Megas, let me have a peek at chu
Pokémon has officially been added to the slowly growing library of games made for the Switch 2 with the second game in its Legends series - Legends: Z-A. While I’m a huge fan of Pokémon, I was admittedly not big on its predecessor Legends: Arceus, so I didn’t go into this one with too many expectations. However, between the sequel's adjusted gameplay loop and surprisingly heartfelt story, I found myself having a blast(oise?).
Complete with some much needed visual upgrades, an all-new battle system, and the highly anticipated return of mega evolutions, the game has taken some ambitious steps. Game Freak were likely hoping to improve on the blueprint laid out by Legends: Arceus, and I do think that for the most part it sticks the landing.
But has the development team finally done enough to silence the endless criticisms that have plagued the franchise since its transition to 3D? Well… It’s complicated.
The title of this section says it all really. I love Mega Evolutions. Mega Evolutions are finally back and I’m happy about that.
Ok, there’s a bit more to add. Megas in this game function a bit differently than you might remember.
Rather than being able to Mega Evolve my pokémon whenever I wanted and having them stay in that form for the rest of the battle, I had to first charge up my ability to Mega Evolve them by attacking. Once evolved, I found I had a limited amount of time in their new form before they transformed back. In exchange though, their attacks became ‘plus moves’, which deal increased damage.
Moves your unevolved pokémon have mastered can also be used as plus moves without Mega Evolving by paying a full bar of ‘Mega Energy, but Mega Evolved pokémon can use these powerful attacks for free. I found the change to Mega Evolution to make it more of a resource management system fun to mess around with, and I enjoyed being able to mega evolve multiple different Pokémon in a single fight if it lasted long enough.
There’s also the insane variety of new Megas to mention, which have been a bit polarising. Game Freak have leaned into quirkier, sillier designs more so than the often edgy coolness of the original Mega Evolutions, so your mileage may vary depending on how much you like those vibes. In my case, I love them - seeing an opponent activate their mega keystone and waiting excitedly to see what goofy new design emerged from the ball of light on my screen was such a good time and I got a lot of laughs from it. Also, Mega Emboar is my son and I will not stand for any mean comments about him.
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One of the few things I did enjoy about Legends: Arceus was the ability to catch pokémon without battling. Being able to sneak around and throw pokéballs from the bushes while evading detection was a really fun way to bring some novelty to the general formula of the series. In my opinion though, the mechanic was heavily constrained by the choice to continue using the traditional turn-based battle system. It led to some pretty heavy whiplash as it felt like I was thrown into a completely different game whenever a battle commenced.
However, Legends: Z-A offers a fresh solution to this issue: the series’ first attempt at real-time combat. Rather than haphazardly tossing one of my supposed friends directly at an enemy and initiating a cutscene that would take me to a menu of options, having a member of my party out alongside me gave me access to its moves at any time and I could interact with objects and opponents freely. Moves have cooldown times before they can be used again and whenever my pokémon wasn’t using an attack it would trail me, allowing me to try and guide the little guy out of the path of incoming enemy attacks.
Adapting to this new battle system did take me a bit of time, particularly getting used to the delay between inputting a direction and my pokémon starting to follow, as well as it being unable to move right before and after an attack. But the more I played around with Z-A’s battling, the more my appreciation for it started to grow. Slowly mastering the system gave me a really satisfying sense of progression, as I went from simply mashing buttons as fast as I could hoping that my rival’s Totodile would faint before it knocked out my Tepig, to patiently baiting out and dodging enemy attacks alongside my Emboar before sending him in for a brutal counterattack.
While it definitely has some room for improvement (I would love some more indication of which attacks are undodgeable and which area certain attacks are targetting) for a first try at real-time Pokémon combat, I think Legends: Z-A does a great job. The system is intuitive and adds some much needed fluidity to interactions with the wild Pokémon I came across while exploring Z-A’s Wild Zones. It also gave trainer battles and boss fights a sense of excitement that retrospectively feels like an obvious fit for the style of the Legends series.
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The ‘Z-A Royale’ is one of the two sets of “boss fights” in Legends: Z-A, essentially replacing the mainline games’ iconic gym leaders with a series of promotion matches, so that I could attempt to climb my way from the very bottom at Rank Z all the way up to Rank A, and claim my rightful place as the best trainer in Lumiose City. Every now and then while exploring the surprisingly dangerous, pseudo-French streets, I received a notification for a match with another trainer of the same rank to prepare for. Winning would mean moving up to the next rank and continuing my quest to learn the alphabet backwards.
