Finally done with this one, after 24 hours of playtime of both the main story, some side quests and a healthy amount of free exploration. All in all, I can see some of the appeal for this game, while simultaneously being surprised as to how such a poorly designed experience has gained astounding critical acclaim.

I'll start with the obvious positive, and probably the main reason why so many critics and players love this game - the catching mechanics are quite enjoyable. It's smooth, quick and intuitive, and works as a sweet translation of the Pokemon Go-formula in three dimensions. It's fun to seamlessly go between sneaking, throwing or battling to expand your Pokedex and research on each Pokemon, and without a doubt the selling point of the title.

I also like how some functions have been streamlined. Changing moves, evolving Pokemon and going into battle is quick and user friendly, it's a necessary change for a RPG-franchise as stale as Pokemon.

Apart from this, I'm mostly underwhelmed by what Legends Arceus manages to achieve. Not counting the Pokemon themselves, the open world feels devoid of life and thoughtful additions. Similar to Pokemon Go, you just find a bunch of Pokemon walking around, without any interactions between them or unique events to give the world flavour. Imagine if there were things like a secret igloo village with Snorunts, a Magmar bathing in lava or a giant sleeping Snorlax blocking a cave entrance. Without these sort of micro-happenings, the game is unable to give the inhabitants of Hisui personality.

While the catching mechanic in this game is vastly improved, the battle system has been completely destroyed. Gone are abilities, battle items and most interesting status conditions from earlier titles, resulting in battle strategy being even more dumbed down than in main line Pokemon. Ironically enough, the new emphasis on turn order and Agile/Strong styles simultaneously manages to confuse things by being both unintuitive and poorly balanced. Due to speed stat, your opponent can start a battle by one shotting your Pokemon, and sometimes even the next one you send in before you even get to move. This is logical from a system standpoint, but unenjoyable to actually experience.

It's also highly unclear when your opponent actually will move - there were multiple times during my playthrough when the turn order clearly indicated my opponent would only get one move off after me, but then got two turns without using agile style. I love the idea of Pokemon experiencing with new battle systems, but the implementation here is extremely poor. Final Fantasy X managed to build a whole game around a similar idea with far better results, despite being 20 years older.

I was also disappointed by how pointless and exposition heavy the story is. The tutorial is even worse than Sword/Shield, with constant interruptions and patronising explanations of every single mechanic. Throughout the game, random characters are thrown at you one after another, monologuing you to boredom. One of the main conflicts is between two clan leaders whose arguments consist of whether time or the surrounding space is most important to humans. It doesn't help that there is no voice acting, and most story related events that are not text boxes are being replaced by black screens. I guess it saves some money on the budget, but it destroys immersion.

Other than this, most of the game just feels lazy. The boss battles are some of the worst I've yet to experience in a modern 3D-game, with an awkward fusion between a Dark Souls-style dodging feast and throwing bags at the boss about 200 times. The resources you gather are mostly useless, making resource management a hazard since you constantly have to rearrange and discard items in order to pick up some actually good stuff.

Pokemon: Legends Arceus feels like a Gamecube-era JRPG. It takes every shortcut possible, and hopes to come out on top of it - a task it apparently succeeded with based on reviews and fan response. But unlike many old JRPG:s from the early 2000's like Skies of Arcadia, Final Fantasy X, Shin Megami Tensei III or Paper Mario, Legend Arceus lacks the polish and soul necessary for me to connect.

I finished the main story/saw the credits on Sunday evening, at around 63 hours. While I am rating this game at 4 stars because I enjoyed my time spent on it, it's still a mixed bag in some respects for me.

Instead of listing pros and cons, I'm going to kind of explore the good and bad of each major aspect of the game.

