Pokémon Legends: Z-A Review

From the bottom to the top, from the north to the south, and back around again.

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Pokémon Legends: Z-A Review
Platform: Nintendo Switch 2(Reviewed), Nintendo Switch
Developer: Game Freak and their many support studios
Publisher: Nintendo

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Introduction:

The lead-up to Pokémon Legends: Z-A was one of the stranger in series history. Announced in February 2024 with a vague CG trailer and some sparse information, the game underwent a year-long media blackout. Speculation ran rampant, nobody could agree on when the game would take place, before it was finally revealed a year later, and was subject to the usual pre-release build up. Though, this time it was a tad different.

PLZA was hurt by residual negativity toward the performance issues of Scarlet and Violet— rather than the more obvious design issues— and the belief that the Switch era of Pokémon was, in an overly cynical sense, ‘a failed era.’ Word that the entire game would take place in Lumiose City, a single location from Pokémon X and Y, struck many as being overly limited for a series defined on exploring regions. A slew of leaks about Game Freak’s various projects happened throughout PLZA’s hype cycle, diminishing its impact with news of other projects and features that never came to be. And early official footage of the game looked pretty rough on an image quality level.

However, there were plenty of reasons to also be excited. I was psyched because it was being built on the innovations and technology of Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022), but with enough new ideas to be distinctly its own game. Something that I want to see, as while some like to refer to Pokémon as a single entity, the developers can’t improve things unless they can experiment. The fan favorite mega evolution mechanic and designs were making a bold return after being relegated to spin-offs for the past six years. And the introduction of a real-time battle system— something people have wanted for literally 25 years, if not longer— is one of the best experiments they could possibly pursue. Because while millions love the turn-based gameplay, and Pokémon competitive play is Pokémon for others, people have been demanding innovation for 20 years at this point.

Oh, and of course the game was also released for the shiny new Nintendo Switch 2, meaning it would be free from the same performance issues— running at a coveted 1080p and 60 fps in exchange for a $10 price hike.

With all of this in mind, I put 75 hours into this game over 10 days, and now I think I’m ready to gush about where this game triumphs. …And highlight how, even after being on an HD console for 7 years, the series is still playing catch-up in a lot of ways.

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Part 1: Open Battle City

Rather than taking place in a linear region, an open world, or a series of lineally delaminated Monster Hunter esque biomes, Pokémon Legends: Z-A chooses to base the entirety of its duration within the walls of Lumiose City. (Well, aside from an opening cutscene, but that’s being pedantic.) The protagonist is a vacationer to the city who, predictably, gets roped up into their own Pokémon journey, exploring this city as it undergoes an aggressive ‘redevelopment plan.’ A slightly dubious plan meant to combine the series stables of towns and routes into a single entity.

Lumiose City is home to a scattering of 200+ wild Pokémon to find, catch, and battle through an expanding number of Wild Zones. Partitioned off segments of the city that take the form of makeshift routes. Pokémon combat is real-time for the first time in any Game Freak title, offering a fresh, flashy, and different take on the gameplay the series has established up to this point. Lumiose, rather than just be a cluster of confusingly arranged shops— like it was in X and Y— is reimagined as a truly three-dimensional environment. One with shops, sights, and secrets to uncover as the player parkours up and across rooftops, searching for rare Pokémon and elusive items alike.

That is before night falls, and the city invites chaos as a sector is partitioned off and transformed into a Battle Zone as part of the Z-A Royale tournament held by the ‘altruistic’ Quasartico Inc. A segment that, in older Pokémon games, would just be a series of battles after another, but in PLZA, they are imagined as a rapid battles driven by stealth, a modest time limit, and a series of bonus modifier cards that confer greater rewards for specific actions.

All of this combines with main story missions, and a deluge of short side quests, to create a game that feels denser, more fleshed out, and fuller than any prior Pokémon game Game Freak has developed. And a game with a firmly compelling loop. Catching Pokémon and exploring the city during the day, battling them once night falls, all while accumulating cash for items— and outfits— and building a squad from a limited yet curated roster.

Broadly speaking, I’d say it represents a new vision for what Pokémon games can be, and is a refinement of many ideas that have been explored throughout the series’ run on Switch. A culmination of what was done before and a game that looks outwards to the future, optimistically imagines what this series could be, and pulls off a lot of things with grace and splendor. But also a title that feels in the midst of a transition. Still clashing against scope, time, and technical limits. Feeling like a bold move in the right direction, but never going all the way.

This is a game with a lot of facets, so in typical Natalie.TF style, let me break things down bit-by-bit.

