Pokemon Legends Arceus Review
Arceus is worth playing if you're into Pokemon, as it manages to be close enough to the mainstream Pokemon games in concept to keep fans looking for something new until the ninth generation games are announced. However, Arceus is one of the deepest and most engaging Pokemon spin-off games out there, and while it's not quite Pokemon BotW, it combines aspects of Monster Hunter and Pokemon Snap into an immersive experience. Arceus isn't exactly like that, and as the name suggests, it's not technically a mainstream Pokémon game. Arceus is a step in the right direction, but it still has a lot of catching up to do.
The Switch may be different, but I'm trying to figure out what Arceus looks like as an idea that Nintendo can build on as they improve their gaming hardware.
With references to anime and numerous Pokemon games, Arceus is very much like a love letter from Game Freak. At its core, Arceus is a story about how people learn to understand Pokémon and build a world where they will eventually coexist in harmony. Although set in Sinnoh, the narrative feels like a meditative reflection on the franchise as a whole and what it really means to be a Pokémon-fighting trainer.
He does this by shifting the timeline long before the modern games in the series, at a time when Pokémon was still little understood. Instead of a world where people and Pokémon live in harmony and anyone can purchase an electronic device filled with information about hundreds of species, players are catapulted into the wilderness and wilderness where people just do their best to survive while they are surrounded by a large degrees of unknown and seemingly dangerous creatures. This shift in perspective, combined with a more holistic design approach and a much larger open world to explore, results in the biggest overhaul of the Pokémon formula since the series' debut. While some elements don't look like their final forms, I love how this new direction is leading the Pokemon series.
Fans have been begging Game Freak for deeper storytelling for years, and Pokemon Legends Arceus fits them perfectly. By shifting the Pokemon formula to focus on better open-world exploration and pursuit of all of this, Pokemon Legends: Arceus truly revolutionized the series for a more modern audience. Not only is it the best Pokémon game, but it's an elegant reimagining of the formula, creating new and unique challenges that fans will love. It's a must-see Pokemon game that will make many "Game of the Year" lists and is expected to bring countless fans old and new to the series.
While technically an origin story for Diamond & Pearl, it's a love letter to the franchise as a whole that fans won't want to miss. If this is the future of the series, I'll be incredibly happy as this could be the best Pokemon game ever made. Whatever the answer, I'm incredibly happy that it happened; this is the best pokemon in recent years.
When considering this game, it's best to put all your preconceptions about the Pokemon franchise behind. Pokemon isn't going to fix that right now until these games are released closer to what one would expect from a series that continues to sell in such staggering numbers and is backed by a brand with such power.
However, I'll gladly pick an imperfect Pokemon game that takes advantage of something else, even if it's not always successful. Technical flaws and minor disappointments can't take away from this game what it has elsewhere; is the best Pokemon game from the main series in a long, long time. The game takes the strengths of recent Pokemon games - Pokemon Sun and Moon's Pokemon Ride, wandering Pokemon Letus Go, Pikachu and Eevee, and the large open worlds of Pokemon Sword and Shield - and combines them with a few new innovations to create something new. fresh and exciting. Capturing as many Pokémon as possible, learning more about them, and training them to be stronger in combat are the core tenets of Game Freaks' iconic RPG series, but few games illustrate these fundamental concepts as convincingly as this latest entry.
Game Freak has released a game that will entertain die-hard fans, as well as those who just want to plunge into the amazing world of Pokémon. This sounds like something new and different from previous rumors, and while no one knows what the future will bring for the upcoming Pokemon games, we felt like Game Freak knew for the first time in a long time where to take his franchise.
Arceus is the coolest Pokemon game Game Freak has made, though that's a pretty low bar considering the frankly disappointing graphics in Pokemon Sword and Shield. However, while the character and Pokémon animations are an improvement over the previous major segment, they still lag behind other games in the genre. Player characters actually use the emotes from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and both Pokemon and their actions have received a major graphical update. Luckily, Arceus doesn't have the odd proportions of Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl; the characters actually look a bit human.
It seems that even Pokemon Legends Arceus sometimes struggles with the technical limitations of the Nintendo Switch (I played on the Nintendo Switch OLED), even among these smaller environments. Instead of randomly throwing dice like in the old Pokémon games, Arceus showcases different sized Pokémon in the wild where you can choose how to fight them.
It's so easy and smooth to take a Pokémon and add it to my party while I'm exploring the green playfields or the snowy tundra. There's always a new type of Pokémon on every corner, and it makes the world feel alive. It's this aspect that makes Legends feel more like a living, pulsating world than any previous PokA(c)mon game.
Legends is a game that defies typical PokA(c)mon conventions in many ways, but our favorite fact is that just catching all the Pokémon isn't enough to get the job done. But since the Pokedex and related studies don't exist at the moment, simply catching a Pokemon isn't enough to create an entry for it in a scientific encyclopedia.
Completing your Pokedex is always the goal of Pokemon games, but it's usually a secondary goal to collect new Pokemon to train them to fight. While the Pokedex completion process includes similar mechanics to those used in the main Pokemon games, Legends: Arceus makes it a bit more challenging. Other times, though, it's more like a monster hunter as you constantly return to your home village and complete many side missions, many of which send you to specific parts of the world to hunt down a specific target. then come back for a reward.