Set in the brand new Galar region, Pokémon trainers will once again be on the quest of searching far and wide, battling and catching different Pokémon, defeating gym leaders and becoming the ultimate champion. Galar is designed to be a varied region with idyllic, English-inspired country sides, contemporary cities that have a slight Victorian aesthetic, vast plains and snow-covered mountains.
Continuing the tradition of getting to choose from a grass, fire and water type, we get a new batch of starter Pokémon that’re all lovably adorable.
We have Grookey, the grass-type chimp Pokémon. For fire, we get Scorbunny, the rabbit Pokémon. Finally, the new water-type starter is Sobble, the water lizard Pokémon. There’s no indication if they’ll have a secondary type or what their evolutions will be but if history indicates anything, the first forms of these starters will be purely grass, fire and water respectively.
Whilst the new entry to the core series looks fantastic, it appears to have dropped the cleaner-looking graphics that were sported in Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee, seemingly reverting to an upgraded version of the graphics from the Sun and Moon games. This would presumably be due to the larger size of the new games, featuring much more content and requiring more processing power for the Switch than the Let’s Go games did.
Other Pokémon that appeared in the gameplay segment included Pikachu, Minccino, Hoothoot, Zwellous, Grubbin, Flygon, Wailmer, Meowstic (female), Lucario, Tyranitar and Munchlax. It’s uncertain which of these will be available in the wild for capture in the game, if not all, but it seems that the Galar Pokédex won’t be exlusive to the newest generation like in previous games.
Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield are coming to the Nintendo Switch in late 2019.