Pokémon Legends: Z-A (2025)

Pokémon Legends Z-A was supposed to build on the uniqueness of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. They struck gold with that new layer to the franchise so naturally they made another one. I was excited for this game, too. Pokémon X and Y are not exactly fan favorites, but I was the perfect age to appreciate them when they came out. I feel a nostalgic and emotional connection to them. Revisiting Kalos was probably the biggest selling point for me before the game came out. Overall, I liked this game. Enough to put 50 hours into it. I will hide spoilers that are mentioned here.

You get off a train, and you are visiting Lumiose City. Why are we visiting? No idea. It's never mentioned. A girl asks you for a favor though so naturally we move in with her. Alrighty then. I'm immediately disappointed because I did the foolish thing of hoping for voice acting. It's 2025 and we still don't have anything close which I am absolutely shocked by. The tutorial is long and drawn out so it was felt uninspiring to start out, too.

Getting into the bulk of the game is when the uniqueness comes out. It was interesting how fast paced the battling was. It's very different than other games! Now we are onto something! The characters start coming to life as well. They seem to have actual hardships, something Pokémon was blind to for literally any character. Things aren't sunshine and rainbows for everyone - family troubles, keeping up with rent payments - real adult problems. I only point these things out because Pokémon has NEVER acknowledged stuff like this before. It shows growth from the franchise, which is why I am still hopeful for voice acting one day!! Surely!!!

I also liked that Lysandre is back. Seemingly returning from the dead as "L". He said he wants AZ to "pay for his sins". Whoa! Again, it's really just because this is very unlike Pokémon to do.

Anyway, some more general takeaways before I get more into the story. The first song I heard in the game was great. But then... oh. Wait. That's the only song? THIS IS UNREAL. I get we don't leave Lumiose but my word you made me listen to the same song for the whole game! There was a day and night track but that's literally it. I liked the idea of rogue battle missions, trying to save the pokemon and all, but man they took a while. Not a big deal I guess. Just slightly annoying because the rogue pokemon literally only attack you, not your pokemon. I shouldn't complain about making the game harder, right? Since it's what everyone asks for with this franchise. This game also has the missions where you need to go to 10 different places for no reason. Classic Nintendo.

The bad guys were interesting, but they don't appear until your team is at like level 50. The timing felt off. I feel like they could have introduced them earlier because they weren't a big part of this game with how short they were relevant.

Well, the story was so-so for the bulk of it, but the battling and pokemon zones made it good enough to keep playing. The ending is what really changed my perspective of this game. Almost all spoilers from here on.

Team Flare is back and it was done in a really cool way. Turns out there were subtleties the whole game and I never realized it, other than Lysandre. Going back to their layer, recalling the Pokémon X and Y story, all of it was wonderful. The final battles take a while but it's so different than what the rest of the game was that I was fine with it. Wild mega Pokémon is super cool, and Floette's story is beautiful. The music got really great at the end as well (where was this for the last 50 hours?) The part that blew me away the most was killing off a character. I don't recall Pokémon ever doing it in this way, but AZ saying farewell was emotionally nostalgic for me. Gotta tip my hat to that one.

All in all, I'd sum it up shortly by saying the heart was there when pokemon was making this game. The effort, however, was not. I feel like if they just tried a little harder they could have realized what they set out to do in a more accurate way, and I'd consider this game way better than I am right now. It was a fine game, but not one I'd play through more than once.

I finished this game a couple months ago and have been putting off reviewing it. I have some free-time right now at work so I'm going to write a brief review. I played this game on the Nintendo Switch 2. It ran great and looked decent. Felt smooth. That's all I really have to say from a technical standpoint.

