At this point I have beaten the main storyline of Pokemon Legends: ZA, and have gotten through at least 8 missions of the Hyperspace DLC. Suffice to say I have seen most of what this game has to offer, and find myself in an odd position with this game. The battling mechanics have been stale since my last review. It’s infuriating to switch a mon in that is super effective against my target just in time for the NPC to use their coverage move which wind up started before I was switching out my other mon that resisted it. This combined with nearly every mon getting every coverage move under the sun makes for a very exhausting experience. The battle fields are already tight and cramped due to the city setting, and you find yourself disadvantaged by this most of the time. Coverage for a pokemon is a move that covers their weakness. For example Pyroar, a normal-fire type pokemon was given the move Earth Power via level up in this game. Ground is super effective against Rock which is super effective against Fire. Not only does this give Pyroar excellent coverage in it’s main attacking stat, special attack, their other primary weakness Fighting is covered but only by a physical move, Psychic Fangs taught via TM. This on top of the Mega evolution given to Pyroar makes it a top tier mon in my opinion but I’m not going to speak on the actual battle meta’s for online battling in ZA. I hear its Mega-Garchomp-Z or bust so I’ll probably hop on with my Ice types someday just to troll. This type of coverage is a nice thing to add but when every mon is capable of covering their weakness on their own it disincentivizes switching, which is core to the turn based battling system. This may just be growing pains of the live-action battling system but if every mon covers their weakness then it pushes the need for speed, and attacks even more leaving bulk builds to always be lacking. It also makes the mons not getting coverage cause there are still some out their *cough Glaceon cough see almost no use because they can’t compete with a mon that can slap down everything in its path. I’m a mixed battle type user, I like to have some bulk, a sweeper, a healer and so on in my competitive teams. This has never been a very viable strategy to win but it was what I liked. Now it just feels like you get the highest speed and attack stats you can find paired with the fastest moves that hit well, and that’s all you need. Yes I am crying that the pokemon battling system is far too simple and only encourages sweepers. Perhaps my years out of battling competitively have left me jaded and no longer with a good eye for metas but battling is the main component of pokemon. Being a lifetime player of twenty plus years should buy me a little credit.
