Despite what you might believe given my profile picture, I've never really cared for the mainline Pokémon series. I don't think before this game I had finished a single one--maybe HeartGold? I played it too young to really remember any of it, and any attempt to play any game in the series after that point would be pretty quickly abandoned, lasting at longest maybe 5 or 10 hours.
It wasn’t until I’d played most of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spinoff games back in 2020 that I actually started actually giving a shit about Pokémon, the media franchise. The PMD games are honestly home to some of the best stuff you’re going to be getting out of a game under the “Pokémon” label: engaging stories, absolutely stellar soundtracks, and fun gameplay to boot (I know this last one’s a bit more contentious, but I honestly prefer the faster-paced grid-based combat of those games to the standard turn-based affair you’ll see in mainline). They’re honestly the only reason I even wanted to give this one a shot in the first place, but I think the similarities between the two franchises are overstated a lot.
Anyways, onto Arceus. Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been marketed, both by Nintendo and by fans, as a breath of fresh air into a stale franchise—revamped everything. And after playing it, I can’t exactly say that’s true? Sure, you can throw Pokéballs at Pokémon on the overworld, but other than that? There isn’t really much new here, aside from the “open world” (which is pretty empty and lacking overall), and the rest is just your standard turn-based affair. It feels like a slightly different container on the same game that’s been sold for years.
Before I get into my criticisms, I feel like I should talk a bit about the part of the game that’s actually good; catching and battling Pokémon. Mechanically, they got this mostly right, although I have some gripes with how most battles end in you being one-shot by the enemy, or you one-shotting them. But that’s mostly a minor nitpick, and I would say this part of the game is still generally mostly fun. Sneaking through the grass and trying to snipe a Pokémon is genuinely a pretty entertaining part of the game. I also thought the boss fights were pretty fun, apparently this is less common of an opinion, but, like, dodge-rolling and timing i-frames was pretty fun to me.
I know some people might be reading this, surprised, thinking, “well, that’s the whole point of a Pokémon game!” and, again, I’d like to reiterate that I’m coming at this from the perspective of having played the PMD games first—story is given a pretty huge focus in those games, and the whiplash of coming back to a mainline with an almost entirely unimportant and unnecessary story is felt in full force. It's like the part of Nier Replicant before that game gets good, where you’re just running from point A to point B to go kill something. Whereas that game has purpose and a point in its drudgery, this game certainly does not; every story beat serves zero purpose other than to get you to go to some area and fight some boss, and the game really just does not care about hiding that fact.
And that last bit—about the game not caring—is a sort of through-line with most of my criticisms. Constantly while playing this game, I just kept thinking to myself “this is the largest grossing media franchise in the world??” And I guess it makes sense, you don’t make it to #1 without cutting a lot of costs, but like, come on. The most obvious complaint is how ugly the game is. It’s not really an observation most people miss, but yeah, it’s a really, really ugly game. You can’t blame it on the hardware because there are plenty of switch games that are eons above this one—It’s hard to believe that this is on the same system as Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, and that both of those games released over 4 years before this one.
Another aspect it’s sorely lacking in is music: to my understanding, most of it is just stuff recycled from Diamond and Pearl. I’m not even going to call them remixes—It’s painfully obvious that they just slapped in the MIDIs they had of the existing songs into some modern DAW and replaced all the instruments with some off-the-shelf Orchestra VST #4. But that’s only half of the game; the other half takes the BOTW approach and just has… no music. Just utter silence. And it doesn’t feel like an artistic choice as it does in BOTW, it’s not like there are reactive bits in the music that come in when you do certain things, it’s just complete silence. They couldn’t be arsed to midislap more than 15 or so songs, so they just gave up and turned off the music anytime you’re not in a battle. There’s tons of other corners cut in this game, from lackluster animations, to a weirdly cumbersome inventory system, it’s kind of ever-present throughout the entire experience.
This is what crunch looks like, in case you’re wondering. Were this game to have some more time in the oven I’d like to think a lot of these issues could have been remedied, hell, maybe they could use some of that $82 billion in merchandising revenue to hire an orchestra or something, but part of me thinks that this lack of giving a shit is a deliberate choice from higher-ups at the Pokémon Company.
Do they even really have to try? As long as it plays decently, it’s gonna be one of the best selling games on the switch. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be that great; Sword and Shield was critically panned on release and still sold 23 million copies. Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee is basically the definition of mediocrity, and it still sold 14 million. The Pokémon Company knows this, that they don’t have to try and they’ll still make bank off of brand name alone, and so they don’t. And this comes from a place of knowing that good shit can be made if they got off their asses and maybe tried a bit. The PMD games are great! There’s no reason to say this is any sort of unsalvageable franchise, and there’s no reason to say shit like “better things aren’t possible” because they are, and they already exist.
Notably absent in PMD’s development is Game Freak, as those games are made by a team over at Spike Chunsoft; is it any wonder that they obviously have so much more care put into them? And it’s not just PMD, Pokémon ranger is dope too despite mostly just being a series where you draw circles over and over… and it’s developed by HAL Labs. There are plenty of examples of Pokémon done right, and surprise surprise, they’re all done by companies other than Game Freak. It’s just frustrating that a series that has all this potential, all of these possible greats of all time, is mostly just used for a quick buck by the teams getting the most resources.
