The latest installments in the Pokémon franchise, Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield released November 15, 2019. Now that the games have been out for two weeks, I feel I have had enough time to play the games to give a proper review of them.

I picked up a copy of Pokémon Sword on release day, for the retail price of $60. Immediately this stood out to me, as previous Pokémon games had costed around $40 at most on launch day. This was to be expected however, as these installments are on the Nintendo Switch, Nintendo’s latest home console, as opposed to the current generation handheld system, such as the 3DS.

In regards time the actual content of the games themselves, they were a great amount of fun to play, as most, if not all Pokémon games are. Despite this however, the games felt small, or short for lack of a better term. The main story of the games felt shorter than most, and you can’t talk about these games without talking about how they only have 400 of the 890 Pokémon available in game.

Despite these limitations however, the games proved to be fun and interesting in their own ways. New variants of older Pokémon bring attention to older classics, and the new Dynamaxing mechanic feels fresh and interesting, and fits well in the games oddly enough. Overall, the games are fun to play, but are lacking in some areas.