For Pokemon lovers, the Nintendo Switch era has been frustrating. Slow but steady progress was made as Game Freak honed their concepts for how combat, exploration, and capture should seem in a completely 3D world, starting with Sword and Shield and continuing through Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Scarlet, and Violet. However, there has also been a significant decline in the general polish, look, and performance of those three games throughout this timeframe. I’m pleased to say that Pokemon Legends: Z-A ends that slide on almost all counts. By converting its meticulously developed turn-based fight system into an action-based one, it successfully carries on experimenting with Pokemon’s gameplay.
It accomplishes this while reducing its aspirations for a huge universe to a more manageable scale, making Pokemon tighter, more polished, and much more enjoyable than it has been in a number of years. The events of Pokemon X and Y, which took place five years before this new plot, took place in Lumiose City, a Paris-inspired metropolis that I remember fondly from Pokemon Legends: Z-A.
Conflicts between Wild Pokemon and the local population have arisen as a result of their unexpected invasion of the city limits, and “Wild Zones” have been established inside the city to keep them apart. You arrive by rail in this tense setting as a young adult (for real! Not a kid ten years old! Your peers discuss finding employment and making rent payments! Holy Sharpedo!) with no apparent plans or purpose other than leisure travel to Lumiose. You are instantly taken in by a gang that calls themselves Team MZ. They are committed to defending the city during the day and building up the strength to do so successfully by competing in the Z-A Royale, a local competition held every night.
The environment of a Pokemon game has never been so crucial to the plot and concepts of the game. I was reminded in many ways of the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series by the way its characters and plot concentrated so intently on Lumiose as a location and a community. Z-A is able to tell the stories of more characters in greater detail because it doesn’t require you to go great distances on a rather abstract badge-collecting adventure by yourself. You have a group of friends who stay with you at a hotel and who frequently come to the city to support you in combat or with other needs. They are given greater room to grow as characters than their competitors in previous games.
Additionally, Z-A is jam-packed with side tasks that offer you plenty of chances to interact with Lumiose’s residents. The majority of them aren’t Pokemon trainers, which is delightful. You will assist a perfume producer in sampling Pokemon scents for her products and a Furfrou groomer in teaching her Scyther styling techniques. An electrical worker needs you to chase Pokemon that are tampering with his elevator (um, “Holovator”), and a cafe employee needs you to entice Trubbish away from her cafe. To continue with the Yakuza parallels, the great majority of these side tasks are, to be honest, very ridiculous.
They frequently include imaginative or strange situations that are handled by your character, such as Kiryu, who for some reason is by far the most resilient person present. Battles, capturing certain Pokemon, teaching them specific moves, trading, evolving, obtaining specific goods, practicing parkour, and many other activities are all part of the more than 100 side quests. I still haven’t completed every single post-game quest, but it took me 35 hours to roll credits while primarily keeping up with the side quests that appeared sporadically throughout the campaign.
The environment of a Pokemon game has never been more essential to the plot and concepts of the game.
Z-A’s plot is civic-minded, just like the Yakuza games (I promise this is the only analogy). Training to defend the city you now call home is your main objective, not merely getting stronger or adding entries to a monster encyclopedia. As you go, you come across a group of people who disagree with one another on what Lumiose City should have in order to prosper. As it considers what it means when several groups of people (or, I suppose, critters) share a space yet have quite different requirements, as well as who should take precedence when those demands clash, Z-A grapples with several real-world concepts.
Although Z-A doesn’t offer simple solutions, it does offer some intriguing parallels for current civic and environmental problems and, most importantly, stresses empathy when attempting to resolve them. Additionally, the game features a Japanese mafia side that is literally nice. Alright, I swear I’m done for good now.) The absence of voice acting is one negative aspect of this.
The lack of voice acting in Z-A didn’t really bother me during all the time I spent running around, completing sidequests, and reading the text boxes for the main quest because I’ve played Pokemon games so frequently and for such a long time. However, it did become an issue during the main story moments, as people wildly flail their arms and move their mouths while making no sound at all. This ridiculous pantomime was startling and disrupted the immersion. I’m not sure what Game Freak had in mind. At least for significant sequences, Pokemon should have engaged some amazing voice actors long ago to catch up to all the other story-heavy games.
Z-A operates at a steady and fluid 60 frames per second on the Nintendo Switch 2. It’s still a lot better than Scarlet and Violet’s erratic phasing in and out at close range, however NPCs and items still appear very abruptly and a little too near for comfort. No character motions moved at very slow framerates that I could see. Personally, I didn’t encounter any issues that broke the game. My Pokemon didn’t become lodged in the wall or the floor. It’s quite impossible to read the tips displayed on the loading screens. When everything is considered, I was able to play the entire game with no concern for performance, which is far more than I could say of Z-A’s two predecessors.
