Enjoying modern, Switch-era Pokémon games as someone familiar with the good old days is often a question of how much you’re happy to let slide. With Sword and Shield it was the eerie Potemkin Villages, the whiff of cut content, the sudden and, I still maintain, very bad decision to do away with dungeons entirely that you had to let go. But in exchange you got one of the series’ biggest gambles, an actually-kind-of-great first stab at open world zones in the Wild Areas.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A review
- Developer: Game Freak
- Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokémon Company
- Platform: Played on Switch 2
- Availability: Out 16th October on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2
With Legends: Arceus, the progenitor to Pokémon Legends: Z-A in this curious main series offshoot, it was more hints at constricted budgets and tight turnarounds, a flawed attempt at streamlining battles, and even murkier visuals, in exchange for the big, fascinating swing at a Monster Hunter-style world with Breath of the Wild’s vibes. In Scarlett and Violet it was, well, all of it. But even then the core of Pokémon persisted. For many the sheer power of this series’ basic, essential formula – battle, trade, collect, plus a bit of found-family theming and the lasting message it carries, of creating human-to-creature, human-to-nature bonds – has proven to be enough, even in a game that can barely hold itself together.
The good news with Pokémon Legends: Z-A is that things have significantly improved on that front, at least on the Switch 2 (fair warning to base Nintendo Switch players: it seems nobody’s had access to that version before launch). Legends: Z-A runs perfectly in handheld mode. The animations both for people and Pokémon are a significant step up, by Pokémon standards. And this time we get yet another reimagining of catching, battling, and the structure of the world – one which actually works quite nicely, a kind of hybrid of the three games before it. It comes wrapped in a layer of enchantingly goofy comedy, as well, with a revival of the series’ signature off-beat humour and oddball characters. It is, in a lot of ways, a bundle of joy. Though there is again a trade to be made for it: for all the invention and charm, Legends: Z-A is also smaller, more confined, a little repetitive. It’s a huge improvement from Scarlett and Violet, but I’m not sure I’d call it a comeback.
As with Legends: Arceus, you’re an out-of-towner here in Lumiose City, the heart of the France-inspired Kalos region, only this time you arrive without the time travel. Quickly you fall in with a group of teens called Team MZ, run by your rival, Taunie or Urbane, and another pair of helpers in the peppy strategist Lida and grumpy fanboy Naveen. Like a lot of Pokémon games the actual plot here is a little messy. You need to help out AZ – the returning, 3,000-year-old character from the heart of the story in Pokémon X and Y, games to which Legends Z-A is essentially a sequel – with a mysterious and purposefully vague quest of “protecting Lumiose City”, because you seem to be pretty nifty with that old returning mechanic, Mega Evolution. And to do that you need to climb to the top rank of the Z-A Royale.