2021 was a somewhat tense year for the Pokemon fandom. While New Pokemon Snap was a nice distraction, all eyes were on Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl and Pokemon Legends: Arceus around the end of the year. There were concerns about the visuals and gameplay of both titles, for different reasons. Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl looked like awkward adaptations of the beloved generation 4 Pokemon titles, and had minimal improvements compared to the remakes of the first three generations. Pokemon Legends: Arceus only appeared to have general stylistic and performance issues, but there was some cautious hope that it could sufficiently shake up the decades-old Pokemon formula.
Now that all three titles are out, BDSP has proven to be controversial, but Legends is surprising a lot of fans. The shift into an outright action-RPG combined with a renewed focus on “catching ‘em all” has given rise to surprisingly positive expressions. Pokemon Legends has changed just about everything that players expect to see in a Pokemon game, from the framing of the story to granular details about battle mechanics. It’s the shake-up a lot of older fans have been hoping to see for a long time, and with any luck, the experiments done here will lead to better traditional Pokemon games in the future.
New Ways to Catch Pokemon
The most immediately apparent change Pokemon Legends makes is how the player engages with wild Pokemon. Normally, players have to wander into an encounter with a Pokemon, weaken them, and then try to catch them. Players will also spend a lot of time fighting wild Pokemon for experience points or escaping from them because they don’t have a reason to fight.
Legends incentivizes catching even undesirable Pokemon with its Pokedex research checklist, and allows players to choose in the field what Pokemon will be engaged with. Players can also sneak around and manually aim Poke Balls to improve their chances of catching a Pokemon outside of battle. In this way, capturing Pokemon has become the core of Pokemon once again in its smoothest form.
Progress is Measured in New Ways
Normally, players can tell how far they’ve made it in a Pokemon game through their number of gym badges. Pokemon Legends has mixed things up by splitting its progression into two interconnected systems.
One involves challenging Wardens and Noble Pokemon for main quest completion and special Plates. The other entails filling out the Pokedex to gradually rank up in the Survey Corps. This unlocks new areas and level thresholds for obedient Pokemon like regular badges, while missions and key fights progress the plot like Pokemon Sun and Moon’s island challenge. This dual progression system likely won’t stay, but it’s an interesting break from the norm.
Battles Make Use of a New Turn Order
Whereas other Pokemon games would determine the order of battle actions in a turn with each combatant’s speed stat, Legends instead uses a turn order. This system resembles the one found in Final Fantasy 10 and allows players to see what order Pokemon can act in. Players and enemies can modify their placement in that order with Strong Style and Agile Style, deepening the strategy employed in fights. This system may also be left behind in favor of the usual simultaneous turn-taking for the sake of multiplayer, but parts of it could be used to vary up combat in the future.
Some Status Effects Were Replaced
One of Pokemon Legends’ more surprising changes is its willingness to alter the effects of moves, weather, and even status effects. To complement its singleplayer-focused gameplay, it even turned two signature status conditions into new ones. Frozen has become Frostbitten, and Sleep has become Drowsy.
This is to ensure that no Pokemon, ally or enemy, can be permanently taken out of the action without a proper KO. Frostbite serves as the special attack-decreasing equivalent to Burn, and Drowsy is a version of Paralysis that lowers defenses. A new weather condition, Snow, has spun off from Hail specifically to synergize with both statuses, and the niches they fill means this might not be the last game players see them in.
One Town Serves As a Home Base
While most Pokemon games have trended towards linearity, the last few mainline entries have caused complaints of too many cutscenes bogging down the action. Pokemon Legends doesn’t exactly fix this, but it does give the player a lot more freedom in exploring its vast maps. When they want to progress, all players need to do is seek out their marked destination and fulfill the criteria of their listed mission. Jubilife Village’s nature as a home base, stocked with special shops and side quests, is something not seen in Pokemon since the Mystery Dungeon titles, and it makes longer excursions into Hisui feel like an adventure into the unknown.
Most of the Game is Spent in the Wild
Normally, uninhabited routes are simply paths that the player must traverse to reach the next settlement. It’s up to their discretion whether they want to spend a lot of time on a given route, especially after all the trainers in the way have been defeated. While Pokemon Legends is light on trainers, it’s even heavier in route content than Sword and Shield’s Wild Areas. Players can spend hours at a time combing the open world for Pokemon and resources, and the Pokedex ranking and crafting systems encourage it. Thanks to crafting and a Monster Hunter-like assortment of camps found in the world, players can keep themselves healthy and prepared.
There is More Control Over Pokemon Growth Than Ever Before
Last but not least is the core facet of raising Pokemon. While some players are annoyed at the forced experience share, other aspects of Pokemon customization have been greatly enhanced.
Pokemon now gain moves automatically, and when there are four moves already equipped, they are simply deposited in a menu to be switched in at any time. Pokemon also bank their evolutions, and players can initiate them at any time. Pokemon that once had to evolve through trading can now also be evolved with a special item that can be obtained offline. EVs and IVs, two partially hidden stats that have been Pokemon staples, are replaced wholesale by Effort Levels, which players can choose to increase with “Grit” items.
A lot of these quality-of-life changes are quite impressive, and Game Freak should try to roll the best of them back into the mainline Pokemon games.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is available now on Nintendo Switch.
