Pokémon Sword and Shield: The Crown Tundra review - that's more like it

It's fair to say I didn't love the base versions of Pokémon Sword and Shield. They suffer on a few fronts, from a world that still seems empty and oddly shallow, a lack of the series' essential, trademark dungeons, or any sense of surprise or mystery. There are clear gaps in world and story alike, and having now lived with Dynamax Raids, the generation's staple feature and Sword and Shield's endgame crux, I can safely say they're an absolute drag. With a bit of distance, it's clear this generation needed more time.

The Crown Tundra isn't a total panacea - really, it can't be - but it is an improvement, and in places quite a dramatic one. Taken in isolation, it makes for probably the best Pokémon experience in a couple of years. Put together with the rest of Sword and Shield, including the other expansion, Isle of Armor, it's also illustrative of how great they could have been.

Like The Isle of Armor, The Crown Tundra expansion has you arrive, misty-eyed by train, at a new slice of the world, with some typically eccentric characters awaiting and a typically quirky, new species-driven main story to work through at your own discretion. Again, it takes place in a Wild Area-esque open world, meaning a free camera and free sense of exploration, and again the design of that open world takes some considerable steps of improvement upon the last.

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