Exploration/Environments: Rather than the more linear routes of old, with various HM-based roadblocks, you're able to explore wide, open areas full of nature, Pokémon, and crafting materials. There are still some of those "roadblocks" in that you can't fully explore every inch of an area until you have all of the available mounts, but the majority of each area is still accessible when you get to it. You're generally free to spend as much time catching, exploring, collecting, cataloguing, and completing quests as you like before moving on to the next mainline quest and area. This addition of more open exploration and freedom is a welcome change to the series, and is what I had hoped for from the wild areas of Sword and Shield. I know there are a lot of complaints about how the game looks, as well, but I think it looks pretty solid. I expect a level of cartoon-y in Pokemon, and while the trees and water might not look extremely realistic like other big-name (J)RPGs, I think that the way it looks suits the series. The moves look pretty cool, and I still really like seeing Pokemon wandering around the natural environments.

There are definitely some downsides, though. One is that more of the wild Pokémon are aggressive as you progress through the game, and just running through an area and being targeted constantly gets kind of annoying. There were some things graphically that are pretty unacceptable for this age of gaming, like the little pixel-y white outline around your character when you go into caves or how slow and laggy distant moving Pokémon look. I don't otherwise have a lot to say about the graphics because it's not a hugely-important aspect to me when it comes to Pokémon specifically. Finally, though, there's the fact that the game just feels utterly un-lived in. Yes, you have a town and a few small camps and settlements. The town of Jubilife grows as you progress and help people understand life with Pokemon as companions. However, Pokemon aren't really DOING anything out in the wild. They meander around. They aren't interacting with each other, eating (unless you throw food at them), or doing anything but just walking in little circles. Even the Pokemon that fly around just fly in one circle over and over for the entire day. I know this is a first true foray into this type of gameplay for the series, but this is the sort of stuff I think about when people say the game is "empty." It's not exactly empty of content--that's still about the same as any mainline game when you trade out gym leaders for some of the bigger "trainer" fights or the Lords, and trade a whole region of routes for fewer, larger areas with wider exploration. I just feel that, if they're going to make this a new normal for major releases in the series (even if not mainline games), they're really going to need to step it up in some aspects. This level of exploration is fun, and I'd love to see some of the other regions done this way, but show me some Aipom actually climbing trees, or Teddiursa chasing some Combee for honey or something. (I don't wanna see a Caterpie getting wrecked by a Pidgey or anything, but Pokemon interacting with each other and their environments is a step I think they need to take.)

Mechanics: I don't really have a lot to say here, other than that...it just worked. Most of the controls felt pretty seamless when it came to targeting Pokémon and throwing items. Thumbstick sensitivity was good. Only thing that threw me off is using X for swapping between your items and Pokémon instead of that top button being for the menu like just about every other game on any system. Pressing up on the D-pad is just weird. I was playing this at the same time as my current FFX/X-2 playthroughs and managed to maintain the muscle memory that will serve me better, though, so, it's okay.

Story: It's Pokémon, so I don't ever really expect much here. It's your typical "here are all of these people in power bowing before this child who has this great ability with Pokémon" story, just in different wrapping. I'm doing some post-game stuff now and still have a lot of questions about the player character, so that's kind of annoying. I don't expect those to be answered.

Battles: Without going too into it...the Agile/Strong styles are interesting; I'm glad we still have some kind of battling; outright-catch-or-just-capture is fun. The trainer battles where they can send out two or three Pokemon against your single 'mon are rigged, and there's no explanation for why that's okay for them but not you. I was usually over-levelled anyway, but still.

General thoughts: I had fun with this, but by the third area, I was getting a little burnt out on deeper exploration and just moved through the story as quickly as I could. I still caught Pokemon as I saw them, but I wasn't actively trying to complete any Dex pages or anything. The main reason for this was due to the mounts, which make it easier to explore more of the areas, so I decided to leave more of the exploring for later. Either way, I have no intention of filling every Dex page completely, as that's just going to be tedious and I have no interest in catching 238428348203402093409290340932 Pokemon just for that purpose or seeing whichever move 67 times (times a billion, since most have something like that to fill on their page). I'm gonna wrap up quests and other postgame stuff, and maybe fill out some pages as I go, but I think combining this gameplay with some kind of camera feature would make the Dex pages more interesting. I don't need to catch a Pokemon 50 times to know what it looks like. Give me goals like taking pictures of it on a tree or eating a specific berry, or whatever. Give me like 20 goals for each Pokemon but make them all different things. There are just a lot of ways they could have made the Dex page research better.

