Good game overall and a step in the right direction, but needs major improvements art direction wise and with the shot composition of cutscenes. The gameplay is different enough to be fun while still keeping the usual Pokemon system intact. Animations for moves look amazing here and catching Pokemon is addicting. It's taken a lot of inspiration from Monster Hunter games with how the areas work.

Music is the best part though, it's kinda insane how good it is after so many years of mediocre soundtracks. When I could hear pieces of D/P/P music throughout the game, I felt like a giddy 8-year-old. Knowing modern Game Freak though, I doubt they'll make a game that improves on this.

i'm trying to think of when exactly i heel-turned on the pokemon series... i cut my teeth on third and fourth gen, returning back in time for gamefreak's arrival onto the 3ds with x and y, and the cracks certainly showed then, but nothing could have been more damning than the release of omega ruby/alpha sapphire, its absence of the beloved frontier explained away in an interview citing "well, who the hell finishes these games anyway?" and that sort of blew my mind, hearing a game director outright handwave inattention to the delivery of their own product with "oh, who cares?"

inattention... is certainly one word that comes to mind when playing pokemon legends arceus. the entire game feels cobbled together from breath of the wild's sloppy seconds, some mmo styled fetch quests and tasks, and youtube videos of pikachu running through an unreal engine wheat field, comments repeating one another with "THIS is the game eight year old me dreamed of playing!"

well, dream bigger.

here's the gameplay: you, the player, enter a map from rust with unloaded textures. in this ugly mess of morrowind bump mapping, you run around and collect resources. of the many things you can make with them, a pokeball is one, and that is how you'll build your team. once you've lobbed enough of the things at unsuspecting wildlife (or suspecting because you ran full steam ahead and threw the damn things like mad), your new goal is to train the team and fill out the pokedex... in addition to completing story beats, of course.

but let's talk pokedex. capture a 'mon and move on, right? wrong. capture 5 of that mon. kill 7. see it use 'ember' four times, and so forth. you do this for every single pokemon, these series of menial tasks designed to give players SOMETHING to keep them in their far cry 2 usermaps long enough so that they don't run through the game too quick. and you have to do this, by the way--the pokedex acts as gym badges do in the mainlines, each badge ("rank") allowing you to use higher leveled pokemon. don't give a shit about screwing around with budews and geodudes? well you better, and you better do it often lest you lose control of your own pokemon.

how about the battles? it's funny--i feel like the initial trailers made combat seem more involved than it really is, which is... your standard turn based affair, really. there's some reworked 'speed' stuff going on, but it's genuinely whatever you're used to from the mainlines with the strange addition of being able to walk around and harass the poor beast you're fighting (or, rarely, its trainer). it's fine, too--don't mess with what works. it's actually fantastic how smooth the transition is in and out of battle, too, a player in legends being able to cut through five starly in the same amount of time a bdsp player might take with just one. this begs a question, though: why no multiplayer? huh? it's the same battle system as anything else, so what's the excuse? why can't i go fight my friends with the shiny zubat i nabbed? gamefreak can't handle seeing me run around in an arena crouching really fast in front of the opponent?

let's get back to the map, again, where all these battles take place. there's not much going on in them. the moment you exit the city hub's gates and find yourself with newfound freedom (after an hour of excruciating tutorial), you see.... virtually nothing of interest. there are some poorly rendered trees out in front, and some... rocks to the left. some grass. there's mountains in the distance, but don't be deceived--this isn't an open world game. you aren't climbing that mountain. you're certainly welcome to piddle about around them, though, the only 'reward' for exploration ever being just finding large pokemon every so often (at turkey leg dangling higher levels, too). for all the ideas nipped from botw, creating intrigue in landscape design isn't one of them. it's just your very, very painfully average set of bump maps with repeating water textures, repeating dirt textures, repeating rock textures--

it's an ugly fucking game, is what i'm trying to get at.

