Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022)

I've played a bit of this game on Ryujinx before my copy arrives on Friday and it's a mixed bag for me so far. I think right off the bat this is the most interesting the Pokemon series has been as far as battles go. The very slightly changed battle system makes it like a more modern turn based JRPG where speed doesn't dictate who goes first, but rather how many turns one gets on the "turn wheel". This makes the "Agile" and "Strong" styles give battles a small snippet of strategy. I initially didn't think this would be significantly impactful but it actually makes battles far more enjoyable to me as it lets you right off the bat fight pokemons far more powerful than yours and actually have a chance at winning. A very welcome change of pace from just one shotting every single trainer battle in traditional games. Outside of battles, the other significant aspect of gameplay is the "Noble" pokemon which are basically (for lack of a better term) Dark Souls-esque fights. As seen in trailers, you dodge pokemon attacks whilst damaging them with a unique throw-able item. While it's not as hard as an actual Dark Souls fight(though I hear the later ones are kinda wacky), it's great to see Gamefreak finally adding more aspects to pokemon's gameplay loop. Not to mention they've finally given pokemons proper animations which unsurprisingly gives battles far more flavor and impact.

The other thing that surprised me is that for once I actually feel compelled to complete the pokedex. Rather than just checking bushes and going through the encounter list for a particular route, naturally stumbling on pokemon feels much better to me. I felt this way in the Wild Areas for SW/SH(especially the DLC) and I always hoped they'd expand more on that idea so I'm glad they actually did and that it works well. Seamlessly catching pokemon or going in and out of battles has been a great change of pace and in my opinion a good departure of the traditional formula.

Unfortunately there's the huge elephant in the room that I just won't be able to ignore even if I tried: The environments look hideous. Even With Ryujinx being able to upscale, the environments simply don't look good. The render distance is incredibly short so you'll always be seeing the (very limited) flora just popping up not far ahead of you. Textures in general look bad but they look especially awful on characters. Everyone's clothing looks so muddied and blurry and I'm honestly baffled they just went along with it. It's easy to compare this to Botw's beautiful cel shaded environments but there's no need to do that because you can just look at sw/sh and the difference is night and day already. I have nothing good to say about the environment's visuals and it's a huge shame because I feel that's one of the more important aspects in an open world game.

I've stopped just short of completing the "2nd" area and will complete it when I receive my copy on Friday, but so far, while the game is fun and an interesting departure from traditional games, it seems it'll be up to fans once more to "fix" the game through mods and visual upgrades. I'm also really interested in seeing what sort of difficulty "romhacks" will come out of this game in the future or how people will come up with challenge runs as a nuzlocke doesn't seem well suited to this game. Trainer battles have been extremely scarce and VERY easy so I hope those are reworked in future mods.

Kind of surprised we are already at launch week. My gut has this strange feeling like this is launching too soon for some reason. It's almost as if it feels like this shouldn't be launching yet, and that there wasn't enough time to develop a truly open world Pokémon game.

Also I love that this already has one 3 star rating on Groovee. Nice and squarely middle of the road from one of our resident time travelers. Seems like a reasonable bit of foreshadowing.

Hi all.

I made the deeply personal, deeply important goal to "Catch 'em all" this year. I have caught 700 of the soon to be over 900 Pokémon. While many of the remaining Pokemon I can get from my games I own (Sword, Shining Pearl, a bunch of old ones), I would need some help to finish my collection. I created The OFFICIAL Grouvee Pokemon Trading Forum Post so people could set up trades. Please join me in the time honored tradition of putting hundreds of animals in computer cages for the sake of "completion". Thank you.

I'm so excited for this, I don't usually preorder games but I also don't usually skip a new mainline pokemon game (does this count as mainline?) and in the UK we just had a little Arceus figure and a really nice steelbook announced as a free preorder bonus so it seemed like a no brainer to pick it up!

I just really can't wait to see more of it, I was already pretty much sold on concept and Vibes alone back when the game was first shown lol, but I think that pokemon presents trailer a few weeks ago got a lot of people super excited! It does look like there's a lot of fun ideas in there, I really hope it all comes together and we get an amazing game when the time comes :')

Being honest about Pokémon, I haven't played a mainline Pokémon games from start to finish since Blue. It's not for a lack of trying, but I don't think they are really for me. The last two I tried to play were Ultra Sun and Let's Go Eevee. I made it about half way in both and gave up. I love the game conceptually but I don't love the gameplay.

So I am genuinely curious to see if Pokémon Legends Arceus might be the first for me. The concept of a historical open world game, where you can just outright catch Pokémon without fighting them is somewhat appealing. I think some people ate hoping this is the Breath of the Wild of Pokémon games. I'm hesitant to label it anything until it is out, but I am hopeful there are enough changes to the formula that it will refresh my interest.

Alright so we have a Pokémon Presents today which I was not excited for until I heard it was 28 honking minutes long. And I'm still not excited but I'm now interested? Like that's a substantial chunk of time. And all they've announced that they're talking about is Arceus and the Sinnoh Remakes. Like how long can one really talk about remakes and a game they probably aren't super ready to talk about? So here are some predictions at how they'll fill the time.

1. For the Sinnoh remakes, the Secret Base feature is back and expanded. They'll need some online multiplayer feature like this to bolster the original game.
2. For Pokémon Legends: Arceus, we will see a town bustling with people. This will raise my hype up substantially, only to pick the game up and feel very disappointed when there is only one packed town in the game.
3. We'll get a little update montage including Pokémon Masters EX's story finishing, new areas added to New Pokémon Snap, and the launch of Pokémon Unite. We'll also get a tease for future updates as well. Also I figure Pokémon Go will be here as well but I truly have no idea what's going on with that anymore.
4. We will get an official announcement about that rumored live action Pokémon series for Netflix. It will have a stupid name like Pokémon: Champions of Huggadoon.
5. We will get footage and a release window for the Switch Detective Pikachu game. Also a demo that drops... right now!
6. They will announce a new line of Pokémon Shirts- those cool shirts I want but they're like a hundred bucks a shirt and I'm not spending One (clap emoji) Hundred (clap emoji) Dollary-doos on a shirt!
7. There will be no mention of Pokémon Sleep.
8. We'll get the announcement of some new but bad game. Like a mobile game where Pikachu teaches you how to vlog.

And there you are. My 100% ironclad bets. If I'm wrong about any of these, well I guess I'll just have to eat my feelings with a lunch at Auntie Anne's. And if I get them all right, then I deserve a rewarding lunch. I'll treat myself to some Auntie Anne's.