Pokemon Legends: ZA

A topical subject for once I know, don’t get use to it; I just find myself very satisfied with this game. Before I start in on it properly allow me to open with my history of being a Pokemon fan. The first Pokemon I played was Crystal on my sister's Gameboy color. I was too young to truly understand what was going on but I remember using gust on a Bellsprout and the thrill of defeating my enemies. My sister and I weren’t good sharers so when Ruby and Sapphire came out we each got our own with our own respective Gameboys. I got the Red Gameboy with Ruby and she got the light Pink Gameboy with Sapphire. I was very envious of my sister to say the least but while her love for the series quickly faded mine only grew. I pleaded for Emerald when it came out and got it, then it just became my thing. Every birthday or Christmas if there was a new Pokemon video game out I would get it as a present. A life of true luxury in my opinion, and my love for the franchise has only ever been for the video games. I’m not sure if it’s the interactivity of it, my deep hatred for Ash as a character and a deep yearning to understand why so many people love trading card games but it has always been the video games I love most with no question. 

So with this in mind and note that I have been in love with this franchise for twenty-three years I think I’ve earned the right to say anything and everything I want about it, while giving zero shits about anyone else's opinion. That’s not to say others opinions don’t help me shape my own but my love for Pokemon has been very solitary. As I mentioned my sister fell out of love with the franchise after Sapphire and the way she played was opposite to my own. She was a collector of them all while I collected and used only my favorites, usually only my starter the first couple of playthroughs. Shoutout to Mudkip and Swampert, the best third generation starters by far. I had friends at school to talk to about it but we never got to play the games together as frequently as I wanted. After elementary school, to put it gracefully, it was better for my social life to hide my love to save face. This set me up for a high school life in which talking about my joys was a social faux pas and liking things passionately was weird. Being too into things made you a sperg and that wasn’t chill man. Then later into highschool I realized how idiotic bending yourselves to fit others image is and how warped that makes your own sense of self. But my love for Pokemon endured through all that and I replayed them regularly, Heartgold and Soulsilver are still some of the best remakes ever made and Black & White’s story actually questioned the morals of animal fighting. The static sprites in Black & White are still some of the best Pokemon has ever looked, and I can say that while enjoying the jump to three-d in X & Y. This is when Pokemon dedicated itself to being more of a casual for the fans vibe. X & Y was the first to introduce gimmicks and the best one at that Mega Evolutions. They were also the first games where you could customize your outfits and race. It also included roller skates as an additional mode of transportation that made moving with the thumbstick on the three-DS more enjoyable. I am a little disappointed that hasn’t made a return so far in Pokemon Legends: ZA. 

After X & Y, Game Freak outdid themselves and made an even better remake than Heartgold & SoulSilver; Omega Ruby & Alpha Sapphire. This was when I made the transition from a hardcore casual to an enlightened sudosweat that knew the mechanics in and out. I learned about the physical, special split that happened in Generation four, the changes to IVs and EVs and how to do single battle from a former third placed in the world competitive battler from Generation five. Yes, I had finally made a friend that was even deeper in love with Pokemon than me. To put it more accurately they were further along their emotional journey with Pokemon than I was. Their years of competitive battling had left them burnt out and not as passionate as my own more innocent love of the games. They had played with people across the world but not much with people in the same room so it was like two sparks coming together to burn an even brighter, beautiful fiery passion for Pokemon. I breed Pokemon competitively for a brief time in Gen Six, which led me to my first use of Reddit but that’s a story for another time. 

Unfortunately as the world sometimes flows I had a serious falling out with this friend and have been a solo Pokemon fan for over half a decade again. I will sometimes go for very long swathes of time between playing any Pokemon games now. For a while it has felt like an obligation, I had already sold my soul to Game Freak I told myself. I loved these games once, surely I still love them now and have more than just apathy in my heart right? Of course you do, you allowed the harsh negativity of every Pokemon game that has come out on the Switch to affect you personally and allowed it to fuel a false sense of hatred for the series. You know that Pokemon is an amalgamation of three corporations, Creatures, Game Freak and Nintendo and have been referring mostly to Game Freak in this post because they are the developers of the video games, your favorite part of the franchise. You understand that as Japanese developers they will have a different world view and understanding then your own. They had no idea that it would reach such a wide audience in the States and it is truly impossible for them to please such a massive audience. They may have only wanted a small fan base of mostly kids to enjoy their game. Work life balance isn’t the best in Japan, and they are more than likely working themselves to the bone to get these games done on such a short timeframe. That’s why people complaining about the budget size leaks on these games pisses you off so much because the issue isn’t a matter of money but time. They pump out several games every year, to try and keep growing instead of extending development time and allowing the developers to take their time to make something great. Graphics were never the appeal of these games and too many people care about visual fidelity, but that might just be your farsighted & astigmatism privilege because everything is blurry to you. You had a whole post to yourself why do you have to ruin this one with honesty too. You’re welcome 🙂