The only way this changes is if people wisen up and stop buying these, but I doubt that’s gonna happen anytime soon. It’s reached the point where the Pokémon name is just so culturally huge that no amount of Gamers who want their silly little videogames to have effort put into them are going to counterbalance the number of parents who need a Christmas present for their kid, and they know what Pokémon is so they’ll just buy that. I don’t know. I just kind of wish people asked more of their Corporate Media Conglomerates
It wasn’t until I’d played most of the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon spinoff games back in 2020 that I actually started actually giving a shit about Pokémon, the media franchise. The PMD games are honestly home to some of the best stuff you’re going to be getting out of a game under the “Pokémon” label: engaging stories, absolutely stellar soundtracks, and fun gameplay to boot (I know this last one’s a bit more contentious, but I honestly prefer the faster-paced grid-based combat of those games to the standard turn-based affair you’ll see in mainline). They’re honestly the only reason I even wanted to give this one a shot in the first place, but I think the similarities between the two franchises are overstated a lot.
Anyways, onto Arceus. Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been marketed, both by Nintendo and by fans, as a breath of fresh air into a stale franchise—revamped everything. And after playing it, I can’t exactly say that’s true? Sure, you can throw Pokéballs at Pokémon on the overworld, but other than that? There isn’t really much new here, aside from the “open world” (which is pretty empty and lacking overall), and the rest is just your standard turn-based affair. It feels like a slightly different container on the same game that’s been sold for years.
Before I get into my criticisms, I feel like I should talk a bit about the part of the game that’s actually good; catching and battling Pokémon. Mechanically, they got this mostly right, although I have some gripes with how most battles end in you being one-shot by the enemy, or you one-shotting them. But that’s mostly a minor nitpick, and I would say this part of the game is still generally mostly fun. Sneaking through the grass and trying to snipe a Pokémon is genuinely a pretty entertaining part of the game. I also thought the boss fights were pretty fun, apparently this is less common of an opinion, but, like, dodge-rolling and timing i-frames was pretty fun to me.
I know some people might be reading this, surprised, thinking, “well, that’s the whole point of a Pokémon game!” and, again, I’d like to reiterate that I’m coming at this from the perspective of having played the PMD games first—story is given a pretty huge focus in those games, and the whiplash of coming back to a mainline with an almost entirely unimportant and unnecessary story is felt in full force. It's like the part of Nier Replicant before that game gets good, where you’re just running from point A to point B to go kill something. Whereas that game has purpose and a point in its drudgery, this game certainly does not; every story beat serves zero purpose other than to get you to go to some area and fight some boss, and the game really just does not care about hiding that fact.
And that last bit—about the game not caring—is a sort of through-line with most of my criticisms. Constantly while playing this game, I just kept thinking to myself “this is the largest grossing media franchise in the world??” And I guess it makes sense, you don’t make it to #1 without cutting a lot of costs, but like, come on. The most obvious complaint is how ugly the game is. It’s not really an observation most people miss, but yeah, it’s a really, really ugly game. You can’t blame it on the hardware because there are plenty of switch games that are eons above this one—It’s hard to believe that this is on the same system as Breath of the Wild and Super Mario Odyssey, and that both of those games released over 4 years before this one.
Another aspect it’s sorely lacking in is music: to my understanding, most of it is just stuff recycled from Diamond and Pearl. I’m not even going to call them remixes—It’s painfully obvious that they just slapped in the MIDIs they had of the existing songs into some modern DAW and replaced all the instruments with some off-the-shelf Orchestra VST #4. But that’s only half of the game; the other half takes the BOTW approach and just has… no music. Just utter silence. And it doesn’t feel like an artistic choice as it does in BOTW, it’s not like there are reactive bits in the music that come in when you do certain things, it’s just complete silence. They couldn’t be arsed to midislap more than 15 or so songs, so they just gave up and turned off the music anytime you’re not in a battle. There’s tons of other corners cut in this game, from lackluster animations, to a weirdly cumbersome inventory system, it’s kind of ever-present throughout the entire experience.
This is what crunch looks like, in case you’re wondering. Were this game to have some more time in the oven I’d like to think a lot of these issues could have been remedied, hell, maybe they could use some of that $82 billion in merchandising revenue to hire an orchestra or something, but part of me thinks that this lack of giving a shit is a deliberate choice from higher-ups at the Pokémon Company.
Do they even really have to try? As long as it plays decently, it’s gonna be one of the best selling games on the switch. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be that great; Sword and Shield was critically panned on release and still sold 23 million copies. Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee is basically the definition of mediocrity, and it still sold 14 million. The Pokémon Company knows this, that they don’t have to try and they’ll still make bank off of brand name alone, and so they don’t. And this comes from a place of knowing that good shit can be made if they got off their asses and maybe tried a bit. The PMD games are great! There’s no reason to say this is any sort of unsalvageable franchise, and there’s no reason to say shit like “better things aren’t possible” because they are, and they already exist.
Notably absent in PMD’s development is Game Freak, as those games are made by a team over at Spike Chunsoft; is it any wonder that they obviously have so much more care put into them? And it’s not just PMD, Pokémon ranger is dope too despite mostly just being a series where you draw circles over and over… and it’s developed by HAL Labs. There are plenty of examples of Pokémon done right, and surprise surprise, they’re all done by companies other than Game Freak. It’s just frustrating that a series that has all this potential, all of these possible greats of all time, is mostly just used for a quick buck by the teams getting the most resources.
The only way this changes is if people wisen up and stop buying these, but I doubt that’s gonna happen anytime soon. It’s reached the point where the Pokémon name is just so culturally huge that no amount of Gamers who want their silly little videogames to have effort put into them are going to counterbalance the number of parents who need a Christmas present for their kid, and they know what Pokémon is so they’ll just buy that. I don’t know. I just kind of wish people asked more of their Corporate Media Conglomerates
tdstr
2 years ago