Pokémon Sword and Shield Critique

I thoroughly enjoyed watching your take on the current status of S&S. And yes while this game is considered the 'worst' in the series, it definitely laid the groundwork for gen 9 hoping they'd take the best parts of the game and taking in the criticism of what the game is lacking. It really is a big hope that they would consider taking a step back in releasing by the year and polish to what would become the best games in the series.

Overall I enjoyed the video and agreed with most of your points! The main thing I disagree on is Dynamax and Gigantamax. For me, the reason its inferior to megas or z-moves is just that neither of those would instantly decide the game. You can still recover from a single z-move kill, and mega pokemon often breathed new life into unviable pokemon and even ones like the latis, altaria, alakazam, medicham, the charizards, mawile all had significant weaknesses. Dyna/gigantamax just feels bad because if you take a sweeper like one of the glass cannon ultra beasts (katarna, pheromosa, etc.) or the horses, or a pokemon with high attack and a good gimmick ability like Mimikyu or Darmanitan, you just need one opening to put yourself in a position where your opponent can never recover since many of the max moves set field effects that indirectly buff or actually give stat boosts. I just think it's bad design and unfun personally, I think this was actually the gen since 5 I played the least competitive pokemon as a result. The most fun battles for me are where you have to make multiple strategic decisions and the advantage shifts back and forth between you and your opponent multiple times. Gmax is kind of like mega evolution with the hp doubling creating more stats, and max moves being like 3 turns of z-moves, but in one package, PLUS an item so even more devastating.

7:06 - Rental Teams aren't a new feature, as they were in Pokemon Sun and Moon. Same goes for the EV training programs (Poke Pelago) and Bottle Caps, and the Ability Capsule which was introduced in XY.