I had fun, but I think what I would like most is more of a mixture of this and the mainline game formula. More towns and gym leaders and such, but the depth of exploration seen here.

I beat the main game and most of post game. I'm focusing on my biggest review which I plan on releasing this Friday (I am like over 4,000 words in and I'm not done yet) so here's a mini review.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is good. It feels like a game that changes enough to make the formula feel fresh. It feels much more fast paced than any mainline Pokémon game and that's what made PL:A the my most enjoyed Pokémon game in years. You don't have go indoors for shops or healing Pokémon. You don't have to scroll through as much text. It all feels much more convenient that it's hard to put down. Alpha Pokémon provide a great challenge. I found myself trying to catch them and losing my entire team a bunch of times because I'm too reckless. It's just a really fun gameplay loop for a Pokémon game that makes the slogan "Gotta catch 'em all" fun. Some quality of life changes I would wish for would be able to throw Pokéballs when riding mountable Pokémon. You can only do it on Basculegion. And hopping off somewhat breaks the flow. With a greater emphasis on throwing Pokéballs, I wish that there were indicators for throwing arcs. It'd be easier to judge where the llayer is throwing. For an IP as approachable as Pokémon, I would've expected this. When exiting a region, I would've liked the option to go to another region instead of just Jubilife Village. The catching is always fun and satisfying. No matter how many hours in you are, except when catching Pokémon in water or flying Pokémon. And there is ome main quest in the post game that I am pissed off about. I hate Cogita. If I ever see her, I'm gonna skin her alive and rub her all over one of those backyard waterslides with salt all over it. Fuck you for making me find wood. Just take my Sudowoodo and cut it instead.

And let's talk about the Donphan in the room: the game does not look good for a game that's on the Switch. It makes Breath of the Wild and Monster Hunter: Rise look like The Last of Us Part 2 in comparison. Textures on models look especially awful. The environments look ugly. Even when upscaled on Ryujinx. It just doesn't have a fleshed out art direction. Far away models run at a lower frame rate, but it looks the worst when looking at flying Pokémon. There are cutscenes that try to wow you. Your character has their jaw dropped as you and them see regions that look like Breath of the Wild if it was modded and downgraded for low end PC's. And I mean only playable on Intel HD graphics levels. I am a gameplay over graphics kind of guy, but the graphics should still be talked

I would give 3 stars to this game,

but, and this is one big BUT...

this game gets an extra star for Hisuian Growlithe.

I really didn't enjoy the first 20% or so of my playthrough. I kept picking the game up, playing for 30 minutes to an hour, getting bored, and moving on to something else. I tried to have realistic up-front expectations: This isn't my first Pokémon game, and I know to expect a slow start and a lot of forgettable dialog. But Legends' world looks so drab, its characters are so mindlessly talkative, its tutorialization is so sluggish and its UI is so clunky, that for a time I seriously thought "this might be the worst mainline Pokémon game."

But just as I was prepared to throw in the towel, the game opened up. Seemingly all at once, all its miserable fetch quests, bizarre visual glitches, muddy brown-gray textures, baffling button placement and soulless NPCs faded into the periphery. And I could finally focus on the most joyful gameplay loop I've personally experienced in a Pokémon game.

There is just something so wonderfully satisfying about consulting your map, picking a destination, stocking up on supplies, then stealthily tracking, catching and researching Pokémon out in the open in Legends: Arceus. It's exciting when a new discovery appears around a corner, surprising when a wild monster catches you unaware, and thrilling to successfully throw that last-ditch Pokéball. If you're someone who's always preferred the collection aspects of Pokémon to the battling mechanics, these changes feel like a natural (and perhaps long overdue) evolution.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus would be my favorite Pokémon game if it got out of its own way. Give me these catching mechanics, a wide open world with all the color and variety of the creatures themselves, a Pokédex to fill, and the barest of mainline quests to complete… everything else is just the vegetables we have to eat before dessert.

