My feelings about the Pokemon series have been complicated for a while now. Lately it seems the series' fandom feels this way as well, as they appear to be in a constant state of war with each other and The Pokemon Company itself, but I’m talking from an outsider's perspective. I’ve always been around people who love Pokemon, and I’ve enjoyed the series and its titular Pocket Monsters plenty of times myself, but when it comes to actually sitting down and playing mainline Pokemon games, I only really get the desire to play one every 2 or 3 years, and when I do I very rarely bother with anything past seeing credits. I get the urge, I satisfy it, and then I move on. This is all to say that I don’t have a strong opinion on what Pokemon should or shouldn’t be. The strongest thing I can say about it is that I usually can’t muster up much enthusiasm for a new entry. So, when something like Legends Arceus shows up, a big game in the series that changes the formula so much that it’s debatable whether it's even a mainline game, now there’s something I feel more confident weighing in on, and a lot more curious to check out.
One aspect of Pokemon I HAVE been regularly keeping up with is Pokemon Go. I played it for a short while during its peak popularity before dropping it, but my friends convinced me to get back into it a few years ago. It's a fun group activity to do while out in public, something to pull out to see all the funny little guys I’ve caught, and in some of my most miserable moments in life, one of the few things motivating me to get out of the house. It’s a simple game, but it provides the exact level of entertainment and engagement that I want from a mobile game. Legends Arceus clearly takes some influence from Go’s style of catching and cataloging Pokemon, even borrowing the term “research task” which originated in Go, at least from what I can tell. Considering my primary fixation in Go is the catching and collecting aspect, this seemed like a great premise for an open-world Pokemon game. Over the years the structure of Pokemon battling has interested me less and less, saying this as someone who isn’t at all invested in the competitive scene or multiplayer Pokemon in general. I’ve seen one or two Angry Pokemon Fans claim that Go ruined the franchise, and while I can see why someone would say that, for me, it did the exact opposite. Ultimately, the attempt to merge Go-esque mechanics with both a Breath of the Wild style overworld and the traditional Pokemon mechanics is fun, but messy and flawed.
In this game, trainer battles and dungeons (or at least the Pokemon equivalent of dungeons) take a back seat, and instead the focus is on exploring a new, giant overworld split up into several areas, each with distinct climates, Pokemon populations, and level averages. In each section there are also unique ingredients to collect and craft into different items, sidequests to undertake, and eventually a “final boss” in the form of a Noble Pokemon that has been “frenzied” by a strike of lightning out of a time-space-hole, which you also came out of. This is a game about catching Pokemon more than anything, which is where the Pokemon Go comparison comes from. Like that game, you don’t have to engage in battle with a wild Pokemon to catch it. But now, catching has been greatly elaborated on, requiring a combination of effective item usage, positioning, and aiming. You can also end up in a battle with the Pokemon, intentionally or not. Coming upon a wild Pokemon requires a series of decisions and quick thinking, especially since many Pokemon will immediately begin attacking you if they are alerted of your presence. This is a world where the relationship between humans and Pokemon is uncertain and wary. In your average Pokemon game, the idea of a Pokemon attacking a human is preposterous, and reason for alarm, but here it’s expected. A Geodude will spot you and start throwing rocks at you, a Rapidash will charge you head-on, a Haunter will try to cut you off your path by teleporting in front of you, truly everyone is ready to throw down. I think this is one of the most effective parts of the game, how Pokemon end up being genuinely terrifying if you’re not prepared for them. They can corner and gang up on you and your team, this is the first time the term “blacking out” for getting a game over actually makes sense, these bitches are knocking you unconscious!
