My full review of Legends ZA after beating it
Spoiler heavy, obviously.
This game sucks. No, not because of graphics or a lack of voice acting. In fact i sincerely hope pokemon never gets voice acting. And i genuinely dont care about graphics as long as the game is fun. That being said....
The game is not fun.
Starting with the battle system, its nonintuitive. Sure, i got the hang of it, but it still doesnt feel right. Or good. Or fun. You button mash. Thats it thats the full extent of the gameplay. You have no room to think ahead or strategize. A lot of moves leave your pokemon entirely vulnerable to attacks. Speed is the most important stat. If youre slow it really doesnt matter if youre bulky because youre taking multiple hits anyway. I know pla also had the speed advantage especially with the agile style stuff, but at least it was balanced by making agile moves weaker and also not even always guaranteeing that you get to move a second time. You actually had to strategize your attacks. And sometimes it doesnt matter if youre fast because some moves make your pokemon reposition itself near you even if you dont want it to, wasting time and taking hits when it couldve just attacked. It makes most moves pointless to use and only certain moves optimal for these kinds of battles, which diminshes what little variety there was. This is especially an issue in rogue mega battles. You cant force your pokemon to dodge, they just follow you around, meaning if YOU are trying to dodge moves your beloved pokemon will simply very stupidly run right up next to you, taking all the hits youre trying to avoid. And while you can recall and send them back out to focus on dodging to save yourself, sending a pokemon out makes them stay in place for a few seconds so they can do their cry and amimation, which defeats the purpose. You also cant command and dodge at the same time since focusing the mega and pressing y doesnt make you dodge, it just makes your pokemon use an attack unless you dont have a pokemon out, which as i just said is hard to manage when switching pokemon out ruins the flow and leaves you extremely vulnerable.
And on the topic of rogue mega battles. Your pokemon will take damage from moves that they are normally immune to. This of course is entirely nonintuitive. You cannot reasonably argue that theyre simply that strong when we have things like z moves and ultra necrozma and arceus itself all not bypassing immunities. Mega pokemon are Not that special. Doesnt matter if theyre a little bigger than usual.
Lumiose was not designed with battles in mind considering a majority of places you find yourself battling in dont have a lot of room for you to move around anyway, leaving you with the only real option being just defeat your opponent faster. You only have space in rogue mega battles which, again, its really hard to command your pokemon and avoid being hit at the same time. After a while it feels like youre just sending in your pokemon as cannon fodder to do chip damage so you can get the battle over with. This is especially an issue at the end of the gane where youre getting jumped by 2-3 mega pokemon at a time in extremely small spaces, and they all tend to target you specifically instead of your allies and pokemon.
The nighttime battle zones hardly have any areas to hide in and the range at which you can start targeting their pokemon is a lot smaller than the range the trainers can see you to initiate battle. Like i said, hardly any room to move around for most of these areas. They also have at most 3 pokemon. Also, the thing most advertised about this game was the za battle rank system, where you go from rank z to rank a, but due to a lack of any meaningful plot progression, you skip all the way from u to f. Ive seen many people praise this decision, saying that it wouldve been annoying or stale to have to get through each rank. But that to me shows a lack of self awareness. Maybe, just maybe, if you think the main advertised battle thing was going to be a slog to get through, then that means it wasnt a good idea to begin with.
Wild pokemon battles arent much better. In fact theyre worse. You get swarmed really quick. There is again hardly any places to hide, failing a catch attempt makes them spot you instantly. You cant sneak up on pokemon to initiate a battle with them like you could in sv or pla, since the only way to battle is to have your pokemon out already and make them attack, but for whatever reason they made it so that if you have a pokemon out, youre guaranteed to get caught by any wild pokemon in the vicinity even if you are hiding.
In legends arceus you had many methods of mitigating pokemon capturing. You had berries and other items you could use to lure pokemon depending on what they liked, you had items that could make them stop dead in their tracks to help you escape or give you a better chance at catching them. You had more places to hide and observe. Sure, you get one extra chance to catch them if you defeat them, but that doesnt really help much. You just walk in, throw some balls, and hope for the best instead of thinking about what might be useful. Theres not much strategy to it anymore and it feels mindless.