I love Pokémon. I played almost all of the entries. I loved almost all of them. But lately I seem to not like them so much as I used to. Pokémon sword&shield was very disappointing to me, especially as a first switch entry. I did finish it but not the Pokedex and postgame stuff I usually do.

Then there was the diamond/pearl remakes. Enthusiastically went to the store, got them. But these too, didn't do it for me. I never even finished them.

Then came Arceus. This game, sounded like the holy grail. The second coming. Everyone was raving, loving it, glowing reviews. I thought, well this has to be it then, the new Pokemon game that I DO like again. Sadly, we were not meant to be.

Narrative

You are someone from the future, I think and dropped in an old Pokemon region. People are just starting to catch pokemon, the first Pokeball was just invented. You join the corps that surveys the area and maps out all the Pokemon locations and catches them for research. There is also Pokemon going berserk here and there and you need to help solve this. (PS: I never actually finished the game so I don't really know where it ends up and if the story is good, but so far it wasn't really)

Gameplay

So this game is a mix & match between regular mainline Pokemon games, Pokemon go/let's go, and the wild area from sword & shield. That said, the whole game is a wild area. Finally, control over the camera, a 360 Pokemon game. That should be the dream, right? Anyway, your goal is to go out to the wilderness, find Pokemon, and either catch them unaware and just throw balls and them to capture, or if they are an agressive species you got to fight them. But oh boy, did they strip the combat. They did improve a few things, like it's very easy to switch out moves. But they removed items, there is no megaevolution or Z moves or any of that weird stuff (and I'm sure there's more they changed, couldn't really find much in the way of stats either). Instead there is "styles" either agile or strong, and agile often means you can move first/twice in a row, and strong is you do more damage but skip a turn usually. I didn't see the point of this, as usually regular was fine.

Then there is the "boss fights" which is mostly running around and throwing food at a berserk Pokemon. Sometimes fight them a little but that's hardly the point. I mean that's about it? There is some fetch quests and collectibles but I am never really into that stuff.

Setting

It's set in the Hisui region which is basically old fashioned Sinnoh. It has some forest, marsh areas and mountains (maybe more but I didn't get much further). It's honestly pretty boring looking. They still couldn't make it look as good as Breath of the wild somehow. Music is fine, nothing amazing.

Other

I mean nothing to really say here. No bugs I encountered or anything.

Conclusion

I am so sad. Sad that this game didn't turn out to be what I hoped. I gave it a good try I feel, like 10-15 hours. But I'm just too bored to continue with it. I am also sad to think that maybe I don't like Pokémon anymore. Maybe I'm just too old now. It always has been a big part of my life so that's kind of sad.

Maybe you think differently and really like this game. That's great! I'm jealous. For me, the gameplay didn't do it. Too much Pokémon go feature focused, way too stripped of combat complexity. It was very grindy, like if you don't grind and catch 50 of the same Pokémon for two hours, you'll probably remain under leveled. The story was boring to me, characters uninteresting. Fetch quests are well, fetch quests. Even the boss fights, just kind of dumb. The area looked kind of dead, lifeless, bland. Even the graphics could've been a lot better.

So I am sad. For my dead childhood. Scarlet & Violet you are my final hope. If that also doesn't satisfy. I will probably quit Pokémon forever (dramatic much).

This review is based upon my initial playthrough in 2022 and my most recent playthrough of Legends Arceus. I played it originally back when it released in 2022 and was in love with it. Easily a top tier Pokémon experience for me. It felt fresh and innovative for the series, and I was ecstatic to learn we were getting a follow-up to this formula in Legends Z-A. Since Legends Z-A launches next month, I spent the last month replaying this Legends Arcues to get back into the spirit of the Legends formula. I got to experience this game on my Switch 2 this time, and honestly it didn't feel much different from the original experience. Maybe slightly faster loading times? Anyways here's my review.

