First Impressions of Pokémon Legends Z-A

Legends Z-A has been out for less than a week, and already so many people have so many strong opinions on it, some of whom are also willing to crucify you for disagreeing. I want to preface this piece with this: I am a huge Pokémon fan, I am also a huge Nintendo fan. In both of cases, it is because of the talented people working at these companies and producing art that I enjoy playing. Both Nintendo and Pokémon have a long history of exploitative practices with both employees and consumers, Pokémon has been in a rough place producing mostly poor games for about a decade, and Nintendo is currently the most anti-consumer they've ever been, with the price of the Switch 2, game keys, etc. If you are in a place where you don't want to give Nintendo or Pokémon your money, that's valid, and I stand with you. I am also not giving either of them money, with the exception of this game. My girlfriend and I decided we had heard enough about it to want to check out ourselves, and I'm happy to say we were not disappointed.

Before we continue, I do want to say: the DLC release for this game is disgusting. Having it available at release, for $30, is ridiculous and obviously a cash grab. DLC content in Pokémon games today are usually things that would be included in the post-game of a normal Pokémon game ten years ago. Now not only do they charge you for that content now, they have it available at launch, that way you can pay 50% more than the MSRP of the game just to have a complete Pokémon experience that was considered standard just a few years ago.

But, that aside, let's talk about that actual game. All in all, it's pretty good! It's very polished, which is a low bar, but considering Scarlet/Violet, it's a necessary upgrade. It runs well, even on Switch 1, despite running at 30fps and having some pretty close render distances. This is unfortunate, but necessary for the game to run as well as it does on Switch 1, which it does! Once you start getting into the flow of the game and playing for a while, it becomes less and less noticeable until everything feels natural. This can also be said of the textures, which are sometimes lower resolution that I would anticipate, but also becomes a background element that's only noticeable when I stop to focus on it. The same goes for the buildings, which are infamously mostly just flat polygons with textures over them, but there's just enough modeling on most buildings that again, I only notice when I stop and think to focus on it. It's by no means hidden, but it's also not the focus, and becomes less noticeable as time goes on. Most people will tell you to play it on Switch 2, which is fair, as that version is technically upgrade in the framerate, resolution, etc. However, it's not as if it's unplayable on Switch 1, far from it. If you still have a Switch like a majority of people do, you won't be missing out playing this game.

Despite my initial apprehension to the game taking place only within the walls of Luimose City, the smaller map size allowed Game Freak to fill it with rich characters, thoughtful design and placement, and no shortage of things to run around and do. Unlike some games like Breath of the Wild, where every NPC is named, even when they have nothing of note to say and aren't memorable in the least, every single person on the streets of Lumiose has some bit of fun, intentionally-written dialogue that makes it fun to just run past NPCs to see their idle pop-up text as you go. The characters in the story as well are all well-developed personalities, with a written voice all to their own. The world itself is lovingly crafted, with everything placed with intention, not by randomly placing dots on a map. Pokémon found outside the Wild Zones spawn in places that make sense, and it's clear that Game Freak took the time to think about where they would reasonably live, and place them for the player to discover. This makes finding Pokémon you're looking for all the more rewarding, when you find it in exactly the place that would make sense for it. This extends to the placement of buildings and shops, the ways that rooftops are accessed and connected to each other, and generally how the world is explored.

Quick note, I mentioned the characters are well-developed and personable. This is true, however this exacerbates one of the most annoying on-going issues with Pokémon games since 2018, which is that they so obviously want to do voice acting. Every since Sword/Shield, Pokémon has animated and written characters both in and out of cutscenes with a direction that seems to indicate there should be audio. Something, anything at all. But instead, most of these cutscenes are either entirely silent, or only have ambient noice or background tracks. Particularly there's the infamous concert scene from Sword/Shield, which is entirely silent, even though the character's text is obviously writing out the lyrics to the song he's supposedly singing. This issue isn't limited to musical scenes, as it shows up in any and every cutscene in these games, including Legends Z-A. There's a cutscene pretty early on that is very well animated, incredibly expressive, and entirely silent. This leads to cutscenes like this feeling awkward and stilted, breaking any immersion you may have had. I can't say for certain why Game Freak continues to design scenes like this if they obviously aren't going to do voice acting, but my guess is that it's a corporate decision that's out of their hands, and so they do it anyway hoping that they'll one day be allowed. Whether it's budgetary constraints, or some other corporate reason, it's obvious that it's been denied over and over again, but that hasn't stopped Game Freak from animating and writing as though they'll one day be allowed, for better or worse.

In terms of audio though, Pikachu has his sound back! No more anime voice, the series mascot is allowed his own voice again after nearly a decade of pika-pi. This is a change that extends to Eevee as well, and both of these excite me personally. Not super important, just something that made me happy to hear!