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Part 2: Wicki-Wicki-Wild-Wild Zones

The Wild Zones, and the manner in which players catch Pokémon, builds upon the innovations of Legends Arceus, but changes things in a few smart ways. Players can throw balls at wild Pokémon without battling, catch them unaware with a ball to the back of the head. But the deliberate aiming of Arceus has been de-emphasized with a lock-on system that makes for faster, more casual Pokémon catching. Stealth still remains a core part of avoiding aggressive Pokémon and sneaking up on timid species. But in trading the wilderness for an urban city environment with narrow streets, walls, and urban clutter, it’s not as robust.

Catching Pokémon, in general, aims to achieve a balance of pretty much every method seen previously. You can just throw a ball at any Pokémon for a good to existent chance of catching them. You can battle and soften them up, dousing them with status conditions, and try your bet then. But, in a true game-changing move, once you knock out a Pokémon, you have a brief window to toss a ball at them and catch them, even though their HP is at zero. It sounds like such a minor change, but after catching thousands of Pokémon over the years, this is a truly drastic quality of life feature that removes one of the biggest areas of friction in catching ’em all. In fact, it might be too convenient, as I caught so many wild Pokémon it became a storage nightmare. (Pokémon really needs an auto-sort feature for boxes, and I miss the old box management features they omitted for some reason.)

I ultimately enjoy the Wild Zones for what they are. Tiny routes that are cleanly integrated as part of an interconnected world. Environments that can be freely entered and exited from while rarely functioning as obstacles. And home to a decent cluster of unique, or overlapping, Pokémon. As an idea, I think they are kind of brilliant. More digestible than the long expeditions of Legends Arceus. Less repetitive than the isolated L of the Wild Area in Sword and Shield. And more distinct than the big breadth of clutter in Scarlet and Violet. However, their design is sometimes a teensy bit baffling. Let’s start with Pokémon behavior.

Generally speaking, there are four flavors of wild Pokémon. Runners, wanderers, fighters, and alphas. Runners run away when approached and need to either be snagged in a Poké Ball immediately or KO’d with a sufficiently fast move. Wanderers are not really perturbed by much of anything, they don’t mind humans getting up in their face, yet may jump into battle if there’s a battle going on. Fighters will start up a battle on sight, even when you don’t want to— even when they are a level 7 against a level 70. While alphas are hyper aggressive giant Pokémon who will go berserk upon sight and are not subject to the same stealth mechanics as regular Pokémon. You can be crouching through the grass, slowly approaching another Pokémon, as inconspicuous as can be, and the alpha will still rush you.

If you want to explore certain zones, you need to either deal with the alpha, effectively a mini-boss, or run like the world is on fire. And unlike in the prior games, battles are not a safe haven from conflict. If you mess around, you can easily wind up in a one versus four, or even six, scuffle. A cool concept, but also a terrifying one that can easily lead to a tactical retreat. Or the protagonist blacking out.

Another recurring grievance is Pokémon distribution. The series has never found a perfect balance between making some Pokémon elusive while giving the player the tools needed to make a diverse selection of teams from the early game. You can assemble a pretty good roster by hour five, but this is a game designed around getting every Pokémon. PLZA prioritizes shiny hunting in a way that few games in the series have. And the game is pretty much designed around the idea that players will cycle through Wild Zones to get what they need.

However, it still chooses to make certain Pokémon only appear at night— a concept that clashes with the Battle Zones. Or make certain Pokémon only available in one Wild Area, in one location, some of the time. The choices are largely random and make for an uneven playthrough. Such as how players can acquire a Lucario, Starmie, or Florges before the opponents reach level 20, but cannot get an Inkay, Litwik, or Falinks until halfway through the game. And if they want Kalos staples like Pancham, Honedge, and Helioptle, they need to get lucky and know where to look, again and again.

The absolute worst example of these gripes is Wild Zone 17, which has already become kind of infamous, as it is home to half a dozen Pyroar who will aggro upon first scene and need to be dispatched before the player can do much else.

However, this area is the only place where you repeatedly find the Kalos starter Chespin— who is located on a lower level, away from the angry lions— and the elusive Skarmory, who received a new mega evolution. So, you’d think that the game would want you to use them. To get to Skarmory, you need to go past the angry lions, climb up a ladder, and maybe deal with an alpha Mawile. …Why not have this bird also appear on top of a tower somewhere, like Dratini, Larvatar, or Hawlucha do? I don’t know!

I think the solution to this is to either ensure that there are at least two ways to acquire every Pokémon. (You can add new spawns after the player hits credits.) Just use fixed spawn locations for every Pokémon to make them easy to catch. Or introduce a repel item that prevents Pokémon from getting aggressive so you can focus on catching over crowd control. Heck, that would practically be an accessibility option, as it is stupid easy to get overwhelmed and murked by a wild Pokemon. I haven’t wiped out in a Pokémon game since I was a little kid, but wild Pokémon wiped out my player character a good dozen times.

The friction of the Wild Zones ultimately works in the context of a playthrough, and can make for some engaging or entertaining drama. But Pokémon is a series that people play like freaks, and this often aggressive structure just isn’t as freak-friendly.

