#because the actual au is so far divorced from anything gen 8 that it’d be impossible for us to share

[battle-subway-aftershow]

Inconspicuous mustache and glasses on, soooo you wanna talk about how galar could be good huh?

Points at you this is all your fucking fault (/j)

Anyways you’ve poked me so I’m going to talk about it now. Sorry not sorry.

Before I say anything: “Moth, Tinker, don’t like, all your characters live in galar?” Yes! Because when you’re making an au for Pokémon why make a region out of scratch, when Game Freak’s left a perfectly good blank slate for you right there?

Anyways with that out of the way, I’m putting this under a cut because this is going to be long.

Sword and shield are such disappointing games. You could say a million things about it— the graphics, the routes, the nat dex cut, so on and so forth, but that’s a long dead horse and im not going to start beating it.

I like Sw/Sh’s story. Or, more accurately I like the idea of the story that the games tried and failed to give us. I really want to say there’s something there to grasp at, but honestly? There’s not. Nothing burger ass game.

The plot up until the climax of the story is “The darkest day was a thing and there was a hero that stopped it. Bede’s mean and wants wishing stars. Wait, what?! There’s two heroes? And badass dogs? No way!”

It genuinely feels like they had a full story arc with plot beats written out, but had to scratch everything besides the climax and try to fill in the gaping plot holes as quickly as they could before they hit the deadline for release. It’s so jarring and bizarre when you reach the climax of the story, because it’s just… out of nowhere? You and Hop try to break into the Macro Cosmos tower to interrupt Leon’s meeting because he was… late for dinner? And Oleana hears this and starts acting like an unhinged evil antagonist out of nowhere, even though at the moment not letting you in is just, perfectly logical?

And then the whole hide and seek game she does for the keys— Team Yell joining in, none of this feels deserved at all, probably because there was, I don’t know, supposed to be things happening before this that properly built up to it?

It’s so frustrating, because if they had even executed the story at all, it would’ve been so cool. The guy who practically MADE galar is re-awakening what is basically an eldritch god in a misguided attempt to save the region from future disaster (trauma? Paranoia? All of the above?) but his plan backfires and nearly destroys everything instead??? It’s such a cool idea! And it’s just. Barely even executed at all.

Oleana and Rose both could’ve been such interesting characters. Their Pokémon teams are symbolic of themselves as people, for crying out loud! Imagine how cool those fights, especially Oleana’s, could’ve been if there had been a proper fucking storyline??

(I won’t go too in-depth, but Oleana using beautiful and feminine Pokémon up until her g-max garbador ace— a literal heaping pile of trash? And how that represents the her horrible personality hidden behind her appearance?

And how Rose’s team is made up of thorn and thorn-like Pokémon, as well as industrial Pokémon and his childhood starter? Without a rose in sight? He’s lost who he was to the pursuit of innovation or something. There’s no Rose anymore, only the thorns. Too bad there’s nothing before these moments.)

It ends up just feeling like a barely even executed dollar store version of Sun and Moon. You’ve got the punk evil team who isn’t actually evil, the altruistic company/foundation that turns out to be far worse than the evil team, extraterrestrial pokemon who are very debatably Pokémon being brought into the world and causing problems? Yeah everything screams “we tried to recreate the s/m formula,” down to Hop using Hau’s animations. Insane.

(Also team yell feels like another dead horse that I don’t want to beat— but they don’t work like Team Skull did. Team skull worked! Really well in my opinion! Meanwhile Team Yell is just… kind of a vague nuisance. I get that was the point, but if Macro Cosmos was going to be the villains— why not give any buildup beforehand? Oh well. I said I wouldn’t beat the dead horse.)

Tl;dr: Sword and shield is barely even trash, it’s an empty dumpster with some unopened cans in it and I am sitting in there playing with the cans trying to create a coherent story out of it. Man galar’s good if only it was good. Go watch Twilight wings it’s Galar if it was good

And also sw/sh feels uncannily like bootleg sun and moon, bri’ish edition.