Having just finished the main game of Pokémon Sword, I have some thoughts on it both in isolation and compared with prior iterations of Pokémon. In the interest of providing perspective, I have previously played one entry of each new generation pair (Blue, Silver, Ruby, Pearl, White, X, and Moon), along with two of the deluxe/sequel versions (Yellow, and White 2). I have also played a variety of spinoff games over the years, but this seems less relevant.
Overall I found this entry's story to be fairly strong. While there was a mysterious series of events just outside of our point of view, handling the B-plot in that way allowed me to get into the sports narrative side of Pokémon, which is something that has never happened for me before. Meanwhile, the pacing of that side story, with it coming to a head right as we are about to face Leon, is the pacing I've been longing for a return to since gen 5 - The narrative climax, saving the world - happening at the gameplay climax, just before facing off against the region's champion. This lack of as much focus on the B-plot did, however, come at the expense of there being a constant set of things happening just out of frame that could have been more interesting than what we were allowed to see, and Eternatus had very little setup.
The increased focus on the sports side also helped alleviate a problem I've had with recent generations, where the use of a player avatar rather than a defined character as the protagonist has prevented them from really feeling like they really exist within the game's story. The grounding of having you already established in this world via a preexisting friendship with Hop also helps overcome this problem. This compares favourably to Gen 7 in particular, where it felt like you were a bystander to Hau, Lilly, and Gladion's story while doing all the things they should have been doing in it - Hau, in particular, suffered from this.
If Pokémon maintains as concentrated a sports narrative focus as it managed here, I don't anticipate this ever becoming as big a problem as it was in Gen 7, but if Pokémon wants to start putting more emphasis on the saving the world side stories again, it will be interesting to see if simply having comparable preexisting relationships will be sufficient grounding to prevent that issue from happening again.
All of the rivals this generation felt fairly well fleshed out and memorable, particularly compared to how Pokémon has handled most rival characters in the past. Hop, in particular, had an entertaining arc that was uniquely suited to a Pokémon rival character. Other characters were more broadly characterized but still worked well in their respective roles.
The Wild area presents an interesting concept - Pokémon as a wide linear game, similar to the numbered Xenoblade entries, rather than the purely linear structure Pokémon has had in most mainline entries. Compromises were clearly made for it, with it looking notably rougher around the edges than the rest of the game, whether due to being a community hub, having a free camera, or a combination of both.
While I enjoyed the Wild Area's presence here, I am more conflicted about what this change would represent for the series as the main form getting from A to B than I was going into the game, particularly with the artificial gating of having level caps on what pokémon you can catch seen here that seems like a necessary balance compromise with littering in higher-level pokémon among the lower to encourage revisiting already visited parts of the Wild Area. Max Raid Battles, however, were a fantastic system within the Wild Area that had a suitable level of presentational oomph to them.
Should I pick up the DLC expansions I suspect that will help clear things up for me - Will I miss the prettier, more linear, pathways with hidden details revealed by scripted camera swoops when not presented both side-by-side? On the other hand, if the DLC open areas don't contain the same style of catch gating, it won't be a one to one comparison with this possible future of how future generations might play.
Pokémon in the overworld, meanwhile, wholly improved on prior entries. Having those coexist with pokémon you don't know what they'll be until you encounter them but which can still be avoided created a lovely compromise between surprise and ability to plan for encounters. While I've wanted the long grass system to be retired since X and Y, this way of replacing it felt better than the way I thought I wanted would have done, and I hope Pokémon encounters stick with this mixture going forward.
Unlike prior Pokémon titles, the mechanics felt like they were encouraging me to raise a box full of pokémon, rather than just a party of six. I'm unsure how I feel about this change - even with the systems that made it feel plausible to raise several parties worth of pokémon relatively evenly, playing like that considerably slows down the game's pace, especially since the changes didn't quite do enough to wean me off my worry about missing evolution levels via Daycare or Pokéjobs that I've had since gen 1's daycare, but I got the impression that all prior Pokémon games were 'intended' to be played like this. It also made gym battles feel more engaging - In most, my party wasn't several levels higher than the gym leader's, and I was able to pick out a party to match the gym's typing. This was the first time it's felt like I've had the tools to raise this many pokémon, thanks mainly to the ability to freely swap pokémon in and out of the boxes instead of only being able to do so at PCs.
The Pokémon Camping system, another thing that nudged me to raise an entire box full of pokémon, was a good evolution of the Pokémon Refresh system of Gen 7. Mechanically it felt like it trivialized status effects and status recovery items less, but trivialized fainting via the curry system. This feels like a good tradeoff, and quick box access would have trivialized fainting even without curry always recovering fainted pokémon. However, I did find the UI for camping a little cumbersome, the pathing AI gets confused at times when trying to interact with two pokémon at once, and the pace some pokémon approach is ludicrously slow. All of these issues feel fixable. More concerningly, however, is how curry is tied to a QTE heavy minigame, due to the accessibility issues QTEs can cause without the ability customize their operation far beyond the option to play using button or motion control that was available here.
The pokémon designs were excellent for me this gen, with a few that I instantly fell in love with upon first seeing them, and I don't recall any new pokémon that I actively disliked the designs of. Galar forms go further with the region variant concept than Alola forms, which was nice to see. Having three legendaries after the vast volume of Ultra Beasts in Sun and Moon felt like a good correction, and while Eternatus felt like it came out of nowhere the box legendaries felt well integrated into the region, feeling properly like legends.
Overall, I definitely enjoyed Pokémon Sword a lot more than the past couple of new generation Pokémon games I've played, and while it's by no means perfect, I was able to get a good 89 hours of enjoyment out of it before seeing the end credits. which is likely the most time I've put into a Pokémon game since Silver.