YMMV / Pokémon Legends: Arceus

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

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A - C

• Accidental Aesop: With Cyllene ultimately being a close ally to the player despite her initial gruffness (even serving as a Big Good alongside Cogita during the banishment plotline) and her resemblance to her evil descendant Cyrus, while Volo ends up being the main villain despite his resemblance and potential ancestry to Cynthia, Big Good of the Sinnoh games, it's easy to interpret the game as having An Aesop about how the actions of one's ancestors have no bearing on what their descendants will do. This Aesop is shown not only in Cyllene and Volo, but also in the Miss Fortune Gang in a lesser extent as their potential descendants in the form of Agatha and/or Bertha, Candice and Saturn are far more heroic in comparison.
• Adorkable: Professor Laventon is clumsy, absentminded and good-natured. His passion and will to know more about Pokémon, despite the danger they represent, is somehow admirable too.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Volo: just how much of his villainy is done of his own free will and how much of it is Giratina influencing him? As pointed out here, his later goals don't align with his early-game actions (unless he was just ''really'' good at hiding it), it's explicitly said that he was set on this path when Giratina gave him the Spooky Plate, and his sanity seems to spiral further downward with each plate you collect, indicating how Giratina is getting closer to returning. Additionally, it's also interesting to note that due to sharing Cynthia's team (sans her Milotic), Volo actually has three Pokémon that evolve via friendship, those being Togekiss, Lucario, and Roserade. For someone made out to be a complete psycho and a "Pokémon Wielder" instead of a trainer, it's odd to see him with Pokémon that require such care and attention, made more ambiguous by the presence of these Pokémon in the wilderness in a natural already-evolved state: the Crimson Mirelands feature Togetic and Alpha Roserade, while the Alabaster Icelands has Alpha Lucario.
  • Is Enamorus a benevolent member of the Forces of Nature, or does it just not care about the conflict? On the one hand, it brings life with the change of the season. According to the Pokédex, its Therian Forme seeks revenge on those who disrespect any form of life, and her retaliation is implied to be far worse than what set her off. She's also okay with attacking you just as much as any other Pokémon you encounter, which implies she doesn't have a problem with hurting life, so long as she's the one doing it. Part of it is intended as a test, but she makes no effort to restrain herself any more than the rest, and she's capable of beating the player unconscious despite the claim that she respects all life, no matter how small. The fact that she insists on seeing if you're worthy in the first place implies that she doesn't truly view humans as her equals. Does she view the life she creates and defends as precious, or merely sees it as a personal insult to her if it's not respected? She has no problem taking orders from you, but it's implied that she's merely amusing herself since human life spans are nothing to her. Even her design seems to invoke this. She keeps her arms at her hips in her Incarnate Forme, looking just as prideful as the rest of her kind. Given that she's a genie, possesses the Fairy typing, and carries out her promises to their exact specifications while behaving inexplicably, it leaves the impression that she embraces a more classic fae nature. Most likely, her morals aren't something that humans could easily understand.
  • Giratina is Easily Forgiven after trying to kill the player and possibly manipulating Volo into causing all the events of the plot. There is a brief mention that Giratina had a Heel–Face Turn and now wants to protect the region, but how do we know if that's genuine? Certainly it seems to be a sore loser, attacking the player in Turnback Cave even after it was thoroughly trounced previously.
    • Additionally, given that unlike the other members of the Creation trio we never hear from it directly, only occasionally getting filtered through Volo, a lot of its behavior is up to interpretation. Did it actually want to Rage Against the Heavens, or was that just Volo projecting his own desires? Certainly, Arceus doesn't mention it at all when you finally meet it.
    • It's entirely possible that after seeing Volo's defeat, Giratina realizes Raging Against The Heavens is doomed to fail and quietly retires to its proper place in the cosmos. It certainly seems to have finished its Heel–Face Turn by Pokémon Platinum, in which it sucks Cyrus into the Distortion World, preventing him from unleashing more havoc upon the normal universe.
  • It's left ambiguous how much, if anything, the player character remembers about the time period they came from, or if they're amnesiac on the subject like Ingo (the game gives you choices that can depict either option, or even somewhere in between). Their status as a Heroic Mime outside of canned responses means they never really talk about it themselves, and nobody else ever seems to know anything about it that would imply that they've talked about it off-screen either. Albeit in the Daybreak update it's shown they at this point at least certainly remember some details of the world they came from, but it's still left up in the air if they always remembered and just never talked about it on-screen or if these were memories they regained similar to Ingo regaining some memories after quelling Lord Electrode.
  • Is the general public of Jubilife Village really as distrustful of the player as Kamado makes them out to be, are they hiding their distrust out of politeness, or is Kamado just projecting his own paranoia onto the village as a whole? During the actual game, pretty much nobody in the village except Kamado himself, Beni, and Cyllene at first show anything resembling open distrust toward you; at worst, most of them seem to simply be unsure what to make of you and your story, and almost all of them seem to accept you pretty quickly. Even when the player is exiled from the village and needs to perform a "walk of shame" on the way out where you can overhear the villagers whispering about you, most of their reactions seem more along the lines of "If Kamado is exiling them, he must have some good reason for it" along with being more surprised than anything that you apparently turned out to be someone they shouldn't have trusted, and when Cyllene allows the player back into the village, nobody seems bothered by you returning.
• And You Thought It Would Fail: Not necessarily fail, but there was some skepticism that an entry that plays so differently from other mainline titles (being an Action RPG) would instead sell on par with spin-off entries like New Pokémon Snap or the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games, rather than join Sword and Shield or Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl in breaking franchise records. Legends: Arceus ended up selling 6.5 million copies in its opening weekend, making it the biggest game launch for the franchise to-date and the second best-selling game of early 2022 behind the multiplatform Elden Ring.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • After the first few days, the player doesn't seem to mind being stuck in the past, aside from a few (optional) dialogue choices indicating they don't know much about their past with a dismayed look. Even if you accept the common theory that the player character is amnesiac (like Ingo, who's in the same boat), they would still come off at times as strangely indifferent to the fact that they'd have no memory of who they really are, where they really came from, or if they might have a family that's looking for them somewhere. They also seem to bear Volo no ill will despite the subject in question trying to kill them at one point.
  • The Diamond and Pearl Clans are surprisingly mellow about the revelation that the respective religions they've based their entire lives around are wrong, and the bloody wars they've waged against each other in the past were for nothing. Of course, it probably helps that it's implied most of them want relations between the two clans to be peaceful, and that they find this out via the divine themselves confirming that they aren't truly each other's enemies.
• Anti-Climax Boss: While the game does attempt to enforce gating by way of restricting access to later areas based on Pokédex completion, which in turn should mean a casual player wouldn't be as overleveled for the game's challenges as they would be in some of the preceding games, many human trainers still only have two or three Pokémon at the most, even towards the end of the main game. The player doesn't encounter anyone who has a full team until the post-game, even those trainers can still come off as this.
  • During Sabi's trial to obtain the assistance of Braviary, she challenges you to a battle that pits you against a Rhyperior, a Magmortar, and an Electivire all at once, while you can only use one Pokémon. However, only Rhyperior has a level on par with the wild Pokémon of the area (Level 50), the other two being Level 30. Speaking of, they even act like wild Pokémon, which in this game means they'll sometimes choose to spend their turns doing absolutely nothing. On top of that, if you happened to have a Ground-type Pokémon with you, then this battle goes from "easy" to "complete cakewalk" (and with a Water/Ground-type, it's impossible to lose). Electivire is rendered completely powerless since it only knows Electric-type moves, Magmortar will only deal a fraction of damage since the only attacking move it knows is Flamethrower, and Rhyperior only has Rock and Ground-type moves and has a double weakness to Water-type attacks. Have fun potentially completely wrecking these three fully-evolved Pokémon with basically no effort.
  • Origin Dialga/Palkia. Despite having lots of health, it's still far easier than the bosses that came before it. It's almost always open to being hit and rarely moves, compared to the erratic movements of Lord Electrode. It also lacks Lord Avalugg's homing attacks, with most of its attacks being exclusively in a straight line or a widely telegraphed circle, making them very easy to predict. Its patterns are not able to trap you nearly as much as the noble Pokémon before it could, and this is all while fighting it in a wide open arena. The end result is it being far easier than you'd actually expect it to be.
  • Pokémon Wielder Volo can fall into this if the player is savvy enough. Despite having decent Pokémon and a high leveled team, the lineup is nearly identical to Cynthia's Platinum team, which anyone who has played Platinum would already be familiar with; the only change being to swap out Milotic for Hisuian Arcanine, who has two quadruple weaknesses in Ground and Water, meaning his team is nothing veteran players haven't already fought before. On top of that, half of his team is weak to Ice, and he's a lot less liberal in using Full Restores. Roserade and Arcanine also don't possess a full moveset, while also being his only answer to Water and Flying types, respectively. This is partially justified, as his main role is to bleed you out through attrition before the boss fight against Giratina, with a lot of the difficulty of his fight coming from having to beat his team and both forms of Giratina back-to-back without healing.
• Awesome Art: While the game certainly looks rough around the edges, there are still several moments where the art style, inspired by Japanese ink wash painting, shines through to create some lovely moments, particularly at dusk and dawn.