First off, I loved Legends Arceus. While the replay value of that game wasn't great, the first time experience was truly so great that it ranks among my top Pokemon games. I was excited to see the Legends series continue, and Legends Z-A seemed like a fresh, new, fun idea for GameFreak to experiment with. Before I even start diving in to the game itself, I'd like to first discuss the way this game was marketed. This game was revealed in February of 2024. I was excited during it's announcement, but nothing more was shown. The game wasn't shown off again until February 2025. We finally were shown the starters, Chikorita, Totodile, and Tepig, after a year of speculation and rumors. The game looked nice, but nothing out of the ordinary for GameFreak. The release date was slated for late 2025. Again, more waiting. I really wish GameFreak didn't show the game until 2025. Waiting a year and a half for this game seemed unnecessary. Big L on the promotion cycle for this game.

Anyways, the game itself is fine. That's really the highest praise I can give it. I did not enjoy it as much as Arcues. The story is pretty forgettable to me if I'm being honest. It was cool to see some former XY characters return, but the region of Kalos goes largely unexplored and ignored in this game. It's all about Lumiose here, which I was already not a huge fan of in XY. Kalos ranks somewhere among the middle-low regions in my own personal rankings of Pokemon regions. The XY Pokedex is small, I have a few favorites like Talonflame, Trevenant, and Noivern, but I'm not a huge Kalos guy overall. So force me to spend time in one big city without exploring the rest of a region that I already find to be mid? I applaud GameFreak for trying something new in this setting, but Lumiose City was so boring to me I'm sorry. The Wild Zones are kind of lame and don't make a ton of sense to me in a world building perspective. They feel so out of place in a Cityscape. These are my negatives with the game. I have one more critique with the game, but I'd like to dive into some positives of the game prior to this last critique.

The music here is fine. I actually surprisingly like the remixed Lumiose City theme both day and night. Not a fan of the original in XY, too annoying and clownish for my liking. But the jazzed up versions here? Really good imo. Even after spending over 100 hours in the overworld, the Lumiose City theme never really annoyed me. The remixed battle theme is really good too. The trainer battle theme from XY was already one of my favorite trainer battle themes in the series, so the fact that it feels more amped up here is awesome. The final Zygarde battle theme is good, and a lot of the music in the DLC is also pleasant. I wouldn't put this OST up there with the greats, but it's serviceable for this game.

Megas are back in this game. Megas are still the best gimmick GameFreak has introduced, at least from a design perspective (which is primarily what I based my opinions of Pokemon off of.) A lot fo the new megas introduced here are great, in fact, I think GameFreak still has it in designing Megas. Of course there's still some lame designs, but I think a majority of the new Megas are fantastic. Some of my new favorites are Emboar, Chesnaught, Drampa, Skarmory, Frosslass, and Staraptor. I'll detail my final team later in the review, but lets just say it panned out A LOT differently than I had originally planned. Overall I'm pleased to see Megas come back. Sad to see a lot of my favorites get left in the dust without Megas, especially my favorite Kalos mons like Talonflame, Trevenant, and Noivern, but maybe someday.

I'd now like to discuss what I believe the biggest fault in this game is: the combat. Let me start by saying that I actually think the idea of real time combat in Pokemon is so cool. I think this is a fantastic starting point for future entries. However, the implementation here is sloppy. Very sloppy. Bugs aside, the casting system is just not great. The moves themselves look cool visually (though could be improved), but the casting system is atrocious. For some reason, some moves, especially special attacking moves like flamethrower, require your Pokemon to come and stand in front of you to start the attack. Lets use my Drampa as an example. Lets say My Drampa is currently to my left. I instruct it to use Dragon Pulse. Instead of just firing off a Dragon Pulse from it's current position, Drampa must first slowly walk to a few feet in front of MY current position, and THEN cast the Dragon Pulse. It looks and feels so bad. I don't like it. I noticed this very earily on with my Tepig. My Tepig would use Rollout, causing Tepig to be on the other side of my opponents Pokemon, and then I would use Ember. Instead of just using Ember there and now, Tepig would have to WALK AROUND the opponent's Pokemon (sometimes just walking straight at/through the Pokemon) towards me, then turn around again and fire off an Ember. It should not be like this. WHY CAN"T THE POKEMON JUST USE THE MOVE FROM IT'S CURRENT POSISITION. My Pokemon does not need to be in front of me to use a move. I get that this was probably done for balancing purposes, but it just feels like it pauses the combat and slows it down. Not a fan overall of the way combat is implemented in this game. I want GameFreak to improve this casting system, and I think I have the perfect solution. Let players control the Pokemon themselves. What if we could control our Pokemon in a combat environment like this? I think it would be so cool. Let us control our Pokemon's movements in battles. If I "become" Drampa during battles, I can simply use Dragon Pulse from my current position. I don't see why anyone would be opposed to this change. We still control the trainer outside of battles of course, but when in battle, we control the Pokemon. I still don't mind being locked into place while a move is being used, but at least this way it feels more natural in the heat of battle. This seems like a next plausible step for real time battles. Please GameFreak, do something like this moving forward if you want to continue using real time battles.