Let me start by saying that while I adore this game, my time with it the second time around wasn't as enjoyable as the first go-around. I feel like this is a rare Pokémon game that loses value in the amount of replayablitiy. Nothing can beat that first experience with the game, and after replaying it, I don't see myself returning to this game for a very long time, if not ever. I'm an avid replayer of Pokémon games, but this is one that I can see myself letting rest, which is crazy as I still consider this one of the best experiences a Pokémon fan can have.

The story here is really solid. Pokémon Platinum was my first Pokémon game, so I'm a gen 4 boy at heart. The expansion on lore and story for this region was done very well. I enjoyed the characters, and the final fight against Volo is one of the best fights in the series.

The OST here is pure bliss. So many great tracks, truly beautiful. 10/10. I enjoyed hearing these tracks again in my replay. Tons of remixes from gen 4 that are handled with love and care.

Visually, I love the art style. It feels very hand drawn and has a feudal Japanese influence. Colors are bright and vibrant and I much prefer this art style compared to what came later in Scarlet/Violet and even Legends Z-A.

The gameplay loop is what suffers most heavily from repeated playthroughs. I had so much fun completing the pokedex my first time around. Getting all research tasks on Pokémon to level 10, and exploring the Hisui region was great. My second playthrough, I mainly just wanted to experience the story again, so I really didn't go out of my way to explore or complete the pokedex more than required this time around. The first time was a blast going for that completionist mark in getting max rank with the Galaxy Team. I felt no drive to do so my second playthrough. I simply wanted to experience the vibes of Legends Arceus again with a new team. I still enjoyed playing through the story, but really didn't engage with a huge part of the main gameplay loop in catching Pokémon and completing research tasks. I feel like it wouldn't hit the same the second time. Again, this is such a great game the first time around, but I think that's due to how fresh it felt at the time. I still praise this game and highly recommend it. Easily my favorite Pokémon experience I had during the Switch Era.

Overall, I still think this game is near perfect on a first playthrough. For that reason, I'm giving it 5 Stars. It doesn't have the same impact on repeated playthroughs, but I think that's ok. Some games don't need to be replayed. It's ok for it to be a once in a lifetime special playthrough. I love Legends Arcues, and I'm very excited for Legends Z-A. I'm replaying Pokémon Y now to experience Kalos again before Z-A.

P.S. I want to document my 2nd Playthrough Team here as well. My first team was an all blueish shiny team that I shiny hunted my first time around, which I think also added to my initial appeal as I enjoy shiny hunting. For my 2nd playthrough, I went with Deltarune characters as that's had a huge impact on me recently. My team comprised of all shinies and alphas. Here they are

-Kris the Hisuian Samurott -Rude Buster the Garchomp -Gerson the Torterra -Ramb the Electivire -Eram the Dusknoir -Angel the Togekiss I even wrote in the notes app on my phone a little lore/story associated with this playthrough and these mons. A very fun team with a lot of my favorites. The final Volo battle was truly hype and I recorded most of it on my Switch 2. Very cinematic.

Game #70/200

Pokémon Legends: Arceus was a game that I initially overlooked when it came out, primarily because I wasn’t really checking out many Pokémon games at the time. Although I’m an incredibly invested fan—and have been since the first generation came to the United States—I’ve gone through phases of being super interested, then losing interest, just naturally. That was bound to happen over the course of 20 or so years (or more, I guess), especially as all the mainline games—excepting this one—follow a pretty derivative formula. That’s the primary reason.

But more than that, I had seen the visuals online, which didn’t impress me. And the catching mechanics and open-world format just seemed… unpure or something, for a Pokémon game. I just wasn’t someone who got caught up in the hype storm that accompanied this game online.

I do have to admit, in my recollection, I remember being shocked at the extremely solid Metacritic score—I think it was in the 80s or something like that—and then, when it came out, the general contentment fans had with it. I was surprised, because Pokémon is one of those series where people are constantly disappointed about something or another. No one’s ever happy. But everyone seemed pretty happy about this game—at least, that’s what I remember.

