Pokémon Legends: Z-A

 I, uh, didn't think I'd be writing about this.

I played this on my Switch 2.

Pokémon Legends Z-A is the latest Pokémon game, and it's noteworthy in that it's both a sequel to 2022's Legends: Arceus and 2013's X and Y games. That is a weird pitch! I'm fully aware of that! Somehow, though, this game succeeds at being a sequel to both without necessarily feeling like you need to have that prior knowledge to enjoy it.

While I'd probably consider myself a lifelong Pokémon fan, I feel like I aged out of the series at some point and ultimately skipped several generations of entries. I played a bit of Let's Go Pikachu! when that came out but didn't stick with it, and played through Sword, but neither of those fully gelled with me. It wasn't until Legends: Arceus that I felt I truly connected with one of these games as an adult. In my 2022 Games of the Year post I wrote a bit about why I loved that game, but to summarize it here I appreciated that it was an attempt to reinvent the Pokémon formula all these decades later. There were certain elements that seemed core to the series that they abandoned or shirked and the game was all the more interesting for it. Because of that, I went into Legends: Z-A with fairly high hopes that I, frankly, didn't think the game would be able to meet.

So, what makes this a Legends game? Well, the main thing is that Pokémon are visible in the open-world and catching them isn't explicitly tied to battling them. There are more specific UI and mechanical similarities, but the important thing is that this has a Pokémon game's aesthetics without necessarily playing like a traditional entry. Legends: Arceus toyed with the formula by letting certain moves' speed impact their position in the turn order, doing away with a strict you-go-and-then-the-opponent-goes back-and-forth, and Legends: Z-A takes things a step further by abandoning the turn-based formula entirely. Each move has some sort of windup and cooldown, but the gameplay is, effectively, real-time.

Mega Evolutions also return from X/Y.

There's a similar rhythm to combat, but positioning is suddenly far more important and as a result the game plays like a real-time action game. It's an interesting idea! Unfortunately, the combat is... messy. Attacks will often miss due to the environment getting in the way and there isn't a whole lot of depth to it (the PP mechanic has been fully removed) so combat generally boils down to spamming the same moves over and over. You could probably make the same argument about standard Pokémon, but without a rigid turn-based format its shortcomings become a bit more apparent. Still, when it works it's evocative of something out of the anime and, together with the more free-form catching of the Legends games, helps the games' worlds feel more alive.

Catching Pokémon, as I've mentioned, is much like it was in Legends: Arceus, but some of the nuance and added mechanics there have been excised for some reason. There are no smoke balls or mud to throw, so catching is superficially like it is in the mainline games. You still have better odds at catching a Pokémon if you sneak up behind it unawares, however, and you have a chance to catch something after you've defeated it in battle, so there are some quality-of-life changes, but often encounters will become a bit of a slog of throwing Poké Ball after Poké Ball at the same thing hoping for a successful attempt.

Shinies still play a pleasant jingle when you get close, at least.

I don't want to sound like I dislike this game, however. Far from it. While it may make some changes that aren't necessarily for the better, I adore the fact that they've attempted to innovate things yet again. Pokémon is a franchise that has, unfortunately, become somewhat formulaic and stale over the years so an entry that tries out new ideas, even if those ideas may not all work, is something to be respected. 

I mentioned this near the beginning, but this game is not just a followup to Legends: Arceus. It is also a sequel to X and Y and in that sense it shines. I'm not going to pretend that X and Y have an excellent story, or even that they're all that phenomenal as games, but revisiting characters and locations from that story was surprisingly gratifying to me, even as someone with no real nostalgia for those games.

The head researcher in Legends Z-A is a woman named Mable...

I worked my way through X over the course of this year and I enjoyed it well enough, but didn't have too strong a connection to any of the characters or events in it. Still, seeing them follow through on unresolved plot threads and even just do the bare minimum of a callback or two was nice. I feel like I always like revisiting old locations in sequels-to-games when the opportunity arises, and even though the story to X/Y wasn't particularly fantastic, getting a followup to it felt cool. It reminds me of how I deeply enjoyed that Far Cry: New Dawn was a sequel to Far Cry 5 even though Far Cry 5 has an abysmal story. Getting to revisit characters and locations that you, as a player, became familiar with is a certain kind of satisfying that I can't quite fully explain.

...who you briefly encountered in Pokémon X/Y.

The story here is ultimately a fairly basic one, but it's propped up by those aforementioned ties to X/Y and, surprisingly, some very strong characters. Now, none of these characters do a whole lot, but in their brief screen time just about every one of them leaves a strong impression. I am still somewhat stunned by how much I enjoyed some of these people, so much so that I was almost a bit sad when the game ended because we'll presumably never see any of them again (outside of the upcoming DLC, that is).

Corbeau, my beloved.

I mentioned that this game revisits locations from X/Y, and the most obvious one is its setting: Lumiose City. This was the central location from X/Y, though while those games featured other towns, Legends: Z-A is entirely located within the city limits. There are tons of people and Pokémon walking the streets, and there are numerous shops and cafes to visit, so the place feels alive. Thanks to scaffolding and some movement abilities, you can freely navigate the city's rooftops where you'll frequently run into wild Pokémon. Additionally, due to the confined locale, the game does away with the open fields of Legends: Arceus and instead utilizes "Wild Areas" where wild Pokémon roam free. The end result is a city that feels lived in, and despite the fact the square-footage may be smaller than something like Legends: Arceus, its maze-like structure makes up for it in density.

I mentioned that there are shops and cafes to visit, and while cafes largely serve to give you a place to hang out with your Pokémon or recover health a la Pokémon Centers (which you can also find scattered about), the shops gave rise to one of the unexpected highlights of this game for me: the fashion. X and Y had a decent amount of clothing options, including some that were gated behind the somewhat nebulous concept of being fashionable, but the items on display here blow those games' offerings out of the water. 

There are so many types of clothing to buy, so many tops and pants and shoes and hats to mix-and-match, that you'll almost certainly find a look you'll like. None of the clothing seems to be gender-locked, too, which was also a decision I'm grateful for. I would frequently see my time in the Z-A Royale as the busywork necessary to be able to afford a fancy new jacket (or whatever). I love playing dressup in games and this is incredible at that.

Because I'm me, I made a Zeke outfit.

If I had to criticize this game again, it'd be that I wish there was more of a post-game. Once you finish the main story there are really only a handful of things left to do. Granted, I still have quite a few sidequests to do and I imagine I'll do just about everything there is to do in this game, but I can't help but want for more in this regard. Maybe that DLC next year will correct this and give me something meaty to chew on, who knows, but until then I just wish I had more of an excuse to keep playing this.

Heck, I even completed a Pokédex for the first time.

In case it wasn't clear, I loved this game. Way more than I thought I would, in fact. It's not that I didn't think I would like it, but given how much I enjoyed Legends: Arceus I saw any sort of successor as having big shoes to fill and, against all odds, this exceeded my expectations. I'm fairly confident I like this game more than that one, and this has made my end-of-year GOTY deliberations even more complicated. I love it when good games come out and this is a very good game.