With Pokemon Worlds in full swing, developer Game Freak released a new trailer detailing the changes made to Pokemon Sword & Shield’s battle system. These mechanics include new items, passive moves, and side effects caused by Max Moves. Many of these effects revolve around various status debuffs and buffs, which are a massive part of competitive play.
One of the new passives shown off is tied to Wheezing, who possesses Neutralizing Gas. This negates all other Pokemon abilities, regardless if they are on your team or not. It’s an extremely potent passive, especially if you aren’t playing 2 vs 2 matches. We also got a look at Corviknight’s hidden ability Mirror Armor, which reflects all stat-lowering effects back at the Pokemon who used it.
However, obtaining a Pokemon with hidden abilities is extremely rare. These Pokemon become even rarer if you want them to have both a hidden ability and to be able to Gigantimax. These Pokemon are caught in Max Raid Battles, but details on just how rare they will be are unknown.
This new trailer also showed off the Eject Pack and Room Service held items. The former causes a Pokemon to swap out when it receives any status lowering effect, while the latter reduces a Pokemon’s speed when the move Trick Room is used. Both of these will certainly be intriguing to see in action, especially the Eject Pack which could catch an opponent off-guard.
Finally, we learned that Max Moves used by Pokemon in the Dynamax form will cause additional effects. This includes Max Knuckle boosting the attack power of all allied Pokemon and Max Geyser making it rain on the battlefield. Knowing when to trigger Max Moves will be a critical aspect of winning battles, especially ones where both Pokemon teams posses Dynamax forms.
Pokemon Sword & Shield is set to releases exclusively for the Nintendo Switch on November 15.