Pokémon Sword and Shield Getting Review Bombed On Metacritic

The Pokémon community has spoken.

Pokémon Sword and Shield

Out today on Nintendo Switch, Pokémon Sword and Shield have both been well received by critics with some hailing it as the best Pokémon RPG since the franchise began. The community, however, does not share that mindset with both versions of the game currently undergoing a heavy review bombing on Metacritic.

Large portions of the Pokémon community have made themselves heard ever since the reveal of Sword and Shield footage, which has gone into overdrive over the last week when some discovered the similarity in assets to older Pokémon games and weak overall performance for the first mainline Pokémon RPG on console, as well as the Dex missing plenty of Pokémon. #GameFreakLied recently trended on Twitter, some members of the Pokémon community contending developer Game Freak’s claim that no assets were reused.

There’s even a petition to The White House to take the game off sale, though my troll senses are tingling a little on that one.

With the game released into the wild and user scores now being able to be written, Pokémon Sword currently sits on a 3.6 from 605 ratings at this time of writing with Shield registering a 3.6 from 266 ratings.

Pokemon shield

Pokemon shield

As is the case often with user reviews on Metacritic, a lot of the reviews are a pretty drastic 0/10, which will hammer the review right down. There’s a good amount of more tempered, better reasoned reviews, but the majority are angry zeros.

From Gofen:

So booooooooooring and terrible game. I hate you gamefreak. How u could be so lazy

From Imperio92:

The worst of the franchise by far. Lackluster animations, textures, coding and a lot of issues everywhere. A rushed game no matter where you look it.

From Aaron94:

This is not a new generation pokemon game.
It’s only a good way to do so much money without wasting much.
#GameFreakLies

From suzakushi:

Gamefreak lied to their fans.They ruined pokemon game.
We need international dex.

From lulubot:

This was a waste of money for me, I put 5 hours into it and got really bored because of the lack of difficulty and constant hand-holding.

The EXP share made my party so over-levelled to the point where i’d just one shot everything, and I was disappointed to find out that there’s no option to turn it off.

I’d only recommend this game for children under the age of 10.

From SiberyanZ:

The amount of reused content, technical issues and blatant incompetence that this game shows are by far the objective demonstration that this is the worst game in the series thus far.

These are just a few of the user reviews for both versions of Pokémon Sword and Shield so far with more likely to come when the game is in more people’s hands. It’s worth remembering, however, that some of these negative reviews may be more protest reviews by already jaded Pokémon players who haven’t actually played the game yet.

We will update this with new Metacritic ratings as they change.

Despite the controversies, Pokémon Sword and Shield are expected to sell well on the Switch in the lead up to Christmas. The first mainline Pokémon RPGs since Sun and Moon, players can catch 400 Pokémon across the region of Galar, which has been inspired by the United Kingdom. New features include Dynamaxing, the ability to make your Pokémon massive and stronger. It’s kind of out there.

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