Koga
2022
You know, if they actually released this game without the performance issues it would've been one of the best Pokémon games they have ever made.
Open world, interesting story, interesting Tera mechanic, the base was there for them to really make it a perfect game for the series. Instead, it's incredibly hampered with performance issues. Despite releasing expansions, updates, whatever, the issues are still there and really ruin what could've been an all time Pokémon game.
Open world, interesting story, interesting Tera mechanic, the base was there for them to really make it a perfect game for the series. Instead, it's incredibly hampered with performance issues. Despite releasing expansions, updates, whatever, the issues are still there and really ruin what could've been an all time Pokémon game.
This review contains spoilers
The one saving grace for Pokémon in the Switch era.
They obviously took huge inspiration from BOTW and decided to make a Pokémon game in the same vein. Despite it being a blatant copy of BOTW, it really does work with the Pokémon concept. The game isn't open-world, however you can somewhat give them a pass given the fact it's the first time they have ever done something like this. And lets face it, you can't exactly rely on GF making a good, playable, Pokémon game anyway so the fact they managed to pull this off is quite the feat.
The story of Legends: Arceus is very simple, which is to be expected given the fact it's a Pokémon game and they haven't really tried a good narrative story since Gen 5 (and everybody cried about it) so you can't really blame them for trying to make a good story in the games when the last time they did it, everybody hated it. You're a kid who gets transported into the Hisui region, your goal is to simply seek out all Pokémon and eventually come to heads with Arceus. Simple, it works, it's not exactly groundbreaking but there's enough of it there to keep you intrigued.
Catching mechanic is great, the fact you don't really need to battle Pokémon in order to catch them was a really neat addition. Just sneaking up behind them and throwing all the Poké balls you've got is fun. Having different sized Pokémon was a fantastic feature, Alpha Pokémon are huge and you really feel like a badass trainer having a team of 6 huge Alpha Pokémon.
Agile/Strong style was another good addition, it made it feel like they really counted towards battling and you had to actually use your brain to think about when you'd use each style in a battle.
Speaking of battles, man... they're TOUGH. Haven't been this difficult since, I don't know, probably Colosseum back in the Gamecube days. The final battle, Volo, is INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT. You'd really need to make sure your team is ready and also levels higher than his team in order to actually battle him. The music, the scene with Giratina, it's just absolutely perfect and really sums up what it means to have an epic battle in Pokémon.
The final part, against Arceus, is again incredibly well done. The one recurring theme throughout this iteration of Pokémon is the music. They really did a fantastic job on that and it shows when you're in an intense battle against Volo and later Arceus. The battle against Arceus itself is fun, and challenging, will no doubt take you a few attempts because it gets kind of tricky towards the end.
Overall, Legends Arceus is an incredible game that really saved Pokémon in the Switch era. It's fun, it's exciting, it's rewarding, it's just a very well made game.
They obviously took huge inspiration from BOTW and decided to make a Pokémon game in the same vein. Despite it being a blatant copy of BOTW, it really does work with the Pokémon concept. The game isn't open-world, however you can somewhat give them a pass given the fact it's the first time they have ever done something like this. And lets face it, you can't exactly rely on GF making a good, playable, Pokémon game anyway so the fact they managed to pull this off is quite the feat.
The story of Legends: Arceus is very simple, which is to be expected given the fact it's a Pokémon game and they haven't really tried a good narrative story since Gen 5 (and everybody cried about it) so you can't really blame them for trying to make a good story in the games when the last time they did it, everybody hated it. You're a kid who gets transported into the Hisui region, your goal is to simply seek out all Pokémon and eventually come to heads with Arceus. Simple, it works, it's not exactly groundbreaking but there's enough of it there to keep you intrigued.
Catching mechanic is great, the fact you don't really need to battle Pokémon in order to catch them was a really neat addition. Just sneaking up behind them and throwing all the Poké balls you've got is fun. Having different sized Pokémon was a fantastic feature, Alpha Pokémon are huge and you really feel like a badass trainer having a team of 6 huge Alpha Pokémon.
Agile/Strong style was another good addition, it made it feel like they really counted towards battling and you had to actually use your brain to think about when you'd use each style in a battle.