"graphics don't matter!" graphics matter. they aren't the end all be all, but a book in light grey print on pages sopped with coffee certainly presents a more unenjoyable reading session than you'd like. it's questionable why the game is in this state at all, barely steps past the original alpha trailers. this is the part where i must iterate and reiterate: pokemon is THE most profitable media property in the world, eclipsing genuinely anything you or i can think of. gamefreak and the pokemon company bring in over 170 million dollars annually--so where the fuck has it all gone?

well, i can make a guess: straight into exec's pockets. these games hardly matter when the pokemon company's biggest source of income stems from merchandise of all things, so here's the position pokemon legends found itself in at gamefreak: the studio wanted to make a nintendo-hire-this-man type game, they were told "sure, and you'll do it in two years!" to which someone probably complained, asking why so little time, how they'd have to dramatically cut down the scope and intent, to which they were probably told "so?" among "it'll sell regardless" and maybe even "no one finishes these damn things anyway."

and that's where gamefreak found themselves, having to create a scope actually manageable. it has its good little bits that the team knew they needed to get right, like going in and out of pokemon battles, qol changes making managing a team easier than ever (choose when they level? choose their names after? hell yeah), and even the brief interest of just hearing a faint, familiar pokemon cry quite near you... but it all takes place in these ugly, lifeless worlds sorely lacking trainers, sorely lacking cities and towns and settlements at all, sorely lacking actual level design and creativity and care.

so maybe it isn't inattention. in all honesty, gamefreak probably did the best they could given the time they had and the ideas they wanted to work with, and they knew the shit that was bad... was bad. the end result is a barely fun gameplay loop with tried and true designs smothered in mediocrity, in fetch quests and genshin tasks, in a lack of art style and cohesion, in sandboxes that fail to justify themselves, in a story that i wanted to spend a paragraph writing about but what the fuck ever, it's a pokemon story, that shit was always going to be bad.

let me wrap this review up by describing the (spoiler free) circumstances leading up to deciding i'd had enough. i did my fair bit of exploring and leveling up, and it got very old very quick, so i plowed ahead with the story and ended up at a boss fight with baby's first dark souls mechanics on display--one i ended without even using a pokemon. this granted me access to a new area, and it was there that i found the same ugly level design but with 50% more brown. i hightailed it to a ruin (which was a large, square, empty box) and met a character who hated my guts. i found three bandits after a hyped up cutscene all to just face one level 23 pokemon, and then i returned to the ruin character who now suddenly loved me as a result, her character arc completed in the span of 5 minutes, and i then realized that if i wasn't playing any longer for the exploration, and i wasn't playing for the gameplay, and now i didn't even care enough to play for the story... then there just wasn't any reason to play a minute more.

gamefreak could've done better--even if you end up playing and loving legends, you may still find yourself agreeing with that sentiment. but they won't do better, and they won't have to when these games sell the incredible gangbusters amounts that they do. the pokemon company knows this, and that's why gamefreak's never going to get the dev time they actually desperately need. so long as half baked $60 early access crap like this is peddled out and sold in the millions, nothing will ever change. in other words...

should you buy pokemon legends, you aren't supporting a brave new direction to take the series. you're supporting a grindhouse dev studio forced into mediocrity, and that's the direction they've gone for the past decade, and it'll be the same till they or this series dies. just don't forget an arceus plushie on your way out.

I can at least see why people would enjoy this, as walking around and having your Pokemon collect resources for you or just beating the tar out of other wandering Pokemon is kinda fun. That said, this game looks horrifically ugly at times (I finished Metroid Prime just 2 days ago and it blows this out of the water despite being a Gamecube game) and the loading distance of trees and grass just popping in as you walk is very, very noticeable. Also, there are a lot of frame drops despite being locked at 30 FPS, which is comically unacceptable. And it is kind of silly needing to catch 25 Bidoof to just finish a Pokedex page or needing to fight tens of Buizel to hopefully catch them using Aqua Jet 25 times vs you. I might play through this a bit more later and I see the potential, but unfortunately this just seems emblematic of the laziness and lack of polish that a lot of GameFreak and Nintendo games have exemplified recently.