The focus is on catching Pokemon and navigating a world where they rule their domains, and I think this part of the game works really well. I love the streamlining of catching Pokemon and setting up all these different research tasks involving them to fill so that there’s always something new to work towards even with a Pokemon you’ve seen plenty of times already. It makes the problem of “fuck this it’s another Zubat” from previous games a lot less of a problem because now there’s an incentive to run into a Pokemon multiple times. Catching Pokemon may be more streamlined, but that doesn’t mean it’s monotonous either. Pokemon often have unique challenges in catching them, such as identifying their favorite food or knowing whether they run away at the sight of you or immediately begin attacking. Sure, it’s not as involved as catching something in Bugsnax or Ape Escape, but when it’s not a level 3 Bidoof, some thinking is required. There are a lot of little calculations to be made, like how close you can get before alerting a Pokemon, whether or not you can manage to throw a ball at it from far away, or if you can make it to another hiding spot from where you are. You can hit Pokemon with items to stun them, smoke bombs to create hiding spots, or stealth spray to become harder to identify. The use of items to help with catching Pokemon often involves the crafting aspect of this game. I don’t know if I can fully identify why the idea of crafting in the new Animal Crossing game disgusts me but I’m fine with it here. I don’t know, it’s nice to always have a backup supply of stuff to make Pokeballs, potions, and revives out of. Also, the ingredients for making these items are everywhere, and just buying items isn’t prohibitively expensive either so it’s not like crafting is the only viable option. But like I said, everything about catching Pokemon and traversing the overworld feels really solid, it’s the reason I kept playing and still have the urge to knock out some of the remaining sidequests and post-game content. But this is not a case of hitting the bullseye on the first try, because there’s a whole lot in this game that could use some improvement.
To me, the biggest issue in regard to this game’s structure is that it tries being Breath of the Wild but instead it’s if BOTW was only its overworld, without the countless trials and dungeons scattered throughout. Each of the overworld areas has distinct regions within them, but what they don’t have is the thing other open-world games do where there’s something distinct, weird, or large off in the distance, motivating the player to investigate. The main path in every area usually just leads to the top of a mountain. This ends up making the overworld feel samey, and even where there are distinct sections on the map, they don’t stick in my head as memorable landmarks. If I didn’t have a marker to follow, I would end up constantly checking my map to remember where the fuck I am or going. There are maybe two parts of this game that I would consider to be close to a dungeon, everything else is out in the open, which you could argue is appropriate for the setting, but nah, this world needs places to go besides “on top of the mountain” or “on the beach” or “that island over there”. The Ride Pokemon do help a lot, I like the way you gradually unlock better and better forms of traversal and how it makes the world feel like it opens up more and more. But there’s that one balloon mission that requires gracefully switching between them, and that’s where you run into the problem with this game’s maximalist approach to controller layout. Every button has a function, and often in a way you wouldn’t expect. You get used to it for the most part, but one thing I never got used to was using + to summon a Ride Pokemon, and using the left and right d-pad to switch between them. I always messed up some part of this process and would end up summoning when I intended to pause, immediately alerting every Pokemon around me.
Another problem is that this whole new form of Pokemon catching is clumsily stuck alongside traditional Pokemon mechanics that make both of those things not feel as good as they could be. I know I said normal Pokemon battling doesn’t interest me much, but mostly battling wild Pokemon turns out to be even less interesting. There’s just not much thinking involved in it, which is why I always tried catching Pokemon outside of battle whenever I could. The second area in the game throws alerted Pokemon at you again and again until you end up fighting 3 Croagunks in a row with no change in strategy on how you fight them. Pokemon are also constantly respawning, so when you think you’ve cleared an area, one will just show up out of thin air when you turn the camera. The addition of agile and strong style moves is neat but using them against wild Pokemon often feels like prolonging something that’s already taking too long. The amount of bland wild Pokemon fighting led me to honestly miss trainer battles, which are in the game, but only barely. Any story battles are easy right up until the last stretch of the game, and a lot of the more engaging fights are post-game content. Also, it’s a bad fucking feeling to fight three Pokemon at once with only one Pokemon. I kind of get that in the wild it helps keep the player afraid of alerted Pokemon, but making me do it in a trainer battle is very annoying. It simply feels unfair to have your first Pokemon basically be dead on arrival as it gets combo’d by three opponents. Do you know what would be nice for these situations? Double battles! Imagine if this game was an open-world version of Pokemon Colosseum, now there’s a video game. Funnily enough, that game had the exact opposite structure where it was all trainer battles and no wild Pokemon, but at the end of the day, I would consider Colosseum to be a better game simply because double battles are cool. Even if it were all single battles, it’s certainly more engaging than constant wild Pokemon fights.
