GAME CLEAR No. 270 -- Pokémon Legends: Z-A
video games game clear pokémon game freak nintendo switch 2Pokémon Legends: Z-A (2025, Switch/Switch 2)
Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Nintendo, The Pokémon Company
Clear Version: Switch 2
Clear Platform: Switch 2
Clear Date: 1/5/26
| Why should I care? |
|---|
| It may fall short of greatness in most regards, but the second entry in the Pokémon Legends series iterates upon the fun real-time battles of the first Legends title, which should at least be enough for Pokéfans with low standards (like me). |
En ‘garde
Game Freak has sort of been wandering the desert since, I don’t know, Generation V released? Yeah, that’s probably right. In that one, they had the chutzpah to make a whole cast of new Pokémon and did not feature a single Pokémon from the previous games until the postgame. Pretty bold for a series that has been contending with a fanbase with fervent Red and Blue nostalgia basically since they put out the first sequels. Since then, and especially in the HD era, they’ve put out some pretty rough products. Nevertheless, diehards like me still line up and purchase them no matter what. It’s easy to argue that Game Freak has no incentive (beyond pride) to do better. With Pokémon Legends: Z-A, they indeed have not done much better, but my love of the creatures and some pretty decent real-time battling were enough for me to see yet another flawed Pokémon game through to the end.
Legends: Z-A follows in the footsteps of Legends: Arceus in a handful of ways that can now be reasonably inferred as staples of this spinoff series. Instead of following a kid with aspirations of becoming a Pokémon League Champion, it follows a kid on some other mission involving a previous generation’s legendary Pokémon. Battling trainers and wild Pokémon alike are both done in realtime instead of turn-based battles. Those are the main differences. In most other ways, PLZA and PLA feel like ordinary Pokémon games. Given the strict adherence to formula of the main series, they do still feel like a substantial breath of fresh air.
Although their gameplay systems are pretty similar, the settings of the two Legends games differ rather drastically. Arceus takes place in Sinnoh (home of Diamond and Pearl) hundreds of years in the past when the first Pokédex was being developed (as a written journal) alongside the first Poké Balls. There’s a strong focus on hunting, catching, and studying wild Pokémon in the wilderness across various biomes. Z-A takes place in modern day Lumiose (modeled after Paris and the biggest city of the Kalos region introduced in X and Y). The protagonist arrives by train and is quickly swept up into the “Z-A Royale”, a city-wide competition to find the best trainer around. Wild Pokémon can only be found in designated Wild Zones of the urban setting, and there’s a stronger emphasis on trainer battles.
I like and respect this drastic change of pace, but I don’t think it necessarily works in the game’s favor. There’s no reason a city setting couldn’t be as interesting as the wilds of Sinnoh. Sure, there may not be as much geologic or climate difference from place ot place, but there should at least be a hell of a lot more people. That’s true, but it’s not true in a way that makes the world of Z-A as rich as that of Arceus. There are little side quests, cafés, and restaurants peppered throughout Lumiose, but they do little to alleviate the feeling that pretty much every corner of town looks the same. The rather low fidelity graphics of it all don’t help either. I don’t like to complain much about graphics generally, but Game Freak has been delivering really substandard stuff for the past several entries. It simply doesn’t make sense when they are developing games for the most lucrative media property in history. These are all pretty tired talking points among Pokémon fans, but that doesn’t make them less true. At least this game is very performant on Switch 2.
Regardless, what I came for here was the Pokémon themselves, and this game certainly still has those. I’m part of the problem of the modern Game Freak product. Part of the reason I still play Pokémon despite my gripes with the series is that I have been playing them in Spanish since Generation VI (X and Y) launched in 2013, which is incidentally when I claim the series began its decline. I could shrug off the “you still play those?” remarks from others (and from inside my own mind) by justifying them as language training tools. It’s perhaps ironic that after playing Dragon Quest VI in Spanish, I wanted a break from the fatigue and decided to play this in English. It was more relaxing, but it was a bit ironic to visit Kalos in English for the first time after beginning my Spanish-language Pokémon journey all those years ago in that very region.
I digress. My point is that my love for the critters is enough to keep me playing these games, not just my desire for my Spanish knowledge not to atrophy. Despite the reduced emphasis on the natural habitats of wild Pokémon compared to Arceus, you still gotta venture into the little sequestered Pokémon parks in the city and sling balls at the guys you want to add to your team or to your Pokédex. I got my Gengar, as usual, and five guys I’d never finished a Pokémon game with before, also as usual.