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Part 3: Real-Time Monster Mashing

The biggest and most obvious new feature of PLZA is that it pioneers a new real-time battle system, effectively fulfilling a desire fans, like me, have had for decades. Much like the turn-based system, it is pretty simple to grasp. Lock onto a target with ZL, toss out a Pokémon using the D-Pad, and have them do a move with a face button, either dealing elemental damage or doing some status-related thing. However, this veneer of simplicity gives way to a complex system rife with variability, customization, skillful plays, and ways to effectively game the system, with the ‘meta’ still being in its rough draft stages as of writing it.

It is less accessible in a physical sense, but the button bashing real-time action is better aligned with modern sensibilities. At least when compared to a system that was being dismissed as ‘dated’ 20 years ago. There is less abstraction in how battles work. And battles feel like a trainer commending their Pokémon more than they do in any prior entry. It’s a bit passé to say it feels like the battles from the anime, but… it kinda does.

I ultimately enjoy the new battle system the developers came up with here. While it may be tempting to compare it to many other real-time battle systems in RPGs, the sheer variety of enemies, moves, and interactions, all of which take place in a continuous world, make this a greatly impressive feat. One that illustrates many animation and model improvements. The 3D models have been given enough care and attention to look right alongside the rest of the world, with reworked textures, eye animations, and a level of expressiveness that makes every one feel like a distinct entity. Animations are not quite as personality-rich as some earlier battle simulators, but the expediency of movements and clear effect animations make them feel like an ideal balance. Emphasizing impact over spectacle, because animation speed is a factor that needs to be considered.

Combat is further heightened with the much anticipated return of Mega Evolution, allowing 60-some-odd Pokémon to achieve new powerful forms during the midst of battle. However, it like everything else has undergone a retoolinh. Mega Evolution is now powered by a mega meter that is filled by performing attacks— not landing them— and lets a Pokémon holding the appropriate mega stone access their awakened form, and gain the extra stats that come with it. However, this form only last for a brief window, and cannot be undone, even if the player is outside of battle, turning the act of mega evolving into a commitment… but one you’re kind of silly for not pursuing. Especially when every trainer with a Mega Evolution saves it for the end, giving the player ample time to regain meter.

However, rather than only use this meter for Mega Evolution, Game Freak also introduced Plus Moves. Higher power variants of every move in the game that are obtained by ‘mastering’ them and consume a chunk of the mega meter upon use. While not as good as Mega Evolution, Plus Moves allow other Pokémon to contribute to combat, deal damage, turn the tide of battle, and use meter, as it’s a waste to attack with a full meter.

I actually really like this format. It lets Mega Evolutions function as a genuine threat without having too much of an advantage, and feels like it could be grafted onto other ‘generational gimmicks.’ Burning meter to Dynamax or Terastallization Pokémon, to unleash a Z-Move, or spending a chunk of it to turn the tide with a well-placed Plus Move. Heck, I think this would work great irrespective of the gameplay being turn-based or real-time. Though, the designers would need to tweak the balance just right.

Despite many nuances and a lot of work in making things… work, I would describe the combat as imprecise. It’s fun, frantic, enhanced by its presentation, and manages to match what I’ve imagined from a real-time Pokémon game for the past decade. But it’s also a game system that will likely never have the same competitive luster as the turn-based variant. There are too many variables, too many precise timings, and because the combat is far more geared around dealing big damage in short durations, I can’t imagine it would be as satisfying to watch.

It’s also a bit opaque, not doing a great job of explaining some of its finer mechanics. Like explaining that speed now determines the cooldown rate, rather than affecting the animations. (Making it kinda bad.) There is no reference of an animation time as part of the move stats, when that is really important. I have zero clue how the game determines where a Pokémon will stand to launch a ranged attack. Or how the player is supposed to consistently get the first strike when battling against opponents. Sometimes it comes down to the luck of the draw, sometimes it depends on who used the move with the shorter animation. I don’t know!

There are also some attempts to rebalance the gameplay system, somewhat reminiscent of what was attempted in Legends Arceus. Stat buffs and debuffs operate on a timer rather than stacking continuously, preventing the much beloved, or despised, ‘setup strats’ of prior games. Though, given the rapid pace of a lot of battles and the relatively short duration of buffs, or debuffs, I never found these particularly useful.

Status conditions like paralysis and confusion have been changed to be less debilitating, mostly restricting Pokémon movement, cooldown speed, or randomizing their used move. Poison, burn, and infestation can be brutal killers due to how the lack of a turn order means the effect operates on time. While the pretty balanced frostbite from Legends Arceus is replaced with an adaptation of the regular frozen status condition that… just leaves the Pokémon immobilized, in an environment where that is even more of a liability. I think the devs just thought it was funny so they left it in. …And they weren’t wrong.