• Awesome Music: See the franchise page.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The Noble Pokémon of the main arc are notable for their exciting premise where for the majority of it, you're taking on the target yourself via throwing balms at them rather than your Pokémon until you find an opening that if successful with a normal battle, allows you to whale further with balms. Of special note is the final Noble, Hisuian Avalugg. The catch? It's extremely massive, akin to a Dynamaxed Pokémon, and fights with an arsenal of giant homing icicles and a Wave-Motion Gun-sized Ice Beam that wouldn't be out of place in a Metal Gear game.
  • One of the best of all is the epic main story Final Boss, Origin Forme Dialga or Palkia. The dragon sends a barrage of meteors hurtling towards you and also uses its time/space warping powers for some surprise attacks and maneuvers. But the best part is that the fight is much less linear than the other Noble Pokémon fights; you have a lot of opportunities to throw balms at the dragon even without tiring it out, or you can choose to wait things out to engage it in a battle with your own dragon (a la Pokémon Black and White) so that throwing balms at it is more effective. Couple that with a killer remix of their battle theme from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, and you have one hell of a memorable final showdown.
  • Possibly one of the most memorable encounters is the last boss of the post game: Volo, who has revealed his true colors as the Big Bad and is bent on taking Arceus' power and using it to recreate reality. Not only is his battle theme a Call-Back to Cynthia's infamous piano, his team is nearly identical to that of the dreaded Champion and is capable of putting up a similar fight. Once he loses his Pokémon, however, he summons Giratina and sics it on you, prompting a second stage of the fight where you take on the powerful Renegade Pokémon without any reprieve. On top of that, once you defeat Giratina, in a first from the series, it gets back up followed by a magnificent Theme Music Powerup as it transforms into its Origin Forme, returning to battle at full strength with a remix of its classic theme playing. This makes Volo the first trainer in the series to essentially use eight Pokémon in a single battle (breaking the previous record of seven with Greevil in Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness and Ghetsis in Pokémon Black 2 and White 2, and unlike with Ghetsis, you don't get free healing in between). All of this together makes for a brutally difficult but immensely satisfying challenge for the final stretch of the game.
  • For the first (official) time in the main games, the player finally gets to battle Arceus itself. And it doesn't disappoint—you actually fight the Alpha Pokémon head-on like you would a Noble, with Arceus flaunting all kinds of divine powers like teleportation, meteor showers, shockwaves, arena-filling energy bursts, illusions of itself, rapid-fire Judgement missiles, and even copying the Secret Arts of the Creation Trio. Like the fights with Origin Dialga and Palkia, you can either whittle Arceus down yourself or take chances to engage Arceus in regular Pokémon combat, during which it demonstrates the ability to change types mid-battle, an ability that was alluded to but never seen before in the games themselves. And when you finally take it down, it all but confirms the theory that every instance of Arceus seen thus far is merely a fragment of its true form.
  • The Eternal Battle Reveries gauntlet lets you refight various challenging battles scaled up to endgame levels, which includes all of the Legendaries and even Arceus itself. However, the standout among them is a 1v3 against the Creation Trio in their Origin Formes at the same time. In case you ever wondered what it'd be like if the three of them put their differences aside and fought together at full power, look no further.
• Best Level Ever: While all the areas in the game are gorgeous and thrilling to explore, the Coronet Highlands and Alabaster Icelands stand out for their sheer size and connections to lore, with lots of vertical exploration due to the introduction of Sneasler and Braviary as Ride Pokémon.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The "Tricky Treat Strategy" request. Halfway through the quest chain of studying the massive mass outbreaks, Mai suddenly asks you to take ten mushroom cake lures to a cave in the Alabaster Icelands, claiming she has a plan. After you do so, she tells you to go back to Jubilife... and when you do, you find Mai there, and she doesn't know what you're talking about when you bring it up. She mentions that Irida also had a similar request earlier that was equally as confusing, and after a Beat, Mai surmises that a Pokémon might be impersonating people to stir up mischief. This is never brought up again, you never figure out what was going on, and the quests go right back to dealing with the massive mass outbreaks (and this odd quest is required to keep that quest chain going). At best, you can take the implication that it was Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark impersonating humans to get food, but the questions that opens up (why come all the way to Jubilife? How did they know who to impersonate and talk to? How were they able to speak English?) just make things more confusing.
• Breather Boss: The final story fight with Charm occurs right in front of the Origin Ore deposit during the end of the game, after Beni and Kamado and before the fight with Dialga or Palkia. She has the exact same team she uses on Firespit Island and in random overworld encounters (using only two Pokémon with one not being fully evolved), being at best a minor nuisance to a team that got this far even without the Legendary Pokémon you just caught that can nail both of hers with super-effective moves.
• Catharsis Factor: People who hated Kamado for exiling the player and turning the majority of the town against them out of paranoia get two massive ones when they confront him in battle to stop his extremist ways of confronting and killing Dialga/Palkia. After he is defeated, he gets a My God, What Have I Done? moment when he finally realizes what he had done to the player was wrong and that his attempts at helping had only made things worse. He even gets on his knees and practically begs you for forgiveness!
• Common Knowledge:
  • The game was never stated or advertised to be an Wide-Open Sandbox game similar to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, with The Pokémon Company and Nintendo only ever marketing it as an Action RPG. That didn't stop people from expressing shock and disappointment at "misleading trailers" when it was later confirmed that the game's structure was far more comparable to Monster Hunter (where a village serves as a "base", with the rest of the overworld being segmented into large regions).
  • Due to an unnoticed error among the fandom, the Origin Formes of Dialga and Palkia have been dubbed the "Lord Formes" when the game was leaked about a week before release, and most information regarding them wouldn't be changed to remedy this until information regarding the two's new formes were better made available.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: While Legends: Arceus has a fairly balanced and diverse Dex compared to the present-day Sinnoh entries, it still suffers from a relative lack of Fire-types that causes players to use specific Pokémon on their teams more often than not.
  • Character Select Forcing is back with a vengeance as Infernape, while no longer a Starter Pokémon, finds itself on many players' teams more than other Fire-types, Fighting-types, and Sinnoh starters. Chimchar can be caught in the very first area of the game (ahead of both Turtwig and Piplup), and Infernape is as strong as ever when fully evolved, to the point that it's considered stronger than the actual Fire starter, Hisuian Typhlosion. Even if the player already has Typhlosion on their team, Infernape still provides very useful Fighting-type STAB and coverage moves along with its Fire type. Adding to this, while Hisui is not as deficient in Fire-types as DP Sinnoh, it's still rather limited, with the player's only options besides Chimchar being Cyndaquil, Ponyta (again), Flareon (which is far weaker than the other Eeveelutions), Vulpix, Hisuian Growlithe, Magby, Heatran, and Heat Rotom (which are not unlocked until later, with Heatran specifically being exclusive to the postgame). It doesn't help that the Houndour line is absent, despite being available in Platinum.
  • Cyndaquil is commonly picked out of the starters not just for being a Johto fan-favorite, but also because of the lingering stigma of Sinnoh suffering from a lack of Fire-types.
  • While speed has always been the One Stat to Rule Them All in Pokémon games, it's far, far more important here because the change(s) to the damage formula. Compared to other mainline games, moves in general skew towards the higher side especially with the amount of multipliers. So even neutral moves can still hit for a lot but super-effective moves will hit like a truck. This means certain Pokémon intended to be a Mighty Glacier are just as much a Glass Cannon as Pokémon intended as such.
  • With the changes to the combat system any Pokémon can do appreciable damage to any other Pokémon, meaning that unless they have sky high Defense and Special Defense, defensive stats are more vague suggestions than a useful indicator of how tough a Pokémon is. This makes Blissey a strong choice, with its incredible Special Defense and HP. And while its Defense is renowned for being poor, since everything else takes as much damage, it's less noticeable.
• Complete Monster: Volo, a seemingly perky yet dissatisfied member of the Ginkgo Merchant Guild, wishes to subdue Arceus and use its power to destroy reality in favor of his own world. To this end, Volo allies with Giratina, having it create the space-time rift, which both drives Pokémon across Hisui into dangerous frenzies and threatens to destroy the world. Manipulating the player into collecting Arceus's Plates, Volo, after revealing his true intentions and being defeated, summons Giratina to kill the player.

D - G

• Ensemble Dark Horse: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Epileptic Trees:
  • After it was confirmed that Kamado is Rowan's ancestor, fans began pinning every character in Legends: Arceus as the ancestor of an existing character. While a few of the theories have unanimous fan support thanks to several characters being a blatant example of Identical Ancestor (e.g. Cyllene and Volo outright resemble gender-flipped versions of Cyrus and Cynthia, respectively), others are more vague and have multiple theories surrounding them. For example, Iscan being a dark-skinned, blue-haired man associated with Water-types could make him an ancestor to any member of Team Aqua, Nessa, or even Marlon (though his dark skin is a tan rather than natural).
  • While Ingo makes an appearance, his brother Emmet is nowhere to be seen, leading to various theories about his location, including a popular one that suggests he was teleported to the future, aka a Gen 9 installment, which also ties in to the past & future aesthetic of Black & White.
