Pokémon Legends: Z-A review - a joyful proof of concept, but don't call it a comeback yet
Under development.
Enjoying modern, Switch-era Pokémon games as someone familiar with the good old days is often a question of how much you're happy to let slide. With Sword and Shield it was the eerie Potemkin Villages, the whiff of cut content, the sudden and, I still maintain, very bad decision to do away with dungeons entirely that you had to let go. But in exchange you got one of the series' biggest gambles, an actually-kind-of-great first stab at open world zones in the Wild Areas.
With Legends: Arceus, the progenitor to Pokémon Legends: Z-A in this curious main series offshoot, it was more hints at constricted budgets and tight turnarounds, a flawed attempt at streamlining battles, and even murkier visuals, in exchange for the big, fascinating swing at a Monster Hunter-style world with Breath of the Wild's vibes. In Scarlett and Violet it was, well, all of it. But even then the core of Pokémon persisted. For many the sheer power of this series' basic, essential formula - battle, trade, collect, plus a bit of found-family theming and the lasting message it carries, of creating human-to-creature, human-to-nature bonds - has proven to be enough, even in a game that can barely hold itself together.
The good news with Pokémon Legends: Z-A is that things have significantly improved on that front, at least on the Switch 2 (fair warning to base Nintendo Switch players: it seems nobody's had access to that version before launch). Legends: Z-A runs perfectly in handheld mode. The animations both for people and Pokémon are a significant step up, by Pokémon standards. And this time we get yet another reimagining of catching, battling, and the structure of the world - one which actually works quite nicely, a kind of hybrid of the three games before it. It comes wrapped in a layer of enchantingly goofy comedy, as well, with a revival of the series' signature off-beat humour and oddball characters. It is, in a lot of ways, a bundle of joy. Though there is again a trade to be made for it: for all the invention and charm, Legends: Z-A is also smaller, more confined, a little repetitive. It's a huge improvement from Scarlett and Violet, but I'm not sure I'd call it a comeback.
As with Legends: Arceus, you're an out-of-towner here in Lumiose City, the heart of the France-inspired Kalos region, only this time you arrive without the time travel. Quickly you fall in with a group of teens called Team MZ, run by your rival, Taunie or Urbane, and another pair of helpers in the peppy strategist Lida and grumpy fanboy Naveen. Like a lot of Pokémon games the actual plot here is a little messy. You need to help out AZ - the returning, 3,000-year-old character from the heart of the story in Pokémon X and Y, games to which Legends Z-A is essentially a sequel - with a mysterious and purposefully vague quest of "protecting Lumiose City", because you seem to be pretty nifty with that old returning mechanic, Mega Evolution. And to do that you need to climb to the top rank of the Z-A Royale.
That competition is run by Quasartico Inc, a mysterious but ostensibly friendly company on an idealistic mission to get humans and Pokémon living together. Their version of that is to introduce wild zones, the relatively small restricted areas where Pokémon roam freely and can often attack people as well as other Pokémon - think bite-sized chunks of Legends: Arceus' more hostile open world. That introduces some curious tension with the locals, though in the main story at least it's never really explored. There are a few threads left dangling there, in fact, which might leave you wondering what was an intentional red herring and what's just a slightly weird oversight - or a question left unresolved for the upcoming DLC, Mega Dimension, confirmed before launch.
Despite the vagueness at times though, Legends: Z-A's writing is for once a bit of a strength. This game is weirdly, delightfully funny. Team MZ's banter in particular is great, their dinner table strategy meetings full of little subversive looks and knowing close-ups, helped by the noticeably improved character animations - again, at least by Pokémon's standards - that finally give a bit of life to the still-unvoiced words. Altogether it's a story that returns to the series' reliable and well-loved beats: a cataclysmic threat, ancient lore, a pleasantly moving, warmly familiar story about both being the chosen one and also being an ordinary kid with just a really strong bond with your Pokémon. And several intermittent baddies with non-sequitur motivations. It's all very Pokémon X and Y - and that's just fine.
The big, structural departure from X and Y of course is the fact this is all happening in one city - and that, as with most modern Pokémon games, you're no longer out for gym badges. As it so happens, the Z-A Royale does take a surprisingly gym-like structure, however. To go up a rank you need to earn a Challenger Ticket by earning a set number of points; you earn those points by defeating trainers and completing little mini objectives in battle zones, which appear at a different location each in-game night. Then you tackle another trainer of the same rank as you - W on W, for instance - for a chance to go up a rank until you eventually reach rank A. (And thus prove you are 'the strongest Mega Evolution user' and therefore go on save the world. Don't think about it too hard!)
