon to be honest.

I had fun with swsh, but there's no way the game deserves that high of a rating. The lack of quality and the amount of flaws are inexcusable, not to mentioned the cut mons.

i love the torvus bog sounftrack in the beginning

Her review was so inaccurate, I genuinely believe she was paid to give an 'outstanding' review

Ah, so, let's see... *"The animations weren't good, characters weren't very expressive, cutscenes were janky, the whole dex wasn't there" = her negatives *"Y-com is good" false claim to be honest, we all know that. *"You can't actually interact with other players in the overworld, routes are narrow roads & there's not really a lot to explore." = More negatives. *"There's a couple rocks in the wild area and a place with sand" = not a very good attempt at 'making something seem better than it really is' so a lie. *"40 hours of gameplay" Where???? I spent 12+ hours ingame time shiny hunting an Electrike before the second Gym and still finished the mainline game at around 16-18 hours or such. I dunno how they counted it, probably with irl time and adding in how long they slept and all that. So I'm counting that as a lie too *"Bad music" Her only true criticism she admits Now, let's see what positives could Possibly negate all of that and turn it into a 9.5 *Tutorial skip - after 20+ years of games, wow *Better graphics - Arguable because of Let's Go *Bike & Flying - The seamless transition from traveling on land and water is nice and the ability to fly so soon is nice, I'll give you that *Access to box where ever - Also nice *Wild area - Nice idea, fell flat *Controllable camera - On 1 area, something they failed to mention *"There's a post game!" - Well, yeah, duh. It's sad when something like this is something to be joyous about *The newest (probably like 10-15) moves are well animated - And all the rest are lackluster and bad *8 gyms, etc - So... a standard Pokemon game? None of that is anything much to really mention Not to mention the lack of voice acting, non-skippable cutscenes, and who knows what I missed So, you tell me how this is worth 9.5

That's why most people don't believe in journalists anymore.

A freaking blue puppet gives a more honest review than IGN!

I think I could lie for money as well