  • Since the Starter Pokémon's final evolutions are regional variants, it is commonly wondered how the final evolutions of the other members of the original trio they were a part of (Chikorita, Totodile, Snivy, Tepig, Litten, and Popplio) could have looked like if they were brought to Hisui instead of Rowlet, Cyndaquil and Oshawott.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: By the end of the game, you succeed in clearing your name and winning back respect from Jubilife Village, stop two apocalyptic events, and impress Arceus itself (provided you did 100% Completion). Great, except the protagonist is still stranded in the Hisui Region, and the game doesn't hint at how they can go home. There's also the matter of Ingo, who's already been in Hisui for years and has little idea about his past due to amnesia. Because the game stopped receiving major new content after the Daybreak update, the player is left with potential implication that Arceus had forgotten about the Fallers and doomed them in the past.
• Even Better Sequel: Legends is widely considered an improvement over the last two entries, which, despite being strong sellers and generally enjoyed, also came under heavy scrutiny from longtime fans. Sword and Shield were criticized for their linearity, barebones story, and simplistic gameplay while Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl were criticized for being a little too faithful to their base versions and low difficulty. Legends makes up for them by using a more active Combatant Cooldown System instead of the series' traditional Turn-Based Combat, having a stronger and more lore-relevant story, offering an expansive overworld that allows for more open exploration, and providing sidequests that give players more to do outside of the main story. Thanks to this, Legends is considered by many fans and critics to be the best 3D Pokémon game, and possibly one of the best entries in the series overall, to the point that the game was nominated for multiple best-of-2022 awards (and won the Golden Joystick award for best Nintendo game of the year as well as a spot on James Stephanie Sterling's top 5 games of the year).
• Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory: The protagonist is sent to Hisui by the literal god of the Pokémon world in order to mend relations between conflicting viewpoints and help them realize the one "true Sinnoh". They are also branded a heretic by some, and even betrayed by one of their closest friends, although in both these cases they manage to survive. The Big Bad Duumvirate is also the closest thing to Satan and the Anti-Christ.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Volo is one of the few truly irredeemably evil characters in the franchise, and the final fight against him is considered one of the most challenging yet awesome battles in the series.
  • In the same vein as Necrozma, Giratina is one half of the Big Bad Duumvirate and caps off the aforementioned challenging Volo battle. It's also a longtime fan-favorite Pokémon with a sinister, ghostly draconic appearance, and unlike its human partner, undergoes a Heel–Face Turn to become the terrifying but benevolent force we know from Pokémon Platinum.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Akari and Rei, the female and male protagonists respectively, are commonly called "Feudal Lucas/Dawn" or "Ninja Lucas/Dawn", due to their resemblance to the protagonists of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, as well as their clothes and scarves giving them a ninja-like appearance, despite evidence putting them in the Meiji period^note Long after what we recognize as ninja faded away. and equating them to the Ainu in the Hokkaido region of real-world Japan.^note Completely unrelated to ninjas and the Feudal Period.
  • Shiny Alphas have quickly become known as "Shalphas" in fan circles.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • Ingo's presence provides a ton of this. Does he ever return home? How does Emmet (and Nimbasa City as a whole) react to his disappearance? Was he bought to Hisui on accident, or was he sent by Arceus for a specific reason like the protagonist? It's clear that he certainly had a major role in bringing about the modern concept of Pokémon Battles, but was he bought back for that or was it just a welcome side-effect?
  • After the game launched, many fans scrambled to come up with concepts for other "Legends" games in other regions, such as Johto, Kalos, or even their own fanmade regions, and coming up with regional variants of existing starters and other Pokémon.
  • How will the protagonist and Ingo get back to their time period? The game never resolves this plot point even after the confrontation with Volo, Giratina and Arceus, leading to fans trying to come up with ideas for how to return them to their own time.
• Fanon: It's a common headcanon that the protagonist is same one from Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, sent back in time by Arceus some time after saving the world from Cyrus. Another popular headcanon is that the protagonist is the professor's assistant (so, whichever character you didn't choose) from that game.
• Fashion-Victim Villain: Volo's Evil Costume Switch consists of him changing into a toga/kimono hybrid, and styling his hair like Arceus' head, which emphasizes just how insane and obsessed with the godly Pokémon he is. The best part is that the protagonist can dress just like him after capturing Arceus!
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • While it did get some flack from said fanbase for visual comparisons prior to release, fans of the Xenoblade Chronicles series have taken a shine to Legends: Arceus. This is because, for starters, the world has a very similar structure to the "mainline" Xenoblade games, being segmented but offering wide open areas to walk around and explore as well as secret side areas with rewards. But most of all, Legends: Arceus handles the series' monsters in a near-identical fashion to how Xenoblade handles its enemies, having Pokémon with different behaviors such as staying docile until provoked or chasing and attacking the player on sight, having different Pokémon appear not only in different environments but also according to time of day and weather, and larger, stronger versions of common Pokémon freely mixed in with smaller, common ones. It's to the point that some speculated that Monolith Soft was involved with the game prior to release, though they ultimately do not appear in the credits. It helps that both franchises are owned by Nintendo and featured in Super Smash Bros. and that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a mon system of its own, in a sense, via the Blades.
  • Legends: Arceus fans tend to get along really well with Pokémon Mystery Dungeon fans, due to the fact that both involve the protagonist getting sent to a world filled with Pokémon with a mission to fulfill and similar plot progressions, twists, and tone.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Catching strong Pokémon typically involves slowly stalking them, utilizing cover to stay hidden, baiting them into position with food, and then hitting them with a back attack. Sticky Globs take out 90% of that challenge, by allowing the player to just run up to a Pokémon and chuck balls of gunk until they're stunned and then casually run behind them for a cheap back attack. In the event they escape the ball, just stun them again! And it works just as well on Alpha Pokémon as anyone else, including the extra-powerful Level 85 Alpha Garchomp. While any of the stunning items are good, Sticky Globs have the advantage of being craftable and purchasable in shops to stockpile a ton of them.
  • Should be expected that Arceus itself is a truly powerful monster, but this game takes it to a new level with the Legend Plate. It's a key item that makes Arceus change its type right before it uses the Judgement move. Arceus will choose a type based on what will make Judgement do the most damage while putting Arceus in the best defensive position (like changing to Dark-type against a Psychic to be super-effective and immune), truly giving Arceus the power of every type there is. The only drawback? Catching Arceus requires completing the entire Pokédex except mythics like Shaymin, meaning there's not much left to do by the time you catch it.
  • The Ride Braviary is basically an instant "you can't catch me" button. He lets the player fly high above any of the game's five zones and survey them from above risk-free, and can also take them to practically any point on the map if they fly from a high enough point. But furthermore, you can summon him right away to escape any wild Pokémon encounter and eventually lose aggro, even if your character is on the brink of passing out; if trying to deal with a horde or other stationary encounter, the player can simply fly away to somewhere safe, wait to replenish their health and reset aggro, and then fly back to the encounter spot again. Also worth noting is that, unlike the other Ride Pokémon, Alpha Pokémon's roars can't knock you off Braviary and stagger you.
  • Any moderately fast Pokémon who can learn and master priority attacking moves (Quick Attack, Shadow Sneak, Aqua Jet, etc.) gives a massive advantage in battle. You can get 3-5 extra turns using the "Agile" version of the move as you whittle away at the opponents health with each hit, getting another turn after, and then still use your final turn for a different move, a switch out, or to use an item that normally would have spent your turn anyway.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Thanks to having a rather flat and specific collision box, it's possible for a player to stand on top of a Bibarel that's in the water. This led to players making Bibarel bridges to access areas they were not meant to before obtaining Basculegion.
  • Receiving a Pokémon in trade counts as having caught it... even if it's a Pokémon you traded away and immediately had traded back to you. In theory, you and a buddy could max out the "Number Caught" research tasks by just trading the same Pokémon back and forth for a while; which is an Arceus-send for rare spawn or distortion-exclusive Pokémon. This also takes size into account for "Small/Large/Light/Heavy Specimen" tasks, though unfortunately not time of day.
  • Running circles around Irida in the Pearl Settlement causes an item of clothing on an NPC or a fragment of a tent in the distance to grow bigger and bigger until it fills the whole screen, though what is actually enlarged depends on the angle. Approaching the enlarged object simply causes it to go back to normal size.
  • Iron Chunks sometimes don't respawn once you're out on the field if you load in. However, if you know exactly where they are, it's possible to grab them while they're invisible by leaning the camera, and it counts as part of that number in your Iron Chunk count.
  • Whenever an Alpha Pokémon breaks out of a Pokéball, their heads will start bobbing as if they're headbanging to the music. And that's if they're aware of your presence.
  • Completing the Daybreak update gives you an additional way to access the Pokémon storage pastures by talking to Ingo. For whatever reason, the game doesn't properly update how many grit items you should get for releasing Pokémon if you never fully exit the Dialogue Tree. This means you can release many high-leveled Pokémon, followed by releasing Pokémon one at a time, and get a bunch of Grit Rocks from every single Pokémon you can use to strengthen your team or sell for P3,000 each.
• Goddamned Bats: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • Lord Electrode is extremely annoying due to the fact that it just won't let up on exploding, and Voltorb are constantly spawning around the arena to bother you even more. It wouldn't be nearly so difficult if it just wasn't so trigger happy.
  • Lord Avalugg isn't overly difficult, but his battle requires long periods of dodging and constant moving before he tires out automatically, which can become tedious and annoying.
