>>58665086SwSh have one of the strongest openings in the series. Opening in media res with a Champion battle, introducing us to Gmax and setting up Leon and Raihan as these formidable trainers who seem like actual characters. Having your rival be the Champion's brother, giving him motivation and making the player feel like they have to earn main character status. Having you encounter the box legendary to establish them as a mystery, very similar setup to the Johto anime arc with Suicune.
It's a shame the rest of the story falls apart after that. They went through all this effort to flesh out these characters, but they spend the rest of the game feeling like facades. It all peaks in the first 30 mins, and never lives up to that promise. It's almost more disappointing than a game like XY, where there's no grand setup or pacing, things just happen at the end and I never felt invested. SwSh got me invested and let me down. That whole game was a series of broken promises
