Here’s another of those classic spicy takes. I actually think that generation 8, specifically Sword and Shield, may actually be among some of the best games/sets of games in the series. They started extremely rough and became synonymous with the removal of the National Dex (despite not being the first games to actually do this, that was LGPE) and pretty much universally hated for its approach to long time fans of the series.
So let’s start with the obvious but in my opinion one of the least important aspects- the absence of over 500 species of Pokémon at launch. I’m hoping readers start to see a pattern in these points, but that still left 400 species with ~70 new Pokémon, which is Kalos tier for new Pokémon but the fact still remains- Sword and Shield allowed you to catch all of that, even without transfers or DLC. This is the same number as US/UM had in its dex, and what SV had in its dex in the next gen- it seems 400 for new + returning Pokémon is now the standard, and it avoids a lot of bloat while still having a good number returning. It also shapes the meta, and the early Sword and Shield meta was wild, much like the Scarlet/Violet meta. Most people have games where 400 that are readily available between the two sets of games simply isn’t possible- certainly gens 3 & 4 don’t do this, or at least as easily as Sword and Shield did. Generation 3 and below didn’t even have this many Pokémon already- so people that gloat about gens being their favorites but then putting down Sword/Shield seriously makes no sense. Eventually DLC did add more in, which was a good move and definitely needed to flesh out the DLC areas more. If someone didn’t have the DLC, they could transfer in the added Pokémon anyways- a pretty smart move all things considered.
The next thing that I would like to point out is that the QoL was through the roof- even more so that Scarlet/Violet have right now. PokéJobs were underrated and criminally underutilized as well as not talked about. As someone who doesn’t always have time to train Pokémon by hand due to having work, college, and other obligations and wants, I appreciated the fact that there was a way that was more efficient than Poké Pelago that I could raise a bunch of Pokémon en masse to a high level for Bottle Caps or for EV training that was legitimate, instead of having the souls sucked out of the game by resorting to injecting. I was able to train over 6 or 7 boxes of Pokémon to be competitively viable that way, which seriously added to my overall collection in HOME for transferring up through the next generations, or just for trading purposes.
Over the course of generation 8, there were essentially 7 Battle Facilities. There were:
Battle Tower (Sword/Shield)
Restricted Sparring
Endless Dynamax Adventures
Battle Tower (BDSP)
Eternal Battle Reverie
Path of Tenacity
Path of Solitude
That’s enough for a Battle Frontier, and I would say that it would be on par with the gen 4 one purely because gen 4’s was just different flavors of the Battle Tower anyways. Each one brought with it something unique, whether it be a tutorial for online battling like the Sword/Shield Tower or a rental facility with a spin on how the rentals work like Endless Dynamax Adventures. Restricted Sparring was interesting, especially when it came time to theory craft how to get the longest possible streak (my longest is still a pitiful 26 with Ice types) and BDSP’s Batte Tower became the best one in the series because the teams weren’t randomly generated- instead, there were set teams with synergy for literally every single trainer. PLA’s various things are minor, but I would take any of those over something like the Battle Hall (gen 4) or the Battle Palace (gen 3) any day.
This isn’t even considering the Battle Stadium in Sword/Shield, which had support up until the release of Scarlet/Violet and had monthly Battle Competitions and Ranked Battle metas. Allowing Mythicals in the the meta was so cool! I was able to get Master Rank ribbons for my Original Color Magearna, my MYSTRY Mew from ’06, and my GMax Melmetal. I always say I am going to participate in more Battle Competitions, but I always never have the time to teambuild for those metas because the actual challenge is announced a mere two weeks before the competitions. I still got the Shiny Galarian birds however, since that was just VGC at the time.
My point is that there were actually a ton of battles to be had, and you could change a lot of your stats and moves on the fly due to the aforementioned QoL. These were once again mostly overlooked by people that didn’t want to see what was there, but instead would complain about what isn’t there.
For shiny hunters, there’s a new allure to shiny hunting- the addition of marks. I talked about marks briefly in my ‘Ribbon Postgame’ post. Sword/Shield were the first and only games in gen 8 to have them, so if someone really wanted, they could do a shiny hunt where the shiny also has to have a mark. This gives more value to their shiny as it is, since gen 7 and to a lesser extent gen 6 as well as Pokémon that game from GO really devalued shiny Pokémon. PLA did as well, but those Pokémon couldn’t be marked- they could be titans, though. Even people that weren’t shiny hunting could get into marks- maybe there’s a perfect mark for a specific Pokémon. Chansey the Chipper? Articuno the Cloud Watcher? Tyranitar the Rampaging? It’s all possible to do, shiny or not. It’s actually an ingenuous system for people to keep catching the same species of their favorite Pokémon; in the event people get a mark they do not want, they could just Wonder Trade it to someone who would like it instead. Plus, that goes towards the ‘Brilliant Aura’ Pokémon that have better stats and odds at being shiny!
Getting resources, especially in the DLC, is great too- it takes no time at all to manually EV train Pokémon. HOME compatibility helps with that too, since it is possible to convert those points into BP. Armorite Ore literally allows you to reset all stats- no EV reset berries required and you can obtain it through raids in a quick manner. Sometimes important mints are just available to get in the wild as a drop. Getting money is as easy as getting Watts since you can trade those for Luxury Balls and sell them afterwards. In Scarlet/Violet, they once again downgraded and make it way to hard to accumulate things like League Points or even standard money.
I can’t deny that it has its faults as well- the raid system in SV is far better (but buggy, even in local play), the main story leaves a lot to be desired, locking Apricorn Balls and better raids to DLC is a bad business practice, BDSP was just an overall mess on top of not having great places to train to get to level 100 for Bottle Caps, and Triple Battles never came back despite being on hardware that could most likely handle them, but my main point is that people like to zoom in on what isn’t there when judging these games- and that’s not fair whatsoever. Sword/Shield were never going to be Emerald/B2W2/Platinum, but that’s okay. I personally had a lot of fun in generation 8 even just by doing random battles or trading with friends, and the additions and changes were just the icing on top. I’m hoping that by the end of this post, people do see the value in what gen 8 brought to the table.