  • If you're trying to catch them, any Alpha Pokémon that has Rest, a recoil move, or both. It'll waste your turns restoring itself to full health every time you bring it down, and/or every now and then will perform its recoil move and end up fainting itself before you have a chance to catch it. The Alpha Infernape on Obsidian Fieldlands' Ramanas Island is especially notorious for this, as it has both Rest and Flare Blitz, which can't be blocked by bringing out a Ghost-type unlike Double-Edge (which many other Alphas have).
  • A number of post-game legendaries can heal themselves to complicate capturing them, but Cresselia has it the worst with its new Secret Art, Lunar Blessing, which heals it, cures its status conditions, and obscures it so that attacks are more likely to miss. A Steel-type can wall its attacking moves, but it still takes a while for it to use up all 10 PP of Lunar Blessing.
  • The Forces of Nature can be particularly obnoxious with their tendency to run away from the player at high speed while pelting you with attacks from long range, along with packing the usual barrier that has to be broken before you can actually battle them. Granted, actually battling them is a comparatively simple affair; it's catching up to them to do it that's the problem.

H - M

• He Panned It, Now He Sucks!: Several IGN outlets from around the world came under fire for their low scores given to Legends: Arceus, especially since many of these outlets gave the divisive Pokémon Sword and Shield much higher scores:
  • IGN Italia sparked a good amount of backlash with its 5/10 review, as most critics and long-time fans view Legends: Arceus as one of the better Pokémon games in an otherwise divisive period of the franchise. This is especially notable in that they gave Pokémon Sword and Shield a much better score of 7.7/10 when Arceus is much better-reviewed by fans. Likewise, IGN France similarly came under fire for its 6/10 review.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During the climax of this game, the cast is briefly sidetracked to mine some Origin Ore to make the Origin Ball and catch Origin Palkia/Dialga. Later in 2022, Xenoblade Chronicles 3 would have the party run erratically around the world to collect enough Origin Metal to reach Origin. Even better, Legends Arceus is essentially Xenoblade Chronicles: The Pokémon Game. On top of that, the game had a plot twist of the two Queens turning out to be villainous Robot Me duplicates, which echoes the plot twist of the AI Professors that would happen in the other big Pokémon games of 2022.
• Ho Yay: The wild Shinx who runs to the player to comfort them runs back to two Luxio who are possibly its parents (could instead be siblings or just members of its pack). If you look closely and do the research, you'll find out that both Luxio are male. ^NoteRemember that the female Luxio has a shorter mane and exposed ankles.
• Hype Backlash: Given that Pokémon Legends: Arceus was praised by fans upon release and was (and is) considered by some to be "the only good Pokémon game on the Nintendo Switch", some backlash was inevitable. There are a number of fans who don't find the game to be nearly as good as it's made out to be, and point out that it still suffers from many of the technical issues and design flaws of other modern Pokémon games
• I Knew It!:
  • When the Found Footage trailer was revealed and fans were asked to guess who was there, some fans figured out that Hisuian Zorua and Zoroark were the new creatures due to the narrator claiming it was "7:06... no, 7:07"^note Dropping the time layout and the zeros, 76 and 77 were Zorua and Zoroark's placement in the Unova Pokedex
  • One Twitter user managed to correctly predict that the female protagonist's name would be Akari months before the character's name was officially revealed.
  • On December 8, 2021, the official Pokémon Twitter account posted an ARG of sorts involving Ball Guy requesting the audience to pick up all the Poké Balls he dropped on the Legends website. Since one of the Poké Balls that drops on the site has a chance of exploding, many people online assumed that this seemingly random event was teasing a Hisuian variant of Voltorb, which ended up being confirmed the following day.
  • Since the starter Pokémon's evolutions were absent in the game's trailers even though they're pre-existing Pokémon, people predicted that they would have regional forms or brand new evolutions. The "Hisuian. Final. Starter. Evolutions." video revealed that while they have the same mid-stage evolutions, their final evolutions are different.
  • The Arc Phone's reveal, which is rather unusual for a game set a few hundred years in the past, causes some fans to speculate that the player character is a modern-day kid who was actually sent back in time. It was eventually proven to be true.
  • A number of fans guessed that Kamado and/or Volo would be antagonists in some capacity while Cyllene would remain a heroic figure, as a twist on their descendants' roles in Diamond and Pearl (Kamado explicitly being Professor Rowan's ancestor and Cyllene being Cyrus' ancestor, while Volo is heavily implied to be Cynthia's ancestor). Sure enough, Kamado and Volo turned out to be the game's major human antagonists, while Cyllene stays heroic from start to finish.
  • Ever since Platinum, fans have speculated about Dialga and Palkia having their own Origin formes to match Giratina's. It was assumed that these forms would appear in a Diamond and Pearl remake, only to surprise everyone by revealing them here instead of in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl.
  • The Power Creep that Arceus suffered over the years since its debut (most notably by the likes of Mega Mewtwos, Mega Rayquaza, Ultra Necrozma and Zacian-Crowned) spawned a theory that the obtainable "Arceus" is not the true Arceus, or at least not its true form. The conclusion of ultimately final quest where "Arceus" joins the player's team after "defeating" it pretty much confirms that the "Arceus" you can use in battles is merely a fragment or avatar of the real Arceus, whose true form is highly likely to be incomprehensible by mortals and far, far more powerful than any other being in existence, even the aforementioned legendaries.
• Inferred Holocaust: Hisuian Pokémon exist in Hisui's uninhabited wilderness, but do not show up in any capacity in the modern-day Sinnoh (or at all, until the next series entry released). As a result, a common fan speculation at the time of PLA's launch day was that every Hisuian Pokémon went extinct between this game and Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, with the most obvious cause being the habitat destruction that would happen between PLA's untouched wilds and DPP's large cities. This ended up being proven wrong as far as total extinction goes with the Scarlet and Violet DLC, which showed that many of the Hisuian Pokémon survive in the modern day in places outside of Sinnoh. This still suggests that for one reason or another they were forced to leave Sinnoh or died out there.
• Love to Hate: Volo stands out as one of the most evil villains in the whole game series and is beloved because of this. Along with also having good looks and one of the most memorable battles in the game if not the entire franchise.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Magnificent Bastard: Cyllene, Captain of the Galaxy Team's Survey Corps, is responsible for the study of wild Pokémon. Upon meeting the player, she tests them by sending them out on a dangerous mission to collect wild Pokémon, with the threat of banishment and death in the wilderness, from Jubilife Village in the event of failure. Once the player passes, Cyllene regularly sends them out to research wild Pokémon. When Commander Kamado banishes the player, Cyllene discreetly aids them against his orders and eventually reinstates them into the Galaxy Team.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Ingo quickly attained this staus among fans for a number of reasons, chief among them being his new artwork, which downplays most of his cartoonish aspects and overall makes him look much more serious, and his ability to more impressively use his Pokémon than most other characters in the game. The Daybreak update takes this even further by giving him two extra battles in the training grounds: one being Ingo's same team but ten levels higher, putting him at a higher level than the post-game final boss; and then after clearing that battle you can battle Ingo wielding three level 75 Alpha Pokémon ^noteKleavor, Wyrdeer, and Basculegion in a brutal 3 vs 1 battle, as all three Alphas get the 'Wild Might' stat buff that wild Alpha Pokémon have.
  • Ingo's brother Emmet has received this treatment despite only getting a passing mention within the game, with quite a few memes spawning of him fighting Arceus with his bare hands as payback for taking his brother from him.
  • Ursaluna got this reaction despite not appearing in a game with a PvP mode for over a year after the game's launch. Between its typing, stats, access to the new powerful (and accurate) move Headlong Rush and Dummied Out Guts ability, fans preemptively dubbed Ursaluna as one of the best Pokémon to use, especially in competitive play, being one of the very few Pokémon capable of OHKOing the annoyingly good Toxapex. Come the arrival of Pokémon HOME for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, it lived up to the hype as a brutal force not just because of this, but also for its Facade boosted by Guts and Terastallization, either slaying or heavily denting even Pokémon that resist it. The fact it also made gimmicky Trick Room strategies viable in Singles, as well as its access to Belly Drum, have further escalated its reputation, even being an extremely powerful mon for Tera Raids.
  • The Player Character themselves. Due to the fact that, over the course of your adventure, Akari/Rei will repeatedly survive dangerous encounters with aggressive wild Pokémon (and the reality that sometimes you'll take too much damage and need a search-and-rescue team to respawn you at a campsite), their survival skills often get exaggerated into, say, fighting Ursaring with their bare hands.
• Memetic Loser: Regigigas already had it pretty bad because of its Slow Start ability sending it plummeting down from "godlike titan" to "ineffective wimp." Its status as this is exacerbated in this game, as it turns out that even in a game without any other Abilities, the developers bent the programming specifically to make sure it still has Slow Start, which makes it even more pathetic given that PLA doesn't use a "Restricted Pokémon" list for the Eternal Battle Reverie like some other postgame battle facilities and that you can only obtain it after Dialga or Palkia, which is just as powerful with no drawbacks. At least having an Ability in this game makes it special in some way.
• Memetic Mutation: See the main memes page for the series.
