Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an exciting, bold step forward for a franchise that has – for better and worse – had its games conform to a similar and familiar style for 25 years. When you look at the success of this style it’s honestly no wonder that it has barely changed after all this time, because the simple Pokémon formula is just so solid. This game finally challenges a lot of those typical Pokémon conventions in a meaningful way, and while being rough around the edges, manages to wrap it all up in a pretty damn enjoyable package. I’m unsure about whether or not I would want this new style of game to become the new standard for the series; but regardless of where the series heads next, there are many things introduced in Legends: Arceus that absolutely need to be kept forever and will make it hard for me to go back to older Pokémon games without those things.
The freedom Legends: Arceus offers to the player is astounding, especially compared to other games in the series. While it takes a bit too long for the “tutorial phase” to finish, after that, you can truly do a lot of things at whatever pace you desire. While I like Sword & Shield, it’s no secret that in that game you’re mostly forced to do the story at the pace that the game wants you to. In this game, you can make your own pace. If you want to follow the story along a mostly linear path, you can do that (for the most part, since you are required to rank up by doing research tasks in order to gain access to new areas). But if you want to explore every nook and cranny of the map, do every sidequest, catch every Pokémon, you’re also more than free to do so. This may not be revolutionary for gaming in general, but it kinda is for Pokémon, and since Pokémon is so unique as a series it leads to this game feeling unique as well even with all the other “open world” type of games out there.
There are many words I can use to describe the gameplay flow in Legends: Arceus. Smooth, seamless, quick, convenient, etc. There is a beautiful rhythm to the act of catching, battling, collecting items (to then use for crafting useable items like Poké Balls and Potions) and exploring. Furthermore, gameplay is never stopped to waste your time with meaningless shit, you can always keep going. The trainer being able to move at basically all times, including during battles and while a Poké Ball is determining if a catch was successful, seems like such a small change but it does wonders in making the game more fast paced because you can already start going somewhere else in the time that it takes to conclude a battle/catch attempt. World traversal feels similarly pretty fluid overall, at least once you have all of the Ride Pokémon at your disposal – even if some of them can be a bit janky at times.
This is the first Pokémon game to not include the ability to battle against other players. As such, they were able to change things to the battle system without having to account for how it would work in multiplayer. The way the turn order works was completely overhauled: the two opposing sides no longer have their turn at the same time, so if your opponent’s Pokémon is faster they can hit you before you can even respond. Using an agile style move will make your Pokémon potentially have another turn faster at the cost of your move being weaker, whereas using a strong style move will do the opposite, with both styles costing you extra PP. This system is quite interesting, though I don’t believe it reaches its full potential in this game, as most fights – because a lot of them are just one single wild Pokémon – don’t require thinking too much about using the styles to your advantage. Another thing about the system is that it further buffs what is already the best stat in Pokémon: speed. Sending slow Pokémon out first feels equivalent to having a piece of paper that says “hit me!” on your back, and that is quite unfortunate. It’s not a huge problem though because as said, the focus is much more on catching Pokémon rather than battling – you can count the amount of times you fight a team with more than 2 Pokémon on one hand.
Which leads to me another discussion point: teambuilding. In this game, there’s a weird sort of insignificance in building up your team and having synergy between team members. This is by far the Pokémon game where I’ve switched the least, as because of the wild Pokémon being on the overworld you always already know what you’re up against outside of the few trainer battles, and thus switching is not necessary a lot of the time. Set-up moves and the like feel less useful for similar reasons, as it almost never feels worth it to use them when fighting against a single Pokémon, especially when you’re trying to catch those a lot of the time (which means you don’t want to KO it). Your team kinda feels less like an actual team and more like 6 individuals, because opportunities where you use more than one or maybe two members of your team in a single battle are rare. This even extends to entire areas where you mostly find Pokémon of one type, such as the Cobalt Coastlands and its many Water types, which means you’ll generally only be using Grass and Electric types in that area. And since you can even catch Pokémon on the overworld without needing to battle a lot of the time, and catching Pokémon is the main focus, it doesn't feel like you're building your TEAM towards an endgame of sorts like in other Pokémon games. Other than the encounters with Noble Pokémon where your TEAM does get tested to some degree (though even then those don’t even NEED to be battled, you can defeat them just by using balms in the action parts), you never really know when the next “testing of your battle skills” moment comes. Overall though I would say this is not necessarily a big deal in the context of this game, it’s just different, but I do think I simply like how teambuilding is handled here less.
