The main series Pokemon games have stuck closely to the formula established when the original games launched in the mid-90s. With each new main series Pokemon installment, Pokemon trainers select their starter Pokemon and head from one town to the next in a linear fashion, building a team of Pokemon, defeating Gym leaders or their regional equivalent, and ultimately becoming the Pokemon League Champion. It's certainly a winning formula and has helped the Pokemon series become one of the most popular in all of video game history, but for some, it's been getting stale. In response to this, Game Freak and Nintendo have released Pokemon Legends: Arceus, a game that takes the Pokemon franchise in bold new directions.

When Nintendo first announced Pokemon Legends: Arceus, it was heavily implied that the game would be an open world title in the same vein as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It was later clarified that Pokemon Legends: Arceus is not a true open world game, but instead features large, segmented areas that players are free to explore, assuming they've gained access to them. Pokemon Legends: Arceus players start in the Jubilife Village hub area before each expedition, and then choosing which specific area they want to explore from a map.

Previous Pokemon games typically have players moving in a straight line, entering a town, collecting a Gym badge, progressing the story, and moving on to the next. Pokemon Legends: Arceus lets players run loose in its wild areas, and the actual battles against Pokemon trainers are few and far between. Instead the main goal in these areas is to document Pokemon for the Pokemon Legends: Arceus Pokedex by catching them and completing other tasks.

The ultimate goal in Pokemon Legends: Arceus is to complete the Pokedex, as it is in other Pokemon games. But where Pokemon Legends: Arceus differs is that players are starting from scratch. They need to study each Pokemon's habits and behaviors by completing goals outlined in the Pokedex, like catching a certain Pokemon X number of times or seeing that Pokemon use a specific move in battle. This encourages players to catch many of the same Pokemon, not unlike Pokemon GO or the Let's Go Switch games.

Catching Pokemon is the main activity in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and it's what players will spend the bulk of their time doing. It's a good thing, then, that the game makes the simple act of catching Pokemon incredibly fun. Instead of always fighting Pokemon in turn-based battles and choosing to throw a Poke Ball from a menu, players have to physically walk up to a Pokemon and manually throw the Poke Ball at them. Players can sneak up on Pokemon to get an advantage, and there's still the option of weakening a Pokemon in battle before trying to catch them. Pokemon Legends: Arceus gives players more freedom when it comes to catching Pokemon than ever before. Pokemon fans have been waiting for a game like this, where they're able to interact with Pokemon in real-time, and it's definitely something that longtime Pokemon fans will get a kick out of.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus makes finding and catching Pokemon its core gameplay mechanic and makes sure it's as fun as possible. It's always a thrill to find a new Pokemon even dozens of hours into the game, with Pokemon Legends: Arceus featuring hundreds of creatures from multiple generations. There's even some brand new Pokemon featured in the game, mainly consisting of new evolutions for older Pokemon.

It wouldn't do to spoil all the new Pokemon, but one of the earliest ones players run into is Stantler's new evolved form Wyrdeer. Wyrdeer is one of the ridable Pokemon that players have access to in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, with players able to summon him whenever they want to zip across the landscape quickly. Another new and ridable Pokemon is Basculegion, which players can use to safely cross the game's waters.

These ridable Pokemon greatly expand the player's traversal capabilities in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, allowing them to reach new areas that they may not have been able to before, therefore encouraging them to return to older areas to explore more. Pokemon Legends: Arceus players will find themselves using these Pokemon to explore the Hisui region for hours on end, collecting new Pokemon and training their team for the tougher battles.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus completely changes how players explore the world and catch Pokemon, though the battle mechanics should be immediately familiar to fans. Pokemon Legends: Arceus features a turn-based battle system like previous games, though there are some interesting gimmicks thrown in to shake things up. For instance, Pokemon can master their moves to gain Strong Style and Agile Style versions of them, with different pros and cons for each option that players have to consider. Players also never have to give up on any of their Pokemon's moves to make room for new ones, giving them the freedom to put together different builds for each Pokemon to suit the situation.

While Pokemon Legends: Arceus players are out battling and exploring the world, they'll be completing main story missions as well as special Requests, which act as the side-missions in the game. Pokemon Legends: Arceus Requests are often worth doing, as they can net players helpful rewards and offer challenges that will help them beef up their Pokemon team for the more challenging battles like the Alpha Pokemon encounters and Noble Pokemon boss fights.

Hardcore Pokemon fans will find Pokemon Legends: Arceus difficult to put down. The core gameplay loop is addicting, and the quests are fun enough that players will feel compelled to complete it all. But while Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a fantastic game itself, it definitely seems like it's laying the groundwork for something truly spectacular, putting things together for a sequel to rectify its issues and take the concept to new heights.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is lacking in a couple key areas. For one, each expedition area looks like a barren wasteland, with little else to see beyond the Pokemon roaming the fields. This isn't the end of the world, but it would've been nice for the areas to have more substance to them.

Secondly, the game's graphics are distractingly bad at times. While the Pokemon themselves look great, the world they inhabit is muddy, lacking in detail, and suffers from glaring texture pop-in. While some could point to the aging Nintendo Switch hardware as the culprit, there are other Nintendo Switch games that completely outclass Pokemon Legends: Arceus when it comes to graphics.

There's room for improvement in a potential Pokemon Legends: Arceus sequel, but what's here will still keep Pokemon fans busy for hours on end. Pokemon Legends: Arceus's gameplay is simple but incredibly rewarding, stripping away much of the tediousness that has plagued recent entries in the series to focus on what's fun. Those who grew up with Pokemon should like it especially, as while it makes dramatic changes to the core formula, it somehow feels truer to the spirit of Pokemon than the older releases.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is out now, exclusively for the Nintendo Switch.

Pokemon Legends Arceus

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a game set in a feudal Sinnoh region, known then as Hisui. The player is sent back in time to catch all the Pokemon, help the Galaxy Team settle in the area, and solve a strange mystery with a distortion in the sky. This game is more open world than main series Pokemon games typically are, and features a different type of gameplay than usual.