Moves like Spikes, Sand Tomb, Fire Spin, and Whirlpool have all been reimagined as environmental hazards rather than entry hazards or damage over time, which I found far more useful. Accuracy is no longer a rigid factor, often being traded off for a longer attack animation. For example, Hydro Pump takes notably longer to charge up than Bubblebeam. And despite abilities being absent and only a small roster of moves making the cut, the game never feels too limited with what you can do.

It’s not always the easiest rebalance and pivot to follow from a design perspective, but… I think I like it more than the turn-based system. It certainly feels faster and more responsive, allowing players to enter battles, deal damage, and move on, with only brief, ‘natural,’ battle transitions breaking up combat. Though I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t worried it might be seen as too simplistic or lacking in nuance to be a new standard.

Ideally, I think the best balance would be for this system to be carried forward and for future games to adopt a dual combat system. One where players can switch between turn-based and real-time combat at their leisure, customizing their experience to their liking. I mean, if Falcom was able to do this with Trails in the Sky 1st Chapter (2025), then I don’t think that would be too hard for Game Freak to figure out. Or, well, I would hope not, but there are several areas where PLZA comes short when compared to its contemporaries.

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Part 4: ‘Bout The City

So, one of the new and more unsung aspects about PLZA is the fact that they added a new pillar to the gameplay that really has not been emphasized in Pokémon before. Parkour platforming. Lumiose City is a city of constant construction and renovation, meaning there are ladders, scaffolding, and teleport elevators— don’t ask— all over the darn place. This gives the city a level of verticality that has never been seen in the series up until this point, and is paired with a positively kleptomanically distributed excess of hundreds of items. The world design, combined with an absence of any vehicles or ridable Pokémon puts a greater emphasis on the player character’s ability to traverse environments.

Dashing through the streets and grabbing fixed or respawning items strewn across the ground. Dodging and crouching for basic stealth. Climbing up ladders, narrowly walking over planks that people were not meant to walk across. Climbing up small inclines with a handy ledge grab. And also dodge rolling off of ledges, because the game lacks a proper jump button. With the crème de la crème of the moveset being a janky double jump. A jump that can only be triggered when the player is airborne, where their phone jostles them upwards, letting them maintain vertical height while traveling a horizontal distance.

If it seems like I am laboring the point, that’s because a surprising amount of the game is just spent using these mechanics to go up buildings, across rooftops, and generally explore Lumiose City in its entirety. However, I would be exaggerating if I said these mechanics are particularly unique or nuanced. This is all Assassin’s Creed II (2009) for third grades executed with a level of endearing jank. It’s imprecise. It’s often a puzzle to figure out how to even get up to a building. And some of the maneuvers you are expected to pull off to get basic TMs or items feels like a sequence break, requiring recognition of mechanical nuance the game does not make obvious.

It’s not great— in fact, this type of exploration is probably a ripe pain for those who like to play through a game several times— but it does add something. Or rather somethings. An element of seamless puzzle solving. A way to give the human character more to do without the use of a Pokémon. And a way to interact with the city in an environment that truly feels three-dimensional. I can tell there was a very real vision with the choice to have the player navigate the world this way, and I enjoyed it for what it was trying to achieve. However, this element ultimately feels like an experiment rather than a template for the rest of the series to follow.

At this point, I should probably pivot into talking about the city itself, and I… have thoughts about it.

Lumiose lacks any distinctly or immediately identifiable districts or neighborhoods. This is partially due to its Parisian origins, but in the context of a condensed open city game, this represents a pretty obvious problem. The world is only about a square kilometer, big, but everything looks similar, and without a map, I probably wouldn’t be able to tell south town from north town. There’s no financial district, no neighborhoods, not tourist traps, no marina, and aside from a handful of buildings you can enter. Much of the city is just a set of parkour set-dressings for you to look at while bopping between the Wild Zones. Hell, I think there were more proper buildings you could enter in X and Y.

This lack of enterable buildings is meant to be countered by the sheer number of things you can do in the great outdoors. The game does not need buildings you can go into once and then ignore. There are hundreds of NPCs littered all over the place, many of whom are paired with a Pokémon to better emphasize that, yes, this is the Pokémon world. Items are found in the streets and alleys you visit a dozen times rather than in the desk of some salaryman you run into once.

In terms of additional tasks to do, there are over 100 side missions doled out throughout the game. These give players insights into the world, the game’s finer mechanics, or just some small vignette story that the developers thought would be neat. The game has enough things to do to keep a player engaged and busy for dozens of hours, and it still manages to feel like a cohesive city. Everything takes place within the city, everything loops back into this being a city, and Lumiose is arguably the true main character of the game.