Let’s talk about the Noble Pokémon, because they are quite unique when it comes to boss encounters compared to the rest of the series. They feel like actual bosses more than ever before and require a completely different skillset than what is normally expected of the player in Pokémon. These encounters are generally a lot of fun, especially because the game once again gives you options as to how you can approach them. If you’re good at throwing balms you can beat these bosses without even battling them, and if you’re not, battling is an equally viable option after dodging enough of their attacks. Each phase makes a particular attack just a bit harder, and since the dodge move feels good and satisfying to use, it culminates into a cool, fresh, visually appealing Pokémon experience that I definitely wouldn’t mind to see expanded upon even further in future games.
Besides changes to the battle system itself, this game also reworks a lot of moves to fit within the new battle system. Furthermore, basically every Pokémon has a new and improved moveset, and the best part? You have access to this entire moveset at all times and can change moves whenever you want. This simple feature is probably my favorite thing in Legends: Arceus. Not only did they make a lot of Pokémon a lot more fun to use right off the bat by giving them better moves sooner, the movesets of the Pokémon are more conveniently customizable than ever before. If this is not carried over to whatever Game Freak makes next I am rioting in the streets harder than the BringBackNationalDex people in 2019.
I will say that this game is somewhat held back by the fact that it has to be tied to Sinnoh. It would’ve been even more amazing if this type of game kickstarted a new generation and most of the mons we discovered on the overworld were new. As the game is now we’re mostly stuck with the mediocre Sinnohdex featuring like 20ish new forms/evolutions and that kinda sucks. Especially in the beginning when the usual Route 1 Sinnoh stuff is almost everything that’s available. The fact that you don’t have to trade for certain mons to evolve is great though, and opens up more options for people with no Pokémon playing friends like myself. But man imagining this game with 150 completely new Pokémon, it really could’ve been even more special.
Speaking of special, I would say the story in this game certainly is, for a Pokémon game at least. Taking place in the Sinnoh of the ancient past, there are no gyms, cities and Pokémon Leagues to be found. Instead of trying to become the very best like no-one ever was, your task is to catch Pokémon and make a Pokédex, and find out what is going on behind the space rift in the sky that you fell out of. This space rift is causing certain Pokémon to become frenzied, leading to the other plot point of you quelling these Pokémon in each respective area. The premise is interesting, but for 80% of the main game the plot is simply to go to an area, quell the frenzied Pokémon, and move on to the next area – with the little stories inside of these areas being cute, but not anything substantial. It is only in that last 20% and the post-game where the story starts picking up beyond the description I just gave it. And that last 20% is actually pretty cool and fleshes out Sinnoh’s myths and legends (heh) quite nicely, featuring some of the most memorable moments in the entire series. I only wish the first 80% didn’t have what feels like Game Freak going through the motions of a typical Pokémon story despite having such a different setting for the first time.
Looking at the characters, they’re fine, serviceable – and I will say that most of them at least contribute something to the story and are better than pre-Gen 5 Gym Leaders in that regard. The character design recycling makes some sense for this game, but at the same time it also feels kinda lazy – though their personalities are at least different enough to somewhat make up for it. On the bright side, this is easily the best protagonist we’ve had in a main series Pokémon game. He/she feels appropriately competent and integral to the plot, while also actually being emotive and having some semblance of character – he/she doesn’t even feel that out of place in most story scenes and that is honestly saying quite a lot.
Legends: Arceus’s presentation is overall a mixed bag. Starting off with the positives: the Pokémon are absolutely the star of the show here. Their models look great, they behave livelier than ever before, and most if not all of them have a bunch of cute new animations to match. Unfortunately, the world they inhabit is not exactly as pretty looking. The environments in this game just look bleh overall. The actual design of the world is fairly good, but there’s not much beauty to behold in them, in stark contrast to games like Xenoblade that throw spectacular views at you constantly. I don’t think it hurts the game too badly, but it certainly would’ve been a nice cherry on top if this game actually had good looking environments. But as long as you’re just looking at your beautiful Pokémon friends, the graphics shouldn’t bother you too much.
