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350 | pokémon shield, initial thoughts
Sunday, 15 March 2026 08:54 pmI wasn’t feeling quite done with Pokémon after Brilliant Diamond, so I decided to borrow my brother’s copy of Pokémon Shield and have started playing that! I’m not too far in yet—maybe three or four hours, I think. I originally skipped Sword/Shield when the games came out, as I wasn’t interested at the time, meaning that it’s currently the only Pokémon generation whose main game I haven’t played.
This wasn’t the first time I’ve skipped a generation*—I was very sulky about the Hoenn games as a child, mostly because I was upset about them cutting off transfers from the previous games (in hindsight: I have much more sympathy for why the developers made this choice!), and so didn’t get around to playing them until the remakes came out; and while I did start Pokémon White and Moon not too long after their respective releases, with both of those I ended up taking a break mid-game and only came back to them years later. But ultimately, whatever my initial feelings are, I always seem to play through a version of each generation’s games eventually, and apparently Sword/Shield is no exception.
*Specifically, the main games I’ve played through are: Red [technically my brother’s game, but we shared the save files], an incomplete Yellow playthrough, Silver, Diamond, Platinum, an incomplete Soul Silver run, White, X, Alpha Sapphire, Moon, Brilliant Diamond, and Scarlet.
Anyways. So far, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised! For all that I originally felt so disinterested in these games, I’m really really enjoying my time with Shield now, so much so that I’m retroactively liking Brilliant Diamond less in comparison, oops. ( more beneath the cut )
This wasn’t the first time I’ve skipped a generation*—I was very sulky about the Hoenn games as a child, mostly because I was upset about them cutting off transfers from the previous games (in hindsight: I have much more sympathy for why the developers made this choice!), and so didn’t get around to playing them until the remakes came out; and while I did start Pokémon White and Moon not too long after their respective releases, with both of those I ended up taking a break mid-game and only came back to them years later. But ultimately, whatever my initial feelings are, I always seem to play through a version of each generation’s games eventually, and apparently Sword/Shield is no exception.
*Specifically, the main games I’ve played through are: Red [technically my brother’s game, but we shared the save files], an incomplete Yellow playthrough, Silver, Diamond, Platinum, an incomplete Soul Silver run, White, X, Alpha Sapphire, Moon, Brilliant Diamond, and Scarlet.
Anyways. So far, I’ve been very pleasantly surprised! For all that I originally felt so disinterested in these games, I’m really really enjoying my time with Shield now, so much so that I’m retroactively liking Brilliant Diamond less in comparison, oops. ( more beneath the cut )