That being said, PLZA does not do a great job in curating its prolonged tour of Lumiose. The game commits an obnoxious faux pas by not letting you run around and explore until you get a few missions into the main story— for no good reason. There is no good way to log what you have obtained or not obtained on the map, which can make 100% completion a frustrating endeavor. Side missions appear on the map at mostly random intervals, including between mission objectives, making for an odd push and pull of side missions. Especially when you’re getting glorified tutorial side missions 80% of the way through the campaign. And the difficulty of just getting from place to place runs a gamut that is not always proportional to its rewards.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time exploring this city, mapping it out in my head, and processing it until it felt like a quaint digital neighborhood that almost feels like home. I think it is a well-designed world that consistently gives the player things to do, explore, or rush towards, if only because of how it litters the floors with breadcrumbs of dopamine. However, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t lacking in other respects. It’s a good step forward, but it also makes me wonder what a true next generation Pokémon city could be.

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Part 5: Incorrigible Items; Deranged Distribution

This next section is going to be a bit pedantic, but I feel that I cannot talk about PLZA without talking about the item distribution. I already mentioned how haphazard the wild Pokémon distribution can be. But this same seemingly random approach to distribution carries over to the way players obtain general items, held items, and the ever-vital infinite-use TMs.

General items are distributed pretty generously from early on in the game. Players can find stat boosting drugs, nature changing mints, and even potent healing items from fairly early on. It’s a bit sloppy, breaking away from a semblance of balance, but I’m not going to harp on a game for making stat manipulation easier.

Held items are, almost entirely, obtained as rewards for completing side missions. A move that, conceptually, I think makes a lot of sense. It provides a direct way to access a highly important item that can expand a team’s capabilities, and gives Pokémon who can’t mega evolve some sort of buff. However, the order that players obtain these 45 held items is all out of whack.

One of the first held items you can obtain is Wise Glasses, which boosts the power of every special move. The staple held item of Mystic Water cannot be obtained until halfway through the game. The effort value boosting items are all scattered throughout the early, mid, and endgame for seemingly no reason. You cannot obtain a Metal Coat, an evolution item, until the game is almost over. The evolution items for Spritzee and Swirlix can be obtained almost immediately after the player is able to obtain either. Lucky Egg is a postgame item for some reason. Oh, and you can just buy every held item from some random men in a garage during the postgame for, like, 5,000 PokéYen.

The side mission rewards, in general, are more often than not completely disconnected from the actual difficulty or placement of the mission. The money rewards, mints and vitamins, and whether they come with a new held item— it’s all random! It’s like there used to be a rigid hierarchy of missions, an intended progression, but then someone shuffled them around at the last minute and nobody was allowed to adjust the rewards.

TM distribution is handled through a grab-bag of tasks that seem like they should be clear or transparent, but they really aren’t. 40-ish TMs are hidden throughout the city as finds that range from obvious golden orbs hidden in street corners to deeply obscure orbs that cannot be seen on the street level. I’d say that they are distributed based on power, but I have climbed some pretty imposing structures for a humdrum TM, while the likes of Brick Break can be obtained pretty early in the campaign.

Roughly 10 TMs are handed our as main story rewards. Another 10 are side quest rewards. While the remaining 40 or so are rewards for PokéDex completion. These rewards almost make sense… until you look at them for a second and realized that you can obtain Giga Drain and Psyshock as rewards 12 and 14 out of 50. There are a lot of little choices that don’t follow a logical framework, despite featuring a far more limited, curated, move pool that would almost necessitate a more rigid approach to distribution.

Also, the TM numbering scheme— which was always some hot nonsense— has become utterly inscrutable. It’s a genuine challenge to find where things are in the TM list, and for zero good reason. Sort them by power, type, category, attainment rate— whatever. But sort them somehow! Or just get rid of the numbering system! We don’t need to worry about character limits anymore!

Mega stones are distributed in batches throughout the game, both in shops and as reward for Rogue Mega Evolution boss battles. But the sequence and manner of this distribution does not reflect any sort of balance of clear pacing. Why is the powerhouse of Mega Garchomp one of the first mega evolutions players can use? Why are Mega Venusaur and Starmie so late in the game when their base forms can be obtained pretty early on?

Why does the game curate which mega stones can be bought between two currencies in two stores? It would make sense for them ALL to be traded for mega shards. Why are certain mega stones unlocked when they are? There simply is no consistency in the design, and I would have rather they just not bother distributing them upon defeating Rogue Mega Evolutions, as then you could get the mega stones you want sooner. Unless you have a good reason to NOT give a player something in a Pokémon game, just let them get it whenever they want.

Then there is the act of commerce, which I feel is one of the weaker areas of the game as a whole. Pokémon is a series that does not really need shopping malls or robust storefront with menagerie of options. It’s a game and buying things on a list is generally easier, and faster, than navigating a 3D environment and interacting with everything. So the fact that it spreads out shops the way it does is mildly frustrating.