Having finally played it myself—on the tail end of a spree or a marathon of Pokémon gaming—I went through a couple of mainline games in a row and then jumped into this one as sort of the denouement, since it’s a little bit more out there compared to the traditional formula. I found myself really pleased with the overall gameplay loop and the simple catching mechanics. I’m glad they incorporated battles in a way that was balanced for this kind of game—for this non-strategic, non-battle-focused formula, where the real appeal is exploration and catching.

There’s still a battle system that maintains its fidelity to the core mechanics as we know them from previous generations, and it makes a few small adjustments to make it work for this game. So, with that being said, the gameplay is fun. It’s Pokémon as you know it—just simpler and with a few changes, which I actually welcomed.

There’s the Agile Style and Strong Style—that was kind of a cool strategic touch. I’d like to see that incorporated into some future mainline games that maybe don’t follow this exact formula, because it definitely added an extra layer of strategy. It reminded me of Bravely Default or something. So, the battles are fun, but the main thing here is the open-world formula.

Although, actually, I don’t even know if I should call it “open world,” because you’re really existing in this one hub town, and then you go out into the field. There are these different field areas you can choose to explore, and then you come back. But the “open-world” aspect consists of the quest mechanics, the item collecting—you know, like the Wisps you run around the map collecting—and the odd little mini-games and stuff that you might find in an open-world game. So it follows that formula without being a true open-world game.

And the formula works quite well—as good as it might in any other game. I’m not going to put this up there with Ghost of Tsushima, or even Hogwarts Legacy, or really even Marvel’s Spider-Man—but it is fairly satisfying. It has some cute and fun quests. Some of them are very easy (plenty of them are, actually), but it’s more about the dopamine you get from completing them, not necessarily the challenge of overcoming difficult quests.

I thought there was a good amount of Pokémon in the game. Yeah, most of them are from the Gen IV region—now called the Hisui region—but I actually really like that generation of Pokémon anyway. They mix in a couple of earlier and, I think, even later-gen Pokémon, and you can build a team that’s satisfying from the very onset.

Because I’m an old-school Pokémon gamer, I was concerned about the EXP Share. I was like, “Oh my God, my Pokémon are leveling up so fast and they’re not even doing anything.” But as I played more, I realized that the intention of the game was not like any other previous Pokémon game. It’s not like you’re really trying to level up your team and take on gyms. There are no gyms, there’s no Elite Four—nothing like that.

It’s more about leveling up and evolving your Pokémon to clear the Pokédex. And that’s where the satisfaction comes from: leveling up, clearing your Pokédex, and catching more Pokémon in a way that’s super authentic to one of the ways the series has always been playable. So it’s cool that they completely stripped out the focus on the badges and stuff. The competitive elements are gone—and I think that’s cool.

And the story? It’s okay. I mean, it’s not substantial or deep or anything, but it carries you through the game. There are some twists and turns that are fine.

But overall? Really solid game. Pretty fun for a Pokémon game, pretty fun for an open-world-style game. Unique mechanics—which I’ve come to expect when Nintendo goes outside the box. They tend to succeed when they experiment. And in this case? A good experience, overall.

Finished the game after 35ish hours.

I am generally conflicted over this game. For over a decade I've been one of many fans hoping for an open world Pokémon game and this gets close to that dream, but I won't be upset that it wasn't perfectly the vision I had for this particular style and I hope any potential sequel builds more towards a more complete experience.

For what it is, Legends: Arceus is an interesting game. The open world is well designed if a little empty, and it's really cool to not only see Pokémon in the open world but to be able to sneak up and catch them or battle them in a more free-flowing way than SwSh.

The new agile/strong style moves add a new dimension to the age old combat system but honestly I don't feel like it's revolutionary enough. You either get an extra turn or your opponent does, it's fine in single combat but that's actually one of my personal biggest gripes with the game. This series has had double and triple Pokémon battles for years now, several generations, but they seem to have become yet another passé trend to be removed by a new entry.

