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This allows trainers to battle on a relatively even playing field with monsters that otherwise wouldn’t fare well in a serious battle. Moreover, in the online battling scene, this “problem” is fixed by a set of various (mostly) agreed-upon tiers that categorize each Pokémon. It has always been the case that some (even many) Pokémon in a given generation are unusable from a practical standpoint at a competitive level.
![pokemon sword and shield pokedex lek pokemon sword and shield pokedex lek](https://www.gamerguides.com/assets/guides/resize1140x-/168/DLC2_183_Eldegoss.jpg)
Having been a competitive player myself for more than a decade, I feel I can speak to this point: it’s nonsense. Furthermore, to continue along the path of carrying over all prior generations’ monsters would put tremendous strain on the competitive scene and the developers, where balancing them all together is concerned. This means that there’s (presumably) a delicate balance holding all of the Pokémon together within the games. Each year, the Pokémon World Championships competitive circuit comes around, and tens of thousands of players around the world battle against one another for the title of World Champion. Pokémon has long held a healthy competitive aspect to its core games. The other primary reason for Gamefreak’s decision to make cuts to the dex is a bit more difficult to ignore. If SquareEnix were in charge of rendering, this would be a markedly different story (also, the games might never actually release, so I suppose there’s that). And while Sword and Shield certainly look better than any entry in the franchise that has come before, they’re still following the same minimalistic approach to detail and rendering that the games always have.
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This sounds reasonable for about five seconds, until you realize that we’re not exactly talking about Detective Pikachu levels of detail and rendering here. First, it would be tremendous work to create new models and animations for upwards of 1,000 creatures. Masuda-san had said that Gamefreak’s reasoning for the lack of a National Pokédex was multifaceted. Green boxes represent Pokémon who are included in the games dark green boxes are for Pokémon with new Galarian forms, while white boxes denote those cut. As such, we’ll use the leaked image below to better illustrate just how many holes there are. The list of Pokémon missing outside of those already mentioned is too great to call out individually.
![pokemon sword and shield pokedex lek pokemon sword and shield pokedex lek](https://assets.reedpopcdn.com/309_oWHWrFr.jpg)
Less surprisingly, all legendary and mythical Pokémon, apart from Mew, from prior generations of the games were cut as well. Beyond the already-revealed Charizard line, none of the other regions’ starter Pokémon had apparently made the cut. The leaked Pokédex showed a massive number of missing monsters. With the recent leak, it is now revealed that it’s even worse than most trainers had feared. And while they had not been specific as to just how many entries would be missing from the encyclopedia, it was surmised that the number would be more significant than anyone would like. This revelation set the Pokémon subreddit ablaze and sparked the #BringBackTheNationalDex hashtag on Twitter and Instagram. It’s no secret that Junichi Masuda and the Gamefreak team had announced that Sword and Shield would not have a National Pokédex. However, the information that I think most Pokémon trainers cared about was actually which species would not be making the cut to the 8th generation of the games. The prospect of learning what some of the new Galar Region pocket monsters might look like is mighty intriguing, maybe even exciting. Surpassing all prior leaks, however, was that of the games’ supposed final Pokédex. With Pokémon Sword and Shield only a few days away, the internet has been aBuzzwole with rumors and leaks enumerating as high as the Pokédex itself.