Why can I still only buy beverages from a designated beverage distributor, and why can I only buy one at a time? Why do I need to visit a Poké Ball Boutique in order to buy a decent variety of Poké Balls when prior games just stocked the Poké Marts with every variety? Why are mints sold by vendors who only stock half a dozen mints, don’t specify what their mints do, and only sell one mint at a time?

Why are these dozens of clothing boutiques clustered in five shopping centers? It makes the act of shopping for clothes maddening, as I simply could not keep track of what outfits were available for purchase. It encourages more exploration, sure, and more realistic, I guess, but it turns the act of outfit shopping into a 30 minute ordeal of checking every single store in all five shopping centers, only to realize you forgot one that actually had the type of threads you needed to complete the look you’re going for? I get that they fill out the map, but either you murder your wallet by spendthrifting with the best of them, or you consult an online resource to plan an outfit before you go shopping!

It sucks because I know this is a darn dress up game for a lot of people— I definitely had some fun with it, as you can tell from the provided screenshots. However, there is just enough friction in finding shops, let alone affording arbitrarily more expensive outfits, that I can see certain people avoiding new looks all together. Similarly, while hair customization underwent a major boon with the ability to mix and match colors, there simply are not a lot of hairstyles of bang styles for that matter, for players to use. I’m sure this will be expanded with DLC, but any game of this scale that only ships with 14 hairstyles is doing something wrong. They’ve done more in the past, and can do more going forward.

Oh, and because I need to put this somewhere, I really need to speak out about this game’s tutorials. While I understand the importance in introducing players to a new world, gameplay system, and characters, the first three to five hours of this game are tutorial after tutorial. Invisible walls block your progress. It’s not clear when the blinders are taken off, or you can actually explore this big open world. And there is zero narrative reason why you shouldn’t be able to explore the city and snag some clothes early on.

Hell, it is considerably more railroaded than Scarlet and Violet. In those games, you can get 30 Pokémon before you even enter the school, get started on your adventure within an hour. And generally get on with a new playthrough without getting dragged around on a leash. If you want a gated tutorial— ignoring why you think such a thing could compete with social video— have the decency to put them in a contained environment.

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Part 6: Battle Friends in Battle City

Up to this point, I have been skirting past the story of PLZA, focusing on the gameplay first in an uncharacteristic move. You might think this is because I have harsh words for the story and wanted to save it for later… but it’s just the opposite. I think that PLZA has the best (maybe second-best) story of any Game Freak developed Pokémon game.

At its base level, PLZA not doing anything too remarkable. It’s a journey about helping a group of friends traveling through obscure and tucked away places to calm down Rogue Mega Evolutions in real time boss battles— that really show off what Game Freak can do with the new combat system. Participating in the Z-A Royale as it pops up across the city every night, all in the pursuit of getting a wish from a multibillion dollar corporation. Doing odd jobs and roundabout missions to suss out their next opponent, even befriending them along the way. And discovering a nicely packaged cluster of mysteries along the way.

However, where PLZA really impresses is with its characters. Pokémon has positioned itself as a story about going on a journey, constantly meeting new people. There are persistent relationships with various rival or friend characters who fill in the gaps between the next city or encounter, but most characters are just used and then discarded as the journey continues. Or, in the case of Legends Arceus, the core story takes a back seat to the expeditions, only really coming together in the bombastic finale where loose ends are tied up in a divine crescendo.

PLZA is not really about a nation-wide journey or legendary stakes as much as it is a group of people living in a contained area, growing closer through their love of their home, their love of battling, and their general love of Pokémon.

From the minute they enter Lumiose, the protagonist is recruited by Taunie/Urbain to join Team MZ, a plucky youth group dedicated to protecting Lumiose City from Rouge Mega Evolutions, with the members making up a surprisingly endearing group of main characters. Taunie/Urbain is the standard rival, a bit too headstrong for their own good and pushy for my liking, but a positive force that tries their best, despite being a bit of a ditz/dummy depending on their gender. Naveen is an aspiring fashion designer who is the reserved and cool head unless it comes to something of particular interest to him. Like fashion. …Or his favorite streamer. While Lida is an aspiring dancer, and upbeat personality, who nevertheless understands the importance of keeping her home safe and throws herself into this mission, even when other members are not as motivated.

The trio really feel as if the writing team looked at the positive reactions to the three ‘rivals’ from Scarlet and Violet, the chemistry they had in Area Zero, and wanted to expand upon that. Creating not only a group of recurring characters, but ones who feel like friends, function as a unit, and have their own reasons for wanting to prove themselves as they go on this city-wide adventure.

They function well, but just as their dynamic seems to be getting a little tired, the game expands its core cast with new characters. From a streamer to a crime boss to a fairy princess with magical holograms and an enslaved dragon maid. These characters have similar roles as gym leaders in prior games, but are not one-in-done encounters. You actually get to know them before your battle with them, learn something about them that gives them some layer of complexity.