My planned team going into this game was Emboar, Feraligatr, Frosslass, Skarmory, Drampa, and Chesnaught. This did not pan out, not in the slightest. First off, you're only allowed one starter mega stone during the story. I can respect this totally, so I didn't have a problem dropping Feraligatr (who's mega is pretty lame if I'm being honest, especially when it's up against Mega Emboar). The other planned team members that I wanted to use I'm not as forgiving of. You can't get Drampa until almost the end of the game which is so sad given that it's one of my favorite dragon types with a fantastically designed new mega. Skarmory is in that same boat. Chesnaught is the worst offender of all. Chesnaught's mega stone was locked behind the online battle mode, and locked until season 3. Meaning, that I you couldn't even get Chesnaught's mega stone until months after the game's release. I seriously considered not playing the game until then because I really wanted to use a Mega Chesnaught. It's such a good mega design, it's a tragedy that it was given these unfortunate circumstances. So yeah, while I like a lot of the new Mega Designs, I couldn't even use a good chunk of them until the end of the game which is so so lame.

While I was sad that I couldn't use my planned team of some of my favorite Pokemon, my final team actually felt very fitting for this game. I grew attached to them, and enjoyed using each and every one of them. My final team ended up being Emboar, Beedrill, Starmie, Aerodactyl, Gengar, and Absol. Emboar because Tepig is my favorite Unova starter, and while I like Totodile, Feraligatr's mega was disappointing. The other five were completely unplanned and just found their spot on the team. I ended up doing some early shiny hunting given how insanely easy it was to do in this game and managed to get a shiny Kakuna, Staryu, and Gastly. They became staples on the team and I love them all. I've never been a huge Starmie fan, but it's new mega is so goofy and this mon grew on me after all these years. More on Starmie later. Absol ended up on the team because I've never used one, and it felt fitting to use (it was the one you're gifted in the Story early on). Finally, I decided to use Aerodactyl because I wanted one more Mega Pokemon. The very first Old Amber that I restored ended up being an Adamant Alpha Aerodactyl. Of course he was going on the team after that, and he was an absolute unit throughout the game. All the Pokemon models look really good in this game, way sharper than the Scarlet Violet models. When I saw shiny Beedrill, it was an immediate lock on the team. I loved this team. They felt like a family and a team a protagonist would use. I made it a priority to only use Mega Pokemon in this playthrough given the importance of the feature.

The DLC finally allowed me to use Drampa, Chesnaught, and Skarmory. I decided to bring these three with me into the DLC and added on a few more of my favorites that received new megas. I added Chimecho, Staraptor, and Golispod to the team. Chimecho is one of my favorite Pokemon ever, Staraptor is probably my favorite early bird Pokemon and it's new Mega is probably my favorite new mega in the DLC, and Golisopod is often cited as my favorite bug type (if not it's easily top 3 with Volcarona and Leavanny). This was also a fun team to use and I'm so glad some more Pokemon got new megas. Z Megas are also a cool concept. I still like regular Mega Absol more, but Z-Absol is pretty cool. Garchomp Z is pretty on-par with the regular Mega Garchomp tbh, and Lucario-Z? Yeah, Lucario-Z is so lame. Why is it fish/aquatic-like?? Such an ugly mega. Mega Lucario is so, sooooo much better. Thank god we have Lucario's OG mega still.

