Post by: Shaymin on November 10, 2025, 10:59:58 AM
Fun fact: The Kalosian army is 0-5-4 against the Church of Helix.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/72268/pokemon-legends-z-a-switch-2-review
I wanted to wait until I finished Pokemon Legends: Z-A before getting my thoughts down on the game, but I clearly erred in deciding that I wanted to have all of the game’s Mega-capable Pokemon on level with the plot requirements. As a result, what is normally cited as a 30-hour game with 60 for completionists ended up with my clock being over 56 hours before rolling credits. I don’t regard it as wasted time, because I do eventually want to 100% the game, but the Pokemon Legends games are definitely designed to focus on one aspect of the Pokemon experience, and I really hope a third Legends game either returns to the catching focus or learns from some of Z-A’s missteps.
Z-A is intended to be a sequel to 2013’s Pokemon X and Y, set entirely in the formerly game-crashing Lumiose City - the centerpiece of the first 3DS Pokemon game. The self-designed player character arrives in Lumiose and is press-ganged into “Team MZ”, a group of early teens who headquarter in a small hotel and are trying to move up the ranks of the city’s new battle tradition, the “Z-A Royale”. Competitors in the Z-A Royale start at the Z rank and once they earn their way to the A rank through winning enough battles can have a wish granted by local mega-corp Quasartico Inc (if it’s physically possible). There were some interesting takes on the X and Y story and even some returning characters from the base game, though one of them required an immense leap of logic that I had trouble accepting even after it was attributed to the legendary Pokemon Zygarde. The story attracted a lot of attention for skipping your character from rank V to F for respect as part of the story, but that serves to keep the game’s length down and all of that repetition was instead loaded into the postgame, where you have to win 15 “promotion match” equivalents consecutively in order for the final part of the plot to resolve.
The prior Pokemon Legends game retained a version of the traditional Pokemon battle system, with the addition of the ability to catch Pokemon without engaging them in a formal battle. Z-A retains capture without battle, but the turn-based with modifiable turn order system has been replaced with a full on real-time combat system where moves now have a cooldown instead of an accuracy stat. It’s similar to the Xenoblade combat system though without the automatic attacks while arts recharge, so it gives added value to stat changing moves or moves with other effects since you can only attack with your best move every few seconds. It’s necessary to hold down ZL in order to perform attacks since they have to lock onto the opposing Pokemon (both singular and later on plural), and the lock-on window is very easy for opponents to break. Legends: Z-A is the game that’s convinced me to invest in a Pro Controller and / or some sort of Joy-Con replacement, since the ZL button on the default Joycons is not well equipped to handle hands of my size holding it down. Items in the urban environment would frequently block my attacks as well: you need a clean line of sight in order to hit attacks even with the lock-on, and that can get frustrating to maintain.
A majority of the battles in the game take place in the Z-A Royale, which has one of the first instances in the Pokemon franchise of a dual scoring system. Beating trainers earn points based on the rank of the trainer faced with a certain number required to earn a “promotion” or “prize” battle, and also awards “prize medals” which are converted to money at the end of the night and are also scattered throughout the battle zone. The Royale also encourages stealth, since if your Pokemon can initiate a battle you get a free first move if it doesn’t outright knock the opposing Pokemon out, but if you get caught the opponent has the advantage and gets a free move. There are also “bonus cards” which award points and medals for completing feats including using super-effective attacks or attacks of a particular type, but the biggest rewards seem to be reserved for “get the first blow” type bonuses. The other major battle type in the game is the Rogue Mega Pokemon battle, which involves dodging attacks from a large Pokemon and using your own (preferably Mega Evolved) Pokemon attacks to subdue it. The Rogue Megas will occasionally use screen filling AOE attacks that it’s possible to dodge, and recalling your Pokemon prevents them from taking damage as well, but there are occasionally cheap ones: one such fight I had to restart three times in order to win. Thankfully, there is an option to retain damage dealt and there’s no penalty, but all of these battles take place in circular zones without anything in the environment so you can’t cheese these the way you could with some of the Noble Pokemon fights in Legends: Arceus.