It’s nothing groundbreaking. A lot of these interactions feel like standard JRPG fare where enemies become allies who help the protagonist after they prove their luster. They all have enough moments and quirks, for me to enjoy them as characters. The fact that I could expect to see them again did a lot to endear me to their presence. And their appearance in the finale of the game solidified this as probably my favorite story in Pokémon.

The cast of characters also relate back to a broader and more political theme that can be read throughout the story. The importance of community, bonds, family— both found and otherwise. How friends and companions shape people and the way they interact with the world by sharing their burdens. The way the powerful enforce their control upon others under the guise of something cute or altruistic. And readable parallels between the economic climates of much of the developed world and what’s happening in Lumiose. Where a powerful corporation is manipulating real estate under the guise of creating an integrated and richer society… while drawing ire from many who actually live there, increasing property values, and exasperating directly referenced rent issues.

I admit that these themes are present, but they are not as overt as I think they could be (remember, this is a product from a multi-billion-dollar corporation). And while they are present, they clash with other elements of the game. If your game is about people struggling to make money, then why design your gameplay system so people can net 250,000 PokéYen in an evening? Why allow them to find cash on the street, and make their base of operations a low rent hotel that’s basically public housing, and give it an occupancy rate of, like, 10%? And it’s just weird to represent gentrification with, effectively, the opening of public parks. …That sometimes contain wild lions that breathe fire. Actually, that sounds like a real story that some right-wing rag would try running in 2025.

Another element lifting up this story is the fact that it is a sequel. While ties to X and Y are not that overt— you can still follow everything without having played those games— there are enough returning characters, reprised elements, and callbacks to make this feel like a genuine successor. A game that wanted to build upon what the 2013 predecessors did, but never wallow or indulge in it. Returning characters are kept to a handful, including some obscure ones who may as well be new characters. But once you get to the ending, the game pivots into a fully-fledged follow-up that manages to thread the needle in feeling like a satisfying conclusion to what came before it, and a satisfying conclusion for everything PLZA is.

…Well, I say that, but to call this a satisfying conclusion is to ignore certain elements in how this story is told, rather than the actual script of the story.

Yeah, I’ve been avoiding this for a reason, but I need to talk about the presentation of PLZA.

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Part 7: Rapid Advancement And Staggered Innovation

I’ve told this story too many times, but I may as well give the abridged version for good measure. Pokémon struggled to transition to 3D. X and Y were basically 3D Game Boy games. The series did not have an entry that felt truly 3D until Pokémon Sun and Moon in 2016. Game Freak had to go from making a 3D game to making an HD 3D game on new hardware in… two years, and the end result was Let’s Go, which looked and felt like an HD 3DS game. Then they made Sword and Shield a year later, a game that aimed to transition existing Sun and Moon tech into a game developed for a far more powerful system. Improvements were made, but this ‘first real console Pokémon game’ was widely criticized for its presentation.

After this, Game Freak has been juggling general development challenges, a pandemic that wrecked their workflow, and a burning need for new Pokémon titles, and myriad innovations made in order to keep Pokémon relevant. I have no doubt that the developers want to do bold, interesting, and creative things with Pokémon. But at the end of the day, these games all still have elements from Sun and Moon rocking inside them, and the more time goes on, the more dated these elements feel. Pokémon Legends: Z-A was released six years after Sword and Shield, for the same hardware, yet it retains many of the same 3DS-isms that defined those titles.

There have been drastic improvements to character gameplay animations, Pokémon animations and models, and general world design. The UI and UX in this game is clean and responsive, barring a few menu-related gripes— why is there no held item category, Game Freak? And there are many improvements that should be recognized and celebrated. Anybody who says they didn’t change anything from prior games is a liar and a rube. …But there are certain things that are just as dated as they were six years ago, and they are a lot less forgivable.

The dialogue scenes in PLZA are often some of the worst and most lifeless I have seen from a modern game of this scale. Characters animation is regularly awkward, if not rudimentary. Mouth flaps are animated around nothing and look like someone operating a puppet. Characters don’t turn right. Certain dialogue scene animations are basically lifted from Sun and Moon. And any retro kitsch charm is offset by the fact that, humans look good, are well modeled, often have striking designs, and have some great animations thrown in there, next to the decade old ones for a crusty handheld.

The better the models are, the higher fidelity some assets are, the more jarring these things feel. Scenes are limited in what the characters can physically do, how they can interact with the world. The climax is supposed to be an action-packed rush from one side of the city to the other. Yet instead of feeling like a continuous battle forward, it simply lacks the pomp, splendor, and scripting capabilities that the script calls for. The game does not have the production values that people were trained to expect from console games 15 years ago.

