Pokemon Sword & Shield Exclusives List - Which Option Should You Choose?

PARSE IN DIFFERENCE VERSIONS

Unsurprisingly, some of the returning Pokémon from past generations have been split between versions. This includes some Pokémon that were the counterparts of the versions in their original games (like Solrock and Lunatone), as well as some of the "pseudo-legendary" Pokémon from previous titles (like Kommo-o and Goodra). This means having powerful Pokémon pretty much even between sword and shield, with an even distribution of pseudo-legends, as well as a few pairs of evenly matched counterparts. While reading makes these exclusive Pokémon available for both games, it's important to consider which one you'd like to own. For example, if you enjoy competitive wrestling and prefer to use a certain pseudo-legendary game, it makes sense to get any game that has that Pokemon in the wild so you can easily look up multiples of the same species.

It's also worth looking at the reasoning behind each of the placements, which seem to follow a pattern - as befits the titles of the two games, the sword gets some of the more furious and more attack-oriented Pokemon (like Braviary and Passimian), while the shield gets more complex, mystical or creepy (such as Mandibuzz and Oranguru). With that in mind, it might seem odd that Turtonator is in the Sword despite his shield-like body, but his placement makes more sense knowing that Drampa, his counterpart, is the more targeted attack of the two.

So it looks like players who prefer a physically oriented Pokemon will find what they're looking for in a sword, while those who prefer to lean towards special attacks might want to try a shield. This also seems to apply to new egalitarian forms and regional evolutions: Kurzola and Galarian Rapidash appear much more supernatural than Sirfetch and Galarian Darmanitan. The Zakian and Zamazenta types (Fairy and Wrestling respectively) go against this trend, and their secondary type, steel, is only present when each is in a specific form. It will be interesting to see why this might be the case! Flapple and Appleton make another interesting difference between the games; in Sword Flapple evolves from the application, while in Shield Applin will evolve into Appletun instead!

Gym leader differences line up with trend as well as sword having battle and rock gyms while shield has ghost and ice. It's also likely that some of the new Pokémon on the list will be used in these battles!