Pokemon Legends: Z-A (Switch 2, 2025)

 

I interrupt this DQ-palooza to briefly check out the latest Pokémon game. I wasn't crazy about Arceus, while lots of others were. Last I checked, this game isn't exactly getting rave reviews, so maybe I'll conversely really like it. They took the bold step of making this a real-time hybrid action game (with dodge rolls, for some reason, cause everybody wants to be a Soulslike now).

This game takes place entirely in the hub city from Generation 6's Kalos. It's an interesting idea that I'm not sure really pans out. At least they're trying new things with the Legends games; Arceus introduced some open world concepts that were then heavily-refined by the Generation 9 games (IMO Gen 9 is waaaay better than Arceus specifically because it takes what worked and makes it much more appealing... sorry the framerate is bad and whatnot, but Gen 9 otherwise worked).

As usual with the modern "limited character creator" Pokémon games, I make Cataluna. She's whiter and more redheaded than usual. It's possible this Cataluna is part-Scottish with a Spanish name, like Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez.

I'm impressed, she's more grown-up and conventionally attractive than the usual teenage Pokémon protagonists.

In any case, she's fresh off the train in Lumiose City of Gen 6 fame, which is loosely based on Paris, France. Not enough, though. The people barely have accents, and the Parisian influence is really subtle most of the time. A third of the people here are young women on a "sex tour of Europe", another third are guys trying to figure out how to do a "sex tour of Europe" (be female), and the other third are angry people who actually live here and have to put up with all these idiotic sex tourists who don't even know what a baguette is and definitely don't parle vous Francais.

Not sure what she's got in her bag. Hopefully a gun, given how dangerous Paris is nowayears with the "no-go zones" and shit.

Stay strapped, Luna! Brrrap! Brrrap! Second-amendment rights are women's rights!

...oh, they don't have that here. Well, in the world of Pokémon everyone gets to carry around, like, pet dragons as bodyguards, so that'll do.

Some weirdo ambushes Cataluna. She's been here 30 seconds and she's dealing with panhandlers.

...why is her bag now vibrating and buzzing?

Yeah, Pokémon posts get weird.

Yeah, no, no thanks dude, not interested. Why does his hair look like those swirly vanilla-punch popsicles?

Oh, the guy was just trying to give our hero her starter 'mon so that The Plot can happen. The first hour of this game consists of about 5 minutes of gameplay and 55 minutes of talking, so I'm just going to jump over a lot of it.

The starter selection is really odd. Totodile and Chikorita are from Gen 2, and then for some reason we have Tepig from Gen 5. You'd think all of the starters would be from Gen 6 since this is, you know, the Gen 6 land. If they were going for Gen 2 due to the popularity of that generation, why leave out Cyndaquil?

And if they were going for an "all-stars" approach, why not one from three different gens? I'd have gone with Squirtle from Gen 1, Chikorita from Gen 2, and Blaziken from Gen 3.

Maybe one of these times they could try a different trio of starter elements, too. Not sure what other trio would work well, though. But it'd be cool to start with like, Electric, Ice, Flying. Or Steel, Dark, Fairy.

In any case...the choice is tougher than usual here. I tend to go for Fire and steamroll the game with that.

Chikorita (Grass) - Good for most of the game, has solid defense and more resilience/survivability than the other two. Gets things like Giga Drain and Leech Seed that allow it to tough it out versus stronger foes. These can make for pretty slow battles though since it trades offensive output for survivability, and it takes the longest of the three to evolve.

Tepig (Fire) - Has strong fire attacks and good damage output, but it also has worse defenses and more weaknesses than the other two, and gets clocked by Psychic types.

Totodile (Water) - Has fewer weaknesses than the other two (only have to watch out for Grass and Electric) and very balanced stats. Where the other two skew towards either offense or defense at the cost of the other, this guy has solid offense AND defense. He isn't as survivable as Chikorita or as powerful as Tepig, but he's reliable all through the game with no weak points stat-wise. I think I'll go with this one. The lack of elemental weaknesses compared to the other two is big.

