It's Reviewsday, My Dudes! · 3:17pm Feb 8th, 2022
In Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Where the one hiding in the tall grass is you.
TL;DR: It's GOOD!
I like it and highly recommend it.
If you’ve even been tangentially paying attention to the gaming word in the last couple weeks, then you have surely heard about the latest game on the Nintendo Switch: Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The internet exists, so if you want to learn about the game itself, you can look it up. This review is largely my opinion and personal take on my experience in the game.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
When trailers first came out months ago, people were skeptical, after the open-world fake-out of the wild zones in Sword and Shield, myself among them. But I felt that the wild zones in Sw&Sh represented a step in the right direction, following Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee. The big change there being able to see wild Pokémon in the over-world without having to blindly wander through the tall grass for random encounters.
The counter-argument to this was the “hardcore” fans who felt that this, combined with the shared XP party leveling was just Game Freak & Co making the games even easier for casual players. And even if this is correct, (I won’t argue to the contrary) this doesn’t need to be a bad thing. As I said in my Let’s Go Eevee review, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with making a game more approachable.
As an old-school Pokémon player, I can sympathize with the bitter fan base that feels jaded after having to grind for endless hours of their childhood to find the right team of Pokémon and having to level them up one by one with thousands of encounters and battles. And see this streamlined method as ‘cheating’ since players now no longer have to endure our pain. And therefore these new games are “not true Pokémon Games”. But I disagree with this sort of gate-keeping mentality in the fan base.
If you’re the sort of petty, masochistic player that can only get hard when a game bends you over and beats your ass with a meat mallet Dark Souls style, then there are plenty of self-imposed challenges you can do to prove how “git good” you are. You have that option. And that’s one of the strengths of Legends; Options. Aside from the tutorial section at the beginning, and the main quest-line missions themselves, you are largely free to play however you like.
But before I spend the rest of this blog fellating the game's metaphorical Pokéballs on how good it is, I want to express my criticisms.
The Bad
First, let me address the elephant in the room: The graphics.
Now, I'm of two minds on this issue. On the one hand, there is no fucking excuse for the graphics to look the way they do. As the owners of the most profitable game franchise of all time, Nintendo and Game Freak had, and have, a virtually unlimited budget. Any argument that Arceus was limited by the Switch’s hardware is 100% bullshit. And as so many have before, compare it to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. BotW is both larger in sheer total map size and more dense with environmental details, more diverse terrain textures, weather, and lighting effects. And that was a launch title from when the Switch first came out.
Now, without insider knowledge of the inner workings at the highest corporate levels in the company, I can only speculate the reasons for the quality of the product we’ve been presented. Firstly, and most likely, was problems arising from an aggressive launch schedule, compounded by Covid, as if the video game industry wasn’t brutal enough. I’d wager that Legends was originally slated for a Christmas 2021 release but was delayed internally. And the graphics became the sacrificial lamb upon the altar of deadlines.
My other theory is that the open-world, non-linear nature of Legends represented a big departure from the tried and true and well, well-worn path of previous Pokémon games. And that made it a risk. Lest we forget that at the end of the day, Nintendo is a business, and the goal is to make money. So they would hedge their bets with an endeavor like this, giving it less than 100% of their normal budget, and releasing it on the heels of the safer bet, the Diamond&Pearl remakes. This also explains a lot of the reported shortcomings in those games if they were likewise ham-strung by this budget split. But I haven’t played them myself.
Either way, hopefully the soon-coming Legends DLC will be a graphical update to give it some much-desired polish so everybody can finally STFU about it.
Because aside from my business-politics gripe, the graphics don’t really matter. At least not to me. I enjoyed the game just fine looking as it does. I’m not excusing Nintendo/Game Freak. I’m simply stating that the game as a standalone product is fine as is, and the graphics should not be a deal-breaker for anyone who wants to play it. It's fun. The gameplay is solid.
And honestly, the graphics are peanuts compared to my biggest gripes: The story and the game’s NPCs.
