VideoGame A grand experiment with promising and worrying changes.
In many ways, this game is exactly what we've wanted: a new take on the Pokémon series after several games not changing enough. And I love a lot of the changes. But my biggest takeaway is that some aspects of the old ways are simply better and should be brought back alongside the new.
The biggest change is the ability to throw Poké Balls in real time to catch Pokémon without battling and to start battles on our own terms, as well as use your mons to interact with items instead of using HMs. The live-throwing mechanics prevent tedium and annoyance from previous games, as you start every battle and don't always have to waste time in a cutscene just to catch something. The tradeoff in making the player vulnerable to wild Pokémon works, but fainting might be too punishing with the items you end up dropping. Another change I like is how trade evolutions are no longer forced, with items being reworked and introduced to allow evolution with no trading. The battles being live on the map is a great change, and I loved the boss fights, which are mostly player-vs-boss dodging spectacles with small turn-based segments to get openings. I also think this game shows how unnecessary dual versions are—let's see them gone!
In many ways, though, the game is a lot harder and loses some fun factor. The battles feel stacked against any player who hasn't grinded for hours, since the battle system now allows enemy Pokémon to have multiple attacks per turn with a cooldown that makes prediction and planning much harder. It's so bad that letting a Pokémon faint just so the one you deploy next will get to move before being attacked is a legitimate strategic consideration. The attacks have also been pretty heavily changed, with some status conditions being altered and type advantages being massively boosted, enough that a mon's level almost feels useless as a form of defense. It didn't help that I felt like I could never find a Pokémon for a desired type that wasn't super-effective weak to a Pokémon it was chosen to be strong against due to one of the foe's types or moves striking back. Battling was very tricky for me, and while some of it's probably my fault, I know the game also increased the challenge beyond reasonable fun levels for me. Story reasons aside, the forced returns to base for inventory and mon shuffling made me miss the portable services from previous games, and the lack of breeding makes the game's completion challenge of filling the Pokédex more annoying than it should be.
The story of the game is nice enough, and uses its antagonists more effectively than Sword and Shield.
This game is a test run for a more open design. I want some of it to be used. Live catching and battles feel great, and some things are well streamlined. But the frustrating battle overhauls aren't something I can stomach for more than this test run, with the other gameplay inconveniences make it less fun.
VideoGame Flawed, but Promising
From a studio as renowned for playing it safe as Game Freak, Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a refreshing step in a new direction. It eschews the modern aesthetic and tried-and-tested format of Gyms and evil teams in favour of a setting where Pokémon are not yet well-understood or accepted, and more open-ended gameplay with an emphasis more on capturing and understanding Pokémon than battling with them. However, despite the welcome innovation, Game Freak has not managed to shake a few deeply-entrenched flaws with its game design, and the way this game is structured makes some of those flaws more evident.
In this review, I will be going through several aspects of this game's design, in approximate order of quality from best to worst.
Music: The Pokémon games have always had very memorable music, and this game is no exception. Many pieces are remixes of or contain references to other pieces (primarily from the Diamond & Pearl games), but put an exciting new spin on them, and consistently do an excellent job of setting the mood for a particular scene. This game is one of the only ones in this franchise with dynamically evolving music, which is particularly appreciated in pieces such as Jubilife Village and Noble Pokémon.
Gameplay: The approach to researching and capturing Pokémon in this game is consistently solid and engaging, providing a very welcome alternative to the "reduce health, add a status effect, throw a Poké Ball" method which has become rote in other main-series games. Learning positioning, timing, item usage and the different varieties of Pokémon behaviour makes capturing Pokémon a much more pleasantly involved experience, though even this cycle does become repetitive after a while. Additionally, battles feel much snappier and more fluid, due to a combination of faster animations, reduced text box lag, and the Combatant Cooldown System as opposed to Pokémon's usual Turn-Based Combat.
Worldbuilding: This game does an interesting job of describing a much wilder, less-tamed world than other main-series Pokémon games, steeped in folklore and enigmas. Many of the sidequests are focused around helping the populace to become more comfortable with Pokémon, and it's interesting to see how the evolution affects the people of Jubilife Village, as well as the structure of the village itself. However, much of this folklore and distrust is told rather than shown to the player; when Pokémon are so rarely shown being aggressive to anyone except the player, and the players rely so heavily on second-hand descriptions, the enigmatic feel falls rather flat.
Character Design: The Hisuian variants of known Pokémon are consistently interestingly designed, bringing a new coat of life to many relatively-overlooked Pokémon such as Samurott, Typhlosion, Basculin, Qwilfish and Stantler. However, the same cannot quite be said for the human characters, many of which are only slight redesigns of existing characters posited as "ancestors" of those characters. Some characters (e.g. Gaeric, Cyllene, Beni) look unique enough to be interesting on their own merits. Others (e.g. Colza, Clover, Volo) do not.
Main Story: The plot... exists. It has its moments, but overall it relies far too heavily on tell rather than show, and at more than one point the plot contrivances are very obvious (why is Melli being so obstructive towards the player? Because the plot says so). The plot also follows a very similar structure to the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games (player with an unclear past awakens in an unfamiliar world, is recruited into an exploration & research organisation, completes a sequence of major tasks alongside increasing in rank, becomes separated from the organisation and forced through an ominous plot tunnel to deal with earth-shattering events, during which the player's destiny is revealed, returns to the organisation before defeating the legendary enemy causing the ominous events). Unfortunately for PL:A, the Mystery Dungeon games tell this story with far more charm and engaging characters, making PL:A look more like an awkward copycat.
Graphics: ...oh dear. On the same console that can handle the visually-stunning games like Mario Odyssey, Breath of the Wild and Nie R:Automata, PL:A sticks out like a sore thumb, with low-resolution textures, shaky framerates, short draw distances leading to very noticeable pop-in (or, in the case of Pokémon, animations cut down to a very janky-looking 4FPS), and dull, desaturated lighting. Walking through Wayback Cave or the snowier area of the Alabaster Icelands made me sigh in frustration. I realise that Pokémon games have never been known for their graphical brilliance, but when I'm playing a game from one of the most successful AAA studios in the world and I'm having to remind myself that I'm not playing on the Wii (or even the Game Cube at times), that is very small comfort indeed.