Speaking of battles, man... they're TOUGH. Haven't been this difficult since, I don't know, probably Colosseum back in the Gamecube days. The final battle, Volo, is INCREDIBLY DIFFICULT. You'd really need to make sure your team is ready and also levels higher than his team in order to actually battle him. The music, the scene with Giratina, it's just absolutely perfect and really sums up what it means to have an epic battle in Pokémon.
The final part, against Arceus, is again incredibly well done. The one recurring theme throughout this iteration of Pokémon is the music. They really did a fantastic job on that and it shows when you're in an intense battle against Volo and later Arceus. The battle against Arceus itself is fun, and challenging, will no doubt take you a few attempts because it gets kind of tricky towards the end.
Overall, Legends Arceus is an incredible game that really saved Pokémon in the Switch era. It's fun, it's exciting, it's rewarding, it's just a very well made game.
Half a star is without a doubt the highest raiting I could ever give this game.
Imagine making a definitive edition of Generation IV in Pokémon Platinum, and deciding NOT to use that as the base of a remake and instead using a far inferior version of those games as the base. Everything that made Pokémon Platinum good was left out of this game, and nothing of value was added to really make BDSP worthy of a remake.
The underground stuff is ok, it gave people the chance to catch a fair few Pokémon that you could use early on instead of having to find them a little further down the line. But it still isn't good enough, the main issue with this is that AGAIN they didn't add the evolution items until post-game only. So that Gligar you caught underground, guess what? You can't evolve it into Gliscor until after you beat the E4. Which is absolutely pointless and is a huge negative to the QOL purposes these remakes are supposed to add.
The chibi art style is nice, a lot of people didn't like it at first, but over time it definitely grew on folks.
Following Pokémon is an absolute mess. A lot of them are so incredibly small you'd think it was a little replica following you around instead of the "real" thing.
The same bugs that transpired in the original versions found their way onto the remakes. How hilarious is that? They literally released the same game twice and didn't even bother attempting to fix issues that were in the originals.
They decided to re-release the event Gen IV Pokémon again, IN THE EXACT SAME WAY THEY WERE INTRODUCED IN THE ORIGINALS. This would be 100% fine if there was a way to obtain the items within the actual game instead of relying on a WiFi event, because guess what? If you decided, for whatever reason, to buy these games today, you're unable to catch Shaymin, Darkrai, Manaphy & Phione due to them being WiFi exclusive events! Sure, Legends Arceus gives you these Pokémon without the need of a WiFi event, but that's not the point.
Overall, BDSP really did a number of the reputation of Pokémon. They have been on a downward trajectory ever since the jump to 3D back with X&Y. Each iteration of Pokémon has gotten increasingly worse since that point. The heart and soul from these games have been missing for a decade now, with no real sign of things returning until some serious change is made in regards to management and staff at GF.
Imagine making a definitive edition of Generation IV in Pokémon Platinum, and deciding NOT to use that as the base of a remake and instead using a far inferior version of those games as the base. Everything that made Pokémon Platinum good was left out of this game, and nothing of value was added to really make BDSP worthy of a remake.
The underground stuff is ok, it gave people the chance to catch a fair few Pokémon that you could use early on instead of having to find them a little further down the line. But it still isn't good enough, the main issue with this is that AGAIN they didn't add the evolution items until post-game only. So that Gligar you caught underground, guess what? You can't evolve it into Gliscor until after you beat the E4. Which is absolutely pointless and is a huge negative to the QOL purposes these remakes are supposed to add.
The chibi art style is nice, a lot of people didn't like it at first, but over time it definitely grew on folks.
Following Pokémon is an absolute mess. A lot of them are so incredibly small you'd think it was a little replica following you around instead of the "real" thing.
The same bugs that transpired in the original versions found their way onto the remakes. How hilarious is that? They literally released the same game twice and didn't even bother attempting to fix issues that were in the originals.
They decided to re-release the event Gen IV Pokémon again, IN THE EXACT SAME WAY THEY WERE INTRODUCED IN THE ORIGINALS. This would be 100% fine if there was a way to obtain the items within the actual game instead of relying on a WiFi event, because guess what? If you decided, for whatever reason, to buy these games today, you're unable to catch Shaymin, Darkrai, Manaphy & Phione due to them being WiFi exclusive events! Sure, Legends Arceus gives you these Pokémon without the need of a WiFi event, but that's not the point.
