Pokémon Legends Arceus is so Great.
I just want to gush about how much I enjoy Pokémon Legends Arceus (PLA). It's definitely my favorites Pokémon game to date. I used to like ORAS due to the systems but, the immersion PLA has woven into it's design is absolutely peak Pokémon.
I love the active catching, it makes encountering pokémon much more immersive and ultimately a dynamic experience. Pokémon can run, attack, or even just look cuddly just like real creatures. In Scarlet and Violet (ScarVi) either run up to you, or sit there and while the pokémon in ScarVi have more idle animations and can run up trees and inhabit the environment more than PLA , catching them isn't as dynamic. Only thing I'd change is to have the balls bounce off of pokémon and then then beam captured them like in the anime. I am glad the backstrike is back in ScarVi, too.
The battles are SO FUN! I'm glad over world battles are back in ScarVi but, on PLA the pace of battles feels like an actual fluid experience in getting my partners to fight a pokémon. Selecting them seamlessly in the overworld makes me feel like I'm actually shifting through my pokéballs on my sash like in the anime. The attack animation for physical attacks also ACTUALLY MAKE CONTACT, that small detail of having mons approach their opponent for physical attacks and pause on impact makes the difference. Very sad they took that away on ScarVi. The only thing I'd change is that instead of having the ball explode into the mon when summoning, the ball opens to have them jump out, and have the trainer catch the ball like on the anime.
The Pokédex quests and side quests also were my favorite parts, I know the Pokédex system in PLA may have been tedious for others but it did have the nice reward of higher shiny chances which is nice. The side quests also are super interesting in that they expand the lore of the Pokédex in the overworld which is all that I ask for sidequests in Pokémon games. The Pokédex provides us with so much lore, seeing it in-game makes the lore that much more tangible which is why I love the Pokémon interactions in PLA like nosepass.
Finally, I do have a sort of soft spot for Japanese settings, which cemented PLA even more as my favorite, I do hope we could maybe visit an ancient Johto. And yes, Kitakami looks like it will be very fun DLC and I'm very excited for it. Kitakami feels very Johto with the pokémon selection.
I can tell Gamefreak put a lot of love in PLA and this lad absolutely appreciates it.
Tl;Dr PLA is peak Pokémon and I hope Gamefreak implements more of the concepts in this game to other games and expand upon it.
Comments
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Pokémon Legends Arceus certainly was a relative breath of fresh air in a series that has relied on the same core systems and design for over two decades. I like the potential of the concepts but sadly I do not feel they were properly realised.
I think a lot of the problems stem from a lack of time and resources to properly develop and implement the game's systems and give them an appropriate amount of polish. At times it feels more like a really promising beta build than a finished product.
There is clearly something wrong with the graphics, particularly the lighting on Pokémon models, which makes them look artificial, almost like plastic. The game world is very barren and textures are often low quality. The only thing I think really looks decent throughout the game is the human models. The designs are appealing and colourful and the lighting does not seem to affect them nearly as adversely as the Pokémon.
The changes to battle were interesting. More could have been done to mix things up further, and the execution could have been refined a little more, but any deviation or innovation is welcome in Pokémon. It was nice to have status changes all appear in one quick message rather than excruciatingly listing them out in individual messages as it did in previous games. I was sad to see SV reverted to the old, tedious method.
Exploring the world could be annoying due to the constant shifting of button inputs when you switched between walking and the various ride Pokémon. One consistent control scheme would have really helped. It felt like a different person designed each control scheme with no communication, then they were all just dumped in the final game and shipped as is.
The story was okay. I liked it for the most part. I liked the characters. They, alongside the music, continue to be the only consistently high quality part of modern Pokémon.
I do not really buy that this really took place in the distant past before Pokémon training was commonplace. There are characters in games set in the present day who say that they remember a time before Pokeballs, yet people were already using them before the main character even arrived in PLA. Furthermore people already have captured and trained Pokémon, despite the insistence that they had had no success before you showed up.
I would have liked to have seen an alternative to Pokeballs. Maybe some system where you have to persuade Pokémon to join you rather than throwing ye olde wooden Pokeballs. Of course, this would have made the main method of completing the olde Pokédex very tedious.
I feel that had PLA been released when SV released, and those games released in November this year instead, both games could have realised their own ideas better, been more stable, less buggy and feature a lot more content. As it stands, both games feel rushed, full of promise but diminished by the lack of time and resources to properly deliver on their respective visions.
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Does it have a lot of great ideas that mainline Pokemon should use? Absolutely.
Is it perfect? No, in my opinon.
Here are my main gripes with the game:
- No Battle Tower or other similar feature.
- The characters weren't all that interesting.
- Battle system was unfair at times- putting Trainers in situations where they had no way of seeing what was coming and no way to react. Granted, it's probably a bit more "realistic" to how battles would play out in real life, but it's frustrating regardless, especially since Pokemon only gain Exp. if they survived the battle as a whole, regardless of what they contributed before they fainted. If they made a game with the typical Pokemon battling system and Gym-based progression, but implemented all the awesome catching-based mechanics from PLA, I'd be satisfied. And throw in some of the quality of life trade evolution items while you're at it.
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Legends is a different kind of game. Battle Tower wouldn’t make much sense in that world, but interesting character development absolutely would.
It could definitely use more polish, but for what it is, it is amazing. I just hope that GameFreak continues on with Pokémon Legends as a series and doesn’t treat it like XD and Let’s Go. But since GF is known to try new things but then not commit to them, I think I’d be more shocked if they actually did another Legends. Thrilled, absolutely! Shocked, definitely!
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@JCMasterpce You're right in that it wouldn't make a lot of sense in-game, but it still stinks from a gameplay perspective.
I should also clarify that I also said "or other similar feature". Really anything where I can enjoy battling with many different Pokemon freely without having to worry about overleveling would be fine.
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