Pokemon Camping is Fun

In Pokemon Sword and Shield, you can go camping! At the start of the game, you are given a whole camping bag that contains all the stuff you need to pitch a tent and chill out with your Pokemon buddies. It’s actually a pretty cute little distraction, and adds a nice social aspect to the game. You can camp alone or with NPCs, let your Pokemon get some fresh air and do some cooking. And, unlike Dynamax raids, you don’t need to worry about a Solrock buffing itself 4 times before having its stats reset by the raid boss. It’s an all-round fun distraction.

I assume that Pokemon: Arceus has some sort of camping thing as well, but I haven’t played it or anything, so I don’t know.

Simple Fun

Camping is pretty simple. You just hit X then click on the camping button, then automatically pitch your tent and let your Pokemon wander around. There’s not that much to do though, aside from relax. Your Pokemon will wander around outside of their Pokeballs, and you can call them over to talk to them. There’s three options, two of which send the Pokemon away, for some reason.

The Pokemon in the background interact with each other too. When they are not pushing each other around due to mediocre pathing, they will occasionally stare at each other and use their cry a few times. I’ve also actually seen Pokemon argue. When camping yesterday, I noticed that Charm the Salazzle was having an argument with Silver the Silvally. Nothing actually happened though and they kinda just stopped on their own. I think Silver was jealous.

Curry is interesting

I’m still not 100% sure why we make curry, but it does make for interesting dishes. You can kinda just shove it all in a pot and let it cook. The game also gives you various weird items to put into your curry. It’s mostly berries, but there are collectables like packets of potatoes, mushrooms, pre-made curry spices and Moomoo cheese that you can add. In fact, there are so many options that there’s a curry Pokedex. Which is kinda impressive.

Also, I have to ask where the player character gets that big cauldron from. Looks way too heavy to move, let alone lift over a fire. Then again, this IS a fantasy world, and kids do seem to have massive strength. So maybe my character and Hop are just used to it. Or, more likely, they probably just used some Dynamax stuff to do it, and in reality, the cauldron is really small.

Feels lacking

However, while camping is fun, I feel like it is incredibly basic. The idea of taking your team of Pokemon and going camping seems like a really nice idea, but there’s not much to it. Stirring a cauldron, throwing a ball and waggling a stick is what we get.

The animations used on the Pokemon are odd too. It’s all reused assets – the attack and special attack animations, sleeping Pokemon looking like they got hit by Spore, how they constantly crash into each other. It’s a stretch but I’d actually like to see an expansion for camping. Get more toys, get better animations, make it so you can pet your Pokemon.  The idea is pretty cute, and it reinforces the bonding you are supposed to have with your Pokemon.

I doubt that would happen though. After all, Gamefreak always goes for the easiest route. And no one has time to give Pokemon sitting and sleeping animations…