Max Raid Battles in Pokémon Sword and Shield could be among the most challenging encounters of the Pokémon series

The folks at Game Informer recently made a trip to Game Freak’s Tokyo headquarters for this month’s cover story, which happens to be Pokémon Sword and Shield. They had a chance to chat with the game’s director, producer, planning director and art director, picking their brains on the direction of the series and what they hope to accomplish with the upcoming Nintendo Switch titles. Among the topics discussed include Max Raid Battles:

“The initial concept of having cooperative battles against a Pokémon – the raid idea – came before raids were even implemented in Pokémon Go, but we saw Pokémon Go implement this raid feature and how popular it was for people to get together in the same space and enjoy these cooperative experiences,” director Shigeru Ohmori says. “I think there was some influence like how in Pokémon Go, you don’t need to be a hardcore battler to enjoy the raid battles. It’s really easy to invite a friend. We wanted to have that element in Sword and Shield’s raid encounters as well.”

Planning director Kazumasa Iwao adds: “I think some of them are going to be pretty difficult. I think it’s going to have a kind of difficulty we haven’t seen in a lot of main series Pokémon games up until now, but there is a wide spread of difficulties even in the Max Raid Battles.”

“It starts out a little easier, then you can choose the difficulty based on how powerful your Pokémon are. Even for me, a seasoned Pokémon player, even if I go with one of the five-star Max Raid Battles, I can definitely run into situations where I’m not able to win.”

Source: Game Informer