For a game with no spoken dialogue, these assholes will not SHUT UP! Pages and pages of dialogue, and only 10% of it is ever relevant. I can confidently say that unless you’re a lore-whore, then you can just skip all of it (as quickly as the games doesn’t allow you to) and just refer to the prompts in your quest log for any relevant direction. I get that there are translation hurdles but god damn, some of the dialogue is just mind-numbingly bad.
But the game’s story itself is shit-on-a-stick that gets in its own way. I swear to god, it reads like a 7yo wrote Pokémon fanfiction. Here’s the quick and dirty:
You are a modern day child that gets isekaied by Arceus, and literally fall out of a literal hole in the sky in the distant past. Luckily you get to keep your smartphone, but now it looks like a bedazzled Nintendo Switch called an ARCphone… *sigh*. You end up on a beach where you are found by the local Pokémon professor, one of the most annoying characters I’ve ever experienced in a game. You’re brought to a village where being the kid that fell out of the sky is your whole identity and nobody trusts you. The local authorities say you either need to work for them, or fuck off and get ate by a Bidoof, because Pokémon are still scary, misunderstood creatures. Turns out the hole in the sky turned a bunch of ‘lord’ Pokémon mad, and your main questline is building a team of Pokémon strong enough to quell them, except not really.*
There's a feud between two clans over who worships Arcues correctly. (ffs, it would have been better if it was a feud over how to pronounce GIF). After you work your ass off with nothing but loyalty to your boss, the 5 lords are quelled and everything is fine. Then the next day the sky turns red and boss-man blames the kid that fell out of the sky and kicks you out of the village because, fuck I dunno. Anyway, it comes down to you to fix everything because of course it does. You go to the summit of the mountain where a bunch of spoiler-y stuff happens (before and after the credits). You complete the main storyline and the credits roll.
And all I can remember feeling, once the credits rolled was “THANK FUCK! Now I can finally play the damn game!”
There were a lot of things about the story and lore that irked me. A lot of it felt extraneous, and tacked on. The Arcphone existing for the sake of the gaming platform immediately pissed me off. And then, well, literally everything else in the previous paragraphs. Why the fuck do you have to fall out of the sky? That is some of the laziest writing I’ve ever seen for a triple-A game. Why the fuck is there already a Pokémon professor? Fuck that guy!
* The lord battles become a real-time attack and dodge minigame that is just the right amount of challenging and refreshing. You can use Pokémon during the lord battle, but it doesn't really require you to. In fact you can win without any Pokémon at all if not for the NPC requiring you to prove your strength via a battle beforehand. Ultimately, the lord battles, fun though they are, end up feeling out of place.
Here’s the EXACT same game but with an infinitely better story:
In the distant past, you are a native child that grew up in the village, surrounded by walls. Outside are scary creatures that everyone fears, but not you. You take it upon yourself to study and capture these strange creatures with your new invention, the Pocket-Ball! It can capture wild monsters by converting them to light and shrinking them down small enough for them to fit in your pocket! Pocket monsters! You start to keep an index of all the creatures you see and catch, to be used to better educate your fellow villagers, as knowledge is the best weapon against fear! There’s your moral! Yes, you, YOU become the world’s first Pokémon Professor! That’s it! That’s the whole story! Now go catch them all! Train up the weak ones that were easy to capture, and use them to capture tougher ‘mon that won’t be caught without a fight! But what is this? A rival who stole the idea for your invention, and is making a Pokédex of their own? DRAMA! It’s a race to see who will catch them all first, with battles between your team and your rivals. Maybe some trading? Maybe a double-cross? No hole in the sky. No clans. No lord battles. And anything is better than falling out of the fucking sky with an ARCphone!
Okay, okay. Calm down. Deep breaths.
Honestly, the shit story and walls of dialogue text are just a couple of minor, errant turds in an otherwise great game. The story, dialogue and graphics are lacking in Minecraft, but I still love that. Because the vast majority of your time in Legends is the moment-to-moment gameplay, which is superb.
