Pokemon Sword and Shield Is Making Training Competitive Pokemon a Lot Easier

Pokemon Sword and Shield will make training Pokemon for competitive play a lot easier. A new [...]

By Christian Hoffer

Pokemon Sword and Shield will make training Pokemon for competitive play a lot easier. A new trailer released earlier today has revealed some of the new ways that players can train and enhance their Pokemon in Pokemon Sword and Shield, the upcoming Pokemon games that come out for the Nintendo Switch later this month. Players can use items like Mints or supplements to affect their Pokemon's stats, and players can also more easily add Egg Moves to their Pokemon with the use of the Pokemon Nursery.

The biggest addition shown off in the new trailer is Mints, a new item that impacts a Pokemon's Nature. Each Pokemon has a Nature which causes one of their base stats (like Attack or Special Attack) to increase by 10% while decreasing another stat by 10%. While Mints don't change a Pokemon's base nature, they do cause the Pokemon to change which stats increase at increased or decreased rates. Basically, a player can give their Pokemon a mint to override a Pokemon's base nature, thus saving them from utilizing more complicated methods to obtain a Pokemon with an ideal nature.

Additionally, players can also now use an unlimited number of supplements to increase their Pokemon base stats. Previously, players could only use a limited number of supplements, but this restriction is now removed.

Finally, Pokemon Sword and Shield has simplified how to give a Pokemon an Egg Move - a special move that can't be learned either through leveling up or through TMs. If a player already has a Pokemon with an Egg Move, they can now leave it in a Pokemon Nursery with another Pokemon of the same species to have that second Pokemon learn the Egg Move as well. Previously, passing on Egg Moves was only possible through breeding, which was a pain when taking into account Natures and other stat changes.

These changes seem to be ways to make it a lot easier to build a competitive Pokemon team. While party composition is a big part of competitive Pokemon play, trainers also need to keep IVs, natures, and ideal movesets in mind. These new changes should decrease the time needed to build a Pokemon team significantly, which could mean an uptick in the number of players who get into competitive Pokemon play.

Pokemon Sword and Shield will be released on November 15th.

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