I've not done the post-game but I doubt my opinion will change at all because of it.

This game is fine. Honestly, it's just a collect-a-thon with some easy combat sections interspersed. The boss battles are cool when they get slightly challenging. There not that much going on in the areas aside from some new pokemon. I enjoyed my time with it and wouldn't say I regret getting or playing it. I thought I might complete it at some point, but after seeing the requirements, no shot.

Pokemon has no reason to look or perform this terrible in 2022. It's the biggest franchise of all fucking time. I can only imagine there is someone really stubborn behind the scenes that is actively gimping progress, or they genuinely don't care about the quality since it sells anyway. I've come to terms with the fact that pokemon will be stuck in a shitty rut forever. Still sucks that getting a truly amazing pokemon game feels like a daydream when the potential is there.

Pokemon Legends of Arceus is not a perfect game, but I would be absolutely lying if I said I didn't have fun with it. As it stands, besides from MAYBE the remake of 2002’s Pokemon Ruby, this is the most fun I’ve had with pokemon in the last decade. While not fully realized to its own potential and a game that is still littered with flaws, this is something that was only before just the Pokemon game of my childhood’s dreams.

You can sense Gamefreak really focused on the aspect of seamlessness with Legends and I’m awestruck that they actually did it pretty well. I can switch from flying off a mountain to riding the back of a Wyrdeer and then hop in some water and swim around on a Basculegion all in a matter of mere seconds. I can start and finish a wild battle in this game almost as fast as they could load in Diamond and Pearl. Despite what trailers and render distances would show, I found myself running into pokemon damn near every few steps. Unlike before in the series, I can simply run away if I don't wish to engage in a battle. In fact, I don’t believe there is a single pokemon that can initiate battle. The core battle system only starts when you want it to. Though in the late game, I found myself at near-death and forced to engage in a battle simply to buy myself a few seconds of life. Even the story was handled smoother, the game lets you explore and ignore the main quests until you want to progress to the next location. Besides the grueling handholding at the start of the game, I never found the story to be an obnoxious chore of button-mashing through stale dialogue that always pestered the entire playtime. Most main missions for each location after the first boss felt pretty short and simple. Everything in this game felt put into place to ensure the player was able to embrace the open world instead of spending too much time with the story or being halted every second by an unwanted wild battle.

I’ve seen a lot of remarks about the world being “too empty.” The statement both feels correct and wrong, but in the end, I do believe the world could’ve used a little more even if it never hurt my enjoyment. Materials and collectibles like the whisps and Unknown sprinkled around the map always did a good job keeping my attention at bay. They always had me stopping my expedition to go collect and obtain. Whisps and Unknowns especially reminded me of the low-tier moons from Mario Odyssey, they were tucked away in hidden or hard-to-reach locations. Not to mention that each pokemon has a specific spawn spot, and each pokemon has an individual “Alpha” that are also all scattered around the maps. Every few seconds I’d run into a patch of pokemon that I’ve never seen before or maybe just needed to fill out some of their dex info. Every minute or two I’d run into an alpha that would immediately agro me. Not even just alpha’s either, in every moment of the game I was chased and charged by pokemon that had much higher levels than my team. These aspects provided a somewhat real sense of challenge, I was getting half a team wiped out by just one pokemon. I found it so easy to get off-topic, just like how I was while I was writing this review. Constantly and consistently immersed into each location, I consumed hours of just hunting pokemon. Immersion that was also built by pokemon spawn correlating to their specific location extremely well and in a very logical manner, unlike SwSh’s wild area. I only wish that there could have had a few more distinct locations. Each map felt different from the last but there were a few stretches of just fields with a few minor details like lakes of mud and big mountains. I still feel like I could recognize most places off just a screenshot, but a little more detail can always go a long way. If catching, battling, and information collecting does not interest you, then it is very likely you'll feel the world is empty. A lot of the critiques on this game are very valid, and they’re aspects to keep in mind because they may end up making you dislike this game. However, this is my review and at the end of the day they never truly impeded my enjoyment to a significant degree. Some legitimate critiques I do have is that the game didn’t utilize the battle system well. Barely any trainer battles, or battles with more than 4 Pokémon. This game managed to have probably my favorite trainer battle in the entire series, I wish they could have done that more than just once. It’s especially annoying when this might be the most I’ve enjoyed battling in Pokémon possibly EVER. Also the graphics and render distance are both balls, let's NOT deny that.

