Pokémon Legends: Z-A (Switch)

Most Pokémon adventures see you traveling across the land, searching far and wide for creatures to catch and battle. Between the forests, deserts, and snowy heights though, cities often serve as safe spaces, only rarely containing places to find wild Pokémon or spots to dip a fishing rod in. In fact, the towns are often fairly small, sometimes meant to represent a larger space but you aren’t able to explore them like you could a real life city. Pokémon Legends: Z-A aims to change the rules a bit about what a city in the Pokémon series can be, not only trying to realize the Paris-inspired city of Lumiose as something beyond a brief rest stop, but imagining how a place meant normally for humans can also be a home for the weird and wonderful monsters known as Pokémon.

 

The role-playing game Pokémon Legends: Z-A sees your customizable character as a new arrival in the city shortly after a new program has kicked off to allow for cohabitation between people and Pokémon. Rather than keeping the wild creatures outside the city limits, now Lumiose is cordoning off specific areas for the monsters to inhabit, holographic barriers keeping them in but allowing people to come and go. This sounds a bit like they’ve essentially made small Pokémon enclaves, a trainer able to decide when they wish to go catching creatures, but Lumiose itself still has a fair few of the fantastical monsters wandering about. The Wild Zones allow for bigger and more dangerous Pokémon to live within the city limits, but there are others that find places throughout the human side of Lumiose to exist. Lumiose is a city of tall buildings and you can gain rooftop access, many Pokémon deciding to take up residence across the skyline. An alley might have the trash Pokémon Trubbish hanging out near the garbage, the waterways have the fish Magikarp, and there are some truly special encounters that add a fun sense of discovery to even regular walking about town. It is certainly more memorable to find the electric gerbil Dedenne behind a food stand nibbling on a stolen treat than walking into a Wild Zone and going down the checklist on the map screen to find everything within, but the monster catching is likely better because it’s a mixture of both. If you want something specific it can possibly be a more guaranteed encounter rather than hoping to stumble across one of the cases of coexistence, Lumiose able to mix the premise of a city made up of both humans and Pokémon but find ways to more believably include something like the giant rock snake Onix without making you ask how that could possibly be safe.

Interestingly, the people of Lumiose aren’t totally on board with this new Wild Zone program, but it appears to also be an effort to make the best of a changing situation. More and more Pokémon are appearing in the city on their own, and an even greater concern arises when rogue Mega Pokémon begin appearing. Normally, Pokémon can undergo evolution to change into new species, this a natural result of training them or utilizing special items. Mega Evolution however is a temporary state some Pokémon can assume where they become significantly more powerful and as a result much more dangerous. Normally Mega Evolution requires a skilled trainer, but rogue Mega Evolution means a wild confused creature is left to run amok. The player ends up joining a group called Team MZ committed to calming down the rogue Pokémon, and the small group is a nice bunch of friends to share your journey with. Your adventure also coincides with a city-wide tournament known as the Z-A Royale where players battle throughout specific regions of the city at night to work their way from Rank Z all the way to Rank A. The game does speed up the process a bit, but eventually the royale allows for additional interesting characters to enter the story as well, Pokémon Legends: Z-A building up quite a likeable cast of memorable trainers. You’ll run into characters like Ivor, an incredibly passionate if a bit dim martial artist who contrasts well with his subdued spooky sister Gwynn, or Canari, a video game streamer whose grandfather works for the city’s construction crew and has turned all his workers into her fans. Most major names become recurring members of the cast, fought multiple times and interacting with the others, Team MZ technically not expanding but gradually you come to gain quite a fun and varied friend group to help with Lumiose City’s increasing troubles.

 