You will use your guys to climb the ranks of the aforementioned Z-A Royale, a competition that you join almost immediately at the behest of your enthusiastic greeter Taunie (or Urbain, if you choose a femme protagonist) as soon as you get off the train in Lumiose. The basic concept is that you start at Rank Z. You fight a bunch of people at your rank to earn the opportunity to have a promotion match to the next alphabetical rank. Simple enough, right? Taunie also wastes no time in inducting you into Team MZ, a ragtag group of youths that use their Pokémon to protect Lumiose.
It turns out Team MZ and Quasartico, Inc., which runs the Z-A Royale, have largely similar goals. In the aftermath of the events of Pokémon X and Y, Quasartico began a redevelopment project in Lumiose with the goal of allowing humans and Pokémon to live side by side in an urban setting. For reasons not entirely clear (to the player) at the beginning of the game, some Pokémon have begun mega evolving on their own throughout the city. This is considered a grave threat because the process is apparently bad for Pokémon if unsupervised (it is supposed to be driven by its “bond with its trainer” or whatever), and also their increased power and reduced self-control in a mega-evolved state poses a problem to the peace in general. Because these so-called “Rogue” mega evolutions can only be stopped by another mega-evolved Pokémon, the point of the Z-A Royale is to find the best mega evolution user in the city. Team MZ, meanwhile, consists of a group of Mega Evolution users trusted with handling these events as they arise.
Of course, it turns out you, the protagonist, are a natural at this. You almost instantly earn the trust of your peers after handling your first rogue mega evolution. Importantly, you also begin to earn the trust of Zygarde, the crazy green dragon legendary Pokémon from X and Y who stalks you and his weird human assistant named simply “L”. He tells you to keep it up. He also kinda looks like the main antagonist of X and Y, whose first initial was also L. Probably nothing.
The plot advances almost entirely by alternating your concerns between getting promoted in the Z-A Royale and dealing with new waves of rogue mega evolutions.
The Z-A Royale is pretty much just one battle after another. Once you get to the higher ranks, the cast of foes you have to beat to earn your promotions gets more colorful and fleshed out. These guys pretty much act as stand ins from gym leaders from the main series. They usually have some contrivances or little quests you have to deal with before you actually get to fight them. They’re charming and funny folks and a highlight of this game, really.
All the effort of ranking up is pretty fun because battling is pretty fun. The real-time battles truly are just completely different from the main series. You still have a max of six Pokémon at once, four moves per ‘mon, and the same move types and weaknesses that have been around for ages. However, dealing with physical spacing and attack cooldowns is a whole different beast. It’s enough of a mixup that I found it a bit challenging, which I seldom do with the main series. I could really get my ass kicked if I didn’t plan and react quickly to the changing matchups throughout the battles. This is a welcome change, to be sure.
The rogue mega evolutions were a bit more of a slog for me. These fights involve whittling down the massive health bars of boss Pokémon by attacking them with mega-evolved Pokémon of your own. A tricky wrinkle is that they (like all wild Pokémon) will also attack you, the trainer, unless a Pokémon damages them enough to draw aggro. If you get KO’d, that’s a party wipe. There’s just not enough going on in these to make them interesting. They boil down to basically running around in circles (and occasionally pressing the dodge button) while spamming super effective moves with your most appropriate mega-evolved Pokémon for the fight. They’re a rather annoying combination of rarely threatening yet full of HP. You probably won’t lose, but it’ll take annoyingly long to win. Or maybe I just wasn’t getting it entirely. Regardless, I never found these particularly fun.
Still, I liked the trainer battles enough to stick with this one (it’s also only about 20ish hours long, so that helps). Even then, I’d say what the Z-A Royale ultimately amounts to is something of an anti-climax, and the endgame encounter that follows (with some predictable faces) could’ve been better than it was.
Here I go writing 2000 rambling words about Pokémon again. Ultimately, the chance to hang out with my buddy Gengar and catch and get to know five new Pokémon every year or two still appeals to me. Despite my complaints, I think Game Freak is still bringing cool ideas to the table even after all these years. It’s a shame they just seem completely incapable of releasing a truly polished and fully realized product to showcase those ideas. For every exciting thing, there are two others that are half-baked. Whatever. I’ll still keep buying this garbage.