Pokemon Arceus is… rough around the edges. The late 2010s have not been kind to Game Freak and they have not been kind to us. The Pokemon formula has gotten stale fast, and it seems that the developers of this prestigious franchise just can’t keep up. Pokemon Legends Arceus is a fine example of this. Shortcuts are everywhere. There’s so much time looking at bland animations, hearing lackluster music and reading frankly pointless text that effects nothing. The visuals truly look bad. There is no excuse for these kinds of graphics when Breath of the Wild, Witcher 3, Wolfenstein 2, DOOM, Nier Automata and No Man’s Sky run beautifully and look great. There are just some glaring problems with this game, and the gameplay is so good that these problems don’t even matter! What this game gets right, it gets so right that this is one of the strongest and most fun Pokemon titles to date. This game understands that the best part of Pokemon games are the Pokemon and sets you free in an open world structure that lets you get up close and personal with hundreds of them. The endearing and headlining act of capturing Pokemon no longer takes a jaunt through tall grass, a hope and a prayer that you’ll get a cool one, and then whittling down a poor Psyduck so you can hope and pray again that it’ll get caught. If you want to catch a Pokemon, just catch it. No really, just go up and catch it. If you want to find one, go find it! If you want to battle a Pokemon, just battle it. This game’s accessibility to the best part of Pokemon games provides hours of exciting and fun gameplay, and really that’s all it needs. It’s a shame that Scarlet and Violet didn’t continue some trends from Legends Arceus, because at the end of the day, it’s Pokemon, and Legends Arcues lets it be Pokemon.