On this day, let's celebrates the 2nd anniversary of Pokémon Legends: Arceus

I loved Pokémon Legends Arceus, I think the game is very innovative and important for Pokémon, I would like more games like this that take place in another time in a Pokémon region and with a new story and a mixed and incredible starting option, the next game Pokémon Legends I would love could be in Johto, which would be amazing, and I hope the starting options are Grookey, Fennekin and Squirtle or Treecko, Tepig and Squirtle or perhaps Grookey, Litten and Squirtle. I think a Pokémon Legends in Johto could reveal a little about the Pokémon that stayed in the burned tower, as well as showing us the burned tower before the fire, as well as revealing more of the ruins of Sinjou with reference to Hisui as well.

PLA was a great concept for Pokémon, even if it didn't quite deliver on it.

It would have really been interesting to see the time before Pokéballs and how people and Pokémon lived and managed to work together when you couldn't just lob a ball at them and instantly convert them into your "beloved companion".

Perhaps we could have seen some SMT-esque demon recruiting mechanics using non-verbal communication or something similar to breaking a horse for larger Pokémon.

Unfortunately the game says "Pokémon" on the box, so people have certain expectations for how it will play, and that would mean designing whole new systems from the ground up, so here is a professor who has conveniently furnished everyone with wooden Pokéballs.

That said, there were some welcome additions to the formula; the ability to catch Pokémon without battling them chief among them. The sneaking mechanics could have used greater elaboration, but it did save so much time catching weaker Pokémon when you didn't have to sit through battle animations for every capture. Sometimes you could even get lucky and an errant ball at a stronger Pokémon would happen to work out.

I did also like the battle styles, again in concept. I feel the whole system could have used another pass and a bit more refinement, especially if it were to be used for more NPC battles and multiplayer in the future. More fertile ground for development though, if they return to the concept.

The pseudo-open world was cool to see, but it was definitely lacking compared to other open world titles, even on the Switch. Scarlet and Violet did go true open world, and they share a lot of the same problems while introducing their own.

The world feels empty, while still being poorly rendered, glitchy and ugly. I think the lighting is one of the primary culprits, not helped by poor, low resolution textures on surfaces.

It feels like the human characters, the Pokémon and the environments were designed by three different teams, then all stuck in the same lighting engine with varying results. The humans look great, the Pokémon look fine, if a little bright and plasticy, but the world really suffers.

The control scheme was another source of frustration. It is just something else that feels as though it was arbitrarily stopped part way through development, likely due to time constraints, and pushed out the door as "good enough". It is irritating that the controls change depending on whether you are walking or mounted, and the mount you are using.

The map screen's button setup was another constant source of irritation. SV shares that problem. Even after all this time, I am always backing out or zooming in or losing my place when I don't want to. Totally counter intuitive.

I would say that is my frustration with PLA as a whole. The game feels like a really interesting late-alpha, early-beta project that didn't get the time it needed to truly refine its systems, its gameplay, its engine, its narrative and everything else.

I think it really needed another few months in development. But when there were three Pokémon games being released in the span of one year, the last being the next main series installment, there just wasn't time to ensure the quirky spin-off got all the time it needed.

I think things would have been better across the board if BDSP had been the Pokémon release for that year (as disappointing as that may have been), PLA had been released when SV launched, and we had gotten SV last November instead.

PLA would have had more time to fully realise its concept and iron out all the quirks and bugs, SV would similarly have had more time to deliver a solid, true open world Pokémon game, and maybe PLA could have received more updates and content along the way.

As it stands, PLA feels like a compelling but abandoned early access concept that would typically be seen littering the Steam store. I am more enamoured with what it could have been that the game I actually played.

Shame...