Starmie story time. As mentioned before, never been a big Starmie fan. Was kind of always a meh Pokemon to me. If Legends Z-A did anything, it made me appreciate Starmie. Mega Starmie so funny to me. I love that guy. I loved him even more AFTER HE SOLO'd the Zygarde fight. Yeah. Starmie 1v1's all three phases of the final Zygarde fight. I refused to use healing items/revives throughout my entire playthrough. I didn't find the game to be too difficult tbh. But man, I was struggling for hours on the Zygarde fight. My entire base team was under leveled by a good 15-20 levels. I kept trying different strategies in this fight, but nothing was working. Finally, changed Starmie's moveset to Ice Beam. Blizzard, Liquidation and Recover. Yes, technically recover is a move that heals Starmie, however, I still was adhering to the my own set rule of no healing items. Starmie solo'd Zygarde this way. Did the entire three phase fight take 20 minutes? Yes. Do I care? No. This was one of the funniest battles I've ever had in a Pokemon game and raised my appreciation for Starmie even more. I think about this fight often, and the wonder that was Starmie. Love that little guy, what a sleeper pick.

It was hard narrowing down a team in this game given how many cool mega Pokemon there are. In fact, I think this game is more replayable than Legends Arceus given how vast the Pokemon pool is. The variety is great and I could definitely see myself replaying this game with a new team of Megas one day.

That's it for Legends Z-A. Not as fun as my first Legends Arceus playthrough with a weaker story and blander environment. A terribly implemented battle system, but I hope it serves as a good foundation for future work for GameFreak. Shiny hunting was insanely easy in this game, which made for some fun hunts. Glad I finally got this review out of the way. Wish the game was better and had a more profound impact on me, but I'm still glad we got it. Hope this Legends series continues. Really want a Legends game that focuses on ancient Unova and the original complete dragon.

Pokemon Colosseum, created in 2004, is on a technical level better than what gamefreak are creating today.

Pokemon Legends Z-A is a good INDIE game, it is carried by good music and the Stellar pokemon IP and the gameplay loop of collection, evoltion and progression. It is hurt by everything else; the story, the menus, the balancing, the graphics, the performance.

I really wish the developmeant teams for the pokemon games would get more budget and focus over the marketing departments in the pokemon company.

Legends sarja selkeästi tuntuu tarjoavan vähän kokeellisempaa ja uskaliaampaa linjaa verrattuna mainline Pokemoneihin. Tässä pelissä uutena juttuna on taistelumekaniikan täydellinen uusiminen vuoropohjaisesta systeemistä reaaliaikaiseen. Muutos on erittäin onnistunut ja pelimekaanisesti tämä on parasta Pokemonia ikinä. Taistelu on viihdyttävää ja vihdoinkin peliin on saatu hienosti tuotua animesarjan fiilistä Ashin komentaessa Pikachua ukkosiskuihin. Pelissä "uutena" juttuna on mega evoluutiot, jotka ovat taistelun aikana aktivoitavia hetkellisiä lisämuotoja. Tämä lisää mukavasti yhden uuden anglen taisteluihin ja niiden oikea-aikaisella käytöllä voi vaikeammissa otteluissa kääntää matsin voitoksi. Peli sijoittuu ranskalaistyyliseen kaupunkiin, josta löytyy erillisiä Wild Zoneja, joissa eri pokemonit viihtyvät. Ensimmäisen Legendsin eli Arceuksen tyylinen avoin maailma oli yksi sen pelin parhaimmista jutuista, joten sen jäljiltä tämä kaupunkimiljöö vaikutti hieman tylsältä. Vaikka kaupungissa ei suurelti ollut vaihtelua, eikä se sisältynyt hirveän muistettavia alueita, niin kaupunkimiljöö toimi pelin kulissina ihan hyvin. Kaupunkimiljööstä ja monista side questeistä, ja ehkä pelin japanilaisuudesta tuli itselleni mieleen Yakuza-sarja. Tässä pelissä side-questien ratkaisu yleensä liittyi turpakäräjien sijaan pokemonien väliseen mittelöön, ja side questit lisäsivät ihan kivaa tekemistä muuten tyhjään kaupunkiin. Ääninäyttelyn puuttuminen oli yksi suurimmista ongelmista pelissä, erityisesti pelin loppu oli tosi eeppinen ja tarinapitoinen, mutta ei päässyt kunnon loistoonsa ääninäyttelyn puuttumisen vuoksi. Grafiikat oli litteät ja hyvinkin välttävät, mutta peli sentään toimi Switch 2:lla hyvin. Peli oli silti viihdyttävä ja nautin pelistä tosi paljon. Vielä kun laittaisivat Pokemoniin kunnon budjetin ja ottaisivat Legends-sarjan pokemonien nappauksesta ja ZA:n tappelusta mallia, niin käsillä voisi olla todellinen masterpiece.