Maybe it seems hypocritical on my part to admonish this game for not being more like the main series games I’m already tired of, but if I’m being honest, the shortcomings of this game made me crave a more traditional Pokemon entry. So much about this game’s structure is fun, but it needs something else going on. This is where I really feel the weight of Game Freak’s release structure weighing the game down, since in comparison the Zelda team clearly had all the time in the world to release their Big Next-Gen Game. Game Freak also clearly doesn’t have access to the same tech wizards that first-party Nintendo games often have on staff, but I don’t have too much of a bone to pick with this game’s graphics. The overall look and feel is serviceable, and while there were moments of egregious slowdown, they were few and far between. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it Actually Looks Good, but I didn’t mind the graphical fidelity (high praise, I know).
Like I said earlier, this game places itself in a very interesting time for the Pokemon series, in which humanity has not found a peaceful relationship with Pokemon and only barely understands their nature. Playing as someone at the front line of Pokemon research is a good premise, but in terms of the actual plot, I felt like it was mostly cool moments surrounded by stuff I didn’t care about. The story around the Noble Arcanine was neat, seeing Jubilife Village grow is interesting, Ingo’s whole deal is honestly pretty cool, but there’s a whole lot of stuff I just find dumb. The Pearl and Diamond clans' whole thing being about arguing whether time or space is better is the dumbest thing ever. It’s like arguing about whether sleeping or eating is better, who the fuck cares. And the clan leaders are constantly like “Ah yes, you got here just in TIME. Remember that TIME is the essence, who needs SPACE” like shut the fuck up! And then some character shows how wise they are by being like “Perhaps we need both time AND space”, OK, yeah, great job. Maybe it’s meant to be a petty argument, but christ, witnessing multiple conversations about whether time or space is better just makes my brain leave my body. I guess it’s no more ridiculous than Team Magma and Team Aqua, but in this game, these are supposed to be characters on our side, and not just incompetent villains. Maybe some small child thinks it’s very interesting, good for them, I guess. Also, in terms of cutscene presentation, it varies wildly. There are some scenes that very obviously are the Key Cutscenes with all the animation and camera movement and direction in the world, but a lot of what could be interesting moments are given very little to work with. It doesn’t help that every time a character does something interesting it just cuts to black, but I don’t think this game is uniquely guilty of that.
There are some other gripes I have about the general premise of this game. When you are cast into the Hisui region, your instruction from God is “Seek out all Pokemon”, and that essentially means helping your ancestors tame the wild frontier of Pokemon in order to pave the way for modern society. It’s sort of like Pokemon Manifest Destiny, and it did raise some concern in me throughout playing the game, but I’m not nearly capable enough to dissect it, especially since confronting this game’s attitude on “taming the land” would involve eventually confronting the entire open world game genre. Just felt like I needed to mention the fact that, yeah, it is a bit off putting. It doesn’t help that the organization you work for, Galaxy Team, has come into the Hisui region as outsiders, inserting themselves into conflicts between the local clans. A series like Pokemon is probably never going to seriously go into this topic, but I would like to transition this talking point into another involving something this game DOES try to get serious about. It is established throughout the game that catching Pokemon in Pokeballs is something very new, and people outside of Galaxy Team are at first adverse to it. Several characters claim that it’s cruel and uncaring and that it reduces Pokemon to tools and servants instead of equals to their human partners. This ultimately leads to nothing, as the game just responds with “actually Pokemon love being in Pokeballs, they like it a lot, there is no part of this that is bad.” At some point, why even bother if the answer to what seems like a relatively challenging question for the series is simply, “nuh-uh.” Remember when Pikachu’s Vacation was like “Pokemon will never fight each other outside of a trainer battle” and how absurd that sounds if you think about it? It feels like that, a dumb answer for an idea that, if you’re going to bother acknowledging, you should respond with something a lot more thought out.