In conclusion, while Legends: Arceus is very rough around the edges and far from perfect, it is the breath of fresh air the series desperately needed. I commend it wholeheartedly for finally making meaningful changes to the Pokémon formula that actually paid off, while being just a fun game in its own right. It does remain to be seen how much of this game will end up being brought over to future Pokémon projects. Regardless, as I’ve said previously – while I don’t think I would want this exact type of game to be the new Pokémon standard forever, Legends: Arceus does set certain standards for the Pokémon series that I never want to see go away ever again, whatever form any new game may take.
The freedom Legends: Arceus offers to the player is astounding, especially compared to other games in the series. While it takes a bit too long for the “tutorial phase” to finish, after that, you can truly do a lot of things at whatever pace you desire. While I like Sword & Shield, it’s no secret that in that game you’re mostly forced to do the story at the pace that the game wants you to. In this game, you can make your own pace. If you want to follow the story along a mostly linear path, you can do that (for the most part, since you are required to rank up by doing research tasks in order to gain access to new areas). But if you want to explore every nook and cranny of the map, do every sidequest, catch every Pokémon, you’re also more than free to do so. This may not be revolutionary for gaming in general, but it kinda is for Pokémon, and since Pokémon is so unique as a series it leads to this game feeling unique as well even with all the other “open world” type of games out there.
There are many words I can use to describe the gameplay flow in Legends: Arceus. Smooth, seamless, quick, convenient, etc. There is a beautiful rhythm to the act of catching, battling, collecting items (to then use for crafting useable items like Poké Balls and Potions) and exploring. Furthermore, gameplay is never stopped to waste your time with meaningless shit, you can always keep going. The trainer being able to move at basically all times, including during battles and while a Poké Ball is determining if a catch was successful, seems like such a small change but it does wonders in making the game more fast paced because you can already start going somewhere else in the time that it takes to conclude a battle/catch attempt. World traversal feels similarly pretty fluid overall, at least once you have all of the Ride Pokémon at your disposal – even if some of them can be a bit janky at times.
This is the first Pokémon game to not include the ability to battle against other players. As such, they were able to change things to the battle system without having to account for how it would work in multiplayer. The way the turn order works was completely overhauled: the two opposing sides no longer have their turn at the same time, so if your opponent’s Pokémon is faster they can hit you before you can even respond. Using an agile style move will make your Pokémon potentially have another turn faster at the cost of your move being weaker, whereas using a strong style move will do the opposite, with both styles costing you extra PP. This system is quite interesting, though I don’t believe it reaches its full potential in this game, as most fights – because a lot of them are just one single wild Pokémon – don’t require thinking too much about using the styles to your advantage. Another thing about the system is that it further buffs what is already the best stat in Pokémon: speed. Sending slow Pokémon out first feels equivalent to having a piece of paper that says “hit me!” on your back, and that is quite unfortunate. It’s not a huge problem though because as said, the focus is much more on catching Pokémon rather than battling – you can count the amount of times you fight a team with more than 2 Pokémon on one hand.
Which leads to me another discussion point: teambuilding. In this game, there’s a weird sort of insignificance in building up your team and having synergy between team members. This is by far the Pokémon game where I’ve switched the least, as because of the wild Pokémon being on the overworld you always already know what you’re up against outside of the few trainer battles, and thus switching is not necessary a lot of the time. Set-up moves and the like feel less useful for similar reasons, as it almost never feels worth it to use them when fighting against a single Pokémon, especially when you’re trying to catch those a lot of the time (which means you don’t want to KO it). Your team kinda feels less like an actual team and more like 6 individuals, because opportunities where you use more than one or maybe two members of your team in a single battle are rare. This even extends to entire areas where you mostly find Pokémon of one type, such as the Cobalt Coastlands and its many Water types, which means you’ll generally only be using Grass and Electric types in that area. And since you can even catch Pokémon on the overworld without needing to battle a lot of the time, and catching Pokémon is the main focus, it doesn't feel like you're building your TEAM towards an endgame of sorts like in other Pokémon games. Other than the encounters with Noble Pokémon where your TEAM does get tested to some degree (though even then those don’t even NEED to be battled, you can defeat them just by using balms in the action parts), you never really know when the next “testing of your battle skills” moment comes. Overall though I would say this is not necessarily a big deal in the context of this game, it’s just different, but I do think I simply like how teambuilding is handled here less.
