A Lizard's VERY Late Pokémon Legends Z-A Review
a quick note from Lizard: hiiii readers it's most certainly been a minute, sorry work has been crazyyyyy, also this review was supposed to come out way earlier but I wanted to wait for the DLC and ended up deciding not to give them my money for that stuff there's just not enough to justify spending my cash on it ANYWAYYYSSSSS heres the review
So, it seems that Pokémon Legends: Z-A has been a pretty divisive game. Well, actually, it’s probably better to say that Pokémon as a game series is divisive in general. For those of you who haven't kept up with the Pokémon franchise; the past 8 years or so has been ripe with controversy over the quality of game releases and cut content that (in my little lizard opinion) has no reasonable excuse for being missing.
It certainly doesn’t help that the series jumped from $40 handheld games to $70 console games in less than 10 years, so the game will inevitably be compared to both the much cheaper Pokémon titles of old and other video games at the same price point. The higher asking price really should reflect higher quality games, so it’s a shame that this doesn’t really hit the mark. It’s especially egregious considering the DLC’s pricing, which is another $30. Pretty greedy, right? Whatever, I’ll get back into this later!
ANYWAYS, there are going to be some spoilers in terms of locations, so be warned, folks! Enjoy the review!
World and Exploration
So, it seems that the newest entry in the Pokémon series comes with some baggage, apart from what you’re carrying into Lumiose City. In Pokémon Legends: Z-A, you’re a tourist in the Pokémon universe’s equivalent of Paris, so that’s where you’re at for the whole game. You’d imagine that being confined to one city might not lend well to exploration, and I’d have to agree. In the 25 hours I’ve spent with the game, I can say that exploration isn’t Legends: Z-A’s strong suit, at least when it comes to the environments. Sure, Lumiose is pretty big, but a lot of that space is wide streets with flat, copy-pasted building textures slapped on very simple geometry. I’ll give you more details about the visuals later, because trust me, I’ve got plenty of gripes, but for now I can say that the visuals are a little immersion breaking!
The city blends together, and I found myself thinking I was on one side of the map while being somewhere entirely different. Part of the Pokémon games’ appeal has always been exploration, and you would assume that being confined to a single area would allow Game Freak to make a polished experience, but unfortunately, that's not the case. To be blunt, Lumiose City feels half-assed.
That being said, not everything is awash, and Lumiose still has some variety. I was particularly delighted by the Lumiose museum with its myriad of references to 2013’s Pokémon X & Y, and there were some later game areas did surprise me a bit, even if they were short-lived escapades. I just wished that there were more of them, but it’s still a minor step up from the previous title. Other locations include sewers, parks, alleyways, rooftops, scaffolding, and these neat little cafés.
Most of these aforementioned spots are ways to add context to the location of certain Pokémon species or a way to have the side quests make more sense. I’m a barista, so I thought it was cool to see the cafés get so much love in the previews, but they actually don’t do much except letting you sit with your Pokémon (likely so players are encouraged to take cute screenshots to post on social media). They add very little to the game otherwise, both in terms of world-building and content, which is a shame. I’d love to have seen a mini game where you put together your own latte that gives you certain buffs (ALA the Sandwich mini games in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet).
And of course, what’s a Pokémon game without the titular monsters themselves? For the most part, they’re confined to the Wild Areas, which are portions of the city that have been repurposed into patches of ecologically sound areas. This is all in service of the “urban development plan” which aims to allow wild Pokémon live more comfortably in Lumiose City. They serve their purpose of being spots you can go catch Pokémon in, and they look like places you’d find the monsters roaming around.
There’s decent variety to be had in these areas, but the real charm from this plot point is the ramifications that this redevelopment plan has caused. The denizens of Lumiose City have varying opinions on this change, with some loving the integration and others complaining about it. One particularly disgruntled businesswoman tells you that her commute goes through a wild zone, and another man says that the Pokémon living on his apartment building's rooftop are too loud at night, which screws up his sleep. There’s some neat world building and depth in these conversations, and they get you thinking about how the Pokémon world would work. It’s a shame that the actual environment you explore is such a letdown because world building opportunities like this are largely untapped due to the limiting world and presentation.
I mean dude there are anti-homeless benches in Lumiose. Why? It’s Pokémon.
Graphics, Presentation, and Performance
Speaking of the environment and world, I will not sugarcoat this. Pokémon Legends Z-A is an ugly-ass game. This game looks bad, and frankly, fails to deliver a satisfactory visual presentation for what it’s trying to achieve.
Let’s list some issues, yes?
- Buildings in this game are literally boxes with completely flat textures and rooftops.
- NPCs either walk down the street, sit on benches, or are standing in one spot staring off into space until you talk to them, and they only load in when they’re about 20 feet away from the player.
- The environment surrounding Lumiose City is super low poly, and if you’re close to the outskirts of the city, you will notice this.
- Shadows are extremely low resolution on both Switch 1 and Switch 2, which results in models that look like they don’t belong in the space they’re in.