• Memetic Psychopath:
  • Despite having two 4x weaknesses, Paras has gained a reputation for being this due to how incredibly aggressive they are, and their tendency to spot the player from great distance.
  • Volo's Togepi is also getting this reputation in Fanon interpretations of its personality, especially in Tumblr. This mostly comes from joke explanations that the reason it had a high enough friendship with its Ax-Crazy trainer to evolve is because it is just as onboard with their plans, with some even saying it took delight in helping them carry out their plan. This isn't even particularly outlandish given that the series has had evil Togepi before.
• Moe:
  • Hisuian Goodra is a Shrinking Violet, whose animation has it retreat back into its shell with its head peeking out of it. On top of that it always has a sad look on its face which just makes you want to hug it to make it happy.
  • Rei and Akari are just as cute as their modern counterparts, and are the most expressive Pokémon protagonists yet, with tons of varied adorable facial expressions and reactions to everything that happens around them. Rei can even be customized into a Long-Haired Pretty Boy with a Samurai Ponytail, bringing BOTW!Link or Noah to mind.
• Moral Event Horizon: Volo crosses it when he orders Giratina to kill the Player Character. Keep in mind that this is well after several hours of the game in which Volo was friendly with the Player Character (who is a child) and even gave them aid and comfort after their exile from Jubilife Village. And now he feels absolutely nothing about taking their life when it suits him to do so.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Landing a back strike on a Pokémon is accompanied by a very satisfying plonking sound and controller vibration, and more often than not it's an indicator that your catch will go well.
  • Shiny Pokémon now appear in the overworld, so hearing their signature chime while randomly exploring is bound to make the player happy.

N - S

• Narm:
  • Game Freak put work into averting a cause of many previous cases of Narm by giving human character much more emotional range. But in regards to that emotional range, it can sometimes take a player out of the moment when their character reacts to something with a slack-jawed look of surprise, especially with how quickly their expression can change from normal to full gaped-mouth shock on a dime.
  • On the other hand, this unfortuately doesn't apply to the Pokémon. One particular example would be when the rival laments about how angry their Pikachu is with them, while the Pikachu itself still has the same default smile.
  • Dialga and Palkia's Origin Forms are meant to make them resemble Arceus. However, the way it's pulled off looks downright absurd, with Origin Dialga having spindly proportions and a large, blocky structure around the middle of its throat, and Palkia having its arms become forelegs detached from (what used to be) its shoulders and looking like an armless centaur, making them come across as botched, unnatural fusions a la Black/White Kyurem rather than the alleged "true forms" of the duo, though they do emphasize the duo's true nature as abstract Eldritch Abonimations related to Arceus itself.
  • Upon clearing the trials of the Lake Trio, they each give you one of their body parts...stored neatly inside a paper envelope, apparently.
  • It can be really hard to take evil Volo seriously thanks to his amazingly gaudy Arceus-styled hairdo and the similarities between his outfit and that of an Olympian god.
  • That stereotypical ghost-sound when a Pokemon like Haunter is in the general vicinity. It just sounds so... goofy.
• Newer Than They Think: Typhlosion displaying the flames on its neck during battle while otherwise idle. Many fans mistakenly believe this was something Typhlosion in Pre-Gen VI 3D appearances had going for them, ever since Pokémon Stadium 2; but in truth it only deployed the flames for certain attack animations. Typhlosion's neck flames were only perpetually out in the 2D games.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Many fans, at least in the West, were caught off-guard by Laventon mentioning that Pokémon shrinking and entering a Poké Ball is a property of Pokémon themselves, not something the Poké Ball does to the Pokémon. To say nothing of the move "Minimize", this fact has actually been mentioned offhand in several non-anime adaptations and a number of side materials dating back to the start of the franchise; from an official guidebook for Red and Green created by Game Freak themselves, to the Pocket Monsters: The Animation light novel, to early chapters of Pokémon Adventures. It is even mentioned in some post-game dialogue in Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, where Lucian has a chance of talking about an article explaining how Poké Balls work when approached in the Canalave Library^note though the English localization mistranslates the conversation, making it less clear that he's talking about Pokémon literally shrinking in self-defense, rather than just curling up, meaning this technically isn't even the first time it has been explicitly explained in the games themselves.
  • The idea of traversing a 3D open world of free-roaming Pokémon (some being aggressive to you, some not), being able to capture them outside of battle by just chucking a Poké Ball, and collecting items along the way for the purpose of crafting (including collecting Apricorns and iron for crafting Poké Balls) was first introduced in Pixelmon, a Minecraft mod that came out over 9 years prior to this game's release.
• Padding: The post-game quest to capture the Forces of Nature is often seen as this, coming at the absolute eleventh hour (after the fight with Volo and before being able to fight Arceus) and not having any plot relevance outside of introducing one completely new Pokémon and revealing a bit more about one of the human characters; otherwise, it's just an hour or two of hunting down some annoying captures before getting to fight the True Final Boss. It doesn't help that the Forces of Nature are a Base-Breaking Character group, and even those who do like them feel that they're very out of place in Hisui.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Trying to catch Pokémon while surfing in water is the bane of many players that are trying to complete the Dex. For starters, since you are always riding on Basculegion, you cannot sneak up on the Water Pokémon (unless you use a Smoke Bomb) meaning you will almost always be spotted (which is annoying considering some Pokémon have the task of them being caught without being spotted). There are some that are docile, but others such as Basculin that will flee immediately before you can even have a chance to ready a Poké Ball at it. And that presents the second main problem is that a lot of Pokémon are very hard to see across the water. This is especially true for Pokémon that can blend in the water such as Remoraid and Tentacool and most players find themselves being spotted by a Pokémon without even knowing where they are at first, and then find themselves taking hits from Water-type moves. Even if the player is able to get close to a Pokémon in the water, throwing the actual Poké Ball at it is a chore by itself. As stated above, you cannot sneak up on a Pokémon as you're constantly riding on Basculegion which makes lining up shots even more difficult than it should be. Then there is the fact that the Poké Balls can very easily miss the Pokémon even if you're right up beside it. Because of this, it is often recommended to try and engage the Pokémon in battle and try to catch it the traditional way.
  • Organizing, searching, moving between, or really anything to do with the Pokémon in your Fields is much more tedious than necessary. There are no options to "sort" your Pokémon (by name, level, Pokédex order would all be very helpful) despite it being a very easy function to have added, so if you're looking for something in particular, you need to use the search function which still doesn't directly find that species for you, merely turning the images of other Pokémon black and white while you search through each pasture. Additionally, while there is a "multi select" option to move the Pokémon, they won't just automatically fill available space unless you tab to the "All Pastures" screen. For example, if you select four Pokémon in a row and try to move them to another pasture where a line has space for three of them, the fourth won't simply wrap to the next line.
  • Unlike in previous games where experience points are granted once the opposing Pokémon has fainted, in this game experience is only granted once the entire battle is over. This is especially annoying in a battle against a trainer with multiple Pokémon or multiple Wild Pokémon at once, who due to the overhauled damage mechanic are more or less guaranteed to score tons of damage to your Pokémon or faint them. Thus preventing them from gaining experience points regardless they manage to faint a Pokémon in the battle.
  • There's no way to affect the chances of Space-Time Distortions appearing. The only option is to go to the area where the Pokémon you're searching for appears in distortions and then just...wait. There's a ten percent chance for a distortion to spawn every five minutes, increasing incrementally until it's guaranteed for one to spawn after 40 minutes. Going into the menu or getting into combat pauses the timer and changing the time of day at camp or going back to town resets the timer, so your options of passing the time while waiting are limited. Additionally, there are certain rare weather events that prevent the formation of a distortion and reset the timer automatically.
  • Despite the fact that battling multiple Pokémon at once is a common occurrence, there are no moves that hit more than one target. Even moves that normally would don't function like that anymore. While not that bad during wild battles, it can be a pain during Trainer battles. Especially if one the opposing mons has a debuff attack.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Compared to the fairly low difficulty curves of most mainline Pokémon games, Legends: Arceus can be surprisingly rough for players expecting the same old curbstomp parade. The level curve for the main questline is balanced around the player going off and training their Pokémon by filling out the Pokédex and doing sidequests to some degree; attempting to barrel through the main questline as quickly as possible will likely render your Pokémon severely underleveled, and without taking the time to grind for Ranks, you won't be able to offset this by catching higher level Pokémon, as they just won't obey you. The under-the-hood rebalance to the stat system also means that type advantage now matters just as much as (if not more than) levels, to the point where unless you are massively overleveled (a 50 level difference is a pretty safe bet), it's next to impossible to One-Hit KO a mon with a resisted attack, making type matchups that much more important and making the old One-Man Party strategy common to Pokémon extremely unreliable. That opposing Trainer with a single Pokémon looks much less like a pushover when, despite being seven levels under you, it still one-shots your starter... and under the new battle system, goes on to take advantage of Styles to potentially repeat the act with your next Pokémon (or two) before you can even register that you're on the other side of the usual curbstomp.
• Shocking Moments:
  • The game's reveal itself, as the idea of an official, fully open-world Pokémon game had long been a wish of the fanbase but had come to be viewed as a pipe dream (even though it turned out to not quite be fully open world).
  • Likewise, the fact that it's a prequel took everyone by surprise, being a first for a mainline Pokémon game.
