Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Pt 4 - Azul

 

Arceus returns with our hero standing in the rain getting pneumonia. This game has its moments.

This guy is almost as douchey as that Snow guy from FFXIII. "You're punching above YOUR weight!" he screeches while putting up his dukes like a pugilist.

"I'll baste YOUR turkey!"

Unfortunately I can't fight this guy (or go past him to face the next Souls boss, Electrode) without doing MORE RESEARCH GRINDING.

Still doing this. Yep. Well, it turns out you only need to get like halfway up the rankings to actually beat the game. Not sure what the rest of the stars are for.

Got my starter's abilities pretty well sorted at this point. Brave Bird absolutely rocks everything I fight.

Luxray is the other one I've had since almost the beginning, and now he's pretty well sorted for the finale. Crunch is super-useful and the upgraded form of Bite.

More 'splorin, looking for things to research. Probably about 70% of the game's runtime for me has been grinding out research points.

Annnnd that's it, I'm finally done with these ranking grinds for the rest of the main story.

Yeah, it really does feel like there being ten stars instead of five is unnecessary. It gives the impression that the game is way longer (and grindier) than it is.

Sneasler is our latest HM Mule, and has the ability to...

...climb sheer cliffs. Look at him go.

Now I can finally battle this guy and actually progress the story to the last two areas. Defeat his Skuntank, and you move on to...

...next Souls boss!

It's a fight, stuff happens, there is a match.

Next our hero spends some quality time with Pokemon's Nicest Rival, Rei, and the weird helmeted professor.

The second-to-last area, Alabaster Icelands, is pretty amazing-looking. The previous area had some snowfall, while this place is just full-on winter.

Rapidash is super useful at this point, with 5 charges each of the uber-potent Fire Blast and Flare Blitz. Plus a lot of Flame Wheels.

I burn (heh) through these moves while one-shotting this entire province, since nearly everything is ice-element. Even had to dig into the Ember stock.

Here's the warden for this area, and he's a lot less douchey than the last one. Actually Irida is becoming the douchiest character fairly quickly.

I'm waiting for Adaman to just slap Irida in the face one of these times. Look at him, he's thinking about it.

Gaeric's Pokemon are all ice, and I've outleveled it by a lot. This game's pace felt really weird. All the grinding I had to do seemed to make my party out-pace the actual story by a lot. Plus Rapidash got a ton of levels from one-shotting everything in this latest area.

For whatever reason there was no research level requirement to fight this guy. They just totally dropped that after the five star requirement to get to this area. As a result, this zone took a fraction of the time of any of the others.

Well, it isn't done yet. There's still a Souls Boss to fight. It's on top of a mountain, so I gotta find Fly to get there.

Our hero climbs a mountain to find this game's equivalent of Masa and Mune.

Next is a fight with Braviary, AKA the HM Mule for Fly. Poor Sneasel is already outdated!

Finally I've got flight powers, and it's awesome. This in and of itself sets this game apart from the rest of the series.

That lets me reach Avalugg, the Souls Boss of the area. It's the same as all the other ones, roll around a lot and throw balms.

Check this out, the game actually tells you about i-frames. The key to Souls success. Now when I go and play games that have a roll without i-frames, it throws me off-guard.

One area left. Good game.