Now that you know my entire love affair with this franchise allow me to state the already obvious to you. This is a very biased review, I have accepted my love and anger with this franchise and my love has heavily out weighed my anger (Except for moves that have less than one hundred percent accuracy). I wouldn’t even call this a review but more of an elaboration of my first ten hours with the game. Yes the game has been out for a week and I’ve only got ten hours in it and I still decided to make it the topic of this post. Also the entire post so far has only been about my journey with the franchise; ain’t I a stinker. I never beat Legends: Arceus but for the five hours I played that game I loved it. Dodge rolling around attacks and being able to run around in Pokemon battles was something I didn’t know I wanted. I haven’t gone back to it and only beat Let’s Go: Eevee within the last year for the same reason. I do not like playing Pokemon games where the Pokemon are stripped of their abilities. For you filthy Pokemon Go only and Trading Card Game losers, every Pokemon has an ability. An ability can be as useless as not allowing them to use held items: Klutz, to immunity to a type of move: Levitate. This is the spice that adds flare to the normal rock, paper, scissors style fighting that is the types system. You know the commonly known, fire beats grass, fighting beats up steel, rock, ice and gets coverage for everything else; ice is weak to fire, fighting, steel, and rock but only resisted by itself and water. Not convoluted whatsoever, still boring to me because I had memorized it when I was eight with a little added addendum when they added fairies to the game. I really hope they add a new type soon and my vote is for nuclear, every other JRPG has that type and we already have a Godzilla pokemon, please do it Game Freak. So no abilities and you get a very bored Gerdy.

However, Legends: ZA has managed to keep my attention more than I expected. The absolutely goofy mega evolutions that we have gotten are wonderful, and they had me on the dlc as soon as they added the Raichu megas. Them just growing an absurdly long tail and ears to make an X & Y is just gravy. Really glad to see more Raichu love because I thought Alolan was going to be the last and people still only remember the jerk Raichu from the anime. I should say I tempered my expectations for the release of this game, I didn’t really expect anything so now that I am playing it I feel like a kid on Christmas again. I like Luminous City in X & Y but my favorite city was Snowbelle City and I didn’t think a game set only in the city would appeal to me. I live in a small city so I’m not opposed to cities, but I can just go downtown and get that joy anytime I don’t need a game to do that. Wrong, the amount of rooftop exploration you get to do throughout the city is astounding and dodge rolling adds some unique platforming. I love falling with grace and you’ve got to know how to do that in this game if you want to get all of these colorful screws! Most of the buildings you still can’t go in but after Violet & Scarlet I’m surprised that you’re able to go into any at all. AZ coming back and running the hotel you stay at for his final days with their Folette is very bittersweet. Seeing Emma’s glow up and wearing that detective outfit was a nice conclusion to the Looker Bureau at the end of X & Y. 

The battling has felt a little smoother than Legends: Arceus, and there hasn’t been any move techniques. The areas are much tighter so you need to be careful where you pick your battles or you can easily get spammed. The customization and fashion in this game is truly on another level. The shopping areas have several shops each with unique items and they even have a visual display that turns on when you approach the store. I have never felt so fancy until now. I’m currently rank W in the ZA Royale, and the main story seems to revolve around eventually getting to rank A and being the highest rank trainer in Luminous city. I’m sure there will be some shenanigans and twists along the way and I’ve already made the acquaintance of a muscle bro that claims themselves as the world's strongest. So I’m quite excited to crush him ruthlessly because I already know I’m the best battler this city has ever seen. Right now I’m much more invested in catching all the Pokemon in each wild area, check, and doing all of the side quests for Emma’s detective agency cause my girls gotta get her sleep and most of these people just want to battle someone. The alpha Bellsprout in Wild Zone Five has also beaten my poor Litleo so many times I’m grinding out of spite to destroy it and all the other Alphas before proceeding in the story further.  

It’s been great fun so far and I’m excited to play more. I’ve already got a Pichu to a Picachu and Budew to a Roselia and am working on getting a Buneray to a Lopunny because I believe in raising Pokemon right. For anyone still reading that doesn’t know about Pokemon, thank you! And all those Pokemon require a high friendship level to evolve which can be a unique thing to increase in game but mostly just takes time. There is a good chance that I am in this for the long haul and then some when the DLC gets released. I’ve already said much more than I expected about Pokemon and Legends: ZA so I may or may not return to finish off my thoughts when I finally finish the game. Hopefully they will stay positive and I won’t slink back to “constructive criticism” and tears.