Pokémon Legends: Z-A

When Pokémon Legends: Arceus launched, it felt like a rough draft of the series' future: unpolished, but bursting with potential. Going into Legends Z-A, my hope was that Game Freak would take that mechanical foundation and truly run with it. In many ways, they have, but the decision to restrict the entire adventure to the confines of Lumiose City is a double-edged sword. While it solves the technical woes of the past, it trades the sense of adventure for an urban cage that, despite its polish, feels a little too boxy and flat.

The highlight of the experience is undoubtedly the shift to real-time action. I say this as a lifelong fan of turn-based RPGs; I grew up on Final Fantasy VII through X and indeed Pokémon. I don't dislike turn-based combat, I just dislike how Pokémon does it; I find Persona-style combat just as stale, so I think I'm simply tired of combat revolving around type matchups. For decades, the mainline series has relied on a stagnant, basic formula that rarely demands strategy. Legends: Z-A finally injects some adrenaline into that loop. Having to actually move your Pokémon and trainer around in order to avoid attacks adds a layer of urgency, and Mega Evolution was always my favorite of this type of mechanic in the series. I also think that the new "boosted moves" are a clever workaround for giving Pokémon that lack dedicated Mega Evolutions a fighting chance against Mega-tier threats. It feels like the series is finally trying to catch up to its contemporaries.

Traversal in Lumiose City is a mixed bag. On one hand, it’s functional and smooth; warping to building tops is convenient, and the basic platforming challenges are decent fun. However, for a game set in a dense metropolis, the movement lacks style. Running from rooftop to rooftop begs for some parkour flair— wall runs, vaults, or fluid climbing, that just isn’t there. The "Wild Zones" attempt to break up the concrete landscape with patches of grass and bridges, but I find them too small and brief to meaningfully break up the monotony. The city looks crisp and runs perfectly on the Switch 2, but the geometry is distractingly simple. It’s a world of straight lines and flat surfaces that fails to inspire awe.

Much to my surprise, I found that the narrative’s smaller scale works in its favor. We are so used to Pokémon stories revolving around world-ending threats that a plot about urban redevelopment and corporate intrigue feels refreshingly grounded. It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s a solid story for this series that manages to ramp up the intensity in the finale. It proves that you don't need to threaten the universe to make a player care about the world.

Ultimately, Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a successful experiment, but an experiment nonetheless. It fixes the technical embarrassments of its predecessors and revitalizes a stale combat system, but it drags its feet with a repetitive loop that overstays its welcome by about 10–15 hours. It sits in a strange middle ground: technically superior to Arceus, yet lacking that game’s sense of discovery. More polished than Scarlet, yet less purely "fun." For series veterans, there is plenty to enjoy here, but it feels like a transitional title that sets the stage for a future entry to finally shoot for the stars.