But before I could accept the challenge, I needed to acquire a promotion ticket, which meant venturing into one of Z-A’s Battle Zones. Every night, a random area of the map is sectioned off and filled with other trainers. Each victory against these trainers gave me points towards a promotion ticket as well as some extra cash. In these zones I could also find randomly located blue cards that would give me different missions such as knocking a pokémon out in one hit and completing them also rewarded me with points and money. Once I got enough points, I was awarded with my ticket and finally ready for my next battle.
Earning a ticket did feel like a chore at times but completing all of the random missions I found did add some fun and variety into the mix. It was also an admittedly nice source of income and heavily fuelled my shopping addiction.
Luckily, the pay off to all of the grinding: the promotion matches, were great. The first few were against random NPCs, but once I got further into the game I started coming up against story-relevant characters. As well as needing to get a ticket before I could fight these guys, they each had their own wacky set of challenges I had to complete. These fights utilised the new combat system well and showcased a lot of the new mega evolutions, which helped to keep the battles fresh and unique and I really enjoyed getting through those later stages. They also carry on the Pokémon series’ mandatory tradition of including incredible battle music, though paying attention to it is a little harder now that we’re in real-time combat territory.
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Legends: Arceus’ boss battles against the ‘Noble’ Pokémon’ were a letdown for me. Fighting giant enraged pokémon should have been cool, but mindlessly throwing random objects at them until I got the chance to start a battle really just wasn’t hitting.
In contrast, Z-A’s Rogue Mega Evolution battles are anything but mindless. I learned early on that pokémon around Lumiose City had been spontaneously Mega Evolving, leading to their own suffering as well as the risk of them doing serious damage. It was up to me and the rest of my friends to incapacitate them and stop things from getting out of hand.
These fights appear in groups of three, are spread across the city and can be completed in any order. Unlike what happened with the Nobles, there are no slow starts - each time I entered a battle I was thrown right into the action as I weaved my pokémon around huge attacks, snuck a few hits in while waiting for the chance to Mega Evolve and strike back. These fights really got my adrenaline pumping and winning was so satisfying. Each Mega has its own patterns that made for unique challenges, which were really enjoyable to overcome.
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I’m just going to say it - Legends: Z-A’s first hour is a slog.
Let me be clear: I don’t have a problem with tutorials, or with a game taking its time in introducing me to necessary concepts. Between the new systems and characters, Pokémon Legends: Z-A has a lot to explain, and I understand that the kids playing may need a bit more help with the mechanics than us adults do.
My problem is the fact that despite being thrown into the city from the very beginning, every time I tried to wander too far away from the goal the game had set for me, I’d receive a call from one of my ‘friends’, helpfully reminding me to turn back around before I got lost. At first I didn’t think much of it, but as this kept happening I got more and more frustrated.
What’s the point of holding me back from exploring this early? The objectives are trackable, so it’s not like I would get lost. If it was possible to take a break from the endless tutorials and enjoy some exploration, it might have made them easier to deal with. But the fact that this option was not just unavailable, but actively waved in my face while kept just out of reach, only made that first hour feel worse; which was especially disappointing considering how enjoyable the other 99% of my time was.
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While I’m a fan of the visual style that the Pokémon series continues to improve on, I’m not going to pretend that the quality of graphics have been up to par for the world's biggest media franchise. With the high bar for Switch 2 visuals I was both nervous and hopeful for how the series was going to start off this new era.
The first thing I noticed as I entered Lumiose City after disembarking my train was how smoothly the game was running. Unlike the performance issues that plagued Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, in my experience Legends: Z-A ran like a dream, with better quality graphics, lighting and shading than the franchise's last outing, without a single noticeable frame drop or visual glitch.
Scarlet and Violet’s texture improvements to the Pokémon models have been carried over, as well as some noticeable visual adjustments to the human characters, including the player. (Check out our other article by the fierce Cat Jahne if you want to know more about the clothing in this game specifically.) The lighting also adds to this improvement, the higher quality shadows giving the models some much needed depth. Unfortunately, these models still have clear rigging issues, with some insanely awkward hover-handing as they struggled to interact properly with other characters, objects and even the world around them.
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This pattern of vastly improved textures, brought down by poor models, also carries over to the buildings. When given some depth, the building textures look incredible - wrapped around the curves and indents of important buildings such as the Lumiose Museum or the game’s many boutiques, the improvements are so obviously clear.
