Pokémon168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Sword & Shield is undoubtedly a massive leap from older 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Pokémon games, but it’s built on a long history of other 3D games in the series. Perhaps the most significant is the first fully 3D Pokémon adventure, Pokémon Colosseum, where trainers explored the Orre Region to rescue Shadow Pokémon and def⭕eat the criminal organization Cipher.
This game was released in 2003, only a year after Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire, but it’s astounding how visually and aesthetically similar it is to Pokémon Sword & Shield fifteen years later. It contains several aspects that are wonderfully reminiscent of this GameCube classic, but some great traits are surprisingly absent from the newer Switch titles.
10 Le💧arned: Massive Region
Pokémon Colosseum’s Orre region isn’t explored the same way as other ga꧅mes. Rather than going from t꧟own to town via routes full of tall grass, the player instead uses a motorbike to travel the massive deserts and forests to reach each main area. It’s an odd system, but helps make the environment feel much larger than it is.
Pokémon Sword & Shield do this one better by making the new Galar region as large as Orre while letting you 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:explore everywhere in-between important locations. With the vast Wild Area, diverse and maze-like routes, and a full train system throughout the region, it’s clear that Pokémon Sword & Shield was able to make an environment as large�🔯� as it feels.
9 Did Better: Towns & Citie꧑s
Galar might be large, but the contents of the region are fairly subpar in most areas. Many towns have no reason to return after obtaining𝔉 a Gym Badge, and many are deceptively small compared to their deep backgrounds. The neon village of Ballonlea is perhaps the best example, being a beautiful place with nothing to do besides beating Gym Leader Opal and getting some one-time items.
Orre’s towns blow Galar’s out of the water, with each having tons of houses and secret areas for trainers to explore. The introductory Phenac City has tons of side missions, Agate 😼Village is reserved as a location to purify Shadow Pokémon, and Pyrite Town has an entire criminal underground to explore later in the game. Gala𒆙r might be more fun to explore, but its destinations are truly underwhelming.
8 🐲 Learned: Themed Soundtraꦕck
Outside of the gameplay, one of the biggest impacts Pokémon Colosseum had on the mainline series was its music. Much of Orre is a large desert, and the town❀s within it have either been there for generations or been freshly built by its wealthier residents. The music varies substantially from the Game Boy Advance games prior, using its orches♚tra to create Pokémon-style music that better-fits each unique situation and area.
Pokémon Sword & Shield is surprisingly close, having its own consistent musical theme centered around sporting events, particularly in Galar's 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:battle themes. Gym Leader Battles have an audience cheering along, and battles with rivals are remixed beautifully to fit different moments with recurring characters. Many Pokémon games fail to succeed in this theming, but Pokémon Sword & Shield isn’t one of them.
7 Did Beꦫtter: Memorable Melodies
While its theming is stellar, Pokémon Sword & Shield suffers from its orchestra more than Pokémon Colosseum. Galar’s music is often quite forgettable, with most cities ꦆhaving very generic upbeat tunes and the Wild Area having a dramatic overture that’s int🦹erchangeable with any other open-world game.
Pokémon Colosseum relied heavily on its orchestra too, but it got around this problem by using different instruments for each area. For example, forest areas like Agate Village use classical stringed instruments to add to its serenity, while the rusted crime den of Pyrite Town features finger-snaps and trumpets to make it feel more active. These details add to the region's charm, while also providing many 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:more memorable songs.
6 Learned: Quick Start ဣ
Pokémon Sword & Shield might feel slow to some players, but the earliest parts of the game are a substantially ಞquicker pace compared to most games in the series. Once players can access the Wild Area, the game opens up immensely, providing🍸 a huge diversity of Pokémon to build teams with.
Pokémon Colosseum does this too, but through its higher starting levels. Rather than an introductory level 5 starter, you begin the g🐼ame w𝄹ith an Espeon and Umbreon at levels 25 and 26. By having this later start, the game gets much more diverse in terms of moves and Pokémon diversity, as there isn’t a beginning grind where every opponent only uses Tackle.
5 ๊ Did Better: Challenging Difficulty
Pokémon Sword & Shield might start wide and diverse, but it comes at the cost of the game’s difficulty. Having access to Max Raid Battles means trainers can get a large amount of Exp. Candy to power-level their team, making many fights against 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:strong opponents like Leon feel underwhelming.
Pokémon Colosseum’s opponents are likely to be seen as overly high by the end of the game, but it’s far from impossible and just requires some preparation. So long as you have a diverse team and don’t skip too many battles, the game is fair in its challenge, and it makes for more interesting decisions than Pokémon Sword & Shield's more forgiving difficulty.
4 Learned: ♓Post-Game Variety 𒐪
While there are many traits that Pokémon Sword & Shield carries from Pokémon Colosseum, it’s also learned quite well from its faults. Perhaps the biggest of these ꧅is in its post-game content♒, as there’s little to do in Orre after defeating the final boss besides a few extra Shadow Pokémon and the endless Mt. Battle challenge.
Pokémon Sword & Shield might lack a Battle Frontier, but there’s still more than plenty to do afterward. From new content in the form of the Expansion Pass, an odd post-game story with new characters, and battle challenges like Restricted Sparring and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the Battle Tower, there’s tons more to do once the game’s beaten.
3 𝓡 Did Better: Focused Story 𒁃
Pokémon Sword & Shield is certainly more story-driven than most older games in the series, featuring full cutscꦇenes and lots of side advent♔ures while collecting Gym Badges. It isn’t too invasive with the player’s journey to defeat Leon, but because of all the characters and plots, the game’s stories can feel somewhat jumbled.
Pokémon Colosseum is perhaps more story-driven, but it makes a much cleaner plot to follow. The villains are all quite clear, there aren’t too many named characters tꦉo keep track of, and every plotline connects back to Shadow Pokémon, Cipher, and Team Snagem. It’s extremely linear but significantly more coherent than Galar’s competing storylines.
2 Lea🦋rned: Excitin💞g Double Battles
One of the most iconic moments of Pokémon Sword & Shield is undoubtedly 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the battle with Gym Leader Raihan, a Dragon-type expert who more uni෴quely specializes in the Sandstorm weather condition. What adds to the flair of this battle is that he prefers it to be a Double Battle, making for a much more complex challenge with far more spectacle than your prior Gym Battles.
Double Battles are an important mode in competitive play, but they don’t often appear in the mainline games. Pokémon Sword & Shield’s fight against Raihan he🧸lps show new players j🦩ust how deep this battle format can be,
1 Did Better: Fr꧋equent Dou🗹ble Battles
The way that Pokémon Colosseum focused on Double Battles was by diving in head-first, making them take up every fight in the game. As a sharp contrast, the battle with Raihan is one of the only instances that Double Battles appear outside of Pokémon Sword & Shield’s Battle Tower and multiplayer modes.
The GameCube games 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:are certainly spin-offs, but Double Battles are just as engaging and have appeared in every mainline Pokémon game since Pokémon Ruby & Sapphire. Most new players are likely to see Double Battles as a gimmick rather than a well-rounded and competitive format, and while Pokémon Colosseum has more Double Battles than most players would want, it at least succeedꩲed in showcasing the format's depth.