Sword and Shield bring so many cool quality of life and UI improvements, but somehow, the UI around held items, and only the UI around held items, just makes no sense at all. Letās break it down:
In the context menu when you select a PokĆ©mon on the party PokĆ©mon menu, thereās a āHeld itemā option. The options under that (assuming the PokĆ©mon is currently holding an item) are āOpen your Bagā, āPut it back to your Bagā and āGive an itemā.
āOpen your Bagā will open the bag, so that you can give an item to the PokĆ©mon...
...except that when you select an item there, the top option will actually be āUse this itemā, which will use the item instead - even though you entered the bag specifically through aĀ āHeld itemā option.
The other option is āGive to a PokĆ©monā, as if itās going to let you select a different PokĆ©mon to give it to, but no, itāll give the item to the PokĆ©mon you selected previously.
āPut it back to your Bagā at least works as youād expect, but is it just me or is it pretty weirdly phrased? Shouldnāt it be āPut it back into your Bagā or even āPut it back in your Bagā? Iām not a native speaker but it sounds off.
The āGive an itemā option, on the other hand, is for moving the item to a different PokĆ©mon in your party. What?? How on earth is that āGive an itemā?
(While in the party menu, you can also press X to āSwap held itemsā, in order to move items between your party PokĆ©mon. Why is that bizarre āGive an itemā option even there when thereās a much more sensible way to do what it actually does.)
Meanwhile, when you select a PokĆ©mon in the box, the only held item-related option in the menu will be āCheck held itemā. Sounds like an option to see if the PokĆ©mon is holding an item and if so what it is, right? Maybe itāll tell you what itās holding and then give you some options?
But! Actually! If your PokĆ©mon is not holding anything, this option will just go straight into your bag to prompt you to give an item to the PokĆ©mon! (Same āGive to a PokĆ©monā option, but this time thereās no āUse this itemā.)
Meanwhile, if your PokĆ©mon is holding something, the āCheck held itemā option will ask you to confirm that you want to remove the item from the PokĆ©mon. I never said I wanted to remove it! I picked an option to check it!
Also this means that the UIs for held items are just arbitrarily completely different depending on whether youāre in the party menu or the box, including how if youāre in the box there is just no option to immediately give a new item to a PokĆ©mon thatās already holding one, without first removing the current item.
It took me a while of gameplay to get any sense of what any of the item-related options actually meant. The first time I was going to do something with held items I just ended up being completely confused and felt like I eventually stumbled into doing what I wanted basically by accident.
Iām guessing these are probably largely translation mistakes. The āGive to a PokĆ©monā option, for instance, is just phrased in a way that would make sense in one context where that menu is used but not it another, which would almost definitely be the same in Japanese with the lack of articles, and I can picture these various other phrasings as being ambiguous in Japanese, one way or another. And then... probably the playtesters for the English localization were just not much for held items and never actually used these options, and thus didnāt notice. Itās really glaring in a game where the UI is otherwise so polished.