The biggest new thing in Z-A is the combat. It forgoes a turn-based combat system akin the main series, and opts for an action-based RPG system instead. Think Final Fantasy 7 vs Final Fantasy 7 Remake. This system still has some kinks to be worked out, like adapting abilities and more moves, but it works fairly well as an action RPG system based on a legacy turn-based one. It's very fun to run around and catch Pokémon in real time with a tactile feel, and actually choose your Pokémon from your team and throw them into battle. The tangible feel of the new system is very good, it helps immerse you in the battles by feeling like you're literally throwing out Pokémon and giving battle commands. The battles, however, are incredibly easy. Pokémon has had a problem for a while having to do with the difficulty level of the games dropping lower and lower to the point that it's practically braindead at this point, and this new system doesn't change that. Not only does Z-A continue the downward trend of gameplay challenge, the action combat makes things even easier by further simplifying combat. Nothing really poses a challenge mechanically or technically, and the balancing is such that there's never a difficulty curve, just a plateau of adjustment when you first start.

This is exacerbated by this smaller point, which is that this game continues the refusal to fix the Exp Share mechanic. This feature essentially trains your team for you by distributing exp earned to all members of your party. It's useful in some instances, but in generations 6 and 7, it was an item that could be turned off if you wanted a more classic, challenging mode of team training. Starting in Let's Go and continuing to today, this feature has been baked in to every game, and has been a non-optional opt in. This combines with the balancing of the modern games to make them incredibly, braindead easy from start to finish. Z-A is no exception, and this compounds with the simpler battle system to make the combat in this game have very little challenge.

In spite of these things however, the combat is fun and fluid, particularly in the PvP ranked modes available with Switch Online. It's incredibly fun to battle with this system, and the ease of progression shouldn't deter you from enjoying it for what it is.

As a closing note, I want to offer my thoughts on an idea that I've heard from more than one place, which is the idea that turn-based combat in Pokémon is outdated, and this new action-based system should become the standard system, with turn-based used for alternate games aimed at competitive, like the upcoming Pokémon Champions. I think this would be a massive mistake, for a very simple reason.

I wrote a recent piece on Breath of the Wild, and how it's a great game with some flaws, but as a Zelda game it fails in ever way to establish any links to any series staples, and as such is one of the worst Zelda games. In the same way, Pokémon is founded on two things: well-crafted worldbuilding and immersion, and deep mechanics of turn-based combat. Strategy and mechanical+technical knowledge have long been staples of Pokémon, building your team and training them up through traditional RPG mechanics to engage in strategic battles of varying rulesets. The series spinoffs have long played with alternate ideas of how Pokémon can be engaged with outside of the main series, and I think that that diversity is a wonderful addition to the franchise. However, to shift the series away from that and towards something like this new action-based combat system would be to abandon the series at its core, and become something new. The same can be said about the well-crafted world, as some of the leaked design documents from the Teraleak suggest that they're experimenting with a procedurally-generated series of islands as the basic for exploration in generation 10. This, too, would abandon the core of the series, becoming something different, and not necessarily better. Neither of those ideas are inherently bad, as a matter of fact I'd love to see both of them becomes games! I think there's a lot of potential in those ideas with some more work, but I don't think either of them constitute a replacement for anything in the main series. They deserve their own place and time to shine, in side games like the Legends titles (which I hope continue to use Z-A's battle system moving forward). The core mechanics of the series are not inherently outdated or undesirable, but they haven't been done well in nearly a decade, and only the most dedicated fans who blind themselves to criticism would say otherwise. There's always something to enjoy about each game that comes out, but they've only been "okay", "alright", or "serviceable" for a long time. Replacing the core mechanics of the series doesn't solve any of these problems, but in fact could make them worse, if they continue to release sub-par games that sour public opinion of the new mechanics just like the old ones. Pokémon doesn't need to be redesigned, it needs to be done right.

To that extent though, I hope there's more Legends games. I hope there's more games with the action-based system. I just don't want to see it in the main series. I want them to do Pokémon as well as they once did, when their RPGs were at the peak of their creativity and hand-crafted design. The Legends games, or other spinoffs, are no replacement for that, as fun as they are, and I want a future for the franchise where they can coexist as two well-made halves of a beloved franchise. Legends Z-A is a leap forward for Game Freak in terms of quality with their 3D titles, and is hopefully a sign of things to come. However, this hinges on powers out of their hands, namely the corporate decisions of The Pokémon Company and Nintendo. I hope and pray that they are allowed to continue to expand their vision of Pokémon as a series, and are given the time and money to make them a sustainable reality for the employees and artists working on it, and the players than engage with it. If you want to signal to all parties involved that Legends Z-A and its quality are what you want more of, you can absolutely buy it. If you want to protest both company's behaviors, you can absolutely continue to abstain. Both are fair and valid approaches in my eyes. Either way, I hope everyone involved recognizes and listens to the fans about what we want moving forward, and that this isn't the last we see of Game Freak's quality work for the next few years.

~ Alex Amelia Pine

This post is a part of the series Game Reviews