There is quite a lot to do around Lumiose City, the battles at night for the Z-A Royale, the Pokémon catching in Wild Zones, and a great deal of parkour, the rooftops requiring smart movement or use of scaffolding that has often deliberately been arranged to provide a brief test of your platforming movement. A wonderful jazzy soundtrack accompanies your activities, the game perhaps needing a few more for standard city walking but the most common themes are nice and catchy while battle tracks can be exciting and surprisingly diverse. Side Quests are also fairly abundant about town, people asking for help in ways that can be fun little diversions that highlight a specific species of Pokémon or might provide a new gameplay challenge. Battles are fairly common side quests, but they often try to present specific styles of combat to help you consider your own options in a fight. Side quests that involve a specific Pokémon might give you a clue on how to evolve them or otherwise explain something interesting about their lore. It can even be a way to get specific Pokémon that otherwise might be hard to find or only available much later, side quests rarely showstoppers but providing the extra bit of texture to Lumiose while also serving as a good point to understand many Pokémon better without looking up online guides or the like. Lumiose is also generally a great host for the game, not too large or too small. There are admittedly a few points the game has you look too close at a texture that maybe it shouldn’t have drawn attention to and sometimes people suddenly appear rather close by because they won’t load in from too far away, but graphically the game looks great and a lot of work was put into making some beautiful sights. The Lumiose museum in particular is a delight in showing a range of believable pieces of art and historical objects for the wider Pokémon world, but then there are small nice touches like being able to order a drink at a cafe and just sit and relax with one of your Pokémon. The monsters in this game also have a good range of animations and expressions, adding some appreciated life to seeing your companions out and about or fighting in battle.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A does see a shift away from the traditional turn-based battle style the series has been using and tinkering with since the start. Normally most main series entries can get away with stumbles here or there because of the complexities of those battles in multiplayer, but Pokémon Legends: Z-A elects to make battles real time and it provides an experience that is unique and enjoyable but not quite as deep as the old style of combat. You are able to have a team of up to 6 Pokémon with you, each of which can have four attacks set. Changing moves is very easy outside of battle making it pretty easy to customize your crew, and different Pokémon have different advantages based on their typing and range of available abilities. A steel Pokémon for example can shrug off damage from plant-based attacks, but hit it with a fiery move and it will deal double damage instead. Weaknesses and resistances can be accounted for by diversifying the typing of your moves, and in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, moves can be further differentiated by how quickly they come out and how long they take to recover. After utilizing a move, a cooldown begins before it’s available again, and what’s more, you are actually able to run around with your Pokémon to help it dodge attacks. A move like Rock Slide may be powerful, but if the foe sees it coming, they can run out of the way. On the other hand, a fast move like Bullet Punch will strike instantly, but it’s not nearly as powerful to compensate.

 

There is certainly a good deal of strategy to be found in team-building, especially since switching Pokémon during a battle can be done so quickly. Many fights can be over in a flash because of the real time fights and strength of certain moves, but the more demanding ones can see you swapping between all six of your Pokémon frequently to gain an edge, avoid danger, or try a new approach. Energy for Mega Evolution is built up gradually during the fight, but regular Pokémon can also activate Plus Moves if you press the Plus button that spend mega energy on a more powerful blow instead. However, Pokémon Legends: Z-A does feel like it can be mostly a battle to hit hardest first. You will find your full moveset of four on each Pokémon likely important because you don’t want to waste time during cooldowns doing nothing, but non-attacking moves don’t feel like they have much space for use, even in multiplayer where they normally thrive in other entries. The speed of the fight doesn’t always seem to scale well with things like trying to lower the attacking and defensive ability of a target or raising your own, and with switching being so easy, you can often just undo an opponent’s effort to do something besides damage. Some do have a few use cases still, Light Screen and Reflect provide a barrier to increase the defenses of your whole team for a while, and there could be value in a tactic like hitting someone with Perish Song and running since the effected Pokemon keeps the timer until they instantly are knocked out even on switch. However, Pokémon Legends: Z-A does seem like it’s attempting to feel out this new battle system some. A move like Fire Spin will turn a patch of ground into a constantly damaging circle of fire, but it’s too easy to run out of it so you’re better of just using a regular fire attack. A move like Surf on the other hand creates a huge wave that’s hard to dodge, and more moves that both consider how they can effect the battle space could shift the battles away from such a heavy focus on plain but strong hits.

 

