Childlike wonder
Written by Wesley Akkerman on
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The main games of the Pokémon franchise are coming to a head. With the 3DS games (Ultra) Sun and Moon, Game Freak made a frantic effort to refresh the formula, only to return to a leaner setup with Sword and Shield. The games have lost their shine a bit, but Pokémon Legends: Arceus is changing that.
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Pokémon Legends: Arceus asks the player to put aside his or her skepticism. None other than pokémon god Arceus sends you to the Hisui region in the past, where you work on the first Pokémon encyclopedia (Pokédex) ever. An interesting concept, but the game doesn’t do much with it from a story point of view. The playable character almost indiscriminately agrees with the given and the assignment. As a player, you therefore feel a kind of cognitive dissonance – and therefore distance from the game.
Players find the motivation for playing outside of the game because they understand what is happening. That makes it all the more strange that the protagonist does not think about it. As always, the self-designed character is silent so players can project their own personality onto it. This may have been a conscious choice by Game Freak, but you never get rid of that strange idea completely while playing.
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Fortunately, the above does not get in the way of the gameplay of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Because the moment the ideas click and you are busy discovering, catching and fighting, then the game is hard to put down. Filling the Pokédex is done in different ways. Players have to catch, feed, fight or watch Pokemon perform certain attacks.
For example, it is possible to catch many of the same kind of pokémon for a full page of one kind. However, it also pays to carry around a beast for a long time to perform specific attacks or make it evolve – per pokémon the tasks that need to be completed for a full page differ. So players have complete freedom to perform interesting tasks and ignore less exciting things. That makes Pokémon Legends: Arceus not only very accessible, but also dynamic. Filling Pokédex Pages Filling Pokédex Pages.
Pokémon react to your presence: some flee, while others come to fight. As a player you have to figure out for each beast how each pokémon behaves and when is the right time to throw the Pokéball. You can just do that – for the first time in the series – without a transition to a battle screen; everything takes place in the same world and that is really cool. The world of Pokémon thus feels alive, as in, for example, New Pokémon Snap.
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Players have complete freedom to perform interesting tasks and ignore less exciting things.
Unlike in other Pokémon games, your personal team is constantly rotating, and as a result, players are likely to encounter beasts they normally don’t pay attention to. After all, you want to tick as many tasks as possible. With 242 pokémon in the game, there’s quite a bit to tick off, without the grind getting in quickly.
The combat system also contributes to this, because that has been overhauled this time. After repeatedly flirting with new styles, Game Freak proves that it can still innovate. For example, there is a new layer of strategy involved thanks to the Agile and Strong attacks. With Agile you attack faster and your attacks are less powerful, with Strong you are slightly slower, but also stronger. That system keeps players on their toes, as it sometimes allows them to attack (or have to cash in) twice in a row. In addition, many known attacks have other effects, which works surprisingly well.
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Unfortunately, the environments in which players and pokémon roam are uninteresting and look dated. Admittedly, the pokémon roaming free can be seen coming from afar. The same goes for the key items players collect along the way to craft Pokéballs and other gear. The graphics are also mainly functional, but that is not enough. Certainly not after the graphical splendor of, for example, both Monster Hunter games and Shin Megami Tensei 5 on the Switch.
In addition, it is a good idea to divide the Hisui region into separate areas, instead of making it one big world. That way, the collection of pokémon remains clear and it seems that the habitat of each pokémon has really been thought through. That is actually one of the few positive points of the environments.
Furthermore, potentially interesting locations lack a certain degree of atmosphere and interpretation. Even old-fashioned ruins are dull and empty; something that actually applies to the entire game world. Also, it’s a shame that wild pokémon don’t interact with each other. As a result, despite the dynamic nature of the game, everything still feels static. Which also doesn’t help: pokemon have no abilities. Not only does that make for less interesting battles, it’s also a missed opportunity for filling the Pokédex. Several features in the previous games have an effect on both the world and battles, making the observation of pokémon even more interesting.
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And yet Pokémon Legends: Arceus is worth playing. When players observe an Abra in the tall grass to determine the best throwing moment (Abra likes to teleport constantly and thus plays a kind of Annemaria Cuckoo) and manage to get close enough and catch him unseen, that gives a feeling satisfied. With this, Legends: Arceus equals the feeling that Red, Blue and Yellow also managed to create at the time. Those original Game Boy classics took you out into the world with childlike wonder. That idea is also present here.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus still has a few stings in the form of missing elements or strange choices. For example, it’s strange that Fairy-types are present in the region (a type that didn’t exist before Pokémon X and Y) and it’s stupid that Pokemon can evolve into forms that were actually only “discovered” later. There are also evolutions that exist exclusively in the Hisui region, as if such knowledge has been lost over the years.
But when players tear themselves away from lore from the previous games and accept the region as a standalone adventure, there’s plenty left to enjoy. Pokémon Legends: Arceus doesn’t even drastically improve the Pokémon formula, but it is clear that Game Freak is committed to innovation and the development of (more) interesting concepts. And that’s how Game Freak is at its best. More of this, please.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus is now available for Nintendo Switch. No early code was made available for this review.
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