Pokémon Legends: Z-A (2025)

I can't put my finger on why, but this is the first time a Pokemon game hasn't just... Pulled me in. I'm mostly just kinda bored. I've been fiddling around for an hour or two over the past couple of weeks, and I just feel like I'm going through the motion.

It feels cheap, it feels like objectives are forced and dull, and while I think the Pokemon themselves look good and the battle system is neat, the setting sucks and there's no real mystery.

Guys I think this might finally be the game that kills my enthusiasm for Pokemon again. I skipped Gen 3, I skipped Gen 5, and I've been a consistent fan since Gen 6.

But man. I am so tired. Nintendo has 1 morbillion dollars and this budget-ass indie game is what we get for $85?

Nah.

I feel like I'm sitting outside the discourse on this one. This game is just simple fun. Of course, there are a few things I would have liked to see, such as more biome diversity or a bigger area, but judging this game on what it's providing, I'm just having a blast drinking coffee, exploring the city, and running obstacle courses with my Pokémon. Since Pokemon Brilliant Diamond, I've also warmed up to the EXP Share as it allows you to switch out Pokémon and always have someone in reserve who can help out. This is actually quite helpful in this game as you hunt down rogue mega-evolutions.

Currently around 13 hours into the game. I got lucky with it arriving the day I was off work sick.

Here's my ranking of the Pokemon games I've played (as an adult) so far. In parenteses is how much I've played of them as that could affect their ranking a bit.

1. Legends Z-A (main story + most post-game)
2. Scarlet & Violet (main story + post-game + DLC + post-DLC)
3. Sword & Shield (main story + post-game + DLC)
4. Legends Arceus (main story only)
5. X & Y (main story long ago, but played a bit recently and watched a recap for the rest)
6. Ultra Sun & Ultra Moon (didn't finish, could improve if story picks up)

SwSh and ScVi are very close picks for me. The main story of SwSh is great but the post-game and DLC kinda sucks. The main story of ScVi is good but is mostly saved by a great ending. The post-game is not good but the DLC is great. The post-DLC story is also pretty fun. As a whole, ScVi wins out by a hair.

X&Y and Ultra Sun&Moon are also quite close. Ultra Sun&Moon did a lot to improve on quality of life, but the story is taking ages and the characters are uninteresting. X&Y lacks a lot of quality of life and is kinda dull to battle in with just okay routes but makes up for it by having much more interesting characters and storyline from early on.

Legends Arceus could possibly climb this list. It's the game it's been longest since I've played. I remember finding the story dull and the only thing driving me forward was the outfits that turned out to all kinda suck. And I couldn't care less about the conflicts between the Diamond and Pearl clans. I hear the post-game is really strong in this one but I can't comment on it as I didn't play it. The world is very empty and boring though and I wasn't able to look past the graphical issues with this one unlike Legends Z-A. It's not a bad game by any means, but I'll have to play it again with fresher eyes.

Legends Z-A shakes up the formula a lot while also keeping the great stuff from the older games. It's imo the best of the bunch. And I believe DLC can only make it better. I wrote about the game in my review here.

I have not played any of the older games recently enough to include them in a ranking.

Finished this just earlier and I had a blast with it. It's not surprising for me considering I really enjoyed Arceus' ideas and concepts despite the rough execution and incredibly underwhelming performance on the Switch 1. Not to mention it is still possibly the ugliest looking game in the series. Though there are still a few issues with ZA, it is pretty much what I've wanted for Arceus' to be in regards to a more real-time based battle system. One might call it simple but it's not like Pokemon in general has ever been anything but outside of competitive scenarios. That said, I think I've gotten more Pokemon faints in this game alone than the rest of the series combined (not including Cynthia). Realized eventually that every single Pokemon on your team should definitely have Protect or Detect, or even both.

For all the memes and jokes regarding the png balconies, the single model city and all that, the game looks great on the Switch 2. Not as great as Sw/Sh did in it's best presentations, but definitely an immense improvement over whatever Arceus was as well as Scarlet and Violet. I would have loved for the game to not be entirely confined to the city or at least have more "dungeons", but I guess that would be asking too much of Gamefreak still in their post-(3)ds era. Nonetheless, I had fun exploring the city and its wild zones.

The multiplayer was surprisingly fun and me and some friends have had some great and funny moments with it. I don't see myself playing with it much, but I don't really do multiplayer in any of the Pokemon games to begin with unless it's with friends.

Huge fan of the story and especially the characters. Though honestly, despite the simplicity of its storylines save for a few outliers (BW/SV had particularly great stories I feel), it's not like the Pokemon series has ever really struggled in this department. Characters and their respective OSTs for those that had them were fantastic. Corbeau and Jacinthe have to be some of my favorite characters amongst the entire series and I admit I did get a little emotional at the end.

Though there's still much to be desired (One day voice acting will be in Pokemon) I feel Gamefreak is heading in the right direction albeit slowly. If even half of the recent leaks are to be believed, I look forward to what the next Legends game will bring and I'm especially looking forward to Gen 10 now more than ever.

My god, the hate of Pokemon Legends Z-A is so unfounded. The game is amazing and much of the hate is rooted in selective picking of unflattering angles that you won't pay attention to while playing, rare bugs presented as if they're frequent, presenting the Switch 2 pricing + DLC price as the price of the game while showing rare issues exclusive to the Switch 1, and just straight up made up bullshit based on assumptions from having maybe seen someone play the opening hour or so. It sure is interesting how many of the YouTube haters also seem to say they haven't played the game they're hating on 🤔

Anyway, I finished it and I loved it. It's the best the series have ever felt with pokemon that felt so much more alive than any prior game.

Didn't think I would spend my entire Saturday on this, but I've been enjoying it much more than I thought that I ended up playing a lot the past two days.

I like how there aren't too many different kinds of Pokémon in each wild zone so fulfilling the research missions there feels doable. The new battle mechanics is kinda fun, and I don't miss the turn-based system so much.

I thought the ranked battles would eat me alive but they are actually manageable and can be addictive. I hope they set the mega stone for Delphox as the prize in the next season.

I am just starting this game, so I don't mean to pass judgement on the game on the whole here...

Can we please, and I mean PLEASE, smack whoever decided "Give the player a dialogue choice, but both options are the same thing" was even remotely a good idea? And like, ban them from any creative input? JRPGs are lousy with these, and it was never clever or funny or interesting.

I picked Chikorita by the way. Eager to see Grass Dinosaur's glow-up.