If only that same care was put into the huge amount of filler buildings in Lumiose City. The same wonderful textures look embarrassing printed as flat PNGs across their walls. One of the most baffling choices was to add balconies to these flat textures, only emphasising the issue. With these two completely opposite uses of modelling for the same sets of textures often in close proximity to each other, being forced to see how this game could have potentially fixed these issues is so frustrating.
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I think that making a Pokémon game that’s set in only one city was a really interesting concept, and that in some ways, Z-A is successful in making use of it. But by the time I was closing in on the end of the story, I was really feeling the constraint of Lumiose City’s limited size.
The game tries to account for this issue by occasionally granting access to new rooftops or shaking things up with new Wild Zones. The rooftop traversal does technically increase the size of the city, and the Wild Zones do technically give you a reason to revisit an area by filling it with new Pokémon to catch, but they’re really only a bandaid solution.
Speaking of bandaid solutions to a small, open world map, did you know that this is the first mainline/Legends game to not include a bike or a ride pokémon? Z-A not giving me any personal transport options besides my own poor, tired legs feels like the wrong choice - especially since the original Kalos games, X and Y were home to the coolest transportation the series has ever had - the rollerskates.
Where are my skates, Nintendo? Why am I not rolling down the streets, flipping on ramps or grinding down rails? It’s such a missed opportunity to not include them in a fully 3D Kalos game. Even without the increase in map size the game desperately needs, a cool transport option would’ve at least added some fun to the repetition. They could’ve even been worked into the scaffolding parkour courses littered throughout the city, adding another layer of complexity to some already pretty fun puzzles.
Even more confusing was that despite this, Legends: Z-A does bring back a different unique travel option from X and Y - the taxis. This is interesting on the surface - until you realise that they were intended to be a fast travel gimmick to help the player get across the 3DS game’s biggest city. But why would I spend my hard earned money on that when Z-A has placed a huge amount of fast travel points around the city that you can use for free? Why was this the one transport option they chose to bring back when it’s the only one that is completely redundant in the modern, explorative era of Pokémon?
Lowering the speed at which the player can travel is a classic way to make an open world map feel bigger, which could be why the game doesn’t provide the usual transport options. But at least in my case it didn’t help with that at all, and I just ended up using fast travel points to get around the city rather than doing any repeat exploration.
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Rather than any of these successes and flaws I’ve mentioned, what really defines Legends: Z-A for me are the characters. Agreeing to assist one of these characters, the city's resident detective Emma, with her caseload grants you access to a constantly growing list of side missions across the city.
The purposes of these missions vary greatly; there are ones that teach you about different battle techniques, ones with unique rewards such as cosmetics or rare pokémon, and ones simply about helping to solve the residents’ problems. Whether it was participating in a contest looking for the best Budew or leading a pack of Trubbish through alleyways to find trash for them to snack on, going through these missions really brought some personality and flavour to Lumiose, and helped the city feel more like a place that people actually lived in, especially as characters started to occasionally reappear.
I realised that this dedication to making the city feel alive extended towards Z-A’s main story too, as I was brought face to face with a bunch of different groups that held varying positions across the city. It’s rare for a Pokémon game to have more than 2 specific groups that are story relevant, both of which are usually villainous or at the very least antagonistic. To avoid spoilers, I won’t get into specifics about Z-A’s factions or how many there are, but interacting with so many characters from different backgrounds and witnessing their various points of view was an incredible experience. I came to understand that even though each group had different approaches, they were all ultimately motivated by the same thing: their love for Lumiose City. All of these characters had such distinct charm and something that made me want to root for them; even as I write this I’m struggling to pick a favourite.
Something that the story of Legends: Z-A constantly questions, is why the player, someone who has literally just arrived in Kalos for the first time, has to care so much about the game's events to risk their own life the way that they do. The more I played and the closer I felt to both the characters and the city as a whole, the more I understood why it was asking this, and the more I understood what the game had to say about the value of community: how connecting with the people around us can both ground us and launch us to greater heights.
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Pokémon Legends: Z-A took some big swings, and despite its shortcomings, I think that it connected with most of them. It succeeds in building off of what was introduced in Legends: Arceus as well as succeeding on its own merits. While it definitely hasn’t done enough to put all the franchises’ criticisms to rest, this latest entry into the franchise has left me hopeful for the future; at least as long as Nintendo gives the developers more than scraps to work with next time.
A copy of Pokemon Legends: Z-A on the Switch 2 was provided to SIFTER for the purpose of this review.
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