  • While previous generations set the precedent for new Legendaries and Mythicals being introduced and added into the games in the middle of a generation, Legends: Arceus surprised fans by giving us new regular Pokémon in the form of both regional forms and full-fledged evolutions.
  • For the very first time in the mainline series, wild Pokémon can actually attack the player. "Blacking out" is no longer the player character safely getting to a Pokémon Center after losing a fight, but explicitly getting injured themselves and losing a chunk of items after a disastrous encounter and needing to recuperate at a base camp alongside their Pokémon.
  • A Normal/Ghost Pokémon (Hisuian Zorua/Zoroark). Fighting/Ghost, the only STAB-type combination that no current Pokémon can resist nor be immune to, no longer holds that feat; made even worse that the STAB combination does nothing to the Normal/Ghost typing.
  • Then there's the very beginning. First of all, Arceus is telling the player to catch every single Pokémon rather than the Professor (who you only meet after falling from the space-time rift), and then there's the whole thing about falling out of said space-time rift.
  • Volo being Evil All Along. Turns out he's been working with Giratina the whole time. In particular, Giratina's Victory Fakeout and subsequent Theme Music Powerup to turn into its Origin Forme in Volo's battle is commonly regarded as one of the single most memorable moments in the entire series.
  • Some of the big storytelling turns are given heavy enough foreshadowing to predict, but perhaps the biggest narrative shock is actually one of the lesser twists in the game: the humble, stooped-over mochi chef Beni is revealed during your trek to the final battle to actually be a highly agile Blood Knight ninja enforcing for Commander Kamado, and serving as a pretty formidable roadblock to reaching him. Even the player character has no idea how to react.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • The game's rendering engine is ambitious, but the draw distances can cause trouble for the player, as well as graphical bugs from time to time:
    • The game's rendering engine operates on a sort of hierarchy, where major landmarks are always rendered, but as you get closer, smaller landmarks like big rocks, trees, and so on will then render, then the NPCs, and then the minor landscape features like grass. The grass you can hide in has been noted on several reviews to cause trouble when trying to capture Pokémon you need to be stealthy to get in range of, because it would always render too close to the Mon.
    • In addition, sometimes the rendering just doesn't complete, and some sections of terrain will appear half-rendered, with a transparent effect as though the terrain in question was much further in the distance.
    • Due to the way objects and NPCs are rendered, occasionally you will run into an issue where some things are properly rendered at one moment then go invisible the next, and won't reappear until you're much closer. This mostly has to do with how things that are just on the edge of the sphere that determines maximum radius might suddenly include something that takes higher precedence, meaning a lower-priority object that was already on-screen now has to be unloaded until the new one finishes loading in. One of the more noticable instances of this is how Simona, the Merit Point trader, can be approached very closely from behind her stall but not actually appear until you move in front of it.
    • Because of the sheer size of some of the Alphas (notably the Electivire you can get in the Coronet Highlands), the standard battle distance has the camera spawn inside the Pokémon during the "I choose you" animation. This causes the Pokémon to be invisible during what should be their opening battle flourish.
  • Some Pokémon get animated at a lower framerate if they are far away, something especially noticable with winged Pokémon: the wide movements of their wing flapping looks very obviously choppily animated at a distance, and with many of them flying high in the sky (or in the case of Beauregard's Dustox, is in an area the player frequents), they suffer the most from this issue.
  • The Glowing Eyes of Doom effect that alpha Pokémon have is applied to any Pokémon that is an alpha Pokémon, with Zubat being the only exception. This even goes for Pokémon such as Snorlax, so now you have one with glowing red spots in its face that have nowhere to go. Also notable is Gastrodon, which has three eyes, yet only has two glowing red eyes when encountered as an alpha.
    • Sometimes, talking to some NPCs at night causes them to have what looks like Glowing Eyes of Doom too.
  • While battle animations have been vastly improved for the most part, most Pokémon still suffer from having only one physical and one special attack animation each, meaning that Lucario, for example, will perform a roundhouse kick when using other physical moves such as the elemental punches or Bite/Crunch.
  • In some areas, the map geometry seems malformed. A rock in the eastern part of Avalugg's Legacy in the Alabaster Icelands floats above the snow it's supposed to rest on. A cliff's rock texture near the Choice Dumplings NPC in the Coronet Highlands appears to be visibly stretched, as if a barcode was made from it. And generally, weird, blocky, jagged edges can be spotted around cliff ledges across multiple regions.
  • Battling in dark caves often results in trash pixels becoming highly visible around Pokémon models every time they move, as can easily be observed in Wayward Cave. A similar effect can happen when objects land in a body of water.
• Spiritual Adaptation:
  • Legends: Arceus can be considered as Golden Kamuy meets Pokémon Mystery Dungeon and Monster Hunter due to the concept of exploring the region of Sinnoh back when it's still filled with nature and wilderness and its story-telling resembling that of the Mystery Dungeon games, Explorers especially. The gameplay also resembles that of the Monster Hunter games in general, to the point that Legends: Arceus can be considered the Pokémon equivalent of Monster Hunter: World for its attempt to reinvent and revitalize its series in a similar way, along with some minor details specific to World such as each area being open and seamless and sidequests to build additional base camps.
  • Alpha Pokémon are basically the Pokémon franchise's answer to Unique Monsters from the Xenoblade Chronicles series.
• Spiritual Antithesis: Pokémon Legends: Arceus can be seen as one to Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee!. Both of them are mainline Pokémon games released in the middle of their respective generations that diverge from the headlining entries of said generations (Pokémon Sun and Moon and Pokémon Sword and Shield) by changing around features, game structure, gimmicks and Pokémon stats to essentially reinvent the Pokémon formula. However, while all three games are meant to be enjoyed by all ages, their approaches are completely different. LGPE opts for a more beginner-friendly approach meant to bring over players from Pokémon GO and reboots the original games into a more streamlined experience, provides a linear single-player campaign with generally easy battles, and cuts off all Pokémon from later generations except for Meltan and Melmetal. PLA, meanwhile, leans more towards veteran players with its higher difficulty and more open structure, diverges completely from the established Pokémon formula, serves as a prequel to Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, the final game before Pokémon Black and White soft rebooted the franchise, and still prominently features some (but not all) Pokémon from other generations, including later ones.

T - Z

• Tainted by the Preview:
  • Shortly after the reveal trailer, portions of the fandom have accused and criticized Pokémon for copying elements from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Ironically, "Pokémon: Breath of the Wild" was what many other portions of the fanbase had been asking for.
  • The mere release date (less than a year after the first trailer) was met with excitement (because it was so soon) and worries (for the same reason), with many people wishing that Game Freak take their time and shift the date.
  • Following the announcement trailer, the visuals of Legends: Arceus came under fire similarly to Sword and Shield before it; particularly the textures of the environments and perceived issues with framerate. While sections of the fanbase continue to feel the visuals are disappointing (or at least underwhelming), the smoother gameplay performance in the second trailer managed to alleviate concerns amongst just as many others within the community.
• That One Attack:
  • While Lord Avalugg is heavily argued to be a Best Boss Ever kind of battle, his rapid fire icicle attack can be hell on those not ready for it, as it requires near perfect timing to dodge every single one of them lest you take a hit or two. And if you've already taken damage before then and you get hit early on, it's probably back to the start for you.
  • Shadow Force, used by Giratina in the final fight with Volo, is a powerful STAB attack that also obscures Giratina immediately after use, giving it a significant evasion buff. It hits very hard unless your Pokémon resist it, and the evasion buff makes it harder to counterattack Giratina (who is already very tanky) after if RNG isn't in your favor; once Giratina Turns Red, the move gets lowered accuracy but deals even more damage, letting it more often than not punch holes right through your already weakened team. The worst part is that not only does Giratina love to spam it, it has a tendency to immediately open its second phase with it using its free turn. Dragon Pulse and Dark Pulse will be your best friends in this fight.
  • In general, moves that obscure the user after use. Intended to be the replacement for both protection moves and evasion buffs/accuracy debuffs, they combine the most annoying aspects of both worlds, putting battles into the hands of Arceus whenever an enemy uses them (unless you have moves that bypass accuracy debuffs on hand). Not helping things is that many of these moves either deal decent damage or have a strong secondary effect (i.e. Shelter increases the user's defenses at the same time). The worst offender by far is Lunar Blessing, Cresselia's new Secret Art. Aside from obscuring the user, it also combines the effects of Recover and Refresh into one overpowered attack. Lunar Blessing single-handedly turns Cresselia into a Goddamned Boss.
• That One Boss:
  • Arcanine, Lord of the Isles. The arena you fight him in heavily restricts the player's movement due to its odd shape, which can make dodging his charges quite difficult at times. Furthermore, near the end of each of his attack cycles, he will create a patch of fire on the ground that causes area-of-effect damage which costs a lot of health to get through, which has the potential to make dodging his attacks even harder. In order to tire him out, the player must wait until he starts charging up an attack with five fireballs, and throw one balm at him for each fireball to make them disappear before he uses his ultimate attack; if you and he are on opposite sides of said fire patch, then you have two options: Make a mad dash through the fire and hope you have enough health to make to the lord (counter-productive for obvious reasons), or go for a difficult max-range throw with little room for error.