- Characters move on simple tracks and don’t have any smoothing, so they will move around like the NPCs in the 3DS games, and turn at sharp angles, or stop to rotate in another direction before continuing. Weird.
- Pokémon will get stuck or clip into things when they follow you and that includes the camera. In particular, larger Pokémon get in the way of the camera all the time, making it really hard to explore with bigger buddies.
- The sky looks weird and sometimes doesn’t match the lighting in the environment at all.
- On Switch 2, the game runs at 1440p using DLSS, and hits 60 fps consistently, but the Switch 1 version runs at a very inconsistent and choppy 30 fps, and there are serious building and other pop-in issues on that version of the game. A shame, considering the much larger player base still using the Switch 1.
Jeez. I could go on, but you get the point. This game is ugly. I don't think there's any need to continue discussing this, but I will say that some people might be put off by this alone.
Gameplay
Graphics aren’t everything, so it’s a relief to say that Pokémon Legends: Z-A is still a fun game, despite all the problems with the world design and visuals.
This is the first title in the main series that has real-time Pokémon battles, and they’re just as cool as you’d imagine them being. You and your Pokémon buddies move independently from each other, and you command your pal with the face buttons on the controller. Each attack is on a cooldown timer, and aspects like where you’re standing and what kind of move your Pokémon are using can make a big difference in battle.
There are a lot of different types of moves, too. There are both ranged and melee attacks, environmental traps, status effect moves, defensive moves, moves that’ll give your Pokémon buffs to certain stats, moves that'll move your Pokémon from one spot to another (which is awesome for positioning and dodging attacks) and probably a bunch of other moves that I haven’t had the chance to play with. Building a cool team composition lets you really strategize on how you plan to approach battles. I’d even go as far as saying that this game has a good sense of player expression through its gameplay system and team building, which is always a bonus in JRPGs.
The only thing I’d change about the battle system is adding some sort of really weak basic attack that is automatically used every couple of seconds. The same thing is in other real-time RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles, and while it isn’t a big deal, it would help a tiny bit with the flow of combat. Otherwise, I think that this game has a banger battle system, and I really hope we see something like it again.
Player movement is another story. Your player character isn’t the fastest ambiguously college-aged lad, so it’ll take a while to get from point A to point B. There’s a light jog and a sprint (which is only marginally faster), but the game sends you from one section of Lumiose to another all the time. Sure, you can fast travel, but sitting through a loading screen is lame. It’s immersion-breaking. You teleport to a spot just to jog the rest of the way to your destination. I think it’s a missed opportunity, mainly because Game Freak could’ve easily given us ride Pokémon or even just the skates from the previous title this one is supposed to be a sequel to. It’s somehow SLOWER to get around Lumiose City in this game than it was in an actual 3DS game.
That’s not too much of a problem, since the gameplay loop is so much fun outside of that annoying traversal stuff. During the daytime, you catch Pokémon and do quests like quelling rampaging monsters or helping strangers out, and nighttime is mostly spent battling with trainers in the Z-A Royale. Your nighttime escapades reward you with money and items, and this is how you progress in the game.
There’s some depth to the Z-A Royale, apart from this really bad forced stealth mechanic that feels kind of annoying. It isn’t clear which parts of the environment will keep you hidden, and there have been a number of times where I’d unfairly get caught before I got the jump on an unsuspecting trainer. A minor complaint, really. Otherwise, it’s so much fun to build a strong team of Pokémon for the battles, and the game rewards you for this with a points system that gives you bonuses for doing certain things. Legends Z-A encourages you to have lots of Pokémon on the bench for different situations, and this added variety makes it so much easier to get sucked into this loop of battling during nighttime, and training and catching during the day. I love this part of the game a lot!
Conclusion
Pokémon Legends Z-A was a complicated game to review. It’s got this really great and fresh combat system that’s fun to engage in, with player strategies actually feeling like they pay off. Add the addicting monster collecting that makes Pokémon so fun to begin with and you’ve got a game that’ll scratch that Pokémon itch in spades.
It’s a shame then that everything that contextualizes the battles and encapsulates the game is so… poorly made. Flat environments, creepy lifeless NPCs, and poor world-building that disregards the numerous opportunities to expand the Pokémon universe seriously stick out. Lumiose City really could have been a dense and exciting location to explore, but what we got instead feels more like a first draft.
I guess that’s the kicker right there. The core gameplay loop is fun, but everything else is tripping me up, and when you’re charging $70 for games like this, a “first draft” isn’t nearly enough. I expect higher quality from one of the largest game franchises in the world, and there are no excuses for this anymore.
Well then, who is this game for?
If you’re a fan of the Pokémon series and you really get time out of these games, I’d say it’s worth it only then. Players who love collecting, experimentation, and RPGs will enjoy this title, but your mileage will vary depending on how much you can tolerate the subpar visuals, empty world, and slow traversal.
My reviews are graded using an S through F scale. F is a comprehensive failure, D is largely bad, C is acceptable, B is good, A is great, and S is excellent.