Enjoyment is never truly and completely universal. I could never expect everyone to like and enjoy this game as much as I did and, unfortunately, I believe that most will not enjoy this as much as I did. But that is truly irrelevant, this score and review are an assessment of how much fun I had with this game. And as I said before, I would be lying if I said I didn't have fun with it. It was a blast, and it had reinvigorated so much hope and love for the series that I had lost over the last few years. I feel a little shaky on the score, I think it's possible for my opinion to change as time goes on. There are flaws, some more overlookable than others, but only a couple of them ever affected my enjoyment that tremendously. As of now, it is sitting at a very humble 7. So easily the switch’s best installment of the series.

Probably the best thing Gamefreak has put out in ages since Gen 5 and Pokemon HGSS.

I hope that this is the new direction Pokemon takes in general. I honestly prefer this to any of the tradition Pokemon games. The battle system already felt better, and could be even better with some tweaking. I love all of the maps and wish there were more.

Alpha Pokemon are also, before you get better balls at least, the most challenge Pokemon has given us in a while and the fights with them were actually fun, and felt dangerous.

Music's great, story's the only one I've cared about since B&W, the catching mechanics are a joy to use.

My minor complaints mostly have to do with the graphics (We've heard that one a million times), balms for bosses feel kinda... silly? and I feel like trade evolution Pokemon should still evolve through trading since the Link Cable item is so rare.


Edit: There's some unfactual information in this review. Trade Evolutions still work, already did a few. Completing the Pokedex is fun but fuck Spiritomb.

Write down what I'm saying:
✔-The game will be leaked
⭕-A lot of people will be pissed without even having played
❌-A lot of people will consider it the worst game in the franchise
⭕-The people who liked the game will be pissed at the people who didn't like the game and the people who didn't like the game will be pissed at the people who liked the game
⭕-A lot of people will say that the game is incomplete
❌The next Pokémon Day probably won't have the ninth generation, a DLC and a new Mystery Dungeon or some spin-off will probably be announced and a lot of fans are either going to be mad at DLC or they're going to be mad at the spin-offs because they wanted the ninth generation
✔-And if the ninth generation is announced next year they will be annoyed because the game was announced a month before Legends Arceus and 3-4 months before BDSP and a lot of people will say the game will release incomplete

I am surprised that some of my predictions are not totally or totally incorrect

Gyms entirely replaced by bad boss fights that consist of tossing pouches until the enemy gives up? Fine.
Super shallow plot (even for Pokemon standards) with no obvious antagonist? Fine.
Not a single 6v6 battle? Fine.
Around 10 or less forced trainer battles in total? Fine.
Forcing you to throw balls at bidoof for hours just to level up to progress? Fine.
Bad battle system that's still slightly confusing to me at the very end? Fine.
Mostly just remixed music from D/P? Fine.
Pokemon still using their cries from the GBA? Fine.
Mind numbingly easy battles? Fine.
Ugliest first party nintendo graphics in a long time? Fine.
There is just one issue for me.
Where the hell is piplup