    • The arena size issue is made worse if you happen to bring with you a Pokémon too big for the arena, such as many of the larger Alpha Pokémon- which outright refuse to come out of their Poké Balls. The time you spend trying desperately to send them out against Arcanine will be enough for it to recover from getting stunned and start attacking you again.
  • Electrode, for the simple reason that it just won't stop attacking and its moves are erratic and give relatively little warning. You have to be constantly moving, and you'd best hope you don't walk into the path of one of its random energy blasts.
• That One Sidequest: Some of the quests that involve you catching specific Pokémon or finishing certain Pokédex entries take the cake for being Feebas in Generation III levels of irritating:
  • The early quest "Big Buizel, Little Buizel" tasks you to find a Buizel that is at least 2'8" tall. The problem is that the biggest normal Buizels are 2'9" max. It's possible to catch several dozen Buizel that are classified as heavy specimens but have none of them be tall enough to pass the height requirement set by the NPC. Due to this, it's often easier to find him an Alpha Buizel, which have a guaranteed 4'2" size and can be easily spotted, but these only spawn after calming Noble Kleavor down early in the story and at a chance that's still relatively rare, making this a Randomly Drops quest.
  • "To Bloom or Not to Bloom" tasks you to complete Cherrim's Pokédex entry. Cherrim only appears in shaking trees — but so can Combee or Burmy, who are more common while Cherrim is very rare and only in select locations. While its pre-evo Cherubi can be evolved into Cherrim, its location is the exact same as Cherrim and it's still considered rare. Not helping matters is that on release there was a bug that drops Cherrim's catch rate to zero when it transforms into daylight form, so if you wanted to catch it during the day, which is required to complete its tasks in the Pokédex, you had to either evolve Cherubi during the day or make sure the weather wasn't sunny, such as overcast or rainy.
  • "The Taste of Honey" tasks you to find three different Combee from different areas. Annoying enough, but the last one comes from Ramanas Island, a place where they don't normally spawn outside of a shaking tree, which has no guarantee of actually happening when you get there. And that area is remote, so if there are no Combee, back to camp to hoof it again.
  • In "Battling with Pachirisu", one of the Security Corps members, Ren, wants to see a Pachirisu in battle, and figures you're the expert, so he challenges you to use a Pachirisu, and nothing else, against an URSARING. Because it gains a Ground-type evolution in the form of Ursaluna, it gains a few Ground-type moves in its arsenal. And it's a high-enough level that it knows Bulldoze, which is super-effective against your Electric-Type. Even if you acquire the Alpha Pachirisu in the Crimson Mirelands, prepare for a rough battle.
  • "Incarnate Forces of Hisui". Ordinarily, it wouldn't be too bad. Catch Thundurus, Tornadus, Landorus, and afterwards Enamorus. They're tricky to sneak up on and get into battle but a fair challenge. The problem is the former two only show up during specific weathers, thunderstorms and blizzards respectively. And they're not common weathers leaving you totally at the mercy of RNG. Hope you enjoy potentially spending some time doing nothing but resting if you want to catch them anytime soon. Even getting to that point could prove frustrating though as the instructions regarding what area they are found in and what weather is needed are only stated in one scene and cannot be referenced afterward via talking to Cogita or looking at the quest description, meaning unless you have a good memory or wrote the instructions down you'll need pure chance or searching online to simply figure out in which map to look for the trio. Further aggravating this issue is the fact that they run on sight, have to be stunned by a thrown object to break down their shields to actually be fought, and always hang around Alpha Pokémon meaning an Alpha Gyarados could heavily damage you while you're trying to catch up to Thundurus. Making this even worse is the nature of two of the areas where you chase them—Thundurus is chased over water where Basculegion's controls can prove difficult, and Enamorus is chased over a bog dotted with patches of mud that restrict your movement. Oh, and Enamorus's tornados reverse your controls, so god help you if there are any Alphas nearby.
  • The Request "The Sea's Legend" is a severe case of Guide Dang It!; it leaves you with virtually no clues to solve the mystery aside from a book called "The Sea's Legend" which you can't find ingame despite the vague hint that it exists somewhere. Where can you find this book? The Canalave Library in Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. So without a guide, you essentially have to jump between games to learn what you need to do. However, if you do find this book in the future, the story is rather straightforward with what you actually have to do, with the only issue being that one Pokémon required for it has an obscure evolution method (though there is a single chance to catch it during the main story).
  • The "Gone Astray..." Request series have you look for Wanda in a particular major area of the game, starting from the Crimson Mirelands, with only Ursaluna's tracking to help you. The problem is that Ursaluna can only pick up on Wanda's scent if you're in fairly close proximity to her AND if Ursaluna is facing in her general direction. This means that in most of the area, you'll just be roaming about aimlessly trying to find where Ursaluna's scent radar turns blue. There are also five of these Requests, one for each major area.
  • Some of the research tasks can be tedious, especially ones that ask you to do a non-trivial task repeatedly. For example: Yanma has a research task that requires capturing it in the evening, a rather short time period that lasts about a minute of real time so chances are by the time you've woken up in the evening and tracked one down it'll have passed into night. What's more to fill it to completion requires that player do it 20 times.
  • "Eerie Apparitions In the Night," because clearly collecting the 100 Zygarde Cells and Cores in Pokémon Sun and Moon wasn't aggravating enough. This Request requires you to gather a total of 107 wisps scattered across Hisui in every major area plus Jubilife Village. It's not helped by the wisps' visibility being drastically reduced during the day, meaning you have to either wait for nightfall or scour each area very thoroughly, and even then, have fun finding that last lousy wisp without a guide and a checklist. Vessa will at least remind you how many wisps are in each area, giving you an idea of where to look... but once you get down to the last one or two per area, tracking them down can still be infuriating. Not even the Massive Mass outbreaks introduced in the Daybreak update can help you bypass collecting wisps, as Spiritomb is ineligible to appear in outbreaks until the quest is completed.
  • "Setting Up the Coastlands Camp" requires you to find an NPC to set up a new base camp in the Cobalt Coastlands. However, the quest marker is worse than useless here since it just points you back to the NPC you got the Request from, and there is no hint for where to even start looking, which most likely translates into you having to do lots and lots of tedious searching across the whole darn area. At least you're not missing out on much if you get too fed up with this one to complete it, since the reduced walking distance from having an extra base camp can easily be made up for using Ride Pokémon.
  • The Daybreak update introduced one more Balloon-Popping minigame sidequest, requiring you to pop 40 balloons in the Coronet Highlands, and it is by far the most infuriating of the bunch. A lot of the balloons are airborne, and they have such wonky hitboxes that you have to summon Braviary at the absolute peak of Wyrdeer's/Basculegion's jump, as well as, counterintuituvely, don't dash with Braviary; turns out Braviary loses altitude disproportionately fast when dashing, so what you think is a time-saving method will end with you flying under a lot of the balloons. And there's no way to lift Braviary back up, so those are just gone. If you forgo most of the airborne ones, you have to be absolutely 100% perfect in popping any others, which is easier said than done when at least a third of them are constantly moving. The saving grace is that the reward for each decent run is Aguav Berries, which are used to get info on the new Massive Mass Outbreaks—you'll end up getting a lot of berries trying to complete this sidequest.
  • Some of the Path of Solitude sidequests can be deceptively tricky, since there's bound to be one of them with a Pokémon you never gave a second thought to and now have to train up, either with grit items or exp candies. It's also never as simple as "hit it until it faints"; the Eevee quest for example pits you against a Zoroark and mandates that you Mimic its Snarl, but if it decides to lead with Nasty Plot, you might as well reset.
• Theiss Titillation Theory: Adaman's loose neckline looks like it could blow open and expose his pecs at the slightest breeze.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The game is lacking a vital feature of Pokémon mainline games from the very beginning: a multiplayer mode, especially PvP Pokémon battles, although other games such as Pokémon GO have been able to achieve success in spite of (initially) lacking such a feature.
  • In spite of the introduction of Agile and Strong style moves, the battle system has been considerably thinned out, with the vast amount of moves failing to return, buff moves like Calm Mind and Bulk Up being changed to temporary and limited to +1, and many moves being reduced in power and/or accuracy (for example, Outrage is now 90 base power and 85 accuracy, making Dragon Claw preferable in many cases due to its perfect accuracy and better secondary effect).
  • The Daybreak Update removed the ability to reset outbreak seeds by soft resetting, making getting shinies from mass outbreaks a lot more RNG-based since the usual method now just ends the outbreak.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • The Miss Fortune sisters appear to be opposed to every major group in Hisui, which could have made for some interesting interactions after the player gets exiled from the Galaxy Team and can't turn to either clan for aid; however, they never rise to any sort of relevance during that part of the game. Additionally, Clover and Coin's backstories are only barely fleshed out, and Charm's backstory is completely unexplored, giving us no proper explanation as to why they became dissatisfied with the clans and the Galaxy Team.
  • While the cast are generally well-liked, several lament how Barry, or at least an Ambiguously Related ancestor of him, did not make an appearance in the game and feels it's a missed opportunity to not include him, given that he's the rival in DPPt.
