I'm writing this shortly after finishing the main story. I planned to spend longer, picking away at finishing the Pokedex until it was mostly complete before finishing the main quest. But, writing in February 2022, there are a ton of games coming out this month I want to be free to play; Dying Light 2, Horizon Forbidden West, Elden Ring, and more. I'm fully confident I will continue to play this game for the rest of the year, or atleast as long as it takes to fill out the Pokedex, finish all side requests, and whatever else I find to do. Because only a month into the year, I know this will be my favorite game of 2022. Not because it's the best, not because I won't play other good games, but because of what it means to me in my soul.
Pokemon Legends represents a lot of really great things, most clearly an escape from the funk Pokemon has found itself in for the last decade or more. While I've personally thoroughly enjoyed every mainline game enthusiastically, I still had my issues. I thought it was a series that lacked direction; while obviously far from being a straight up JRPG, where it wanted to lean seemed unknown. Most fans seemed to just want the game to be more hard, targeted at the demographic of mid 20-30 year olds that grew up on the first 3 generations that have know aged out of the property on a difficulty level. And for a while I resented these people, enhancing the difficulty wasn't going to solve deeper issues and I thought they were just failing to verbalize actual issues, playing some fan made enhancement hacks like Sacred Gold have opened my eyes to the fun simple changes like that can make. I still think that isn't the direction Game Freak should ever go, or would ever go for that matter, but I understand. Speaking of which, what audience does Game Freak want to cater towards? Simply, all of them. Boys, girls, kids, teens, adults, any age or gender or experience with games. I'm sure a giant chunk of Pokemon's profit comes from selling merchandise, I'm positive there's a huge chunk of people buying cute Pokemon plushes without having ever touched the games. It's a multimedia empire, and locking off the core pillar of the property to people with adequate gaming experience would never happen. I thought it should lean more in the style of the anime for a while, deemphasize the gyms, instead focus on the details of any given individual Pokemon, exploring this world, meeting characters with random side quests for you. When Let's Go came out, my perspective matured a bit to just thinking it should focus on the catching aspect, like Let's Go did. Catch Em All is such an iconic catchphrase that fits the series great, and we had slowly creeped away. By Sword and Shield, I had settled into feeling like the main appeal of Pokemon was the creatures, the visual appeal and designs, and focus should be directed towards showcasing that as much as possible. Pokemon Snap last year was excellent for that, seeing Pokemon outside of static battle poses and actually living in their natural environments felt shocking and extremely charming.
This is all to say, Pokemon Legends Arceus is a game I have been wanting for years.
By the end of the first area, maybe 2-3 hours into the game, I had spent 15-20 hours just wandering around, engaging in the core loop of this game. Wander into an area, catch a bunch of new Pokemon in natural seamless ways, try and complete Pokedex entries. It feels like a collectathon, except instead of coins and jewels or whatever it's hundreds of unique living animals. It'll take my time to drill into the subtleties that make this system work as well as it does for me, but things like encounter variety, different levels/types of aggro, the pacing of a dex, and the exact size of the worlds certainly play a huge role.
The battle style I think also fits this game really well. It's simplified in a lot of ways, which I think is a good decision given how the focus has shifted, but still with enough new depth to make meaningful decisions. I went into the final fights 10-15 levels under and was able to pull through with good use of the games systems. It also feels like the stat distribution has been curved a bit, making low level Pokemon stronger and high level ones weaker, so as to make fights a bit more balanced at all stages. Your level 20s can still have a bit of trouble with a level 8, while also taking on level 35s. The battle screen is also well stylized, letting you choose your own framing with black bars on the top and bottom for dramatic effect.
I have so much more to say, about this games style and its story and its worlds and so on. Some of its main criticisms I have disputes with, and I have some undisputed issues of my own. But my hands are tired, I want to talk about this at length in a different form later, and I think it's clear that I love this game in spite of any faults. Please play this game, and if you're Game Freak, please expand on this premise.
Pokemon Legends represents a lot of really great things, most clearly an escape from the funk Pokemon has found itself in for the last decade or more. While I've personally thoroughly enjoyed every mainline game enthusiastically, I still had my issues. I thought it was a series that lacked direction; while obviously far from being a straight up JRPG, where it wanted to lean seemed unknown. Most fans seemed to just want the game to be more hard, targeted at the demographic of mid 20-30 year olds that grew up on the first 3 generations that have know aged out of the property on a difficulty level. And for a while I resented these people, enhancing the difficulty wasn't going to solve deeper issues and I thought they were just failing to verbalize actual issues, playing some fan made enhancement hacks like Sacred Gold have opened my eyes to the fun simple changes like that can make. I still think that isn't the direction Game Freak should ever go, or would ever go for that matter, but I understand. Speaking of which, what audience does Game Freak want to cater towards? Simply, all of them. Boys, girls, kids, teens, adults, any age or gender or experience with games. I'm sure a giant chunk of Pokemon's profit comes from selling merchandise, I'm positive there's a huge chunk of people buying cute Pokemon plushes without having ever touched the games. It's a multimedia empire, and locking off the core pillar of the property to people with adequate gaming experience would never happen. I thought it should lean more in the style of the anime for a while, deemphasize the gyms, instead focus on the details of any given individual Pokemon, exploring this world, meeting characters with random side quests for you. When Let's Go came out, my perspective matured a bit to just thinking it should focus on the catching aspect, like Let's Go did. Catch Em All is such an iconic catchphrase that fits the series great, and we had slowly creeped away. By Sword and Shield, I had settled into feeling like the main appeal of Pokemon was the creatures, the visual appeal and designs, and focus should be directed towards showcasing that as much as possible. Pokemon Snap last year was excellent for that, seeing Pokemon outside of static battle poses and actually living in their natural environments felt shocking and extremely charming.
This is all to say, Pokemon Legends Arceus is a game I have been wanting for years.
By the end of the first area, maybe 2-3 hours into the game, I had spent 15-20 hours just wandering around, engaging in the core loop of this game. Wander into an area, catch a bunch of new Pokemon in natural seamless ways, try and complete Pokedex entries. It feels like a collectathon, except instead of coins and jewels or whatever it's hundreds of unique living animals. It'll take my time to drill into the subtleties that make this system work as well as it does for me, but things like encounter variety, different levels/types of aggro, the pacing of a dex, and the exact size of the worlds certainly play a huge role.
The battle style I think also fits this game really well. It's simplified in a lot of ways, which I think is a good decision given how the focus has shifted, but still with enough new depth to make meaningful decisions. I went into the final fights 10-15 levels under and was able to pull through with good use of the games systems. It also feels like the stat distribution has been curved a bit, making low level Pokemon stronger and high level ones weaker, so as to make fights a bit more balanced at all stages. Your level 20s can still have a bit of trouble with a level 8, while also taking on level 35s. The battle screen is also well stylized, letting you choose your own framing with black bars on the top and bottom for dramatic effect.
I have so much more to say, about this games style and its story and its worlds and so on. Some of its main criticisms I have disputes with, and I have some undisputed issues of my own. But my hands are tired, I want to talk about this at length in a different form later, and I think it's clear that I love this game in spite of any faults. Please play this game, and if you're Game Freak, please expand on this premise.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
2 years ago