Actually earning your challenger tickets is quite fun. The battle zone appears in a different location each time it spawns, and typically requires you to scuttle up and down ladders and scaffolding - you'll be doing a lot of this in Legends: Z-A - to find enough objectives and trainers to battle through. The big twist is your ability to sneak up on trainers, as you can wild Pokémon. Land a blow on their Pokémon before the trainer spots you (Pokémon sometimes alert them if they see you approaching first) and you'll deal a load of bonus damage, often knocking them out in one. Plenty of objectives, which spawn at random as items in the battle area you collect as you go, feature some element of sneaking up and landing X number of attacks of a certain type, or super effective attacks, and so on. Typically it only takes one, well-optimised go at a battle zone to earn enough points for a ticket, though later on you'll find yourself needing to do a couple.
I say "quite fun" for a reason here, really. Trainers often have very silly one-liners to offer, and the simple act of crossing off tasks from a to-do list, like doing your daily objectives in a live service game, remains perpetually compelling. As does battling in general, thanks to the new system - more on that shortly - and likewise scuttling about collecting items as you go. But once the novelty of sneaking up on an opponent's unsuspecting Bunnelby and pelting it into oblivion wears off, all this can also get quite repetitive. When you've done a dozen or so of these, all on largely identical streets, rooftops and alleys, all with actually-identical visual textures, it eventually becomes a grind. Pokémon has always had grinding, of course, being an old-school RPG at heart, but without that thrusting purpose of building up to take on a greater challenge which drives the old XP-grinding of previous games, it's a grind of the bad kind by the end.
More interesting are the rank-up battles between them, which almost unanimously have a purpose within the narrative - despite being open world, and you being able to tackle the battle zones repeatedly each night if you like, your actual rank-up battles come at specific moments as you follow the main story; the two are entirely linked. The upside here is these effectively play out like old-school gym bouts against single-type specialists with a bit of actual character to them, giving a much more authored element to counter the more randomly-generated sense of the battle zones.
Between these opportunities to rank up, the main story also tasks you with ritually duking it out in Legends: Z-A's other main combat-focused addition, in Rogue Mega Evolution battles. Or, let's be honest: raids. These have become a mainstay in some form since the success of Pokémon Go seemingly captivated the brand: Sword and Shield had Max Raids, Legends: Arceus had Frenzied Noble Pokémon, and Scarlett and Violet had Tera Raids. This time, it's excessive 'mega energy' radiating from somewhere in Lumiose City that's causing Pokémon to mega evolve against their will. Part of your job on Team MZ, besides ascending the ranked ladder, is defeating these in battle when they arise.
Typically they come in waves of three, featuring a mix of classic mega evolutions and the largely excellent (and occasionally very funny) new ones. Leaks for those are all over the internet already, naturally, but I won't spoil them here of course. What I'd say is the three new, already-revealed ones, in Dragonite, Victreebel, and Malamar, offer a pretty good sense of what to expect: cool ones, incredibly goofy ones, and ones that mix the two.
The battles themselves are, much the same as the Z-A Royale, a case of an inventive mechanic that's fun in isolation but can, by the end, become a little bit of a dirge by virtue of a very rigid structure and repeated visuals for their environments (they all happen in another swirling non-space, as opposed to the real world - not that Lumiose is enormously varied itself). The actual bouts themselves can be great: one spooky mega was an absolute nightmare; one of the new megas was appropriately epic. They're also genuinely challenging at times. I never did any real level grinding of my team, but a tactical selection is important, and keeping yourself alive as well as your squad requires close attention and, at higher levels, quite sophisticated dodge timing. It's worth noting that proper youngsters might struggle a bit.
That also goes for the standard battling out in the wild zones, and really this new battle system as a whole. I'm a staunch defender of Pokémon's classic system and sincerely hope that never goes away, its sophistication a factor of just how many years of honing and expertise have gone into it. But! If the Legends series is going to stick around, this system, combined with how wild encounters work, feels like the best alternative we've had so far.
In brief, turn-based is out and real-time is in. You as well as your Pokémon can be knocked out (if you are, you just respawn at the nearest Pokémon Center, no biggie). There are no Pokémon Abilities, though all their other stats continue as normal. And there's no PP for moves anymore to limit how often you use them; instead each move has its own cooldown time, modified by their speed stat. You lock-on to enemies by holding the left trigger and can toggle between them on the fly - in wild zones you'll often find yourself getting ganked by several little scamps at once, so this is important - and likewise, many moves have an area of effect, either dealing damage around their target to others nearby, or in a specific location as with moves like Spikes or Whirlpool.
I worried in my preview, where I only spent about 20 minutes or so with the wild battles, that this whole system was a little chaotic, and wished aloud for Pokémon to have a dodge ability as opposed to you, their trainer. I take about half of that back! The chaos is largely a non-issue, as within the context of the game, in most cases you can simply run away from overwhelming groups or thin them out quickly. Most large-number encounters tend to happen when you take on an Alpha Pokémon - one of those extra large, red-eyed 'mon with a maxed out HP stat, in a mechanic that makes its way over from Legends: Arceus here - which tend to let out a cry and sic their little minions on you at once. In those cases, that sense of overwhelm is intentional and something you can strategies for and counter yourself - a big, wide, rolling Surf wave, for instance, makes short work of a pack of Houndour.
