Pokemon continues a real breakneck release schedule with another title little over a year after the last DLC for Sword & Shield and apparently the same year as the next generation. I wish Game Freak would take their foot off the pedal for a slower, more considered game.
Legends Arceus is at the same time a successful expansion of the mechanics in Sword & Shield while showing off painful limitations in those mechanics- at least with GameFreak's vision and resources. I found it fantastic fun for the first few hours to run out into the wild and pelt pokeballs at all around me, catching Starlies and Shinx with wild abandon. But as the game went on I found myself becoming disinterested in pokemon. All pokemon were just something to chuck balls at. The unique qualities of the pokemon faded into the background, especially with infrequent and unchallenging combat. In previous generations I spent hours searching for a rare Gible, and prized the one I found. In this game I saw a wild Garchomp and passed over it immediately; it wasnt' Alpha.
The new Hisuian Forms and the brand new evolutions for old pokemon are all good, I'm a big fan. Maybe a little less-so for the starter evolutions. They all have fun typings, but none of them really do it for me. I have more mixed feelings on Alphas- extra-large versions of any given pokemon. They look cool, but they're sufficiently common that they server to make non-Alphas feel lame.
There are some other new ideas on show- a series of boss fight pokemon where you run around a large arena clumsily dodging and chucking little stinky bags at them (this calms their raging aramitama, for some reason). It's a solid idea and the first couple of fights are fine, but the flimsiness of the system shows through. The camera is a mess, you need to see the ground underneath you to dodge, but you can't while you're throwing things. There's no way to recover health while in combat, and the game isn't shy about just lamping you across the back of the head while you're in the recovery animation for another move. It becomes truly unbearable in the postgame when you have to fight four fast moving legendary pokemon who shoot out untelegraphed tornado attacks at random positions, in areas populated with dozens of regular pokemon. Some more time and care might have saved these mechanics but they didn't get any.
The story, however, never had any potential. Pokemon's absolute nosedive into interminable cutscenes with unlikeable jerks continues unabaited. I'd say this is the absolute nadir but I've learned not to underestimate these games. In PLA you're tasked with singlehandedly supporting an entire colony of workshy cowards, catching hundreds upon hundreds of pokemon for these idle twits who are too thick to catch their own bloody Buizels. I absolutely dreaded going back to town, knowing that the absolute worst of them, Professor Laventon, was going to spend 5 minutes force feeding me potato mochi before allowing me to proceed to the next area. I was only ever interested in getting new ride pokemon and accessing new areas, but these guys talk endlessly about the paper thin plot- there are 5 very angry pokemon, punch them until they stop being angry, and then punch even more pokemon into submission after that.
One element of the story I feel a little reticent to comment on is the colonial theme and the representation of the Ainu people. The game is set in Hisui/Sinnoh, an analogue for Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. The Ainu are an indiginous ethnic group native to Hokkaido. In the game, the Galaxy Team are colonising Hisui which is currently inhabitted by the Diamond & Pearl clans. I haven't been able to find any Ainu commentary on the game so I don't have a strong feel for if the portrayal in the game is good or not. I'm personally not nuts about the depiction of the Japanese establishment as peacefully and happily agglomerating the native peoples into their society (by the "present day" of Diamond/Pearl, there isn't much identifiable heritage left). There's also a very weird implication, buried deep in the game's lore, that there is another even-more native group of blonds who predate even the Diamond & Pearl clans. I'd love to hear a more informed reading of the plot, I have anxiety that there might be dog whistles going off that I can't hear.
The game was sweet at first, but left a bad taste in my mouth by the end. It feels rushed, half baked, in the same way that Sword & Shield felt underdeveloped. I wish the Pokemon Company weren't committed to this pace of releases. I would rather wait a Zelda length of time, or a Mario length of time for a new pokemon if it meant getting titles as good as Black & White, but instead year after year I see new titles that dillute my love for the series. For the love of Arceus, slow down.
Legends Arceus is at the same time a successful expansion of the mechanics in Sword & Shield while showing off painful limitations in those mechanics- at least with GameFreak's vision and resources. I found it fantastic fun for the first few hours to run out into the wild and pelt pokeballs at all around me, catching Starlies and Shinx with wild abandon. But as the game went on I found myself becoming disinterested in pokemon. All pokemon were just something to chuck balls at. The unique qualities of the pokemon faded into the background, especially with infrequent and unchallenging combat. In previous generations I spent hours searching for a rare Gible, and prized the one I found. In this game I saw a wild Garchomp and passed over it immediately; it wasnt' Alpha.
The new Hisuian Forms and the brand new evolutions for old pokemon are all good, I'm a big fan. Maybe a little less-so for the starter evolutions. They all have fun typings, but none of them really do it for me. I have more mixed feelings on Alphas- extra-large versions of any given pokemon. They look cool, but they're sufficiently common that they server to make non-Alphas feel lame.
There are some other new ideas on show- a series of boss fight pokemon where you run around a large arena clumsily dodging and chucking little stinky bags at them (this calms their raging aramitama, for some reason). It's a solid idea and the first couple of fights are fine, but the flimsiness of the system shows through. The camera is a mess, you need to see the ground underneath you to dodge, but you can't while you're throwing things. There's no way to recover health while in combat, and the game isn't shy about just lamping you across the back of the head while you're in the recovery animation for another move. It becomes truly unbearable in the postgame when you have to fight four fast moving legendary pokemon who shoot out untelegraphed tornado attacks at random positions, in areas populated with dozens of regular pokemon. Some more time and care might have saved these mechanics but they didn't get any.
The story, however, never had any potential. Pokemon's absolute nosedive into interminable cutscenes with unlikeable jerks continues unabaited. I'd say this is the absolute nadir but I've learned not to underestimate these games. In PLA you're tasked with singlehandedly supporting an entire colony of workshy cowards, catching hundreds upon hundreds of pokemon for these idle twits who are too thick to catch their own bloody Buizels. I absolutely dreaded going back to town, knowing that the absolute worst of them, Professor Laventon, was going to spend 5 minutes force feeding me potato mochi before allowing me to proceed to the next area. I was only ever interested in getting new ride pokemon and accessing new areas, but these guys talk endlessly about the paper thin plot- there are 5 very angry pokemon, punch them until they stop being angry, and then punch even more pokemon into submission after that.
One element of the story I feel a little reticent to comment on is the colonial theme and the representation of the Ainu people. The game is set in Hisui/Sinnoh, an analogue for Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan's four main islands. The Ainu are an indiginous ethnic group native to Hokkaido. In the game, the Galaxy Team are colonising Hisui which is currently inhabitted by the Diamond & Pearl clans. I haven't been able to find any Ainu commentary on the game so I don't have a strong feel for if the portrayal in the game is good or not. I'm personally not nuts about the depiction of the Japanese establishment as peacefully and happily agglomerating the native peoples into their society (by the "present day" of Diamond/Pearl, there isn't much identifiable heritage left). There's also a very weird implication, buried deep in the game's lore, that there is another even-more native group of blonds who predate even the Diamond & Pearl clans. I'd love to hear a more informed reading of the plot, I have anxiety that there might be dog whistles going off that I can't hear.
The game was sweet at first, but left a bad taste in my mouth by the end. It feels rushed, half baked, in the same way that Sword & Shield felt underdeveloped. I wish the Pokemon Company weren't committed to this pace of releases. I would rather wait a Zelda length of time, or a Mario length of time for a new pokemon if it meant getting titles as good as Black & White, but instead year after year I see new titles that dillute my love for the series. For the love of Arceus, slow down.