xesite/blog/pokemon-legends-arceus-review-2022-03-07.markdown

---
title: "Pokémon Legends Arceus Review"
date: 2022-03-07
tags:
  - pokemonlegendsarceus
---

[tl;dr: this game is easily the best Pokémon game in years. It has flaws that
are apparent, but overall it doesn't rely too much on them in order for its core
gameplay loop to function. If you've been on the fence about it and need the
voice of a cartoon animal to convince you, you'll probably not be disappointed
with it. You'll know within an hour or two if you like it or
not.](conversation://Cadey/enby)

Pokémon is a very important series to me. The Pokémon games were one of the
first places that I was able to do some form of gender exploration. I spent
hours crunching numbers and training up teams to battle competitively. I never
really got anywhere with this, but it was important enough to me that my YouTube
channel used to be nothing but commentary on Pokémon battles that I captured
with my DS and a cell phone camera, using a "tripod" that I assembled out of
legos.

However, the Pokémon 20 years ago when I was in high school is basically the
same Pokémon game you can go out to the store and buy today. Most of the core
Pokémon formula was set in stone by the point that Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
came out. The core game loop was to talk to people to find out where to go next,
buy items, fight and enslave wildlife, battle against trainers that want you to
show your mettle and somehow end up preventing a CK-class reality restructuring
scenario after the latest evil group of the month tries to use the power of a
sleeping god to bend reality to their will. This core game loop has remained
unchanged, but along the way various gimmicks, features and iterations were
layered on top to give it a fresh coat of paint. Yet under the hood it was still
the same Pokémon game with the same battle rules and the same overall flow.

[Not to say that the core game in Pokémon games _isn't fun_, it's more of just
that I've seen the same thing so many times that it's less new and exciting the
6th time around as it was magical and unique that first time. Also keep in mind
that as a competitive Pokémon battler I have a very different experience than
most casual players would](conversation://Cadey/coffee)

Pokémon Legends Arceus is a defiant counter example of this same Pokémon game,
and it really shows what a Pokémon game _can_ be. It's a lot more like Monster
Hunter than other Pokémon games have been. Instead of Pokémon hiding in the tall
grass from you, you hide in the tall grass from Pokémon. You can get knocked out
when Pokémon attack you. Getting knocked out makes you lose _items_, which are a
lot more precious (money is scarce if you played the game like I did) and
limited then they have ever been. The battle system has almost been thrown out
and reinvented from a high level overview of how Pokémon battling should work.
So much cruft and baggage has been thrown away, leaving things to a much more
streamlined and enjoyable experience.

However a lot of the initial fan reaction to the game went something like this:

[But that one trailer showed the game running like ass at 24 FPS and the trees
look worse than they did on the 3DS. How can you praise this game if it looks
like babby's first Unity game for an ancient android
phone?](conversation://Numa/delet)

I have a theory on why Game Freak makes "horrible" trailers: they can't run
their game on PC. They have to run it on dev units. They literally can't get a
4k60 trailer because they _do not have hardware strong enough to render that_.
Additionally, they're probably running a development build of the game before
all the optimizations are done. In a way Game Freak is actually the most honest
developer I've seen in a long time. They show the game off _with its graphical
flaws openly visible_ because they focus on the _gameplay_ rather than the games
themselves. And because gamers in 202x, honesty is punished so of course they
get the short end of the stick.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/fjj87nrVDr">pic.twitter.com/fjj87nrVDr</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1487545209881694209?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 29, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The game looks fine. The art style helps polish over some of the rendering
weirdness they needed to pull to get it to run on a Tegra X1. Sometimes I really
wonder what they could do if they weren't hamstrung to having to run the games
on Nintendo hardware though. I'd really love to see what they could do if they
had their games on Steam or at least without the overhead of emulation.

You can actually see this in the kinds of changes that they make to the core
Pokémon formula over the years. Here's a high level list off the top of my head
as I compare Pokémon Diamond to newer games in the series:

* Hidden Machines (HMs) have been totally ripped out
* New battle formats (triples, rotation, etc.) have been added
* Battle gimmicks (mega evolutions, Gigantimax, etc.) have been added
* Fully 3D environments don't constrain you to only be able to move on an
  invisible grid
* Lots of downtime was streamlined away
* Gyms were streamlined out in favor of plot-based challenges which are the
  moral equivalent of gyms anyways
* Soft lock and sequence breaking potential was removed

Hidden Machines contain field skills which you need gym badges to use. In
Pokémon Diamond and Pearl there were 8 field skills you could get, and usually
you needed to dedicate two Pokémon in your party of 6 to be "HM slaves" so that
you could move around the world freely. This constrained your team building
choices for the main path of the game significantly. Later Pokémon games
streamlined these field skills out in favor of them just being things you could
summon in when needed.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/VvefsR9Fxg">pic.twitter.com/VvefsR9Fxg</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1501013567591514115?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Pokémon Legends Arceus retains some of these, but it's much more focused on
movement (running around fast, finding buried items, climbing sheer cliff faces,
crossing water and gliding) than most of the other movement field skills in the
past have been. However if you really want to, you can catch 6 Bibarels and walk
across their backs to skip your way into high level areas. There is no way Game
Freak would have let you get away with this kind of madness in other Pokémon
games because you could soft lock yourself so easily that way.

