Pokemon Sword and Shield Reveals Big Change To Divisive Gameplay Feature

Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield will have Exp. Share built into the game as a feature, rather than limiting it to an item, a first for the series. What this means is that every Pokemon in your party will get equal experience automatically as you progress through the game. In the past, Exp. Share was simply an item you could give a Pokemon. In other words, this is a pretty big change to the feature, which, as you may know, was already divisive to begin with. At the moment of publishing, it's unclear whether players will have the option to turn the feature off. As you may know, it was also recently revealed that the game will have autosaves, but you'll be able to turn them off. You'd assume Game Freak will allow players to do this with Exp. Share, but for now, the developer hasn't specified one way or another.

As you would expect, this reveal has been met with a bit of backlash from some players, with many claiming this ruins EV training, game balance, and selective grinding. Exp. Share was already a divisive feature -- with some players claiming it made the games too easy -- however, this new implementation seems to have ramped up the complaints. Meanwhile, some are pointing out that Pokemon is simply catching up with the times.

Pokemon fans being mad about EXP share is just further confirmation that they don't play any other games.

Most JRPGs have something like EXP share now. Look at DQ.

— gameonion (@gameonion1) October 1, 2019

Why do people want to turn exp share off at all in Pokemon? Nothing is worse than an RPG where your party members don't level up unless you're using them

— Θ (@Agneas_Arrow) October 1, 2019

So Pokemon Sword & Shield will have forced Exp. share? God can they do anything right? So even the most core gameplay is ruined. No more EV training without dropping all your team to bank. nuzlocke is also axed because of this.

— 🤡 Hannah 🤡 (@CutieHannyah) October 1, 2019

Why? What was the reason for this? Did people just forget to switch the EXP share on so now nobody gets to turn it off? Do they have any idea how difficult this will make IV and EV training? pic.twitter.com/hrAoYPTGH2

— 『Smuggy』 (@Smug_Legend) October 1, 2019

Pokemon Sword and Shield will be available on November 15. For more news, media, and information on the pair of Nintendo Switch games, click here.

Source: Game Informer