Pokemon puede ser mejor que esto, van a la cola en cuanto a incorporar lo nuevo a sus videojuegos.
Aquí hay buenas ideas, el sistema de captura es algo muy disfrutable pero ya está, es solo una idea.
Y el arte del juego se ve con una buena dirección pero solo sabe apuntar, no llega a ningún lado, desde popping de objetos muy notado porque los distintos modelos de LOD son muy distintos, un mundo vacío sin assets, o assets cutres sin acabar, un mundo en el que ir de punto a-b, repetir la misma mecánica hasta que te quieras morir, dialogos exasperantes, no solo porque sean larguisimos, sino porque no cuentan nada interesante, no hay ningún movimiento de los personajes ni nigún movimiento de cámara, aquí he de añadir que un doblaje hubiera estado bien y se nota pero sé que son muchisimas lineas de dialogo.
De verdad que veo una buena base, pero falta chispa, necesito ver que los personajes se expresan como en el anime, que se cuidan los detalles como que las cuevas sean cuevas y no un suelo plano y cuatro paredes con texturas sin terminar y todo el espacio de la cueva vacío.

Me encanta pokemon y lo he jugado todo, pero ya no puedo sacar más, no me aporta nada.
Estoy estudiando desarrollo de videojuegos y se que estoy sesgadisimo tirando a bastante exigente con muchos juegos, pero nintendo es una compañia putisimo enorme y recaudan más pasta que marvel, quiero decir que pueden hacer muchisisisimo más,
esto no parece ni si quiera un indie, porque los indies conocen sus carencias y en vez de abordarlo todo se centran en una sola cosa y la pulen al máximo, aquí lo tienes todo y no tienes nada realmente.

Es el mismo rollo que los anteriores, una mecánica nueva e ir a la cola con los últimos avances, no hay mimo faltan pulir muchas cosas que no creo que lleven mucho tiempo, es una completa desgana y desprecio por algo que me ha gustado tanto.
Al ritmo al que van faltará mucho para que hagan algo que para mi me merezca la pena, al menos no van por mal camino, pero para mi este es un proyecto que se ve como una demo técnica al que le faltan años de desarrollo, llamalo una beta da igual, no es un juego, está cerca.

También entiendo que se ha visto limitado por el entorno en el que está desarrollado, la switch, que entiendo que ya cogea un poco para hacer algunas cosas, pero yo que sé el BOTW existe y a mi no me gusta pero salió en wiiu mucho antes que la switch y es maravilloso en la creación de un entorno y al menos en darte ganas de jugarlo un rato.

This was incredible, I went in with little to no expectations, and after seeing the leaks prior I'd say I was even less excited to play this game. But after a few hours of boring tutorials, I got hooked. Even with how repetitious some tasks feel, it never got boring, and if anything got better as the game went on.

As far as the story goes, I rarely care about pokemon's story, but if this is what they take inspiration for in gen 9, I'm all for it. This really felt polished, and the cutscenes didn't look like garbage (sorry Zacian/Zamazenta turning 180 degrees out of nowhere).

My only real complaint is the graphics, but those are hilariously bad so it didn't feel like it really hurt anything. Especially since the main focus is on the catching/battling of the pokemon themselves.

Pokemon Legends is an incredibly fun game with some really great battle animations, but its story and core gameplay system are far too much like those of Monster Hunter. And the graphics in Legends are incredibly sloppy. I don't like that a lot of moves have been removed from this iteration, but the moves present look good, so I can let it slide.

(Casual players can ignore this paragraph. This is for hardcore fans and competitive players only.)
The EV/IV system has been reworked into a much more beginner friendly one, which is fair, since the previous system was almost excessively complicated. The new system is akin to Gen 2's EV system, but with IVs removed entirely. In their place are Effort Levels, which are levels from 1-10 that can only be raised with certain specific items. That means no more EVs from wild Pokemon, but I actually think that's a good thing, since you won't get any EVs you don't want. IVs are still present, but all they do is determine a Pokemon's starting Effort Levels, which can be anything from 0 to 3. If this translates over to the main series, then it will make creating competitive-ready Pokemon vastly easier, encouraging more new players to join the otherwise unforgiving competitive scene. This new system does, however, make me wonder how Effort Levels will translate into EVs/IVs when Pokemon from Legends are transferred into Home. Furthermore, I would like to see a hard cap on the combined sum of a Pokemon's Effort Levels. The 512 EV limit forced players to strategically considere how to invest them, but allowing every Effort Level to reach 10 eliminates that element of thought. I think a cap of 24 would be reasonable, since it's a nice round number that would allow for two stats to be maxed out completely with one more having a level of 4, somewhat akin to how many competitive players go with the 252/252/4 distribution. We'll just have to see where it goes from here.