However, that doesn’t mean Z-A looks fantastic. The fact that Z-A is set entirely in a bland, ugly metropolis is one of its main, frequently mentioned issues. You will be staring at the same five or six building exteriors most of the time, all of which are flat, awful pictures with no depth or detail—just a few windows and balconies painted onto a wall in the style of Looney Tunes. While there is some variation in the town, such as a graveyard, a sandy area, and a snow-covered Wild Zone, Lumiose is primarily composed of the same parks, cafes, and paving stones every single day. Most structures are closed to the public.
However, Z-A is not entirely unappealing. The inside of the buildings that you are able to view are intricate, vibrant, welcoming, and unique. Small, long overdue details like unique facial features and different colored clothes within trainer classes have also made character models more emotive than before and increased the visual variety of NPC designs. The ability to customize the face of your own character has also improved from previous games. There are many alternatives for outfit customization, no apparel that is gender-locked, and in some situations, the opportunity to mix and match the colors of jackets, shirts, belts, and other items for a greater range of styles.
Even though Lumiose lacks visual appeal, exploring it is nonetheless worthwhile.
Although I have criticized Lumiose for having a dull aesthetic, that does not mean that exploring it is boring. One of my main criticisms of both Arceus and Scarlet/Violet is mostly resolved by Z-A: both were large, empty worlds with no compelling reason to venture forward. The broad spaces in those two predecessors lacked true detail, despite their best efforts to depict the Pokemon world’s enormous scope. Large fields filled with the same Pokemon and pointless objects strewn around aimlessly made up a large portion of their maps. Their mountaintops were frequently desolate, their caverns were empty tunnels, and their landmarks seldom ever provided a compelling reason to visit.
If the enormous world is going to be so dull, why even have it? Z-A is not that way.
Game Freak was able to find the time, or ideas, or whatever was lacking previously to fill the world with well positioned incentives by making it smaller and more controllable. TMs and collectible Colorful Screws are among the items that occasionally wait at the conclusion of Z-A’s humorously difficult platforming stages. Rare Pokemon are typically the prizes, though.
You know, even though the majority of Pokemon are only found in Wild Zones, there are still certain monsters that hide in city streets, and finding them is quite thrilling. At first, you’ll just encounter basic Pokemon, like Kakuna hanging from trees, Pidgeys and Fletchlings scuttling around in parks, and possibly a Trubbish eating on some trash. A single Eevee running down a tiny backroad, a Gastly springing out of a dark corner at night, or an Ariados falling abruptly from a sewer ceiling are just a few examples of the rarer creatures that can be found in alleyways, courtyards, and roofs if you do enough exploring. Once, I squealed when I spotted a lone, uncommon Dratini on a rooftop that I had laboriously climbed to get to. Moments like these are what give Lumiose its true personality and make it so enjoyable to explore.
I’ve managed to get this far into my review without delving into Z-A’s most revolutionary shift to date—the fighting system—because there is so much to see. Pokemon has evolved into an action game. The final turn-based components were thrown out the window! It’s fantastic!
Game Freak’s ability to adapt a well-known system of monsters, moves, status effects, items, and types into an entirely new genre is quite amazing. While the monsters are engaged in combat, you move your character about the battlefield rather than taking turns.
By default, your Pokemon will follow you, providing you with an intriguing and indirect method of slightly controlling their positions and even avoiding your opponent’s techniques. Instead, your Pokemon will square up with its opponent if you hold down ZL, allowing you to choose and use moves. This adds an intriguing new layer of strategy to how you position yourself, and thus your monster, for optimal offensive and defense. If you’re fighting a wild Pokemon, you’ll need to accomplish all of this while also moving your character out of danger because they can hurt you or even knock you unconscious.
Verdict
In Pokemon’s 3D era, Pokemon Legends: Z-A feels like Game Freak is finally finding its footing. Even though Lumiose City lacks visual excitement, its engaging Pokemon encounters, compelling individuals, and entertaining side quests make it enjoyable to explore and the perfect setting for a more personal and emotionally developed Pokemon story. Z-A’s complete battle system change from turn-based to action also works surprisingly well, offering a variety of fascinating opportunities for more in-depth, competitive play while remaining simple enough for series veterans to understand and entertaining to play casually.
Although Z-A’s performance on the Switch 1 may be a bit better, it’s still a substantial advance over its predecessors, and it’s much better on the Switch 2. It’s great to be eager to play for hours on end again after years of putting down the controller with a heavy sigh at the conclusion of a Pokemon review.