There’s a good thing here, and I did genuinely have a good time with this game. But I can very clearly see a much better game than this, it’s a real “one step forward, two steps back” situation. I appreciate that Game Freak went for it in this one, and I hope they get a chance to make a sequel that’s given a little more time in the oven. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen of Scarlet/Violet seems to indicate that probably won’t be the case for any Pokemon game in the near future. Also, I’m starting to realize maybe I just want a JRPG with an actual party instead of 1-on-1 dueling, I think that’s what I need in my life. A monster collecting JRPG that allows you to battle with multiple of them at once in a full party, does such a thing exist? (This is a joke; I know that this extremely exists). One more thing: fuck you for making Decidueye fighting-grass, what’s wrong with you, I was scammed.
One aspect of Pokemon I HAVE been regularly keeping up with is Pokemon Go. I played it for a short while during its peak popularity before dropping it, but my friends convinced me to get back into it a few years ago. It's a fun group activity to do while out in public, something to pull out to see all the funny little guys I’ve caught, and in some of my most miserable moments in life, one of the few things motivating me to get out of the house. It’s a simple game, but it provides the exact level of entertainment and engagement that I want from a mobile game. Legends Arceus clearly takes some influence from Go’s style of catching and cataloging Pokemon, even borrowing the term “research task” which originated in Go, at least from what I can tell. Considering my primary fixation in Go is the catching and collecting aspect, this seemed like a great premise for an open-world Pokemon game. Over the years the structure of Pokemon battling has interested me less and less, saying this as someone who isn’t at all invested in the competitive scene or multiplayer Pokemon in general. I’ve seen one or two Angry Pokemon Fans claim that Go ruined the franchise, and while I can see why someone would say that, for me, it did the exact opposite. Ultimately, the attempt to merge Go-esque mechanics with both a Breath of the Wild style overworld and the traditional Pokemon mechanics is fun, but messy and flawed.
In this game, trainer battles and dungeons (or at least the Pokemon equivalent of dungeons) take a back seat, and instead the focus is on exploring a new, giant overworld split up into several areas, each with distinct climates, Pokemon populations, and level averages. In each section there are also unique ingredients to collect and craft into different items, sidequests to undertake, and eventually a “final boss” in the form of a Noble Pokemon that has been “frenzied” by a strike of lightning out of a time-space-hole, which you also came out of. This is a game about catching Pokemon more than anything, which is where the Pokemon Go comparison comes from. Like that game, you don’t have to engage in battle with a wild Pokemon to catch it. But now, catching has been greatly elaborated on, requiring a combination of effective item usage, positioning, and aiming. You can also end up in a battle with the Pokemon, intentionally or not. Coming upon a wild Pokemon requires a series of decisions and quick thinking, especially since many Pokemon will immediately begin attacking you if they are alerted of your presence. This is a world where the relationship between humans and Pokemon is uncertain and wary. In your average Pokemon game, the idea of a Pokemon attacking a human is preposterous, and reason for alarm, but here it’s expected. A Geodude will spot you and start throwing rocks at you, a Rapidash will charge you head-on, a Haunter will try to cut you off your path by teleporting in front of you, truly everyone is ready to throw down. I think this is one of the most effective parts of the game, how Pokemon end up being genuinely terrifying if you’re not prepared for them. They can corner and gang up on you and your team, this is the first time the term “blacking out” for getting a game over actually makes sense, these bitches are knocking you unconscious!
The focus is on catching Pokemon and navigating a world where they rule their domains, and I think this part of the game works really well. I love the streamlining of catching Pokemon and setting up all these different research tasks involving them to fill so that there’s always something new to work towards even with a Pokemon you’ve seen plenty of times already. It makes the problem of “fuck this it’s another Zubat” from previous games a lot less of a problem because now there’s an incentive to run into a Pokemon multiple times. Catching Pokemon may be more streamlined, but that doesn’t mean it’s monotonous either. Pokemon often have unique challenges in catching them, such as identifying their favorite food or knowing whether they run away at the sight of you or immediately begin attacking. Sure, it’s not as involved as catching something in Bugsnax or Ape Escape, but when it’s not a level 3 Bidoof, some thinking is required. There are a lot of little calculations to be made, like how close you can get before alerting a Pokemon, whether or not you can manage to throw a ball at it from far away, or if you can make it to another hiding spot from where you are. You can hit Pokemon with items to stun them, smoke bombs to create hiding spots, or stealth spray to become harder to identify. The use of items to help with catching Pokemon often involves the crafting aspect of this game. I don’t know if I can fully identify why the idea of crafting in the new Animal Crossing game disgusts me but I’m fine with it here. I don’t know, it’s nice to always have a backup supply of stuff to make Pokeballs, potions, and revives out of. Also, the ingredients for making these items are everywhere, and just buying items isn’t prohibitively expensive either so it’s not like crafting is the only viable option. But like I said, everything about catching Pokemon and traversing the overworld feels really solid, it’s the reason I kept playing and still have the urge to knock out some of the remaining sidequests and post-game content. But this is not a case of hitting the bullseye on the first try, because there’s a whole lot in this game that could use some improvement.