(Back to the review)
It seems like GF was trying to keep costs low in case it flopped. Hopefully, the mostly positive reception and strong sales numbers will let them continue this line of games with more polished content, a bigger budget, and much more time. As it is, Legends is a solid foundation for what's to come in the future.

This is the absolute most fun I've had with a Pokemon game since B2/W2 and the first game that made me really think Game Freak was coming to terms with developing for an HD console. I have my fair share of criticisms, but even after streaming it 24h straight I've kept playing it; I have it pulled up in the background while I'm typing this out.

First, my criticisms (+ some nitpicks): It's generally not super pleasant to look at. I'd say that visually it's generally 70% okay-fine, 15% shockingly good, 15% shockingly bad. I'm disappointed by the Pokedex size. Frame rate is generally stable, mostly maintaining 30 while exploring the world but with some sharp drops at other points (I mostly noticed these when the camera hit the foliage, effect-heavy moves, and during the 5th boss). Lack of following Pokemon is a bit of a disappointment. Aiming with Basculegion, while cool, feels really difficult and impractical - and, weirdly, it's the only ride Pokemon you can aim while using, which feels odd. I really missed abilities and held items because I felt they made each Pokemon feel more distinct. I know the game wasn't made for competitive, but I do wish we could at least do some online battling against friends. The new designs are a mixed bag. I'd say it's nearly a perfect split of "I love this!" and "I actually hate this!" Music choices at times felt odd and out of place.

But beyond that, I really loved this game. I've been wanting a mainline game with an emphasis on singleplayer for a while, and this really delivers. The plot wasn't some sort of masterpiece or anything, but it was enjoyable and probably one of the best stories in any main series title (not saying much, but still!). The game has just the right level of challenge I wanted - not absurdly easy nor "Dark Souls" difficulty, but hard enough that you have to actually consider how you're going to proceed at points, which is helped by the real time sections of exploring the world. Side quests are generally fun and help build the world. Plus, with only one title and some changes to evolution methods, this is the first title you're able to complete the entire Pokedex in singleplayer!

This is the first entry where EXP. All felt like a nice addition to me; it didn't feel like it forced me to be overleveled and it helps tremendously with raising Pokemon given how many you're probably going to catch. Heck, at the end of the game, I was underleveled by like 7-10 levels on average, and I loved it! The presence of battles where you could be outnumbered, similar to Horde Battles but significantly closer to your level, were a great addition and encouraged being careful about how you approach wild Pokemon so you didn't aggro too many at once. The new battle system was fun, and it's fun to see turn order actively shift as you manipulate it like in other games.

I was shocked at how enjoyable exploring the world was. While there aren't a lot of secrets to find, it's still exciting to find a new area with rare Pokemon you hadn't been able to find before. Like just a few minutes ago, I was just exploring and found some ponds guarded by [unrevealed mon] which was super exciting because I hadn't been able to find one anywhere until then! It really instills the feeling of actually searching for and finding a rare Pokemon, which is something I've wanted for a long time. The music is generally really good, though as mentioned earlier the usage can sometimes feel a bit out of place while exploring the world.

Overall, I'd say this is easily my favorite Pokemon game since the DS era and I am really hoping they take a lot from this game for future installments. If not for Gen 9, since that's surely deep in development, then hopefully for Gen 10 or a totally new Legends title. Would also love to see a DLC pass for this game like they did for Sw/Sh.