>>41564461Y was the last game I played, unless you count Go back in 2016 or Showdown.
I actually have been having way more fun with Sword than I thought I would be.
Pokemon being in the overworld is great and makes catching them way more fun.
I also really like the raid battles. The story was pretty meh until you got to Spikemuth and the pace picked up. I actually grew to like Hop and Marnie a bit when I thought I'd hate them. Bede and to a lesser extent, Leon, were a bit underwhelming. Piers could've used more screentime and should have been in the final opponent in the gym leader cup instead of Raihan. Bede being gone for a large chunk of the game made me largely forget about him until randomly showing up for a grudge match in Wyndon.
I think the games could've used some larger areas outside of the Wild Area. The cities were large yet barren, the Gen5 cities and Lumiose are still the best and most comfy.
As far as the Pokemon themselves go, I think gen8 is great overall. There are only a few ones like Eiscue and the squirrels that I didn't care for. The only one I straight up hate is Bolthund, as Yamper was one of my favorites and it just turning into Yellow Scooby Doo screams wasted potential. Some of my favorites were: the Corviknight line, the fossils, the Grookey line, the Grimmsnarl line, the Dreepy line, all of the bugs, Hattrem, Rolycoly, and all of the regional variants and evolutions except Coomer Meowth and Ponytrans.
