Sword and Sheild and no National Pokedex.

I wanna be the very best.

The premise of Pokemon is both simple and instantly recognisable. Gotta catch 'em all. Not 'Gotta catch some of them' or 'gotta catch the new ones' but 'all of em'. It was this simple phrase that allowed Game Freak to literally release the same game twice for the past twenty years, without anyone batting an eye. If you wanted every Pokemon you had to either strategically purchase each game alongside a follow Pokemon enthusiast, rely on Nintendo's weird online systems to fill up your blank spaces or just bite the bullet and buy two games. But people ate it up readily without complaining. In generation 3 (The best generation.) The Pokemon Company deigned it appropriate to take this concept to it's logical conclusion with the introduction of the National Pokedex.

You see, usually a Pokedex would list all of the Pokemon that were available to collect in the game that you are playing. Or, within the game's universe, the 'reigon' that you are operating within. This allows the player to trudge towards 100% completion with a list of possible-to-obtain Pokemon to refer too. The National Pokedex, much as the name implies, expanded the reach of that Pokedex. With the National upgrade, the Pokedex would now display any-and-all Pokemon that was known to exist up to that point. That meant including the roster of every single Pokemon from every game, a list that would constantly expand with each entry.

This seemed perfect for an RPG that was never really built with the core concept of balance and scale in mind. Pokemon was a game that took it's fundamental premise, of an RPG with a roster of hundreds, more seriously than it took many of the fundamental tenets of creating an RPG. You never hit a roadblock that couldn't be grind-ed over and, if you were stubborn enough, all the special attack values could be totally ignored if you just buffed up your main to out-damage your opponent's special effects. In a RPG that offers that much freedom in the player's approach it makes sense that they would also allow you to take the same overpowered Pokemon from the last game and bring it over to the next one to cause mayhem. Why start at the beginning each time when you can just drag along Arceus, literal god of creation, to wreck shop on low-level trainers like some sort of rich playground bully?

Fans of the games responded positively too, loving the ability to take their favourite Pokemon with them on this decades long journey around the ever expansive world. It made the Pokemon feel like more than just squad mates, it made them feel like companions. Like we were all Ash Ketchums
going on our very own globetrotting adventure, only with us waking up with a new mother, father, best friend and rival in every game for some reason. Those 'hidden stats' that Game Freak always kept around as little personality definers really came to fruition too, when you where with your virtual pet long enough to tell it's quirks apart from others you met along your adventure. You became one big family with your huge-ass Pokemon roster backing you up.

Only now that family is about to be a broken one. In the lead up to 'Pokemon: Sword and Sheild' Game Freak have decreed that the National Pokedex will be scrapped in order to start again from scratch at the new entry. This doesn't mean that your favourite Pokemon will definitely be unable to travel to this new game, you just better hope that Pokemon also exists in the Galar Region. This move has eviscerated the number of playable Pokemon from the 809 of 'Pokemon: Sun and Moon', to however many are in the finished game. Likely around 150. This means that if your Pokemon-of-choice does not fit within the thin confines of the Pokemon that Game Freak consider a 'neccesity', you ain't gonna get to bring that Pokemon along. (Rayquaza, no!)

This move has, understandably, upset a lot of die-hard fans who have been travelling along with the same roster since the Hoenn days. People have demanded to know why The Pokemon Company seems to be abandoning one of the core pillars of the Pokemon world, the ability to 'catch em all'. This has become the spearhead in a flurry of attacks that fans are levelling at 'Sword and Shield' as a whole. They have been lamenting the fact that Pokemon seems to have taken little-to-no steps
forward with this game, despite having made the move from 3DS to a whole new, more powerful, system. Visually, it looks the same as Sun and Moon and many of the new features are either gimmicky, like the 'Dynamax' mode, or steps backwards, like how enemy randomness has been reworked.

Game Freak have, however, provided some context behind the decision. Explaining that they made the choices that they did with a heavy heart and a reason. Whether or not this explanation makes up for their transgression is up to you. For one, they claimed that Pokemon was undergoing a huge tech leap from 3DS to Switch, allowing them to achieve so much more but requiring more time. One of the complications comes from the fact that in 'Pokemon: Sword and Shield', every Pokemon now boasts a high fidelity model, whereas before they could deal with just sprites. This means that Game Freak would have to redesign 809 Pokemon just to accommodate for the National Pokedex. A daunting task indeed. This does however lend water to a major fan contention.

Given many of the graphical and mechanical weaknesses that I mentioned earlier, Many fans have made the claims that Game Freak it rushing out 'Sword and Shield'. Sure 809 Pokemon are a lot to handle, but what is wrong with just delaying your game long enough to work on it? Surely The Pokemon Company can take the hit. It seems to fans that in recent years, Pokemon games have upped their release dates to start becoming yearly. 'Pokemon Go' came out in 2016, 2017 saw the release of 'Pokemon: Sun and Moon', 2018 was the year of 'Pokemon: Let's Go Pikachu and Evie' and 'Pokemon: Sword and Shield' is slated for 2019. It feels like The Pokemon company are tilting their production to make Pokemon yearly and, thus, start competeing with the yearly money-makers like CoD and Battlefield.

In Game Freak's defence, there could be another, totally innocent, reason why the would abandon most of their 809 strong roster. Just straight-up balancing. I know that earlier I mentioned how that wasn't important in the Pokemon game-creation process, but things have started to spiral out of control in the later generations. Game Freak even had to introduce the concept of 'Mega Evolutions' in order to raise the ceiling cap of their new Pokemon's possible power level and add space to expand. Not to mention the fact that, out of those 809 Pokemon, many of them are total trash. I'm not talking in terms of stats because that can be easily amended, I'm talking in terms of basic design. Remember Trubbish? He was a bin bag. Vanillite and her evolutions where all just increasingly generous servings of an ice cream cone. Probopass was an Easter island head with a comedy fake-moustache glued on. Game Freak clearly had issues pushing the limits of their creativity during some of later generations, resulting in some truly awful designs. Perhaps 'Sworld and Sheild' is chance to finally sanitize that roster and start from the beginning, kind of.

Finally comes the issue of money. Does 'Sword and Shield' really have to make these kind of concessions when it comes from a franchise that totals up to 90 billion revenue? Don't say that you don't have the staff or resources to manage such a huge undertaking because you could easily afford it without making a sweat. Perhaps The Pokemon Company are staring to become more frugal in recent years, but if that means stunting your biggest cash cow than doesn't that just end up hurting their long-term profits anyway? They can afford to delay the game long enough to work on the National Pokedex. Heck, They can afford to rent out an island and create 'Pokemon land' if they wanted to. The Pokemon Company have reached the goal of Eric Sacks from the TMNT movie and become 'stupid rich'. Let's just hope that they haven't become 'Stupid rights holders' by the same merit.

As a Pokemon fan, I can understand the disappointment even if I don't feel it myself. I've always started from the beginning in every Pokemon game, usually because I lacked the online capabilities to take advantage of the National Pokedex. People who have devoted a lot of themselves into the collectathon nature of Pokemon have a right to be dissatisfied by this slap in the face. But on the bright side, this is a brand new place to start for a whole new generation of trainers. Even I might fianlly dive into the revamped National Pokedex this time. (Wait, Nintendo charges for their crappy online service now? Scratch that, I'm sticking to being a loner.) Is this controversy enough to sink the game? No, not even close. But it does strike at the heart of the dedicated fan base and those are the fans that you do not want to lose.