Hyvä 3/5

The game totally caught me at the beginning, and I was ready to name it my GOTY, until the release hype started to cool down a bit. It's still fun, but the further you play, the more you realise how much potential was left unrealised.

Only taking Lumiose City as the setting and not all of Kalos (or at least some locations) was already a bit vague, but they probably wanted to keep the development time shorter. However, the city has very little to offer, you can barely enter any buildings, and everything looks far too similar. Even after 50 hours of playtime, you mainly use the map to find your way around, rather than knowing the city well enough to navigate it by memory.

The game's lore, on the other hand, is interesting, especially if you have played X/Y and recognise some of the recurring characters. But as for the story itself, it's similar to recent Pokémon games: it doesn't really happen until the end. The same thing is teased the whole time, and you hardly learn anything about it until the very end. The early and mid-game sections are interesting for getting to know new characters in the city, but they are quite predictable and deserved more depth, because these are very interesting and greatly designed characters. Sidequests, however, are rather short and often not genuinely engaging. Sometimes they involve battles, sometimes they are Fetch-Quests, and sometimes they feature interesting stories about Pokémon. I would have liked to see more of the latter. Nevertheless, the rewards are often very good and useful.

I quite like the core of the battle system, as it feels like a crossover between Xenoblade and Pokémon. However, it's not fully refined or flawless. The environment can be particularly annoying; for instance, when a Hyper Beam is blocked due to a few pixels from a pole. Such occurrences are especially frustrating in the Online Ranked Battles. The battle system shines during the Rogue Mega Battles, though. They are particularly fun, even if the environment was always the same.

The OST has some great tracks, but that is something Pokémon consistently delivers on. It was also interesting that there are platforming sections, but they seem a little random and were probably included simply to offer at least some variety within the city. All in all, it's the same as the last few years with Pokémon: there are innovations, and the formula is still fun, but the potential was not fully exploited.

PROS:

• More engaging battle systems but. read more down there...
• 50 hours of contents including post games
• Actually hard compared to previous installment mainly coz u have to dodge the attacks yourself

CONS:

• Still no improvement on graphics. The building are copy pasta junks and the rest of environments very unoriginal. Lifeless. Colorless.
• FPS drops in certain area. not sure bugs or what restart the game solve the drop
• Unnecessary pop up... End battle credits, change in night day cycle bla bla It shoould be minimal ! and u cant even skip it
• 100+ side quests but oh boi they terribly boring and tedious.
• Small city, small map. Come on. U did well with map in arceous, what the hell is this.
• Cant target, roll or throwing pokeballs at same time. Horrible designs. Lock on should be tap not hold. Why my pokemon follopwing me around when im trying to dodge? they get hit themself.... *facepalm.
• Cant revert mega
• Just run if u see alphas , unless u twice the level
• NO AUTO TEXT, NO VA, NO CUTSCENE SKIP. i love replaying battle and clicking as fast as i can to exhaust dialogues
• No flying. really dude? instead we get parkour
• Story is.. whatever.. final battle is cool though

Buy it during sale.