However, the area of production values where I feel the game is really lacking is the audio front. As to be expected, Pokémon Legends: Z-A has a good soundtrack. Not really the most well-used, but that’s the price you tend to pay for a game with one central location and several variants of a few themes. The broad sound design is also good. There are a lot of responsive sounds for player movement. Sufficiently crunch battle effects. Pokémon have walking noises, and I’m pretty sure different shoes also sound different when going down the street. But there is one teensy area where the sound team did barely any work. And that’s voices.

The lack of voice acting has been a criticism of the Pokémon games since Game Freak began Pokémon Sword and Shield with a cutscene of a man speaking only for no sounds to come out of his mouth. Six years later, and after a lot of genuine improvements, PLZA makes the same misstep, beginning the game with a cutscene that is missing audio, and this same silence is noticable throughout the rest of the game. There are no grunts, barks, soundbites, or noises that escape character’s mouths as they speak. Something that I find difficult to excuse, as there’s pretty much no other game that looks like Pokémon that doesn’t have at least some voice acting. At the very least, or some sound that is paired with character dialogue other than a deafeningly empty tone.

While writing this review, I took out the time to play an indie action platformer with a pixel art aesthetic and a budget that was probably under a million dollars. However, they made sure to record grunts and barks for most enemies, gave bosses unique voice lines— a sentence at most— and had a ‘typewriter sound’ that accompanied nearly every line of dialogue. These are all pretty cheap tools to enhance characters, make them feel more real, and these are not new techniques. These have been a staple of gaming since the 1980s in some cases. They assign characters a voice, in one way or another, and add to their personality by giving them a sound. They speak, they make a noise, and it sounds better because they are making a noise.

This is a principle that Game Freak has understood since the early 1990s. Every Pokémon has a unique cry, a sound all their own, and while most of them sound like a bitcrushed demon yelp, they are an additive part of the experience. So why the do humans only speak in a single beep for every line? The protagonist actually makes grunts while they are rolling around and getting hit, so there is not an ideological refusal to give characters human voices. Even something like the typewriter sounds of Little Town Hero would be a step-up. Instead, they just do nothing and Pokémon is among the only games that look like this that gets away with this.

When characters are having a team meeting, sharing in banter, making jokes, and talking about important threats as their lips flap, it feels wrong when none of them have any voice. When there is a cutscene with subtitles and characters’ lips are clearly forming words, it feels wrong when they don’t actually talk. When a game sells millions upon millions and looks like a game that should have voice acting, and is going for the AAA price of $70, it feels wrong when it does not have an voice acting. Because it is breaking against an unspoken social expectation of what a game of this scale should be and should do.

I’m not asking for the moon. I am not asking for full voice acting in English and Japanese, or that Game Freak takes on the genuine challenge that is dubbing the game in ten languages. But at this point, they need to do SOMETHING. It’s distracting, it’s annoying, it’s refusing to do something that lots of PSP games were doing 15 years ago. And there is no argument to be made that this approach is the best one.

There’s some quote that has been circling around at how Game Freak wants to encourage people to imagine what these characters sound like, but if that were true, they would not give the Pokémon voices either. They would not voice the spin-offs, and they would not feature these same characters in various animations where they are all, universally, assigned a voice. This is not a creative decision. This is a workflow and economic decision, and a very bad one. If you want people to be able to imagine what these characters sound like, just give them the option to turn off character voices via a volume slider. Give people options and everybody will be happy.

…Also, yes, the windows look ugly from a design perspective, not even looking like they belong in a real city. While their lack of any 3D modeling is jarring, as game-likers have expected modeled window for decades. It’s probably due to technical limitations, polygon counts, or some texture space-saving issues, but… maaaaannnn does it bite.

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Conclusion: For The Future

After finishing Pokémon Legends: Z-A, I am left optimistic about the future of Pokémon. Not unlike Pokémon Legends: Arceus, Z-A does a lot new, a lot different, and presents a blueprint for where the series can go from here. The game shows a bold desire to expand what Pokémon can be. It has the strongest cast in the entire series, in large part due to its commitment to a recurring cast. The real-time combat system, despite being their first go at anything like this, is a thoroughly successful reimagining that retains the core essence of Pokémon battles. Its city is the most endearingly dense and populated world that the series has attempted, let alone realized, forming an imperfect yet nevertheless engaging playplace.

There is no shortage of things to love, if not celebrate, about PLZA. But as a game developed as a side venture in a studio trying to rapidly modernize and advance their game development structure, not everything received the level of TLC it warranted, and the game can be an uneven experience. From basic yet multidimensional factors like progression to the generally substandard ways it tells its story. It’s a big step up from the design and progression mess that was Scarlet and Violet, but a reminder that the developers, technology, and studio still has a ways to go before they can achieve a perfect modern Pokémon game.

That being said, the highs of this game are so high, game flow is so smooth, and my time with the title was filled with such joy that Pokémon Legends: Z-A is easily one of my favorite Pokémon games. Top three at least. And if Game Freak can treat this as a new standard going forward, then the series, and those who love it, are in for a shining new era.