(The footage I recorded for this article has echoing audio, sorry about that. 🙃)

Thanks to Legends Arceus, I can finally articulate an opinion that I couldn’t pinpoint in the past. Whatever concept interests you the most in a Pokémon game, it will inescapably bring down everything else to compensate.

Animations, Obviously!

For me, the most important aspect of Pokémon is in the characters themselves. Their designs, and how their animations express their personalities. For 3 generations of games, Pokémon animations have been stiff to the point that they feel like action figures. For reasons only known to Game Freak, the energetic movements seen in Colosseum, XD, and Battle Revolution simply didn’t transfer to the 3DS and initially with the Switch. In Legends Arceus, dramatic improvements have brought back that energy.

Improvements include wild Pokémon walking, relaxing, and taking in the scenery (though jumping will hopefully be improved in the future). Combat is fast-paced at all times, and Pokémon connect with their targets better than in the past. Stoic Pokémon that seem motionless at first will express themselves when unleashing attacks.

Outside of battle, players can send out their Pokémon and press a few buttons to interact with them. While mechanically shallow, it helps further expand on their personalities.

An extremely specific animation I want to highlight is the way Flareon faints (shown at the end of the video above). You can see one of its front legs buckle before its entire body crashes. Small flourishes like these are what breathe that aforementioned “life” into a character.

In addition to the Pokémon, some attack animations got an overhaul, too. The quickest example is with beam attacks - Ice Beam, Hydro Pump, Flash Cannon, among others. In the past, all Pokémon would generate attacks from a common spawn point. This is what led to the years-long mockery about Blastoise shooting water from its head instead of the giant canons atop its back.

In Legends Arceus, this has been fixed and expanded upon. My Dialga shoots Ice Beam from its mouth, but my Empoleon treats it as a magic attack, forming a giant ball of ice before launching it at his target. In the grand scheme of things, this is a simple change, but its impact can be felt.

Another improvement is how the scale of each Pokémon has been fixed. Due to Game Freak’s old habits, Pokémon in the 3DS-era and Sword and Shield were forced to be smaller than usual. It allowed the camera to comfortably sit behind them, just like it was when they were 2D sprites. This is utterly nonsensical, as back then the shrunken proportions were due to hardware limitations. It doesn’t translate at all into a 3D plane.

The stupidly simple yet brillaint fix in Arceus allows the player character to walk around the battlefield. This puts the player in control of the camera, so there are no concerns about larger Pokémon obstructing smaller ones.

To expand on this change, Alpha Pokémon were added to the game. Mechanically, they’re no different from regular Pokémon, but their towering presence and deeper battle cries give them a formidable presence. I think they’re better than the sluggish Dynamax gimmick from Generation 8.

The Trade-off

With all these fantastic improvements to the game’s animations, everything else in Legends Arceus consequently suffers. Most obvious are the visuals. I’m not a huge stickler for graphics, but… they’re downright terrible in this game. Admittedly, there can be moments of beauty, but most of the time everything feels plastic or half-finished. The water textures are especially egregious, looking like how I created water in my beginner 3D modeling classes during college.

Combat as a whole has been simplified for better and for worse. For context, I need to ramble about my time dabbling in the competitive scene.

Over the years, I grew a hatred for the meta of the mainline games. The power creep has bloated beyond control: Mega Evolutions, Mega Rayquaza, Z Moves, Gigantamax, and the fact that all-powerful Legendary Pokémon can be used in official tournaments. These mechanics pressure competitors to strike fast and to strike hard before their team is bulldozed by the same strategy.

Even though experimental gimmicks can be found, they’re either obscure or completely abandoned by Game Freak. One of my favorite examples involves the series of “Pledge” moves - Grass, Fire, and Water Pledge. These attacks are exclusive to Starter Pokémon, and their true potential can only be used in double battles. The order in which they’re used after each other creates a combo that impacts the entire battlefield. 

But you know what’s faster, simpler, and more reliable for damage output? Pressing a single button for Flamethrower or Rock Slide.

Depending on the attack, there can be essay-length details about their intricate mechanics. Substitute, for example, is far more complex than you’d think just by reading the in-game description. While there’s nothing wrong with that, it tends to confuse players outside of the competitive sphere who think Pokémon is “just a kid’s game.”

In Legends Arceus, attacks are straightforward, and far less information is obstructed from the player, making combat easier to grasp. Unfortunately, “simplified” also leaves a lot to be desired.