Of course, this is only true for you the player. There are instances in the plot or in the wild where your single Pokémon will square up with 3 opponents for a royal beat down. Add the strong/agile styles and your poor partner could be on the receiving end of up to 6 attacks before you get a single turn. This is not fun and I would also argue it is not particularly challenging in a fair way, you don't get beaten by clever or tricky AI with good move sets and strategies but by an avalanche of moves that chip your HP down. It's totally surmountable, it's just an annoyance along the way.

The best part of the game is when you explore and capture Pokémon at your own pace. I love putting on an album or an audiobook and just wandering through the fields and checking off Pokédex tasks. It's pure busy work, but for me it's a comfortable and easy grind. There are a few dex tasks that are annoying (The Porygon line is a perfect example with the "see it use Thunderbolt" task showing up on 2/3 of the evolutions and adding up to spamming that one single move more than 40 times... As well as Tri Attack 40 times and Recovery 30 times, etc).

That said, this applies to perfecting the dex, you can get completed entries without perfecting each Pokémon and it is perfectly optional.

For me, Legends: Arceus is a fun diversion to be played while doing something else. It's what I like to call a "podcast game" when I describe it to others. Switch off your brain, crouch in the grass, and catch some Bidoofs. It's a solid little experiment that I hope leads to greater things in, hopefully, future spin-offs.

Let's start by addressing the elephant in the room: tha game looks exceptionally bad, Game freak is so jealous of its brand that they won't let anyone else develop their games, and Pokémon Company absolutely needs one release per year MINIMUM, so we got this abomination of a PS2 game. Repeating textures (horrible textures), huge pop-in of all the objects on screen, terrible shaders and terrible overall lightning.

Now to the real part: the game is fun as fuck. I played for 50 hours non-stop since its release and I would play it 50 more: the gameplay loop of search-battle-catch is really addicting and satisfying, the Pokémon are inserted in a really believable world full of details and secrets, and if you're not focused you'll constantly get sidetracked by the sheer variety of stuff to do around you. The new battle system is fun, even if a bit unfair at times, but there have been a LOT of quality-of-life changes in almost everything; I won't list everything here, but for example, you can switch movesets of Pokémons on the fly, choosing between all the moves they know and they have learned. In addition, battles also (in certain occasions) require some dodging action from the trainer, which mixes things up and creates very fun battles from time to time (keep in mind that this is still a Pokémon game, and it will hardly be a real challenge for veterans of the series, or gaming in general).

The story is, while nothing exceptional or groundbreaking, really interesting and captivating, something Pokémon did not have for 12 years now. Some aspects of it tho are hidden behind a couple of really annoying fetch quests, on the line of "search for these 20 hidden objects around all the maps of the game without a map or a signal telling you where they are", which is 20 years old game design, and really annoying. Apart from these, the subquests are usually really fun and engaging, with some being legittimately hard, not in a bullshit way.

The game balance can be broken quite easily, since Alpha Pokémon are busted, and a team full of them is easy to assemble and broken beyond comparison. I finished the game without using them, and I feel like I got the most out of it that way. Again, it's a Pokémon game, they've never been really challenging or balanced, outside of challenge runs (remember catching Rayquaza in Emerald before the Elite 4, at level 70?).

There are a lot of details in this game, which really enphasize the love that the developers have for this game (the things they lacked were skill and time): the Pokémon sizes are accurate to their Pokédex entry (finally a Steelix is not as high as a Kricketot) and even members of the same species can be of different sizes, giving additional variety to your explorations; there are a lot of ways to approach a wild Pokémon, and a lot of end-game challenges to catch certain legendaries: if you didn't get it already, this game is fun.

In conclusion, even if it's inexcusable that the technical side of Pokémon Legends Arceus is so bad for the highest-grossing franchise in the gaming industry, I didn't have this much fun with a Pokémon game in a long time, and I really couldn't give it a rating lower than this.