To me, the biggest issue in regard to this game’s structure is that it tries being Breath of the Wild but instead it’s if BOTW was only its overworld, without the countless trials and dungeons scattered throughout. Each of the overworld areas has distinct regions within them, but what they don’t have is the thing other open-world games do where there’s something distinct, weird, or large off in the distance, motivating the player to investigate. The main path in every area usually just leads to the top of a mountain. This ends up making the overworld feel samey, and even where there are distinct sections on the map, they don’t stick in my head as memorable landmarks. If I didn’t have a marker to follow, I would end up constantly checking my map to remember where the fuck I am or going. There are maybe two parts of this game that I would consider to be close to a dungeon, everything else is out in the open, which you could argue is appropriate for the setting, but nah, this world needs places to go besides “on top of the mountain” or “on the beach” or “that island over there”. The Ride Pokemon do help a lot, I like the way you gradually unlock better and better forms of traversal and how it makes the world feel like it opens up more and more. But there’s that one balloon mission that requires gracefully switching between them, and that’s where you run into the problem with this game’s maximalist approach to controller layout. Every button has a function, and often in a way you wouldn’t expect. You get used to it for the most part, but one thing I never got used to was using + to summon a Ride Pokemon, and using the left and right d-pad to switch between them. I always messed up some part of this process and would end up summoning when I intended to pause, immediately alerting every Pokemon around me.
Another problem is that this whole new form of Pokemon catching is clumsily stuck alongside traditional Pokemon mechanics that make both of those things not feel as good as they could be. I know I said normal Pokemon battling doesn’t interest me much, but mostly battling wild Pokemon turns out to be even less interesting. There’s just not much thinking involved in it, which is why I always tried catching Pokemon outside of battle whenever I could. The second area in the game throws alerted Pokemon at you again and again until you end up fighting 3 Croagunks in a row with no change in strategy on how you fight them. Pokemon are also constantly respawning, so when you think you’ve cleared an area, one will just show up out of thin air when you turn the camera. The addition of agile and strong style moves is neat but using them against wild Pokemon often feels like prolonging something that’s already taking too long. The amount of bland wild Pokemon fighting led me to honestly miss trainer battles, which are in the game, but only barely. Any story battles are easy right up until the last stretch of the game, and a lot of the more engaging fights are post-game content. Also, it’s a bad fucking feeling to fight three Pokemon at once with only one Pokemon. I kind of get that in the wild it helps keep the player afraid of alerted Pokemon, but making me do it in a trainer battle is very annoying. It simply feels unfair to have your first Pokemon basically be dead on arrival as it gets combo’d by three opponents. Do you know what would be nice for these situations? Double battles! Imagine if this game was an open-world version of Pokemon Colosseum, now there’s a video game. Funnily enough, that game had the exact opposite structure where it was all trainer battles and no wild Pokemon, but at the end of the day, I would consider Colosseum to be a better game simply because double battles are cool. Even if it were all single battles, it’s certainly more engaging than constant wild Pokemon fights.
Maybe it seems hypocritical on my part to admonish this game for not being more like the main series games I’m already tired of, but if I’m being honest, the shortcomings of this game made me crave a more traditional Pokemon entry. So much about this game’s structure is fun, but it needs something else going on. This is where I really feel the weight of Game Freak’s release structure weighing the game down, since in comparison the Zelda team clearly had all the time in the world to release their Big Next-Gen Game. Game Freak also clearly doesn’t have access to the same tech wizards that first-party Nintendo games often have on staff, but I don’t have too much of a bone to pick with this game’s graphics. The overall look and feel is serviceable, and while there were moments of egregious slowdown, they were few and far between. I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it Actually Looks Good, but I didn’t mind the graphical fidelity (high praise, I know).
