While playing the Pokémon Sword and Shield games after the release of the Crown Tundra DLC and the Series 8 Ranked Ruleset, I have some opinions on changes that the games should have. With the addition of the older Legendary Pokémon and the new ones to the set of Pokémon to play with there are some new issues that come about. These relate to three sets of Pokémon: 1) Calyrex and his horses, 2) the Primals and 3) Keldeo.

Calyrex

Calyrex Ice Rider Calyrex Calyrex Shadow Rider

Interestingly, Calyrex Ice Rider and Calyrex Shadow Rider are currently the only Pokémon that can’t be used in competitive play unless you have purchased the DLC since Fusion Pokémon can’t be traded. While you can get the individual Pokémon - Calyrex, Glastrier, and Spectrier - from trades just like any other Pokémon, you can’t get their special item, the Reins of Unity, from the Bargain shop like the others. This means that there is a competitive advantage to buying the DLC. This is an interesting issue when compared to Mythical Pokémon which aren’t allowed due to the availability to players. In my opinion, allowing Calyrex and not allowing Mythicals contradict each other.

Two solutions that I believe could be implemented to solve this are:

  1. A simple, but crude solution is to ban Ice Rider Calyrex and Shadow Rider Calyrex from competitive play. This would remove the advantage that the DLC gives, but I don’t think that this would go over well.
  2. Make an update that adds an NPC by the Battle Tower for the purpose of Calyrex fusion. This NPC could appear if you Calyrex in your box and don’t have the DLC on your system, but can disappear when you have the Reins of Unity in your bag since they won’t be needed anymore. They could just talk about the King of Bountiful Harvest and his steed to indicate that they can fuse and separate Calyrex and a horse.

Primals

Primal Groudon Primal Kyogre

The Primals are an interesting pair. They appeared at the same time as Mega Evolution and thus get associated with them, but their change is similar enough to Zacian and Zamazenta that I believe that they should return to Sword and Shield. The doggos’ base stat totals are 720 so the Primals with base stat totals of 780 aren’t too outrageous comparatively. But, to make balance them a bit, their base stat totals should be reudced to 730 with the Attack for Primal Kyogre becoming Kyogre’s own and the Special Attack of Primal Groudon becoming Groudon’s own.

Then there is the matter of their weather effects: Primordial Sea and Desolate Land. These can be added back with some modifications:

  • Hail and Sandstorm can be set when these are active.
  • Sun and Rain can’t activate since the current effect is stronger than them or cancels them out.

The argument I have seen against Primals is that their weather effects could allow someone to switch in a Pokémon that cancels a Max Move. That is a weak argument since it ignores the following and just require players to not select moves without thinking of the possible switch ins.

  1. Abilities like Storm Drain, Flash Fire and Lightning Rod which already work on Max Moves and can render them useless.
  2. Switching in an immune type like Fairy or Ground to take Max Wyrmwind or Max Lightning respectively.
  3. Z-Moves were cancelled by the Primals’ weather effects so it is not something new that your gimmick move can be rendered useless.

Keldeo

Keldeo Resolute Keldeo

Keldeo is a Mythical Pokémon that was given an in-game method to obtain it in the Crown Tundra DLC. This is similar to what happened in the Delta Episode for Deoxys. This means that it can be ontained without having to get a limited time event and addresses its previous availability issue. It should be allowed in competitive play since there is now a repeatable method to get it, and this can be an effective strategy to phase in Mythical Pokémon into the competitive play.