A lot of mega pokemons main appeal is their ability and there are no abilities in the game, meaning some pokemon just end up completely pointless to use over something else. For example, you may like to use mega charizard y if you prefer to set up sun and use moves that benefit from it, but without abilities theres not really any point to using it over mega charizard x. All it really does is make there be even less strategy or variety. Also locking the kalos starter megas behind online ranked was a really stupid idea. They clearly only think people are going to play the game to fight people online instead of, idk, experiencing a story? And with that being said...
The plot is lame as hell and the worldbuilding is not much better
This games plot feels a lot like it was made for people who didnt actually play xy. Or any pokemon game, for that matter. The plot is shallow. Quasartico, one of the first things thats been advertised about the game, ultimately has no presence in the game at all. Everything about that happened with the tower and how its AZs fault has absolutely no basis in anything previously established in xy. They invented lore from nothing and acted like you were supposed to enjoy it. Sure, its nice to have more lore, but the least they couldve done was expand on things that needed expanding on instead of making up new problems that didnt need to exist. If you played xy and also have basic reading comprehension skills, you would notice that every single bit of lore that kalos has does NOT take place in lumiose city. Lumiose has its own little mysteries here and there and, oddly enough, not a single one of them are explored in za. The biggest thing was the ghost girls and the train station message. All we get is an npc mentioning the ghost girl thing, like gamefreak was cheekily poking fun for making us expect anything about za to have anything to do with xy. The game feels way too self contained. We dont even get to know who taunie/urbain is looking for. For some reason everyone treats naveen like shit despite him not doing anything wrong. Corbeaus whole thing with lysandre is told rather than shown and not fully expanded upon. Team flare nouveau consists of a grand total of 2 people and is dropped on you last second and also ultimately doesnt affect a single thing in the plot except to retell you things you would already know if you played xy. The whole thing with lysandre labs felt like nostalgiafarming but for people who didnt play xy. Nothing about looker is mentioned. Anything about characters you would reasonably care about is only mentioned by random npcs, where sycamore and trevor are conveniently not in kalos at the time despite the fact that their expertise in megas couldve really helped make any of it matter at all, and theyre the only two that have direct ties to lumiose. Its not a bad thing to have new characters, but it wouldve been nice if they were based on things we got to know in xy. Theres no reason why clemont shouldnt have been involved when the main plot point is the tower and he had direct ties to the tower in xy. The museum is the most we get of the rest of the region, which like i said before is where all the regions lore is. Everyone who played xy knows that one of the biggest things people wanted to know about was the power plant, which is right outside lumiose city, and we dont get to see anything about it. A lot of tell-not-show going on, especially with the subway bosses who just kinda. Got a resolution except why should it matter if we're in kalos and not unova where it would matter. Whats with all the unova pandering without actually going back to unova these past few games anyway?
Like i said with sycamore, considering the plot kinda revolves around mega evolution, you would think the only characters in the game that are linked to the history of mega evolution would have been there to help investigate. Somehow theyre still trying to push the idea that mega evolution is only possibke through a trainers bond, despite it being blatantly untrue and disproven throughout the games events repeatedly. "Mega energy" doesnt really have much of a basis. In fact the entire concept of pokemon randomly doing the gimmick due to some weird energy in the region is a 1 to 1 rehash of galars plot where the galar particles are what allow dynamaxing, and throughout swsh we have instances where pokemon randomly dynamax (except we dont get to see or deal with it). But at least it all stems from eternatus. Mega energy kinds just. Exists. Only from the tower. Because of something az did, i guess? But ultimately it still doesnt give any good reason as to why only a select few pokemon can mega evolve. Also, none of the alola mega dex entries were expanded upon at all, all we got was that the rogue pokemon specifically are suffering. Which is crazy because even pokemon masters, a mobile gacha game, addressed the alola dex entries and how sycamore is trying to learn more because in xy it was only a theory that mega evolution was only possible with a trainers bond, but none of that matters because mega evolution as a phenomenon isnt explored at all in za. Its just a thing you can do sometimes and thats it.