Let’s talk about the Noble Pokémon, because they are quite unique when it comes to boss encounters compared to the rest of the series. They feel like actual bosses more than ever before and require a completely different skillset than what is normally expected of the player in Pokémon. These encounters are generally a lot of fun, especially because the game once again gives you options as to how you can approach them. If you’re good at throwing balms you can beat these bosses without even battling them, and if you’re not, battling is an equally viable option after dodging enough of their attacks. Each phase makes a particular attack just a bit harder, and since the dodge move feels good and satisfying to use, it culminates into a cool, fresh, visually appealing Pokémon experience that I definitely wouldn’t mind to see expanded upon even further in future games.
Besides changes to the battle system itself, this game also reworks a lot of moves to fit within the new battle system. Furthermore, basically every Pokémon has a new and improved moveset, and the best part? You have access to this entire moveset at all times and can change moves whenever you want. This simple feature is probably my favorite thing in Legends: Arceus. Not only did they make a lot of Pokémon a lot more fun to use right off the bat by giving them better moves sooner, the movesets of the Pokémon are more conveniently customizable than ever before. If this is not carried over to whatever Game Freak makes next I am rioting in the streets harder than the BringBackNationalDex people in 2019.
I will say that this game is somewhat held back by the fact that it has to be tied to Sinnoh. It would’ve been even more amazing if this type of game kickstarted a new generation and most of the mons we discovered on the overworld were new. As the game is now we’re mostly stuck with the mediocre Sinnohdex featuring like 20ish new forms/evolutions and that kinda sucks. Especially in the beginning when the usual Route 1 Sinnoh stuff is almost everything that’s available. The fact that you don’t have to trade for certain mons to evolve is great though, and opens up more options for people with no Pokémon playing friends like myself. But man imagining this game with 150 completely new Pokémon, it really could’ve been even more special.
Speaking of special, I would say the story in this game certainly is, for a Pokémon game at least. Taking place in the Sinnoh of the ancient past, there are no gyms, cities and Pokémon Leagues to be found. Instead of trying to become the very best like no-one ever was, your task is to catch Pokémon and make a Pokédex, and find out what is going on behind the space rift in the sky that you fell out of. This space rift is causing certain Pokémon to become frenzied, leading to the other plot point of you quelling these Pokémon in each respective area. The premise is interesting, but for 80% of the main game the plot is simply to go to an area, quell the frenzied Pokémon, and move on to the next area – with the little stories inside of these areas being cute, but not anything substantial. It is only in that last 20% and the post-game where the story starts picking up beyond the description I just gave it. And that last 20% is actually pretty cool and fleshes out Sinnoh’s myths and legends (heh) quite nicely, featuring some of the most memorable moments in the entire series. I only wish the first 80% didn’t have what feels like Game Freak going through the motions of a typical Pokémon story despite having such a different setting for the first time.
Looking at the characters, they’re fine, serviceable – and I will say that most of them at least contribute something to the story and are better than pre-Gen 5 Gym Leaders in that regard. The character design recycling makes some sense for this game, but at the same time it also feels kinda lazy – though their personalities are at least different enough to somewhat make up for it. On the bright side, this is easily the best protagonist we’ve had in a main series Pokémon game. He/she feels appropriately competent and integral to the plot, while also actually being emotive and having some semblance of character – he/she doesn’t even feel that out of place in most story scenes and that is honestly saying quite a lot.
Legends: Arceus’s presentation is overall a mixed bag. Starting off with the positives: the Pokémon are absolutely the star of the show here. Their models look great, they behave livelier than ever before, and most if not all of them have a bunch of cute new animations to match. Unfortunately, the world they inhabit is not exactly as pretty looking. The environments in this game just look bleh overall. The actual design of the world is fairly good, but there’s not much beauty to behold in them, in stark contrast to games like Xenoblade that throw spectacular views at you constantly. I don’t think it hurts the game too badly, but it certainly would’ve been a nice cherry on top if this game actually had good looking environments. But as long as you’re just looking at your beautiful Pokémon friends, the graphics shouldn’t bother you too much.
In conclusion, while Legends: Arceus is very rough around the edges and far from perfect, it is the breath of fresh air the series desperately needed. I commend it wholeheartedly for finally making meaningful changes to the Pokémon formula that actually paid off, while being just a fun game in its own right. It does remain to be seen how much of this game will end up being brought over to future Pokémon projects. Regardless, as I’ve said previously – while I don’t think I would want this exact type of game to be the new Pokémon standard forever, Legends: Arceus does set certain standards for the Pokémon series that I never want to see go away ever again, whatever form any new game may take.