Overall, BDSP really did a number of the reputation of Pokémon. They have been on a downward trajectory ever since the jump to 3D back with X&Y. Each iteration of Pokémon has gotten increasingly worse since that point. The heart and soul from these games have been missing for a decade now, with no real sign of things returning until some serious change is made in regards to management and staff at GF.
By far the greatest Pokémon game ever made, slightly edging Platinum due to the addition of another region, following Pokémon and post-game content.
It's the perfect remake of arguably the greatest addition to the series, in Gold/Silver/Crystal. It took everything that made those games great and expanded on it.
The only real problem with this game is that they didn't rework the Pokemon locations. Still having a lot of Gen 2 Pokémon found in the postgame only is pretty bad... I think the majority of people would 100% agree that Pokémon such as Houndour should not be found IN ROUTE 7 (Kanto) and instead an earlier place in Johto.
Aside from that, they really did justice to the Gen 2 games. Generation IV was really GF's greatest work, HGSS & Platinum are the pinnacle of what makes a good Pokémon game.
It's the perfect remake of arguably the greatest addition to the series, in Gold/Silver/Crystal. It took everything that made those games great and expanded on it.
The only real problem with this game is that they didn't rework the Pokemon locations. Still having a lot of Gen 2 Pokémon found in the postgame only is pretty bad... I think the majority of people would 100% agree that Pokémon such as Houndour should not be found IN ROUTE 7 (Kanto) and instead an earlier place in Johto.
Aside from that, they really did justice to the Gen 2 games. Generation IV was really GF's greatest work, HGSS & Platinum are the pinnacle of what makes a good Pokémon game.
2023
I'm mainly a career mode guy who very rarely dips into UT just to play the draft mode. This iteration of FIFA/FC has been littered with bugs.
The biggest bug that has YET to be fixed (if ever) is the goalie running out. I see you're able to do this on UT, however in career mode your goalie will just stand on the spot jogging and won't even attempt to dive. It's awful, you can't rush your keeper out for anything and you just have to rely on them to save a shot.
Graphical issues have plagued this game once again, only in career mode (I think.) Star heads get added, but it ALWAYS seems to break the game and results in other players having their star heads removed. This usually doesn't get fixed until the next squad & game update, which is usually like 3 weeks at the bare minimum.
Overall, it has been a typical EA mess when it comes to FC 24. Same issues that plagued the previous games have found their way onto this one, no doubt FC 25 will be rife with bugs and glitches. It's a decent game if you like football, there's literally nothing else better on the market unless you either only like managing a team (Football Manager) or playing a bareboned, PS2 style game in PES/E Football. If the 2K rumours are true and they're working on a FIFA, then maybe we could finally get another game that'll push EA into making FC playable. Until then, we're stuck playing a buggy, broken mess of a game.
The biggest bug that has YET to be fixed (if ever) is the goalie running out. I see you're able to do this on UT, however in career mode your goalie will just stand on the spot jogging and won't even attempt to dive. It's awful, you can't rush your keeper out for anything and you just have to rely on them to save a shot.
Graphical issues have plagued this game once again, only in career mode (I think.) Star heads get added, but it ALWAYS seems to break the game and results in other players having their star heads removed. This usually doesn't get fixed until the next squad & game update, which is usually like 3 weeks at the bare minimum.
Overall, it has been a typical EA mess when it comes to FC 24. Same issues that plagued the previous games have found their way onto this one, no doubt FC 25 will be rife with bugs and glitches. It's a decent game if you like football, there's literally nothing else better on the market unless you either only like managing a team (Football Manager) or playing a bareboned, PS2 style game in PES/E Football. If the 2K rumours are true and they're working on a FIFA, then maybe we could finally get another game that'll push EA into making FC playable. Until then, we're stuck playing a buggy, broken mess of a game.
Without a doubt the greatest retelling of DBZ. My only gripe with the game is that battles can feel a little... too long. They're fun, but in the end it comes down to spamming KI Blast and your special moves until you win. It's incredibly fun, but towards the end it gets a little tired.