While there is a standard battle format present for things like the Z-A Royale or slightly altered variants like fighting multiple Pokémon at once either in the wild or against a group of trainers in the points-based online battles, Pokémon Legends: Z-A also goes a step further with its concept of rogue Mega Evolution. While it introduces no new Pokémon to the series, it does revive the Mega Evolution idea and does some justice to newly introduced ones by way of special boss battles. When facing a Rogue Mega Evolution, you enter an ethereal area where the rampaging Pokémon is much larger and packs more varied and unusual moves than the usual four. Mega Evolution already leans on the idea of exaggerating a specific feature of a Pokémon to a new degree, like the sauropod Meganium who normally has a wreathe of flowers around its neck gaining an even more elaborate set of flower frills. Some Mega Pokémon aim to look cool like the rock pterosaur Aerodactyl getting covered with jagged spikes while others are fun and goofy like the starfish Pokémon Starmie having its spikes start to move like a person’s limbs to give it a strangely alien personality. In a Rogue Mega Evolution battle though, you can see things like the haunted doll Pokémon Mega Banette make illusory copies and teleport around the arena, or the big poison filled pitcher plant Mega Victreebel scatter puddles of poison around the arena to a much greater degree than you can in a regular battle. These fights definitely make use of that added battle space and make dodging incredibly important for survival, and being boss battles they have the health needed to not just get focused down with the strongest moves. Avoiding injury as the actual trainer is even crucial, something that also crops up in Wild Zones thanks especially to the hostile enlarged Alpha Pokémon who can take more punishment and are similarly built to better dish out and take damage than a regular monster.

THE VERDICT: Pokémon Legends: Z-A fleshes out the idea of a purely urban Pokémon adventure well. You get a wide range of Pokémon types thanks to the Wild Zones but also fun discoveries of how they’ve found living spaces alongside humans, and Lumiose City in general has a good deal of fun exploration thanks to the rooftop parkour and the side quests that help you learn more about Pokémon and the new battle system. The real time fights are energetic affairs that let your whole team easily get involved and you gradually meet a fun range of personalities through the game’s plot, but the types of attacks do feel like they need to expand beyond just porting over what already exists in the turn-based battle system of other entries. A strong soundtrack sits well beside the usual set of beloved monsters that appeal to many tastes, Pokémon Legends: Z-A not a typical Pokémon journey but that makes it compelling in its own way.

 

And so, I give Pokémon Legends: Z-A for Nintendo Switch…

A GREAT rating. After almost 30 years of treating Pokémon cities as a smaller part of the experience or in the case of Scarlet and Violet practically an afterthought, Pokémon Legends: Z-A dives deeper into what it could be like to actually live in the Pokémon world. For every kid traveling the land on their journey there are many more people who stick to their homes, Lumiose City being a place where you can still live the trainer life and featuring a good deal of interesting sights and ideas because it is trying to make use of the available space. Traversing across rooftops and doing the scaffolding parkour challenges spices up walking around the city before you even start to include ideas like the Wild Zones or side quests, and having dedicated spaces for the action also gives you ways to engage with it as you please. The Z-A Royale will be there when you’re ready for fighting and the Wild Zones give you a way to diversify your battle team or aim to collect all of the available creatures, but then around town you can find some critters too or find a side quest character who wants to battle. The city feels a solid size for the game’s scope, giving you areas you don’t tread often for a sense of newness when you do head over but the circular shape of Lumiose keeps it navigable even before you consider fast travel. Many nice features like a guy at the healing centers who will give you back Poké Balls you missed with when trying to catch Pokémon make the experience smoother and less frustrating, and with the lovely cast of fun personalities to make the plot more enticing to see through, it’s easy to get swept up into Pokémon Legends: Z-A and its continuous sense of progression. Catch, battle, adventure, and you’ll get to see the more involved Rogue Mega Evolution battles as well as tougher trainer fights, but the action does feel like it should have decoupled itself from tradition a bit more. Pokémon Legends: Z-A looks like it didn’t want to vary up the attack options from what was on offer in the turn-based games, meaning moves don’t always take the best advantage of the immediacy of real time fighting or the battle space. Most Pokémon games are possible to clear just with hard hitting moves during a regular playthrough, but the tactical depth that helps turn-based fighting shine isn’t quite as present here despite new considerations like attack cooldowns and how quickly you can swap your team members in and out.

 

Journeying across the land has been done in Pokémon adventures before and it will no doubt be done many times again, but taking a deep look at one large location has lead to a rich and memorable space in the Pokémon world. The people you meet get to spend more time with you and the Pokémon you find are placed with a good degree of intentionality, and even when references are made to places in the broader Kalos region or the now historical events of Pokémon X and Y that influence its story, Pokémon Legends: Z-A remains committed to making Lumiose City the star. There are other video games that set all their action in a large city like Tokyo or New York City, and now the Pokémon games have done so as well, giving us not just a hint at how humans live in the Pokémon world, but a full-blown tale that makes use of that core concept of what living in a big city must be like in a world so filled with incredible creatures to discover and collect.