I knewPokemon Legends: Arceuswas fun when I first played it. Heading to the PokePast is an interesting concept, and seeing Sinnoh in its Hisuian form is very clever. TheHisuian Pokemonare great, especially those with environmental stories that explain why they’re not available in present-day Sinnoh, and then there’s the fantastic catching mechanic.
Catching mechanics are the core ofPokemon. In the regular games, you select a ball and press ‘A’ to throw. It’s fine. InPokemon Let’s Go, you have thePokemon Gomechanic that involves a shrinking circle, moving monster, and manual aiming. This works in Go on a phone touchscreen, but doesn’t when you’re using Joy-Con, and ruins the otherwise cosy Gen 1 remakes for me.
Rather than using an infernally frustrating catching mechanic, Legends: Arceus brings perhaps the greatest. There’s no better feeling than running around Hisui, yeeting balls left, right, and cenny. There’s still a manual aim element, but you’re able to snap onto the Pokemon you want to catch to avoid that Let’s Go annoyance. This is one of the best feeling mechanics Pokemon has ever introduced, and it made running around Hisui incredibly fun.
The gamehas its problems, though. The first is something that we’ve said about every Pokemon release for the past few years: it looks terrible. The textures are simple and repetitive, and things get so much worse when you get Hisuian Braviary. Flying high above the region reduces things to a blur, and what would be a cool flying mechanic becomes disappointing. We wanted a picturesque panorama of the region, and we got some coloured smudges? Count me out.
This very mechanic has been done before, and better, by Pokemon. Alpha Sapphire & Omega Ruby allowed you to fly atop Latias or Latios respectively, hovering over Hoenn to find your next destination and encounter Legendary Pokemon via portals and thunderstorms. It was a 3DS game, so it didn’t look great, but the aesthetic was in keeping with the on-the-ground gameplay and there wasn’t a noticeable reduction in quality once airborne.
As well as looking terrible, Legends: Arceus has monsters pop in, and the frame rate drops whenever more than three Pokemon are on-screen at once. It’s not as bad as Scarlet & Violet admittedly, but it still impacts your enjoyment and takes you out of the wonderful world that Game Freak designed.
I have a few other problems, likeNoble Pokemon being utterly boring, but this kind of thing is balanced by the terrifying Alpha Pokemon and moment-to-moment gameplay. The gameplay loop is incredibly satisfying, and I even enjoyed having tofill up my Pokedexto progress through the region, as that’s often something I do in the main series anyway to get that little digital certificate from the professor and the burst of serotonin that comes with it.
However, the ultimate feeling coming away from Pokemon Legends: Arceus was that it was unfinished. Sound familiar? I had fun, but was disappointed by the execution. However, after playing throughScarlet & Violetand therecent DLC, it’s time for a personal reappraisal of the Sinnoh remake.
Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl were clearly remasters, not remakes.
I’m also disappointed with the execution of Scarlet & Violet, something which gets worse in The Teal Mask and Indigo Disk. The Switch runs these games at a bafflingly inconsistent frame rate, pop-in is ludicrous, and there aren’t even any interesting mechanics to go with it. At least Legends: Arceus was fun while it didn’t work, but Scarlet & Violet don’t have an interesting story, have no unique mechanics, and are utterly dull.
Pokemon’s problems go deeper than the aesthetic. I’ve called for areturn to 2D or HD-2D gamesfor a long time, but Pokemon needs help on a deeper level. Arceus’ catching mechanics and Alpha Pokemon were two very risky departures from the classic Pokemon format, and they paid off. Noble Pokemon were a risk that didn’t pay off, and I’m still not sold on the battle styles, which were great for a solo playthrough, but removed any chance of competitive PvP fights to extend the game’s lifespan.
Looking back, I’m happy Legends: Arceus took risks with its mechanics. Pokemon has been chasing the open-world pipedream for so long that it’s forgotten to do anything interesting with the core gameplay loop or basic mechanics. If you were forcing me to pick a scruffy game that took the series in an interesting direction, or a completely broken and utterly boring game that has some semblance of an open world, I’m picking the scruffy but interesting one every day.
I’d hoped the Scarlet & Violet DLC would be as good as Sword & Shield’s, which felt like Gen 8.5, building small new open areas with interesting routes, biomes, and monsters, but that hasn’t happened. The Indigo Disk actively makes Scarlet & Violet worse by exacerbating its technical issues and adding nothing of substance. It’s content for content’s sake. I now have only one good thing to say about Gen 9; that Pokemon Scarlet & Violet have made me appreciate Legends: Arceus more. I’m not defeating one more arbitrarily difficult trainer, find me campaigning forLegends: Celebiinstead.