I'm slightly less in love with the fact you can be defeated as a trainer. This made sense in the harsh wilds of Legends: Arceus, set in a time before Pokémon trainers existed as a concept and where the personal danger was the point. Here in a city, even in these wild areas, I'm not sure it's as necessary. It adds an element of peril to the boss-fight encounters of Rogue Mega Evolutions, and likewise to taking on Alphas, but it's also a distraction, not just of your own attention but from the game's ability to really commit to making you think more deeply about battle strategy.
There is strategy to be found - lacing moves with certain cooldown timers together; moving around so your Pokémon follows you out of a melee-only enemy such as Machamp's short range, and so on - but there's also a sense it could go a smidge deeper. At times combat does descend into button mashing as you wait for something to come off cooldown, or cycle through equally-effective alternative moves while you wait for it. And at other times, still, it feels enjoyably intense, the little symbols for super effective, effective, or not-very-effective that appear on your moves becoming something for you to hyper focus on in a kind of split-attention flow state, as you time move commends to your own dodges, lock-ons and hurling Pokéballs. A few hitches persist amongst all that - namely an annoying pause before you can do anything after you send out a Pokémon, and the odd scenario where your lock is removed from the enemy and you have to re-select it again - but over time you learn to work with them, rather than against them. This is, as I'd hoped, a system that's simple on the surface but has some depth to be found within.
It also entwines itself naturally into the way wild spawns and the wider city itself works. Around the city - even outside designated zones - you'll find some Pokémon you can catch in their natural habitat. A Trubbish amongst some back alley bins, for instance; or Flying-type Pokémon (and other rare, reclusive sorts you should seek out…) on rooftops; or Pansage in the very occasional tree. This is really one of Legends: Z-A's greatest strengths: showing Pokémon in their natural habitat. It's a long sought-after element of these games, something that's always been hinted at within the technical limitations of each entry, right back to the Game Boy originals, but this is another step up in progress. It's small things, often carried over from Legends: Arceus, like the way certain Pokémon sleep at night, but combined with the odd funny spawn location or interaction, and the many, many Pokémon around the city with the trainers, it all adds up.
Lumiose City itself is also a pleasant surprise, albeit perhaps a surprise against Pokémon's never-lower expectations than, say, other games on the Switch 2. Its textures are entirely flat - think lots and lots of spray-on balconies - and often heavily repeated, which can get a little eerie. But within those hefty restrictions Game Freak has made it curious to navigate. Climbing scaffolding to collect items or Colourful Screws - collectibles that can be spent on permanent buffs to things like catch rates or your own survivability - is weirdly compelling. Spotting a rare Pokémon on a mid-distance rooftop and figuring out how to get up there, or across to it, often brings a form of spontaneous environmental puzzling into play. There's a clever system for turning a range of moves into, essentially, modern HMs for clearing obstacles - not only Rock Smash smashes rocks, for instance. And coupled with collecting Mega Shards to spend on late-game items, which you do by using any move on the pink rocks you find around the place, it's easy to find yourself in a hypnotised loop. And there's the odd point of genuine interest: the Museum, for instance, is well worth a visit.
Beyond that, there are side quests in the dozens, and as much as these are often painfully simple to the point of parody, they are at least delivered with more of that genuine charm and oddball humour. The people of Lumiose City can be strange. Their weirdness, and really this series' weirdness, is an enduring delight.
Like the last three main series games before it then, Pokémon Legends: Z-A comes with hefty caveats. It gets repetitive after a while. It's still visually limited, despite the huge improvements on the last pair. It's still missing dungeons, deep mysteries, a sense of big challenge to build up to, prepare for and overcome. But then it has charm in spades, from that humour right through to its soundtrack (a smooth, jazzy, wistful, accordion-based treat). There's even an homage to a dungeon, that feels if nothing else like a fantastic proof of concept for one day bringing them back in 3D.
And that, really, is the joy and ever-so-slight of Pokémon Legends: Z-A as a whole. It's a mix of older ideas with new ones, and one that arguably finds the most enjoyable balance yet. And it also feels a little abridged, a little self-contained. It's a bridging game, in a way - which these Legends games were probably always meant to be, between the main main series ones. A breezy, charming in-between entry that could argue its limits needn't be a problem, if only the games it was arriving between were a little sturdier. Instead what we have is a kind of proof of concept. But the concept is so good that you can't help but feel a little frustrated to be teased with it. Imagine a bigger game, with more Pokémon, more wild areas, more variety to its environments and activities and interactions. Once again, as with so much of the past six or seven years as a Pokémon fan, we're still stuck with imagining. But at least as proof of concepts go, I'm now convinced this one could really work.
A copy of Pokémon Legends: Z-A was provided for this review by Nintendo.
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