paulinhue Pokemon Legends: Z-A Review

I don’t think I ever really had any hype for this game. Even though Arceus (which I played for at least 60 hours) is my favorite Pokémon game, I still thought I’d have at least some fun with this one. And honestly, the battle system looked pretty fun before I played it… but I was so wrong. First, I need to mention how the graphics look straight out of the PS3 era — like Sonic 2006 — and you can see that from the screenshots I’m showing you. And worst of all, the game doesn’t even run properly on the Switch 1. It barely holds 30 FPS. Arceus, even though it was ugly , at least ran smoothly at 30 FPS. There are already tons of videos showing ugly PNG textures and how especially the environments in this game are terribly made. Now, let’s talk about the main flaw — there’s absolutely no gameplay variety. What you do in the first hour of the tutorial is exactly what you’ll repeat for the entire game. In the tutorial, you basically learn that you’ll catch Pokémon, complete some side quests, and at night fight trainers in what they call the ‘Battle Zone.’ I can tolerate games with limited variety, but not when the little variety they have is this boring. Why is it boring, you ask? The new battle system (which is no longer turn-based) just doesn’t work for Pokémon. In every fight, you’ll probably just spam your strongest move (using type weaknesses like always), and then use weaker ones only so you don’t ‘lose your turn’ while waiting for the cooldown. Eventually, you realize there’s no real strategy — you just button-mash your way to victory. See now how this system is and clair obscur 33 we can agree that the second choice is a better choice by far. The capture is equal to arceus so i have any kind of bad things to say about that. Besides that, there aren’t any real quality-of-life improvements. Every night, when the Battle Zone starts, you have to go through the same sequence — and you can’t skip it. Also, every time you heal your Pokémon at the Poké Center, you have to sit through the full animation. And don’t even get me started on how many black screens you’ll see during cutscenes. The game seriously needs to feel more fluid. I just want to battle trainers without constant black screens — am I asking too much? Or is this the bare minimum for a franchise as big as Pokémon? On top of that, there’s no bicycle or skates to improve your mobility. The only thing you get is a double jump that are so bad I don’t even have words for it. Honestly, they deserve an award for managing to make something this bad. The last negative point I want to mention is how underused the moves are outside of battle. They show a few areas that you can only access with Rock Smash, but they never build on that idea. They could’ve used Surf, Waterfall, or Fly to make you curious about exploring the world — but there’s zero incentive to do so. To be fair, there are some things worth praising. The music is good (even if it repeats the main theme too often), the character designs are nice and most of them are pretty cool, and the story is actually decent — especially when compared to Sword/Shield or Scarlet/Violet. I haven’t finished the main story yet, but I doubt my impression of the game will change. In the end, this game deserves a 6/10. You should only buy it if it costs around $40 or less — anything more than that is just abusive