Pokemon Legends ZA is a very fun game that benefits from most of the things that make pokemon great...while coming off as a lower effort from the developers than maybe any other switch title.

The game has some great quality of life features that I hope become a series stable (though assume they will not) but also removes others like the Linking Cord item from Legends Arceus. In general I think part of the reason this game feels somewhat backwards is comparing it to Legends Arceus, which massively innovated on the series.

The big new feature is the new combat system that uses MMO style cooldowns in real-time combat to emulate battles you'd see in the anime series instead of the traditional battling system we've seen since the 90's. This system has fun moments but ultimately it mostly comes down to button spamming and pokemon abilities (the thing that often makes them unique) were sacrificed to make it happen.

The lack of abilities can definitely be felt like Megas. Mega Evolution returning is incredible and most of the new designs are really well made but without abilities a lot of the really interesting Megas that changed how you used the pokemon in battle are now just bags of stats like every other Mega.

I think honestly I'd be much more satisfied if the game was $50 instead of $70 + DLC but that's not the world we live in and it's not like Nintendo will ever put this on sale.

The characters and writings didn't live up the highs of Scarlet/Violet (but thankfully the performance was nothing like those games) but were still fun with interesting and likable characters (main rival not withstanding).

I have been extremely critical in my review but honestly...it's still new pokemon and new pokemon is just a great experience to have even if it means I'm just part of the problem that allows these games to be made with AA budgets while making some of the most money in the industry.

I want to give it a lower score just to be "objective" but if I'm being honest with myself I had too much fun to give this anything lower, at least on my first playthrough, maybe I'll revisit the score after the DLC or another few playthroughs in a couple years.

4 / 5 Stars

(DNF - little over 6 hours, team in mid-30s levels - feel like I more or less got the idea, but sorry if I've missed anything big)

Pokémon's latest attempt to mix things up definitely does just that, significantly reconstructing some of the series's pillars of structure, battling, and progression. It may be just what many people wanted or didn't know they wanted, but while I can see what they were going for conceptually, I found it lacking enough in execution to not feel particularly compelled to stick with it.

I mostly miss the "travel across the land searching far and wide" part, as the decision to stay within the borders of one small city has interesting implications for storytelling and a battle-heavy format but is boringly implemented. It took just a few hours to have fast travel footholds across the entire city, but there's a lot to look at between those points. After several more hours, though, I still had no sense that I'd really gone anywhere or seen any distinct or recognizable neighborhoods aside from a slowly expanding set of sectioned-off wild catching areas, and it just feels overall plain or bland. Exploration seems to be focused in alleyways and rooftops, pretty dull in my book and awkward when it asks you to do a bit of parkour to climb up. Adding more density of stuff to do, you'll also encounter far more side quests than in a usual Pokémon game, though maybe I just got unlucky but I didn't really find the ones I did all that interesting either.

There's kind of an odd structure to what I saw of the main storyline, too, beginning as a challenge where you rise through the ranks of local trainers from Z to A before suddenly skipping many ranks and shifting to focus on defeating troubled wild Pokémon who are experiencing "rogue mega evolution". (I gather it will alternate somewhat between these while delivering the rest of the story, though neither side is that exciting by that point I've reached.) The Z-A rank challenge is only active at night (you can skip to nighttime whenever) and has you battling trainers and completing challenges to earn a certain amount of points required to start your rank promotion match. These sections include an odd-feeling stealth mechanic that was mostly an OP advantage but sometimes penalized me for being "caught off guard" by a trainer that I was actively in the swing of preemptively attacking. I mostly just found these parts a bit boring, very easy and lacking the personality of the usual Pokémon town and gym journey. The rogue mega battles are at least a better showcase for the new battle system and somewhat more individually memorable.