Personally i dont think zygarde shouldve needed a mega stone to mega evolve, i think it shouldve been like mega rayquaza where it can just do that because its that powerful.
The final boss plays out more like a kirby boss than anything. Which wouldve been neat if commandong your pokemon was better. And if you pay attention to every game that lysandre is in, like usum and pokemon masters, it seems like they think the only personality trait that kalos has is the ultimate weapon. And this continues to be the case in za, where despite the fact that Ange had nothing at all to do with the ultimate weapon and it was built for an entirely different purpose, it decides to try and Ultimate Weapon it up anyway out of nowhere, despite no indication that this was even going to be possible at all. Its just stupid.
Theres no good reason for alpha pokemon to exist, an npc even points out that thats only a thing in ancient hisui, but this isnt really expanded upon.
Every single plot point in the game progresses through battles. Every. Single. One. All the exact same way. "Ill give you info if you beat me in battle". I know this isnt too far off from other pokemon games, but it wasnt for EVERY SINGLE PLOT POINT. I was genuinely surprised when mable DIDNT make me battle her for her to tell me something. Which btw shes all "i used to be part of team flare" as if its supposed to be a surprise when she clearly makes zero wffort to hide her ties to team flare when she has the logo on both her laptop and chair. And most of the side quests are just battles. Ive personally never been fond of endless battling (like battle tower, battlebtree, stuff like that just doesnt personally interest me) and would rather have interesting plot and lore than just battling.
It should not be the case that galar had a better plot than za. Because at least galar was really fun and involved with the gym challenge.
It feels like a slice of life without the slice of life part
One of the hugest things about kalos was that it introduced pokemon amie. With switch 2 mouse controls and both switches having touchscreen, you would think theyd let you pet your pokemon. In fact, one of the only other things advertised that wasnt just battling was being able to hang out with your pokemon. But then you play the game and there is actually no way to interact with your pokemon. You sit at the cafe and do all of nothing the entire time. None of the buttons do anything, all you can do is sit abd stare at your pokemon while they stare at you back. And you sit and stare at your screen because there is no engagement. You cant interact with your pokemon when you have them out, which both pla and sv let you do. Yoir pokemon even interact with each other in pla, sv, and swsh. Its weird with how good the animations are in the game that they removed one of the biggest things people care about, which is interacting with your team.
And more issues....
Tons of buildings, cant go into any of them, like sv. Sure, the cafes were mostly pointless in xy, but they offered personality to the region. Let you know the kinds of people who lived there. Youd think with a game that focuses on one city would make it more in depth but it somehow manages to do the opposite of that. Cafes are now just a waiter that stands outside and you order a drink and sit outside and do nothing. Apparel shops arent their own rooms much like how none of the shops in sv were anything more than a menu. No office buildings to enter means no ghost girl thing as previously mentioned. Somehow they failed to even acknowledge the heatran thing in lumiose. Not to mention since its all one place you hear the same music all the time. Doing the scaffolding obstacle course type things feels pointless and like theyre strewn about randomly just for the sake of having something there. They couldve at least given us roller skates as some region personality. It just as a whole feels shallow and empty and i feel like the only way to enjoy this game is if you hadnt played any other pokemon game before.
Im sure theyre going to cover major plot points in the dlc because of course they would lock base game content behind a paywall, the same way the sv dlc shouldve been base game stuff. Or hell they might just continue inventing new things instead of expanding on anything else. But ultimately i just really do not care about mega pokemon.
I think the game backed itself into a corner by only taking place in lumiose. Nothing really Happens in this game. And whatever does happen happens with little basis in previously established lore.
Tldr this game is not worth $60-$70 and you should just borrow it from someone else if you wanna play it