[Fast travel being unlocked right at the beginning really does change how you
handle being soft-locked eh?](conversation://Numa/happy)

New Pokémon battle formats were added over the years. The most notable example
that comes to mind is how Pokémon Black and White introduced Triple battles
(each side sends out 3 pokemon at once) and Rotation battles (each side sends
out 3 pokemon on a rotating platform that you can rotate between at the cost of
a turn). Both of these lead to some really interesting and unique strategies,
and created very memorable experiences. Along the way they also added Mega
evolutions, Gigantimax and other gimmicks that can help you turn the tide of
battle, but is also fairly hard for me to keep track of (and probably banned in
Smogon grade competitive Pokémon anyways). The core battle system is still the
same though. You can be confused and then hurt yourself in confusion, sleep and
freezing are absolutely bullshit. Core parts of how your pokemon progress (such
as Effort Values) are hidden from you, needing you to either hack your game to
see them. If you try to run away from a fight, sometimes it doesn't work.

[There's usually a consumable item that helps you recover from confusion, but
you usually only get access to it after you suffer through the slog that is
Zubat cave where I swear they programmed the AI with the express purpose of
using Confuse Ray as much and as often as possible, even to the point of
predicting when you'll snap out of confusion so it can re-confuse you instantly.
I am so glad to see that gone.](conversation://Cadey/angy)

In comparison, Pokémon Legends Arceus ripped out most of the battle system. The
only battle option is singles. You choose if you want to battle a wild Pokémon
or not by yeeting that sucker right in the face with one of your team. If you
want to run away, you make your player character _actually run away from the
battle_ with no chance of failure. Confusion was ripped out of the game. Sleep
and freezing are like burns instead of making you totally screwed and they wear
off in a few turns. Special and physical attack/defense boosts and nerfs are
combined instead of specializing too much in one over the other. Swords Dance is
viable on special attackers. Pokémon that are 10-20 levels below you can be
threats and can cause a party wipe if you're not careful. Alpha Pokémon pull TM
moves into the movepool and can be a serious threat.

[If this game allowed competitive battling against other players, the Resto
Snorlax strat would be even more powerful...](conversation://Mara/hmm)

Effort Values (EVs) are shown to you in the the Pokémon status screen. EVs are
sort of like persistent stat bonuses, so them being visible lets you really
customize how you balance out your team's strengths and weaknesses. As someone
who got an Action Replay in part to see EVs of my Pokémon, this is an
earth-shattering change. It makes it _actually worth my time_ to try and raise
up a team.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/GLJjBHdnQG">pic.twitter.com/GLJjBHdnQG</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1501012489231749127?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

They also added move styles to the mix. Once a Pokémon levels up enough, they
gain mastery in moves. This allows them to either use the move in Strong Style
or Agile Style. Doing the move in either style costs two PP instead of the one
it usually does, but they let you manipulate the amount of damage you do. Use a
super effective move in agile style to avoid damaging it too much then throw an
ultra ball to catch. You're given a lot more freedom.

Speed was totally thrown out and rethought from scratch. Speed controls the turn
order instead of just a race to see who wins. The turn order can also be
manipulated by strong and agile style moves. Strong style makes you slower in
the turn order and agile style makes you faster in the turn order. This can
change the tide of battle and can lead to you getting 3 or 4 attack turns in a
row if you play your cards right.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/105202D2k4">pic.twitter.com/105202D2k4</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1501012882728710148?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[These are just more and more reasons why I want to see what PvP battles in this
game's engine would be like!](conversation://Cadey/enby)

One of the biggest changes with the presentation is the fact that they made
everything fully 3D as soon as the hardware allowed. This arguably happened when
it did because the 3DS had an analog stick, which allowed you to move directly
in any direction you wanted. It made sense for the flagship RPG Pokémon to
follow suit. Pokémon Legends Arceus is a very vertical game. You _actually
explore_ the area. Walking into the Obsidian Fieldlands for the first time has
that Breath of the Wild moment where the camera pulls back and you can really
appreciate the scale of the area.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/7AhyNYYE53">pic.twitter.com/7AhyNYYE53</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1498478801642143744?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Pokemon walk around and go about their own business and then it's
up to you to either fight them or assimilate them into your fold. You don't just
run around, you dodge, roll and sneak your way over to Pokémon, baiting them
with berries and then throwing a ball into its back to capture it even faster.
Field Items let you make your own cover wherever you need it. Pokémon can knock
you out, and when they do you actually lose things. I've lost Nuggets,
experience candies and more to being careless.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/Km6xt32FPn">pic.twitter.com/Km6xt32FPn</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1487585767392104449?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[It's worth noting that you can get those items back eventually, but in the
moment being without your healing items can fundamentally change how you play
the game.](conversation://Cadey/enby)