That battle system is the other big new thing, reworking evergreen mechanics into a cooldown-based system with active positioning. For the most part, this does a good job translating moves that you know into something that makes sense for the format, but does feel awkward when it's time to pause and use an item or do other things like evolution and move learning that also used to be part of the turn-based flow. Also awkward is how you switch between having your Pokémon follow you around and actually being able to give it commands, a sort of lock on and off that I didn't really get a comfortable grip on. I feel like at this point you might as well just cut out the middleman and give direct control over the Pokémon if this is how combat is going to work, at least making it feel more natural, and helping with the problem I found where the fights were just hard to visually follow. It's not that they were hard to win, I just felt like sometimes I couldn't tell why my button press wasn't doing anything, and found it overall visually chaotic and better off fully committing to direct action.

Not much else to say as I am abandoning this one, not mad I tried it out, story and character stuff seems okayish, and think it would probably be "fine" to keep playing if I didn't have much else to do. It's just that for me it's streamlining away things that I liked without really buffing up the other stuff enough for me to get fully on board. I don't need great graphics or technical perfection or even a great story if the game is fun to experience, and for many this one is, but for me I'm going to need them to do a lot more next time they try this idea out.

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.

Pokémon Legends Z-A is the first Pokemon game I've fully completed the pokedex of and managed to catch more than one shiny (that wasn't just handed to you as part of the story). I've had so much fun with this game!

Seriously though. Legends Z-A is by far my favourite Pokemon game. The single city setting works wonders considering the cities and towns were the most interesting parts of previous games imo.

The new gameplay mechanics makes battles feel very snappy and fun, much improving pacing over the older games. I don't take issue with the turnbased system, in fact I find it pretty fun too now that I understand it proper, however, the way they've implemented it for ages now has been infuriatingly slow with way too much text preventing the flow of the battle. If they could've reduced the amount of blocking messages during battle, I'd not have issue with it. And yet I still find myself preferring this new combat. Whether they stick with this for Gen 10 or goes back to turnbased though, as long as they bring in the vastly improved pacing of the battles, I'll be happy!

And the story. My god was the story spectacular. It took a while to get to the good parts, but once you get there, the characters and the story itself is so great. Lots of amazing foreshadowing throughout the entire game that you'll likely only notice once you realise what was foreshadowed. Lots of mysteries and intrigue. It kinda reflects the setting itself, a mysterious maze. And while it didn't go in the direction I hoped it would early on, I was not at all disappointed with what they did by the end. A much more mature story than what I'm used to with Pokemon.

And yes, there's the graphics. Whatever. The haters are gonna hate. I'll just say this, go play the game and let yourself immerse into the story and you won't notice that many of the buildings are flat. It's likely a result of wanting to not repeat the issues they had with Scarlet and Violet. It is what it is and I barely noticed it throughout my playthough. In contrast, the things I noticed were the moments it stood out as looking really good. Certain lighting conditions made certain areas look stunning and that's what stuck with me.

Every Pokemon game gets hated on at the time and then some years later gets re-evaluated as not being as bad after all. I mean, Sword and Shield is certainly having a rennesance like that right now where I'm seeing more people say it's good now unlike the hate at the time. I liked that game quite a bit once I actually sat down and played it. The haters have clearly not played Legends Z-A. Maybe they've watched a little of it played by another streamer who hates on the games or smth and got all their impressions from that.

Safe to say, the game is not what the haters say. Not saying everyone will love this but the haters have made their whole personality around hating Pokemon anyway, so who cares? The game has been reviewbombed to hell and beyond despite how many steps forward it takes. Scarlet and Violet made somewhat sense due to their bugs and performance issues, but this game runs great and pushes forward in many ways the haters have been asking them to. They only hate on it because of the flat walls on buildings really and some selective bugs on Switch 1 (while stating the price of Switch 2 version that doesn't have any issues throughout my entire playthrough). Even the Switch 1 runs pretty well in reality. My girlfriend did not have any issues beyond a weirdly spawned pokemon once throughout her gameplay on her Switch 1 either.

My biggest issue with the game is not the graphics, it's that they don't have real skirts! Fuck skorts! Give us real skirts and dresses! And I want more fashion!

Rating: 8/10 Scored before the DLC is out

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.