This. Oh my Arceus, just, this. This is what Pokemon has wished it was for the last 25 years. None of that bs railroading, none of that “oh you must catch one Pokemon then you know everything about it.” This game does so many things right and so many things that the franchise has needed for years.
So you’ve been isekai’d into the distant past, Pokeballs have just been invented, Pokemon are these big scary beasts that can and will harass humans, and civilisation lives in a few outposts and camps that have to keep themselves defended. So in an age where food is at a premium and you can’t just bum around, what are you gonna do? Well, become a Pokemon researcher, of course. Arceus sent you here to complete a Pokedex, so that’s what you’re gonna do.
And this game makes doing just that incredibly fun and streamlined. No more random encounters, no more having to go into a battle to throw Pokeballs. If you see a Pokemon you wanna catch, you just sneak up to it and yeet a ball at it while it’s not looking, and it’s so streamlined and quick. Speedrunners can catch upwards of 20 Pokemon in a minute. It’s kinda nuts how fun this game feels to play. In addition to just catching each Pokemon, you actually have to research them. You can’t just get all the data in a single catch. Every pokemon has requirements for catching and defeating to earn research points, but you can also get points for catching variants, witnessing them use certain moves, defeating them with certain types or attacks, etc. To fully research a Pokemon, you need at least 10 research points for it.
It does have its blemishes though. For one, it kinda looks bad, like, on a platform that has Breath of the Wild and Bayonetta on it, PLA looks worse than Zelda Wind Waker, but then again when you look at other games in the series, that’s about par for the course now. The battle system was also changed, some ways good other ways bad. They tried to implement an initiative system, but did it in the weirdest possible way. You’d think agile moves would make your next turn come sooner, but instead it makes your target’s next turn come later, which does cause some problems in fights with multiple opponents, since you just keep getting pushed further back in the initiative chain and never get a chance to attack.
That aside, if you like Pokemon, you should really play Legends Arceus. It’s worth it for the in-world catching and researching mechanics alone.
Switch: https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Pokemon-Legends-Arceus-1930510.html £49.99
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