Moments later, the city GOES INTO LOCKDOWN. It's MARSHAL LAW! Gotdang authoritarian government! Damn you Macron! Hashtag resist!

This is basically The Purge, and once lockdown commences, anyone in the streets is fair game and has to Poke-battle anybody that accosts them. It's sorta like the guy wearing the bull mask on the island. You gotta steer clear.

Yeah, it's literally The Purge. Shouldn't have been stuck outside after 6 PM.

This "sex tour of Europe" is going pretty badly for Cataluna so far. She's been here for two hours and it's been nonstop BS to deal with. She thought she'd be riding her third Frenchman by now!

Anyway, a few Poke-battles later, and our hero wakes up the next day totally fine. The Purge was no big deal, it turns out. Time for the sex tour to begin!

...but wait, now that pink-haired dude (his name is Urbain, apparently) is installing spyware on Cataluna's levitating phone while she sits there and blinks like the good little mute protagonist she is.

How many drugs were the makers of this game on? And why does it look like it's from the PS2 generation, when they were charging $70 for it in 2025? When is the graphical budget for this series going to get some sort of lift? Aren't they making billions of dollars?

Battles in this game are weird. They went for a real-time, hybrid action style of combat, where you move around the battlefield and hammer the attack buttons to spam attacks (rather than the normal having to thoughtfully choose one move per round...here you just press all the buttons). The dodge roll is important for keeping your character out of the line of fire, since enemy attacks can spill over and hit your character.

The game transpires entirely inside of this one city, which seems like a bad idea. It isn't exactly a large city, and an hour in I've already seen pretty much all of the southeast quarter. Not sure how much depth the game can have with such a small setting. It seems like the goal is to go around finding/doing quests (the pokeball icons) to get strong enough to conquer the Wild Areas (basically, local parks) and capture all the Pokémon within as you build your army. Still limited to a six-monster party, even though you capture new ones like crazy.

It's good to see Android 18 finding work.

The director of the lab is KING MABLE, of WWF fame. He sure slimmed down since 1995, and became a white woman, like Michael Jackson did.

....why does this feel sarcastic?

I don't need your sass, King Mabel. Cataluna and I are already both taking time out of our planned week to putz around with this game.

The only real hold-over from Pokémon Legends Arceus and the (really tedious if we're being honest about that game) research system...is that you get rewards for finishing various tasks, like catching 5 of a specific type, or catching every 'mon in a particular park. Before, those things (over and over) were a requirement for grinding the game forward and unlocking the next area. Now, they just give you TM rewards that are purely optional, and sometimes very useful. So you don't have to worry about research levels, but you can check in every so often and get some nice bonuses for being thorough. This is much better.

Rock Smash is one of the first TMs, and gets me a strong Rock-type attack that decimates anything weak to Rock (which is a lot, early on). I need to get better at rotating 'Mons around, because even though they share EXP, the one you've got out gets most of it. So Totodile, who I've been sending out pretty exclusively, is way ahead of the others already.

Sometimes you can get pretty high up, like Rob Van Dam, and see out over the city. There...isn't a whole lot to it, and there is basically nothing whatsoever outside of the city. They should have structured it after Atlantis, with the multiple moats and connecting river built on an ancient collapsed geodesic dome. This town by comparison seems more like a death trap. rather than an impenetrable fortress of the ancient world There's no connecting body of water and it'd be a maze to have to leave. Everything is flammable. Whose idea was this?

On a lighter note, here's Pichu.

My GOD. He's adorable!

I could catch a Pikachu soon after, but instead I'm going to evolve one myself from this Pichu. It's the difference between cooking your own food and picking up fast food.

Mareep is a sheep that is, for some reason, Electric element. "Electric sheep" is pretty clever.

Getting money is difficult in this game (as it usually is in Pokemon, since most fights don't give you money and certainly not farmable random fights). Far as I can tell, the best source of income is to sell everything in the "treasures" tab every time you get low on funds.

I need that money so I can stock up on Balls. With the abundance of catchable 'mons everywhere, and the ability to completely circumvent fights* by just throwing a ball right from the get-go (it works probably half the time), Poke Balls are crucial to have a large stock of at all times.

