An open world Pokémon game is something I’ve wanted for ages and Pokémon Legends Arceus gives us a taste of what one could be like. GameFreak finally attempted something majorly new with the franchise and while it doesn’t all land, it creates a blueprint for an incredible gen 9 if they actually follow up on it.

To start, the presentation feels like a massive step up from the previous 3D games. There’s no denying that the graphics could’ve been much better but the animations and everything else feel much higher quality. Pokémon finally actually make physical contact in their animations, they’re accurate to their size in battle or the overworld, and more changes like this. The animations in general all were redone and look much better due to that, you can even do simple things like throw your Pokémon out in the overworld and see how they interact with each other. These changes are all big improvements from the past games, even if the graphics do not look great most of the time. I like the art style that the game was going for, but it just doesn’t turn out looking good in most places. Other games on the Switch such as Breath of the Wild or the Xenoblade games show that the Switch could’ve handled better graphics and it’s unfortunate that Legends has to look like this.

The most obvious change from the previous Pokémon games is the “open-world” structure. The game is split into five decently sized areas where you can go explore and catch Pokémon, but unfortunately that’s all you can do in these areas. The areas aren’t all connected like in something like Breath of the Wild though, they are all just places you select on a map, and you have to go back to the town to go to another place which takes a lot away from the immersion and “open world” feeling. While it is cool going around and catching Pokémon you eventually end up just seeing the same ones over and over without much else to do other than catch them several more times. I’m a big fan of being able to sneak around and catch Pokémon without battling them when it works, but most Pokémon later into the game get angered whenever you get anywhere close to them, forcing you to battle them and defeating the whole purpose. This is a really cool concept in general though and I like that there are different items and different types of Poke balls you can use to experiment with different methods of catching.

Another thing that got a big improvement for the better is the battle system. The strong and agile style move feature may not seem like much, but it’s the biggest change to the Pokémon combat system in ages. It’s nice experimenting with different move styles to try to get two moves in before your opponent can act and adds some more strategy to the game. It’s no SMT combat but it’s a step in the right direction and I’d love future games to bring this back, maybe even expanding on it more. Battles were also much more challenging than usual for Pokémon; it was refreshing actually having to think about what to do in battles for once instead of just spamming your strongest attacks and one shotting the opponent’s team. I really enjoyed battling in this game, so it’s a shame that there were only a few trainer battles throughout the course of the entire game.

My biggest issue with Legends Arceus is the overall structure of the game. I like that GameFreak tried something new with the series, but unfortunately it doesn’t all land. The game starts with your character from Diamond/Pearl falling into a rift back to the past Sinnoh region, Hisui. This concept is already really different from the typical Pokémon structure which had me interested to see where it went. The first couple hours are a decent start, showing off a lot of how people used to live in fear of Pokémon and how they were an actual threat to humans. Majority of the story is spent chasing after frenzied Pokémon and then engaging in a battle with them where you dodge their attacks and throw balms. While I don’t hate this structure, it got a bit repetitive after the first couple of times and I wasn’t the biggest fan of this style of battle either. The final act of the story also just felt weird, it had a complete shift in the direction out of nowhere and felt underwhelming in general. I’m not one to play Pokémon for the stories but the writing in this game was really inconsistent and strange, it felt nothing like previous games I’ve played in the franchise.

My biggest hope for the future of the franchise is that GameFreak will take the good elements of Legends and merge them with the best elements of traditional Pokemon. Legends had a lot of cool ideas and new mechanics that could be improved on and merged with more traditional Pokemon elements like trainer battles and gyms to make a genuinely amazing game. Legends combat and quality of life features, mixed with an actual interconnected world with gyms could be so good so I hope GameFreak actually tries again and doesn’t give up on innovating the series. It’s hard to say if I could recommend this game, it does a lot more “new” than Brilliant Diamond or Sword do for example, but I feel like those games are all around more solid and less flawed even if Legends outclasses them in many aspects. I had a pretty great time aside from the flaws, but it feels more like a blueprint for what Generation 9 can be like than an actual fully fledged Pokémon game.