Like I said earlier, this game places itself in a very interesting time for the Pokemon series, in which humanity has not found a peaceful relationship with Pokemon and only barely understands their nature. Playing as someone at the front line of Pokemon research is a good premise, but in terms of the actual plot, I felt like it was mostly cool moments surrounded by stuff I didn’t care about. The story around the Noble Arcanine was neat, seeing Jubilife Village grow is interesting, Ingo’s whole deal is honestly pretty cool, but there’s a whole lot of stuff I just find dumb. The Pearl and Diamond clans' whole thing being about arguing whether time or space is better is the dumbest thing ever. It’s like arguing about whether sleeping or eating is better, who the fuck cares. And the clan leaders are constantly like “Ah yes, you got here just in TIME. Remember that TIME is the essence, who needs SPACE” like shut the fuck up! And then some character shows how wise they are by being like “Perhaps we need both time AND space”, OK, yeah, great job. Maybe it’s meant to be a petty argument, but christ, witnessing multiple conversations about whether time or space is better just makes my brain leave my body. I guess it’s no more ridiculous than Team Magma and Team Aqua, but in this game, these are supposed to be characters on our side, and not just incompetent villains. Maybe some small child thinks it’s very interesting, good for them, I guess. Also, in terms of cutscene presentation, it varies wildly. There are some scenes that very obviously are the Key Cutscenes with all the animation and camera movement and direction in the world, but a lot of what could be interesting moments are given very little to work with. It doesn’t help that every time a character does something interesting it just cuts to black, but I don’t think this game is uniquely guilty of that.
There are some other gripes I have about the general premise of this game. When you are cast into the Hisui region, your instruction from God is “Seek out all Pokemon”, and that essentially means helping your ancestors tame the wild frontier of Pokemon in order to pave the way for modern society. It’s sort of like Pokemon Manifest Destiny, and it did raise some concern in me throughout playing the game, but I’m not nearly capable enough to dissect it, especially since confronting this game’s attitude on “taming the land” would involve eventually confronting the entire open world game genre. Just felt like I needed to mention the fact that, yeah, it is a bit off putting. It doesn’t help that the organization you work for, Galaxy Team, has come into the Hisui region as outsiders, inserting themselves into conflicts between the local clans. A series like Pokemon is probably never going to seriously go into this topic, but I would like to transition this talking point into another involving something this game DOES try to get serious about. It is established throughout the game that catching Pokemon in Pokeballs is something very new, and people outside of Galaxy Team are at first adverse to it. Several characters claim that it’s cruel and uncaring and that it reduces Pokemon to tools and servants instead of equals to their human partners. This ultimately leads to nothing, as the game just responds with “actually Pokemon love being in Pokeballs, they like it a lot, there is no part of this that is bad.” At some point, why even bother if the answer to what seems like a relatively challenging question for the series is simply, “nuh-uh.” Remember when Pikachu’s Vacation was like “Pokemon will never fight each other outside of a trainer battle” and how absurd that sounds if you think about it? It feels like that, a dumb answer for an idea that, if you’re going to bother acknowledging, you should respond with something a lot more thought out.
There’s a good thing here, and I did genuinely have a good time with this game. But I can very clearly see a much better game than this, it’s a real “one step forward, two steps back” situation. I appreciate that Game Freak went for it in this one, and I hope they get a chance to make a sequel that’s given a little more time in the oven. Unfortunately, what I’ve seen of Scarlet/Violet seems to indicate that probably won’t be the case for any Pokemon game in the near future. Also, I’m starting to realize maybe I just want a JRPG with an actual party instead of 1-on-1 dueling, I think that’s what I need in my life. A monster collecting JRPG that allows you to battle with multiple of them at once in a full party, does such a thing exist? (This is a joke; I know that this extremely exists). One more thing: fuck you for making Decidueye fighting-grass, what’s wrong with you, I was scammed.