Pokemon Legends: Z-A, Part 7 (Finale) - Alsace-Lorraine

 

Cataluna came, she saw.

I'm just glad this thing is mercifully over.

.......Because you go back to this damn hotel over and over and over again for the entire game, and there aren't many other locations in this city. Was this game made during COVID or something?

Next up is a boss fight with Emma. Was wondering when that shoe would drop.

Turns out there's something called Team - WHOOOOO - Team Flare, and they were the pre-eminent team in this area until they got scattered to the four winds and disbanded. Also they made Emma's vacuum-sealed pants, which are apparently called the "expansion suit" whatever that means.

...Bi-curiosity? Emma's pants are sure promoting a lot of that.

In case we forgot this is a Legends game. I do like that the research tasks aren't that mandatory in this game compared to Arceus where they were very much mandatory.

The next part has a few face-offs with what's left of Team Flare, now working as coffee shop baristas. Team Flare alumni-ship is as worthless as a Fine Arts degree!

All of these guys are Fire element across the board, and with a Water element main, I can roll through these fights the way I usually roll through Blaine in Gen 1.

In any case, the beleaguered former members of Team Flare have something to show Cataluna: The dark secret of Lumiose City. An ancient truth, buried beneath the surface world. This would be a great time to give it some sort of Paris Catacombs type dungeon...

....well, we do get a dungeon, but it's basically a Pokemon Mansion type deal where everything is creepy and lots of old, unattended computers are running.

This dungeon also has teleporters, which aren't my favorite dungeon mechanic but at least it's a change of pace.

Our heroine is WAY too excited about finding this key. Then again, she'll probably take any excitement she can get in this fairly dull game.

This is kind of interesting. It delves into the "ancient great war" element that Pokemon occasionally lightly touches on. Generation 9 in particular, one of the reasons it's my favorite of the modern generations.

This supertall guy talks like he was there.

He is... The Highlander.

...wait, he WAS there. He's 3000 years old, and fought in the great war. Not only that, he built a gigantic flower-shaped super-weapon*. Now, that super weapon is about to burst forth and END LUMIOSE CITY**. So we have to help him stop it***. But first...

...time for MORE RANK-UP FIGHTS!

Grisham here is the final boss of rank-ups, and defeating him puts me at A.

He has the mighty Tyranitar. OH MY GOD.

Most of his 'mons are fire, though, which means my water starter is able to completely whoop up. Given Team Flare's late-game prevalence, I gotta say, water-types have it made later on.

* / ** / *** - I'm not actually sure what's going on. I was really booking it through the later parts of this game to just put it down and get it done.

After achieving A rank, our hero celebrates for a while alone in her room. Eventually all of the shaking freaks out the rest of the team.

No, that was just Cataluna celebrating. Maybe you should back off!

Somehow Urbain is also now Rank A, despite that he, you guessed it, didn't do shit!

The bad news is that all of the shaking from Cataluna's hotel room caused the city center to COMPLETELY COLLAPSE.

Er, at this point the super-weapon erupts from the ground and attempts to wrap itself around Lumiose Tower, or something. Much devastation ensues, and it's time for the final sprint to the city center to confront the weapon. For some reason our heroes have to fight to determine who battles the super-weapon. Why don't they just BOTH go up there and fight it? The Pokémon series is nonsensical.

Anyway, I crush Urbain (no shots, forgot lol) and the final run up the tower involves meeting all the folks from earlier in the game again. Yep, the gang is all here.

The hot woman with the maid outfit is here too! All of these former-rivals team up with our hero to fight the super-powered 'mons sent out by the super weapon. This part of the game is pretty cool, though it does drag on, especially if one is in a hurry to get to the end.

Things culminate with all of the characters forming a human ladder to help Cataluna climb the tower.

....yeah, she literally climbs this ladder of people.

At the top, Zygarde reaches his final form, and we get to control him for the final battles.

....at least, here and there, to unleash mega-attacks on the giant death flower. In-between these parts, I have to fight pairs of smaller death flowers in what are some fairly tough fights.

This has to be the weirdest Pokemon series final boss. You fight six of these things, in three pairs, and it's hard to suss out exactly what their elements or weaknesses are. Reminds me a lot of the end-chapter battles of FFVII Rebirth and the inscrutable, vaguely elemental-themed mostly-identical bosses that you fight one after another.

Things culminate with Zygarde, Cataluna, and Cataluna's whopper legs blasting the giant ancient flower weapon with a giant Kamehameha and saving the city.

Much fireworks ensue.

AZ is glad to see his super weapon stopped, and can finally rest.

Why was he gigantic, anyway? It's like Leder in Mother 3 except I don't get it. Was everyone giant 3000 years ago? The Book of Enoch was right all along!

We'll take it from here.

So, final thoughts on Pokémon Legends: Z-A? Well... it's probably the worst mainline Pokémon game. Arceus had some issues (or at least I thought so, everybody else loved it) with holding the player up to do mundane tasks over and over, and while this game fixes that to an extent, we still have that same design loop of pretty much repeating the same few activities for the whole game. The world is much smaller and less-interesting (they could have done a LOT more with Lumiose City) here, and without any other biomes to explore, the town environment gets dull fast. Also wasn't a fan of the real-time combat. Well, even a meh Pokémon game is still usually a fun time, and this was reasonably fun. At least for a while.