Into the Wilds

Professor Magnolia and Leon gave Hop and I one final gift before ushering us out of town and onto the road to our first gym battle: a Dynamax Band.

Dynamax is the new mechanic in Pokémon Sword and Shield. Just like Black and White added Triple and Rotation battles, X and Y added Mega Evolution, Sun and Moon added Z Moves, now Sword and Shield has added Dynamax. The Pokémon franchise is definitely no stranger to gimmicks.

I haven’t performed a Dynamax evolution yet, but from what I know of it, it makes your Pokémon much larger and allows you to use super powerful moves. I am not yet sold on this as a game mechanic. I definitely will need to see how it works in-game later on.  It was just a matter of time before Gamefreak decided to capitalize on the recent Pacific Rim/Godzilla/Game of Thrones hype with Kaiju-sized Pokémon.
 

I found a female combee  in the wild area. One thing I really like is that you can choose what Pokémon you encounter by sneaking up on them. Random encounters are a thing of the past and damnit they can stay there, for all I care.  Just think about this for a second. The spawn rate of female combee is 1/8. This means that finding a female combee in a previous generation game would involve random encounters where the Pokémon itself has a percentage chance of showing—and then the specific gender would be rolled on top of that. Getting a female bee in gen 6 took me the better part of an hour. In this game, it took me ninety seconds.

Being able to choose which Pokémon you are able to battle is an obvious, but useful change. It makes just walking around battling and catching fun.

 I fought an over leveled onix and was able to beat it with Snorkle the Chewtle. I was not however allowed to catch it. Apparently over leveled Pokémon in the wild areas are not uncommon, but you can’t catch them. This is a little fucked up, but isn’t bad enough of an issue to harsh my ease.

I decided to avoid the next story obligations and went on a Pokémon catching and battling spree. Besides the aforementioned onix, I was also able to encounter overleveled diggersby, vespiquen, and one MASSIVE Galvantula that had my squirrel shaking in its furry boots. I caught Bunnelby (Bunnelbro), Machop, Roselia, Tyrogue (Rogue), Stufful (Stuffy), and Stunky (Stonks).

Nope. Run.

I always train myself into a corner, so I stopped and checked what my team looked like.

Grookey, Rookidee, Nickit, Purrloin, Zigzagoon, Chewtle, Dottler, Stufful, Tyrogue, Stunky, Skwover, Bunnelby.

...yikes, time to make cuts.

Pokédex:

Current Squad:

Grookey/Cheeto/lvl 15

Nickit/Kat-Kit/lvl 14

Chewtle/Snorkle/lvl 14

Rookidee/Chirpy/lvl 14

Dottler/Bleppo/lvl 14

Stufful/Stuffy/lvl 14

 
 On Rotation: Zigzagoon, Stunky, Tyrogue