Abilities and held items are noticeably absent in this game. Most battles are only ever 1-v-1, though you can occasionally have wild Pokémon gang up on you. “Strong” and “Agile”-style moves give a simplistic choice to make a selected attack stronger but slower, or faster but weaker, respectively. I didn’t find this gimmick as interesting in practice as it seemed in the trailers.

At the end of the day, the combat in Legends Arceus isn’t going to revolutionize or “fix” the competitive scene. It is, at the very least, properly designed for a casual experience.

Other changes that suffer in this game include an incomplete Pokédex. I’m not bothered when this happens for a spin-off game, but Pokémon Colosseum and XD still managed to code in every Pokémon, so I’m not making a great argument here. 

The story has a decent setup, but isn’t anything special. Like many Pokémon games, it boils down to “Go to point A, fight X, go to point B, fight Y,” just without gyms this time around. I am, however, drawn to the idea of Pokémon being wilder and dangerous. Using themes of respecting/taming nature, versus the usual “everyone becomes your friend” is rarely used in Pokémon games, so it feels refreshing every time.

Wishlist for the Future

Of all the changes to Pokémon from a mechanical perspective, there are a few that I want Legends Arceus to carry with the franchise moving forward. Those hidden variables known as “Effort Values” are now clearly displayed as “Effort Levels,” and can all be upgraded to +10. EVs are agonizing to explain to those not versed in the subject, so I’ll skip it to save time. I greatly appreciate grinding for a common currency (“Grit Gravel”) to raise these levels, rather than crunching numbers and scouting out the right Pokémon for hours just to attune my stat spread.

In this game and hopefully for the future, you no longer need a friend or another copy of a game for Trade Evolutions (e.g. Graveler into Golem, Kadabra into Alakazam). Instead, you apply a literal Link Cable to the compatible Pokémon, which is the cutest homage to the technology this franchise has ever done.

Instead of seeking an NPC to change your Pokémon’s four attacks, they can be swapped through a menu. I spent so long doing the original method, that I hadn’t realized how much I needed this feature. It provides flexibility without wasting time exchanging a mcguffin to someone else to accomplish the same end goal.

The crafting system is a simple but nice addition. In other Pokémon games, I have a bad habit of hoarding scarce or expensive supportive items for the end of the story. Because I can craft Potions, Revives, Ethers, and more in Arceus, I don’t feel as pressured when using them. Harvesting the necessary resources with your Pokémon is relatively fast and painless, the only critique being that I should be able to stay on my mount for the whole process.

I wouldn’t mind if catching Pokémon in Arceus stayed in future games, but it needs to be expanded upon. With some basic stealth mechanics, it’s possible to capture a Pokémon without initiating a battle. It’s mindless fun, but also feels half-baked in a sense. 

There was a 3-pronged plan that never failed me throughout the entire game. I found the target Pokémon’s favorite food palette, threw the appropriate bait, and obscured myself with a smoke ball to easily snag them unaware from behind. The terrain never significantly impaired this strategy. My only concern was flubbing a Heavy Ball throw. Otherwise, if I angered the Pokémon, my trusty Wyrdeer could help me bail out in seconds to reset the entire situation.

I reckon I’m asking for too much for a kids’ game. It makes sense for the mechanics to be easily repeatable. Still, variety to shake up this formula wouldn’t hurt.

I’m on the fence with Space-Time vortexes. These giant magical bubbles act like what other RPGs call “raids.” Within a short window of time, the enclosed field is bombarded with wild Pokémon, some exclusive to these events. Plenty of rare and valuable items drop as well. However, after I looted a few of these bubbles, they felt “samey” to me. Unfortunately, I don’t have any ideas that would improve this concept.

In Conclusion

As a proof of concept, Pokémon Legends Arceus is solid… but I’m aware that’s a backhanded compliment. Pokémon isn’t the child of a tiny studio, it’s a multi-billion dollar juggernaut. Game Freak’s staff is too small to tackle the bloated scale of their franchise. The turnaround for these projects are insane, with the consumer base seeing a release at least once a year, if not more.

To pour salt in the wound, just one month after Arceus released, the official Pokémon Youtube channel released the first trailer for Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, slated to release Holiday 2022. The next product is already speeding towards the finish line, right after I finished one that could use more time in the oven.

Saying that Legends Arceus “looks promising” as if it’s an Early Access game on Steam is insulting. But I can’t deny that I enjoyed my time with this diamond in the rough. I don’t regret spending the full $60 for this game, but recommend others find it on sale or secondhand.

I’ve moved my Best/Worst section to a separate page!