If Legends: Arceus was a Pokemon take on Monster Hunter as is often quoted, it seems like Legends: Z-A was intended to be a Pokemon take on pre-Like a Dragon Yakuza. But Lumiose City is no Kamurochō, even with an entire city being available instead of just a fictional section of Tokyo. A lot of the architecture in Lumiose is identical to each other just with different colors on the roof, even with additional variety being granted through the game as more of the Wild Zones unlock. I mean, they had to put Ice types SOMEWHERE. But apart from the zones and some bits that take place in sewers - never an appealing location - it’s definitely an issue, and the announcement that the DLC just takes place in “Hyperspace Lumiose” means we’re probably not getting some more environmental variety until next October at the earliest. The game is heavily tied to the moving clock, which is not a real time one but similar to the one used in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet that runs through the cycle in about an hour of real time - but there are options at all of the game’s Pokemon Centers to skip to night or day depending on whether or not you want to fight trainers en masse or not. That said, even with skipping I could see the postgame tacking on 7 - 10 hours of game time just for finishing the story.
I had a lot more time than most will with Z-A, and in all that time I don’t recall a single instance of a game crash or any of the other issues that plagued pre-Switch 2 Scarlet and Violet. The biggest technical issue I’ve seen with the game is more of a system issue: the Switch 2 might have quoted 2 - 6 hours of battery life, but I would be lucky to get two and a half hours when playing the game portably after work. The performance in battle was smooth, even during late game triple battles when everything in sight is either Mega Evolved or in the process of evolution. We posted an extensive Switch v Switch 2 comparison already, but my time with the Switch version was consistent even if it wasn’t as sharp graphically as the Switch 2 upgraded version ended up being.
One advantage of taking so long to play the base game was that I got to try the multiplayer modes before and after the 1.0.2 patch, and I definitely preferred the post-patch structure. The core of the multiplayer is a four-player battle mode with private or ranked options in which you have three minutes to knock out as many of the opposing Pokemon as possible. Points are awarded based not only on ranking the number of knockouts, but other factors such as achieving a certain number of knockouts, picking up items in the environment, or Mega Evolution. I found the matches to fly by, and especially in the second round it only took about eight minutes to get out with the second starter Mega Stone. The original awards were slight, but post-patch they’re directly useful for investing into your team whether for the PVP proper or just for single player. After being deemphasized in Arceus thanks to the ability to use the evolution items, trading is once again necessary to complete the Pokedex whether locally or online with a Switch Online sub, which has the unfortunate side effect of making at least one popular Mega Evolution-capable Pokemon unavailable until just before the credits and another until after the credits. And if you’re trading with randoms, such as using a link code of “Pokedex number of what you’re trying to evolve twice” to set it up, they might take the Pokemon and run. Some jerk ran off with a Scyther I had put some investment into and I wanted to at least give them a double Trudeau salute.
Although there’s not a lot of environmental variety, there’s a good amount of character variety. By not having a lot of X and Y characters return, it lets them fly the freak flag on designs and personalities - even if the inclusion of “female Electric specialist who’s also a streamer” for the second consecutive game was a little over the top.
In a departure from series tradition, one endgame cutscene gave me the option to skip the scene… sadly, the same cannot be done for the 15-second cutscene every time the game shifts from day to night or vice versa. They could have at least given an option to bypass it, and could have a pop up saying “new Battle Zones are available” the same way you get notified of new Wild Zones or Mega Stones being available. I can only assume they’re hiding load times at this point. The soundtrack has a good mix of borrowed elements from X and Y’s soundtrack and original tunes, and I’m especially glad to hear the Legendary Pokemon theme of X and Y returning.
This second generation of Pokemon games on the Switch - Scarlet, Violet, and Legends: Z-A - has repeatedly gone back and forth between “we are so cooked” and “we are so back”. Pokemon Legends: Z-A has basically distilled that down to one game, because it feels like everything that annoyed me about the game was countered almost immediately by the game doing something I enjoyed or impressed me. Of the two Legends, I still prefer Arceus though, and I do hope a third Legends game is more focused on catching than combat.
