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Game Freak Considered Revamping Pokemon Sword and Shield Battle System


Pokemon Sword and Shield have a couple of changes going for them but they are still going to be standard JRPGs; just the way fans like them. One mechanic of the series that is often debated between fans is the signature combat, which is basically rock-paper-scissors as you use the weakness of opposing Pokemon to make them faint quicker. While nothing complicated, developer Game Freak has stated that there were talks to change the combat system a bit.

Speaking with Game Informer (via Nintendo Life), Director Shigeru Ohmori confirmed that the battles would remain turn-based, with each Pokemon having four moves each. Like previous games, when a Pokemon learns a new move, another one has to be deleted if all four have been filled. It's a good thing HMs have been removed since those moves couldn't be deleted back in the day.

Here's what Ohmori had to say about the battle system and how adding more than four moves might have changed the series too much:

"If you make it five or even more than five, that makes it so a lot of the Pokemon can really do anything, and it becomes a lot harder to read what your opponent might do because there are just that many more possibilities of moves they could use. I think that hurts the balance of the gameplay quite a bit. At the same time, even if you reduce it by one to three, you really start seeing there are haves and have nots in the Pokemon world. Like, these Pokemon are obviously way stronger than the rest of these Pokemon. We keep coming back and finding that four is the right number for the current battle system, but it is something we revisit."

While a change in battle systems would be interesting, I think most of us are content with the way Pokemon games are now. Thanks to extensive training, battles can evolve and go beyond choosing weaknesses thanks to IV boosting. You can actually find players who win competitive battles with a Magikarp, which is pretty crazy.

Pokemon Sword and Shield are coming to Nintendo Switch on November 15.

Read:Turns Out Pokemon Sword and Shield Will Only Have 8 Gyms Like Most Games

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