Pokémon has a lot of downtime in its core event loop. When you enter a wild
battle encounter in Pokémon, you have to wait for the opening animations while
you send out your Pokémon and then wait for the move animations and then wait
for the health and experience bars to drain down and scooch up. This makes for a
lot of downtime that adds up a lot. Most of your time spent playing Pokémon
Diamond is waiting to do things. Future games removed a lot of the waiting (and
even gave you an option to disable a lot of the animations), but there's still
waiting in the core formula of the game.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/-gCvQiFUyC4" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

It feels like the game designers behind Pokémon Legends Arceus recognize how
much downtime Pokémon has at its core and went out of their way to get rid of as
much of it as possible. You can run around, have a battle and then win it in
less than 30 seconds. If you aren't spotted you can catch 4 Pokémon per minute
easily. As someone that grew up on the wait-heavy formula of older Pokémon
games, this is unheard of to me. Here is an _entire battle_:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/TTOUzkDwmC">pic.twitter.com/TTOUzkDwmC</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1487586353038573568?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Yeah, that's it. Things that don't need to block the gameplay loop don't.
Battles start and end quickly. It's glorious. You don't have to go to a move
eraser or farm heart scales to have your Pokémon relearn old moves. Leveling up
doesn't instantly present you with the choice to forget moves, you choose the
moveset you want when you want to make that choice.

One of the main points where the game is lacking is in the story department,
however in comparison to other Pokémon games the story both does and doesn't
make sense. Pokémon Legends Arceus goes for a generic fantasy isekai\* vibe.

[\*Isekai is the blanket term for all those "I got transported to another world"
type stories. Think A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, Space Jam, The
Good Place, The Legend of Narnia and Konosuba.](conversation://Mara/hacker)

You are some random 15 year old that noclips out of reality and has Pokémon God
pull them into the past to catch 'em all. For a Pokémon game, this actually
works a lot better, but it could be a lot better if they took the time to really
make it a proper isekai. You just show up out of nowhere, are shown to be an
absolute Pokémon prodigy and suddenly accepted into the fold of a fairly
isolated village. Then you go about slowly discovering the CK class reality
restructuring scenario at play while also following the commands that Pokémon
God texts you.

[You criticize Pokémon for doing things that most isekai media does? Look at
Konosuba. Kazuma basically shows up in that poor village out of nowhere and
eventually works his way into be accepted into the community (after sleeping in
horse stables) and occasionally getting instructions from Aqua and Eris. Space
Jam has Micheal Jordan come out of nowhere and save the Looney Tunes from Space
Capitalism with the power of a chaos dunk. If that ain't like the typecast
definition of what an isekai is, what the hell do you
WANT?](conversation://Numa/delet)

[Okay yeah, you have a point. I guess that the story really does get the
intended vibe across and most of the reason I think it's a negative thing is
because I've been on a bit of an isekai kick as of late. If I wasn't like 15
animes into isekai stuff I'd probably like it a lot
more.](conversation://Cadey/facepalm)

The story doesn't really get in your way too much though, movement options are
restricted by the story but this is how it is in every game these days. Most
story progression is done through either getting enough Pokédex points to go up
a ranking level in Team Galactic (the moral equivalent of gym badges) or
completing story-based missions.

Another big thing they changed was the Pokédex. Catching them all isn't the
end-all-be-all anymore. Now you actually have to experiment with them. Try
feeding them berries, catch them without them spotting you, beat them using
moves of a certain type, watch them use moves or styles of moves, learn more
about them with side missions (the game calls them "requests") or the like. You
actually feel like you're _learning_ what the Pokémon do instead of just going
down a list, even if you are fundamentally just going down a list.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/Bei0c201wk">pic.twitter.com/Bei0c201wk</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1501014249857900546?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 8, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I hope future games in the Pokémon series are like this game. My greatest hope
for this game is that in comparison the the future games in this series, this
game will be _absolute garbage_ because the newer games will have polished and
ironed out the rough sides in this game. They do exist and you can notice them
pretty easily if you are looking for them, but most of the time I can appreciate
the limitations as setpieces and focus more on the gameplay.

The biggest graphical issue I found was a bug in the anime shader in caves with
water pools in them. It can make the borders render weird like this:

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/0PQhWLmpql">pic.twitter.com/0PQhWLmpql</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1487864370453368833?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 30, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Note that I have really had to go out of my way to find that. The 99% case is
that things look great. The game has such a beautiful aesthetic that I can
forgive a fixable shader bug in a case that happens very rarely.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PokemonLegendsArceus?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PokemonLegendsArceus</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NintendoSwitch?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NintendoSwitch</a> <a href="https://t.co/JbPooCsM0K">pic.twitter.com/JbPooCsM0K</a></p>&mdash; Within Screenshots (@withinscreensh1) <a href="https://twitter.com/withinscreensh1/status/1489669077916209152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 4, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

Overall, if you're burned out on the sameiness of Pokémon games, give this one a
try. It is not earth-shatteringly good like NieR: Automata or Xenoblade
Chronicles 2, but it is a step towards [the perfect Pokémon
game](https://reddit.com/r/theperfectpokemongame). It's worth a play.