* - The one major weakness of Let's Go Pikachu was that it dropped random battles entirely and switched them out for a ball-throwing minigame that was tedious, not fun, and tended to waste a lot of your Pokeballs. This game takes that element and fixes it (by keeping random battles and making the ball-capture-to-skip an optional method). So they fixed elements from both LGP and Arceus in this game. Weird thing is that both of those games were well-recieved and this wasn't. Well, I'll never claim to understand the popularity of Arceus.

Pronounced Cafe Olé, this is one of the better hot beverages you can get, especially in the winter.

This creepazoid goes around telling other teenagers that they should jump off of buildings because their Pokedex will protect them. What is he, Marilyn Manson?

"Can I get yo numba" yells our hero while running after passerby catcalling them. That's right, Cataluna will shack up with anyone at this point. Meanwhile a kid nearby is talking about how people there can't get enough shrooms.

So far, everyone in this game is terrible.

Everyone except this supple miss, who probably does fantastic nude paintings of herself. She just has that art school vibe, and figured out already that the best photo subject in life is woman.

She can have one of the Fast Food Pikachus. She then evolves it into Raichu and worries that it might attack her, because apparently Raichu is a lot harder to control. ...so why did you evolve it? I guess she was just interested in evolution stones and how they work. The main time I ever bother with evolution stones is to turn Growlithe into Arcanine in the early games, which gives you a beastly fire 'mon fairly early.

We're introduced to a martial arts dojo led by this big Nordic God guy. He keeps a harem around, because of course he does. I get the impression that a lot of martial arts schools are literally cults. You'll have the place run by this one middle-aged dude who acts like Steven Seagal (usually with a ponytail) who expects everyone to have the same rigid set of beliefs if they want to be included. Deviate at all or question their dogma and they won't want you around anymore. It's just weird vibes from some of these places, and the guys that run them develop these deity complexes because they have a bunch of teenagers who think they're cool. It's bizarre.

As if King Mabel wasn't enough of a wrestling reference, I see that Great Balls look just like Big Van Vader's head.

Every time I play a new Pokémon game, I always try to start using new Pokémon that I like, but haven't gotten much use out of in the past. Beedrill is a good example of this. Really liked this thing in Gen 1, never really got to use it. It's hard to get if you had Pokemon Blue like me, and Bug types aren't actually that good...

Well, I'll get as far as I can with a ragtag band of 'Mons I like, until I get some actual decent ones to fill out a serious team.

Bret Hart: "Who are you to doubt Beedrill? He's a serious competitor, and a jam-up guy!"

Next up is the aptly-named "Looker" Bureau. It's aptly-named because this place is run by Emma:

Her pants are so tight, it looks like they were vacuum-sealed on.

Basically this is a detective agency that sends Pokémon trainers out to do sidequests. Forget detective work, I want a taste of those painted-on pants.

This pink-haired psychopath shoo's our hero so he can be alone with Emma. You stay away from her you bastard!

Alright, I've ignored the elephant in the room long enough. Cataluna's pants are horrendous. Probably the most un-sexy pants I've ever seen. And clearly, the traditional Pokémon Fetching Female Outfit is alive and well. How do I get these Barely Socially Acceptable Microshorts?

...by paying 12 thousand quid. This is ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Well, I went ahead and kept playing, not buying things I needed and selling anything I could get away with, until I eventually accumulated the money.

Not 20 minutes later, the next story area gives me a store with better-looking shorts for a much more fair 1900.

This actually made me mad. They're super-limiting about where you can go early, so you'll inevitably go to the expensive stores first. They're a beginner's trap that will completely clean you out on funds. It's ridiculous. Not a lot of thought went into any of this. Normally merchant stock ascends in price as you go.

Had a tough time choosing between the darker shorts and the blue shorts. Typically blue denim is more appealing.

There are some other solid outfits around here too. This would be better if it were a skirt and not a "skort" though (i.e. it's shorts in the back). From the front this looks like a very British outfit.

There are also cozy winter tights, which give texture to legs.