  • Similarly, Jupiter is the only one of the major Galactic characters to not have an obvious possible ancestor; Cyrus has Cyllene, Mars has Arezu, and Saturn has Coin.^note Unless one counts Melli due to the Skuntank...though he has far more visual resmblance to Lucian than Jupiter.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: After the premise of the Time Rift bringing over the protagonist and Ingo from the current timeline to Hisui, as well as bringing up numerous times how they must be very scared, missing their loved ones and wanting to return to their current time, the game abruptly ends without resolving this plot point even after the protagonist defeats Volo and Giratina (who were responsible for the Time Rift), completes the Pokedex and confronts Arceus, the Pokemon who tasked them with the mission in the first place, in the final battle. This is especially bad for Ingo given that we know he has a twin brother in his original debut game.
• Ugly Cute: Ursaluna's dopey expression is oddly adorable to many fans, even when it's attacking. Additionally, the Ride Ursaluna does an endearing celebratory dance when it finds a hidden item.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The game has a large number of food pickups and craftables that can be thrown to attract and distract wild Pokémon, and each species has specific preferences. Unfortunately, most of the system goes overlooked because berries also attract Pokémon when thrown, and they work equally well on every species, can restore party Pokémon in a pinch, and take up less space than carrying around multiple types of food and cake-lures. While favored food items can increase the catch rate of a Pokémon, the same applies to Razz Berries, which aren't uncommon at all.
  • Scatter Bangs are used to scare Pokémon and make them move away from a spot. Their usage is limited compared to attracting Pokémon with berries, and they have no effect if the target can see the player, meaning they can't be used to shoo something that's already attacking. Most players only carry then around for completing easy research tasks on a few species.
  • Being able to use certain items that normally need to be held while trading to evolve Pokémon directly ends up being a lot less impactful due to many of the Pokémon they evolve into being present and obtainable in the wild (often as very powerful Alpha versions, no less). While certain Pokémon are not obtainable outside of using these items, it's often less of a hassle to simply catch them directly than hoping for the relevant items to drop or farming the Lost and Found to buy them for Merit Points.
• Unexpected Character:
  • The choice of starters from the game revealed in the first trailer (Rowlet, Cyndaquil, and Oshawott) are not only not from Sinnoh, but are each from different regions to boot.
  • Oshawott especially was a surprise to be chosen. While Rowlet and Cyndaquil are the most popular starters of their respective regions, Oshawott is not the most popular of the Unova starters (at least in its first stage). So it being picked over more popular Water-type starters such as Froakie and Mudkip was a bit of a headscratcher. It makes more sense in context, however; the starters were chosen based on the mythology of Hokkaido, which Sinnoh was based on. Otters were sacred to the Ainu people.
  • Standard Pokémon receiving new evolutions mid-generation was already a surprise to some, but even among those who theorized that it might happen, nobody expected Stantler, Ursaring, and especially Basculin and Qwilfish to be among them.
  • Speaking of Basculin, practically no one expected a new variation of it, the White-Striped form, to be introduced, especially since Male Basculegion (the only form of it revealed before release) bears a striking resemblance to Red-Striped Basculin.
  • Similarly, while new regional variants were hoped for by many, a regional form of Braviary was anticipated by very few. Some thought that it was either ignored or forgotten by Game Freak^note It actually appears in every mainline game except remakes since its release, but is always version exclusive, and shows up in numerous spin-off games, while other thought the heavily America inspired bird wouldn't make sense in a Japanese setting^note Japan actually has a number of native species of eagle, and its regional form drops its American Indian and patriotic features for ones more directly taken from Ainu culture and the seldom-seen Steller's sea eagle..
  • With the game taking place in a past version of Sinnoh, nobody expected catching Pokémon Black and White's Forces of Nature to be a key stage in the postgame Legendary research, since they wouldn't be expected to show up at all in this region. And even if anybody caught on to the Four Gods theming of the Legendaries and thought something was missing, far fewer people would have guessed a fourth Force of Nature would debut, especially in this particular game.
  • With Sneasel already living in the modern Sinnoh region and already getting a Sinnoh evolution in Weavile, it was quite a shock to see the former gain a Hisuian variant and a new evolution, Sneasler, for that variant.
  • Of every Pokémon in the Hisuian Pokédex that isn't from the Sinnoh regional dex or isn't connected to a regional form/evolution, there are three families that weren't connected to any of these in any way: Paras/Parasect, Vulpix/Ninetales, and Spheal/Sealeo/Walrein. Even more shocking with Vulpix/Ninetales that their Alolan Forms can also be encountered in the game too (no Alolan variants of other Pokémon, including the Geodude family and Raichu, which the base forms are in the game, are encountered though).
  • Even with the player's status as a Fish out of Temporal Water (which was a First-Episode Twist), it would have been hard to predict that the same fate would also befall futuristic Pokémon, such as Porygon/Porygon2/Porygon-Z, Magnemite/Magneton/Magnezone, and Rotom's appliance forms (Rotom itself is surprisingly a natural species in Hisui).
  • Returning from Pokémon Black and White is Ingo, one of the Battle Subway Bosses, displaced from modern day Unova by the same time-space rift that brought the player back to the past and given Laser-Guided Amnesia. Strangely, his brother Emmet is not seen anywhere else, despite the two being inseparable in the previous installment. Most players' reaction to seeing him is to initially assume he's yet another Identical Grandparent until they're told that no, this is the one-and-only Ingo.
• Unfortunate Character Design: On Hisuian Decidueye's 3D model, the way some of its feathers are layered make it look like there's a hole in its body. This wouldn't be a problem in and of itself if the feathers (and hole) in question weren't positioned over its crotch area.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • You'd be forgiven for thinking Melli is female at first, with his long hair (down to his waist) and pretty face. It doesn't help that his gender isn't mentioned when you first meet him either.
  • Many fans find themselves confused on Volo's gender as well, likely not helped by his resemblance to Cynthia.
  • It's also fairly easy to mistake Cyllene for a man at first, due to the fact that she heavily resembles Cyrus.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The new evolution animation features an awesome swirling tornado rather than the usual ball of light, all to an epic drum beat.
  • The new animations for several moves due to the reworking of the turn system tend to be amazing, of special note is the new animation of Origin Forme Giratina's Shadow Force, where not only does it disappear, it immediately physically claws and tears open reality to strike the target.
  • Also of note are the updated animations for Hyper Beam, which now fires a massive laser that completely blows away the target, and Spatial Rend, which in full 3D is essentially the Pokémon equivalent of the Judgement Cut.
  • While subtle, each Pokémon has improved textures that make them look more detailed and realistic, such as Gyarados having scales and Wurmple having compound eyes.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Pokémon Legends: Arceus features a surprising difficulty spike from previous Pokémon entries and also has its characters frequently discuss the very real possibility of humans getting attacked and killed by Pokémon—a risk posed to the actual player character—which may catch some younger kids off guard if they're used to the lower stakes and easy difficulty of other entries. Some fans were surprised that the game didn't get an E10+ rating like the decidedly less scary Super Mario Odyssey.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: With the future of Hisui and the effects of the actual Japanese colonization of Hokkaido in mind, it's actually very easy to read an anti-colonial subtext in the game. Hisui is presented as a harsh yet beautiful land with an indigenous population^note Although despite being indigenous-coded, the Diamond and Pearl Clans were not the original inhabitants of Sinnoh, that being the Celestica people, the ancestors of Cogita and Volo. with a close connection to nature and the Noble Pokémon, which themselves are the direct descendants of the Pokémon companions of a legendary hero who managed to meet Arceus itself. By the time of the Sinnoh games however, the vast Hisuian wilderness has been largely tamed and developed, and most poignant of all, the regional variants and evolutions that the Noble Pokémon belonged to, as well as the Noble Pokémon themselves, are nowhere to be seen and possibly extinct. This can easily be read as commentary about how the colonization and development of Hisui into Sinnoh led to the extinction of multiple Pokémon species and severed the region of its living connections to the great myths of old. However, this is likely unintentional, given how little focus is given to the long-term effects of colonization and the game's neutrality towards its ethics. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet has also revealed that some of the Hisuian regional variants are still alive in the present day and even handwave some dex entries stating that they're usually found in very cold areas^note (though they're still all outside of Sinnoh, due to the nature of BDSP, giving the impression that they were all driven out of the region somehow).
• Win Back the Crowd: For a number of generations now, several players have gotten tired of the games' Strictly Formula approach, with criticisms coming to a head in Sword & Shield and Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl. However, the overhauled gameplay and improved features in Legends: Arceus have managed to win back most of the disillusioned fans, making them excited for future installments possibly incorporating the changes to the status quo introduced in Arceus and spreading optimism for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet despite its abrupt announcement after Arceus' release.
• The Woobie:
  • The player themselves, as they are thrown into another land against their will, and have to deal with a mistrustful village at the start along with wild Pokémon that will explicitly kill them if provoked. This is really played up later on when Kamado exiles them due to his paranoia. Emphasized by the expressiveness of the player character, meaning you can see their discomfort and distress in various situations.
  • An amnesiac Ingo. Not only does he not know why is he on Hisui, he has also forgot who he is, his brother Emmet, even his dear Chandelure. Always on the verge of almost remembering who he is, it's only after a battle with the player that he gets a faint remembrance of his past—but still not enough to get him back. Watching him do his poses, still use the same train-based lingo he used in Unova, and clinging to a clearly tattered coat as the only remnants of his old life is guaranteed to break your heart.

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