i don't think it's really a secret that i'm a pokemon freak. i love pokemon with all my heart and it's one of the most important game series to me ever. so naturally, i was going completely crazy waiting for legends za to come out (im not typing z-a im not doing the hyphen). i took 2 days off so that i could have a 4 day long weekend where i did nothing but play pokemon all day for 4 days.

pokemon legends za is so so so fun and has quickly become my second favourite pokemon game ever (after emerald because that will always be #1). this game hits the overall themes of pokemon so nicely and in a way that i am always weak to and in a setting that i am obsessed with.

i'd give this game a 10/10 if you like pokemon. if you don't like pokemon, this probably won't change your mind! it's a very different experience from regular pokemon games, but it's still pokemon at its core, and it's so so so lovely.

this is a mostly spoiler-free review! i won't talk about any plot specifics, but foundational stuff will naturally be mentioned because it's not really possible to talk about stuff otherwise. i went in with very little knowledge about even the mechanical stuff, so if you want to have a similarly blind experience, you should click off now!!

battles

i think the new battle system is probably the most exciting and standout part of this game. it takes the turn based battles and makes it realtime, eliminating move PP in favour of cooldowns. the fights are extremely fun and dynamic, and it felt sooo good to get better at the battling as the game progressed. it's not just as simple as spamming a move, and the fights are also fast enough to where failing doesn't feel bad, and retrying a battle with a better plan of action after knowing your opponent's party and moves feels totally awesome.

some moves are also fairly changed in how you use them. protect, detect, and double team for example require you to time your usage in order to block an attack. u-turn, flip turn, and other such moves make your pokemon teleport beside you after they attack, allowing you to potentially dodge the opponent's attack. some moves also have different cast times, or will let your pokemon close in faster. you can even swap out pokemon right as your opponent uses a move to either dodge or just switch which pokemon takes the blow. in some contexts, you can also fully put your pokemon away without switching in a new one if you want to keep it out of harm's way.

i'd say this is the closest the game has felt to capturing how the anime depicts pokemon battles. i do still love the turn-based battles of all the other pokemon games, but god i would be gutted if they never brought this battle system back, because it just feels SO good and SO dynamic.

the game also changes how trainer battles are generally approached - you don't find trainers on the streets of the city regularly, but instead within battle zones at night. there's a skyrim-like detection system, where you aren't necessarily instantly spotted, but once a trainer gets a good enough look at you, you'll start a battle. you can also get a jump on opponents first, though, letting you land a free hit on their first pokemon before they notice, which is sick!!! the game requires you to do a number of these battles in order to get enough points to progress in rank (for story), and the battles feel fun enough and the sneaking aspect feels cool enough to where it never feels like a chore.

footnote but mega evolution in this game is a ton of fun and the new megas are awesome and i can't wait to replay this game and try out some more of them!!

tldr: the realtime battles feel fucking awesome, and i would love to see it again in another pokemon game

story/characters

the game is set entirely within lumiose city, which i think is such a fun setting. the main story and most of the side missions generally have a big focus on the bonds between people and pokemon (especially in the context of the city). one of my favourite types of settings for a story is a city where lots of different people connect and live together, so adding pokemon on top of that naturally activates all of the neurons in my brain in a diabolical way.

i think that the story is one of the more hit-or-miss aspects to me just partly because i think it could have gone into more depth for some things. there's a number of plot threads that i would have loved to see more out of, or that i would have loved to have gotten more of a resolution to prior to the post-game.

the primary plot thread in the story is still a lot of fun though, and i really appreciate that, while pokemon games are always child-friendly, they generally are decently mature, and legends za is no exception. it touches on some occasionally dark and serious themes that were really interesting.

on another note, the characters are all really fun, and are a bit part of what made me enjoy the story. the main characters in team mz are pretty unique and strange, and i love how they bounce off one another. AZ's presence and role is also fascinating and fun coming out of X and Y, and it's interesting seeing the ways he's changed since those games. also i am obsessed with the rust syndicate and especially philippe, likely to no one's surprise. thank you pokemon for giving us bears when no one else will.

tldr: the story is fun and good but i would have liked to see some more exploration of some plot threads; the characters are a ton of fun and i wub them

exploration/collection

lumiose city is a really fun place to explore, and the experience of roaming the city and searching for pokemon is a ton of fun. the movement options for going from rooftop to rooftop or for scaling various construction sites feels really awesome - the roto-glide has a weightiness and resistance that's really satisfying to get good with.

catching wild pokemon also feels really fun. i would say one issue legends arceus had with catching wild pokemon is that the battling being what it was meant that it felt like there was a lot larger of an incentive for players to catch pokemon purely outside of battle without ever battling (just because battling one pokemon slightly interrupted the flow of gameplay), but i really like how they integrated the realtime battle system here.

you can naturally still catch pokemon without ever battling, but knocking out a pokemon creates a little grace period where you can throw a ball before it disappears, with a heightened catch rate, and the speed and ease of the realtime battles makes it pretty natural to just psyshock explode a pokemon and throw a ball right away.

i had a ton of fun filling out my pokedex - i'm only 3 pokemon away from being done, and those are trade evos, and i'm going to be trading with a friend sometime soon!!

the experience of finding shiny pokemon is also great. it's basically just the same as legends arceus (thankfully!), where there'll be a little noise from the shiny pokemon, even if you don't notice it. they also added some sparkles coming off of the pokemon! so far, i've caught a shiny fletchling, bunnelby, spinarak, and ralts. i was hunting for the ralts, and the rest were luck! i also had found a second shiny fletchling but i was so shocked that i reacted late as fuck and then it flew away, and i didn't bother save scumming because i already had one so i was like. oh well...

i also totally would not have noticed the shiny spinarak if it wasn't for the noise. i heard the noise twice and was losing my mind and then i eventually looked on a wall and there were 5 spinaraks, one of which was shiny. i don't want to think about the shinies i didn't notice in the time i played pokemon violet, and thankfully i don't have to because if there were any, i didn't notice them.

tldr: exploration is a lot of fun because the flow of gameplay is very rarely interrupted, and this game has the most fun experience of filling out the pokedex out of any pokemon game

fashion and music

i'm lumping these two together as kind of a misc category.

the fashion in this game makes me SICK. easily the best character customization out of any pokemon game, and coming from scarvio's paltry pathetic offerings, i am flourishing and growing beautiful wings. the number of clothing items is awesome as fuck, the designs are awesome, the fact you can change individual parts of an outfit if you have different colour variants blew my mind, the hairstyles look great and the fact you can do colour blocking and bayalage with the hair made me drool. it feels really apt that kalos introduced character customization in gen 6, and now kalos has revolutionized the character customization world in pokemon once again in gen 9. i hope gen 10 gives us similarly awesome customization!!

this feels almost unnecessary to mention because literally every pokemon game has incredibly lovely music, but as you'd expect, the music in this game is really fantastic. i basically have had nothing but the base daytime theme playing in my head for the last several days. everything is an earworm.

tldr: character customization in this game is SO GOOD and the music is phenomenal as is par for the course in pokemon

conclusion

this game is incredibly fun, and is really the pokemon game i dreamed of as a kid. the battles feel SO good, the overall vibe really captures the feeling that this is a place where people and pokemon live together, the characters are really lovable, the story is pretty cute, filling the pokedex is the most fun out of any pokemon game, the fashion is peak, and the music is awesome as usual.

if you like pokemon, you will almost certainly like this game!!

game freak cooked something really special this time. i can't wait to play more, and i can't wait for the dlc!!

thank you for reading!