I believe this ensemble is known as "the Darby Allin"

Well, here's what I settled on. Blue jean shorts, wide-collared shirt. Moments after this picture was taken, I hit the barber and got her hair let down like a 90's teen movie "nerdy character". Now she needs some decent shoes, not finding anything good though. You'd think this game would have a better shoe selection, given how much most women like collecting shoes.

Elsewhere, a RAMPAGING BUNNY is on the loose.

"Help me build a manger for my savior!" squeaks this vicious minion of Toad.

Hair-down Cataluna looks pretty damn elegant now.

I take my first loss of the game here, but it wasn't because my 'Mons weren't trained enough. It was because my character got taken out by the enemy's AOE attacks. I didn't even realize I was taking character damage during the fight until it was too late. Can likely just stay away from your active 'Mon and avoid any splash damage that way; doesn't seem like the enemies really focus-target your character.

In the immortal words of Austin Powers...

"Riiiiight."

Breaking news: There's a claimable Mystery Gift for pre-ordering the game. I've got a copy from the library (one that has absolutely been checked out many times before, since this game was out months ago), but I checked the DLC section of the menu to see if there was anything downloadable under "connect to the internet". There indeed was. So either no one ever claimed this before me, or it's claimable by-system rather than by-game and it let me claim it due to starting from scratch on this system.

Either way, what is the Mystery Gift, you ask?

Ralts, which looks like a Grass-type, but it's actually a rare and powerful Psychic/Fairy dual-type that can evolve into Kirlia and then the super-strong Gardevoir (at 20 and 30, I believe, but not sure). This is an "endgame party" level Pokémon right here and getting it so early is awesome.

It's level 6 so it'll need to do some catch-up to git gud, but it'll be a mainstay right next to Totodile. Very nice preorder bonus. It starts with Confusion, so I now have an OP Psychic-element attack. Yeah, I suspect catching up won't be any problem for this thing.

Emma and her painted-on vacuum-sealed pants is starting a Mutual Admiration Society with Cataluna. Meanwhile vanilla swirlie guy hovers around creepily like the psycho he is.

Oh that's nice, this cafe doesn't charge the "disadvantaged" (homeless, I assume) for coffee. Nothing wrong with hooking up someone who's down.

Though the game might not want to start patting itself on the back for being philanthropic when...

...all the damn benches have anti-homeless architecture, to make sure nobody can sleep on one. Because fuck 'em, make 'em sleep on the hard ground instead! These particular benches strike a nerve, especially given how common they are in cities that like patting themselves on the back.

Regardless, Cataluna takes a moment to rest. It'd be really nice to be able to lie down, but we can't have that. Now that she's been roped into being a looker for the Looker Bureau, her Parisian Sex Tour is postponed indefinitely. Probably a good thing, noted Netflix show Emily in Paris is one of the worst atrocities to ever be committed in Europe. And Europe once contained the Hapsburgs.

That's it for now. Maybe at some later time I'll do more with this game, and this series in general. However, this is it until then, and I figured I might as well post my findings. This game is interesting, but the jury is out on whether it's really all that good. I like the main character, obviously, and I like that it tries some new things. However, it's already making me miss the normal turn-based gameplay of this series. It's a game that lucks out by being part of a hugely popular series with an extensive array of fanboys ready to buy it. If it were called anything else, I think this game would have flown entirely under the radar.

BTW, this costs more than Expedition 33. That's right. This is game with visuals that could have existed on the PS3, it feels like a budget title, and they had the nerve to charge $70 for it in a world where you could just go pick up Expedition 33 on PS5 for $50, even last Fall when this came out. Also there was a $30 day-one DLC. So if you want the full game at launch it's $100. Lol probably because of tariffs or something, that's gotta be it, certainly not that the Big N has become an upfrontedly greedy entity in the Switch 2 era.

 I covered Gen 1-3 a decade ago, and before it's all said and done I'd really like to cover Gen 4-10 if possible (10 will be out by then). Maybe. I don't know if I'll have the energy for it. At this juncture I might be limping over the finish line just finishing the Dragon Quest series. If Dragon Quest is the #1 series I've liked writing about, Pokémon is probably #2. There are some other long-overdue things as well.