My daughter's friends at school play the Pokemon video games and card games, and my daughter seem pretty interested in it, but I am not sure if I should go with the Let's Go series or Sword/Shield for her first venture into the series. Also, since I have never played a Pokemon game before, I will not be much help in understanding how to play it until I help her through the first few hours of the game. Any advice would be great.

Do you have a sense of what your daughter's friends play? If she knows they're into Sword/Shield, perhaps start there. Maybe what's best is to come at it from the angle of what'll keep their interests connected—that is to say, it might be harder for her to relate to her friends' interests if she's playing a different edition of Pokemon than they are.

At a high level, Pokemon is more complicated now than it has ever been. But at its core, it's still a series that will accommodate newcomers into the experience. You're probably going to want to learn a little bit about how Pokemon works yourself, just to help out in a pinch, but I think that'll be true no matter where she starts.

Whatever the other kids are playing tbh

@inevpatoria: That was great advice. When I ask her about what her friends are playing, she says she doesn't know. I know they play with the Pokemon cards, but she seems like she just wants to know what the world is and who the characters are. I will try and find out which games her friends are playing.

Thanks!

Every Pokemon game is made for newcomers. She should be fine with Sword and Shield. The reading level for the games skew young and the mechanics are easy to understand to get through the main story. But yeah, find out what games her friends are playing first before you decide to buy anything.

My 9 year old daughter loves pokemon sword. I originally got it for myself when it came out, she watched me play it and got obsessed with collecting as many as she could.