The Good
The music in the game is good. It’s not eargasmic, but it’s good. The ambiance music is subtle and forgettable, but it prevents any dead air. And It doesn’t get in the way of important sound effects, like nearby Pokémon cries, running water, wind, and other weather effects. Music does serve gameplay functions, shifting to a spooky playlist for night-time. There is music that indicates you are being targeted by a hostile Pokémon, and also special music playing when there are Alpha (boss) Pokémon nearby. The music during Pokémon battles is excellent, and it always has been in this franchise.
The core gameplay though is really where the game shines for me. After playing Breath of the Wild, and Let’s Go Eevee, I dreamed of a crossover between the two, with a splash of Monster Hunter elements mixed in. Where you could move around in an open world, see Pokémon at a distance and use stealth to move in close and freely throw a Pokéball to catch them. Or lure them closer with bait. Some Pokémon that only appeared during the day, or nocturnal ones at night. Or even those that realistically would only be active at dusk or dawn. Pokémon that would only exist in certain climate regions, in the water, in the air. And just catching one wasn’t enough to constitute “research”. You had to do special tasks and observations associated with each one.
Well I guess the Nintendo mind-reading van was driving past my house at the time, because Legends is damn near exactly what I envisioned. Sure, it’s not one big open world. It’s five climate regions you travel between via loading screens, but they are each big enough to feel plenty open. Everything else I just described is there though. And once the story is out of the way, the core gameplay is all about catching Pokémon, training them to catch tougher Pokémon, and researching them for the Pokédex.
But it gets even better!
There is a multitude of Quality of Life improvements to the game!
Pokémon in your party share XP, but Pokémon evolve on command. Not right when they level up. So you don’t have you worry about your party Eevee turning into another Espeon in the middle of the day. You’ll get an indication that she’s ready, and then when night comes, you can evolve her at will in a controlled way.
Pokémon don’t forget moves. They can only have 4 active, but you can freely swap out moves from their remembered library at any time outside of battle.
The addition of Alpha Pokémon makes for some great goals to attain! Not only are they physically larger, they are tens of levels higher than their local counterparts and act accordingly. They are tough to take down and capture, but well-worth the effort in your mid-game for advancing to new regions.
Breeding is not in the game (for logical story reasons) but you don’t need to rip your hair out breeding IVs for days and days and hatching hundreds of eggs on a bicycle. IVs have been replaced with EV, and they are able to be boosted! When you release Pokémon back in the wild, (and when catching hundreds of duplicates, you WILL be) you earn Grit material. You use it to pump up the EV values of your Pokémon. And it works retroactively for higher-level evolved Pokémon! So don’t feel like you have to invest all that time, effort, and materials into a lvl3 Shinx.
Just like in Let’s Go, shiny Pokémon are visible in the overworld. In addition to looking visibly different, they have a sparkling effect surrounding them and even have a jingling sound effect. And even if you’ve never caught a shiny before in your life, there is even an early game quest to catch a mission-specific shiny Ponya as a tutorial on how exactly you can find and identify shiny Pokémon in the game! And that’s awesome!
Since poke-marts don’t really exist yet, you mostly have to craft your own equipment. Luckily the game will bukkake you with crafting material, but rest assured, you are going to go through it. Crafting recipes are super simple, with at most at three parts or less.
By doing research tasks, you earn money and rank. The higher your rank, the more money you earn. You can eventually buy equipment like Pokéballs as you advance the local store if you’re feeling lazy. You can spend money on cosmetic items like new clothes and hairstyles you unlock with side quests. But most of your money, as in more than 98% of it is going to go to the goddamn devil himself to expand your inventory space one space at a time at an exponentially expensive rate.
Though you really should be diligent about putting most of your inventory in your storage chest. The storage chest has infinite capacity and you can access it at any camp. You should also keep just the essentials in your personal satchel because you lose items when you die.
Also you can die.
Yes, if an aggressive Pokémon does enough damage to you, and you don’t have any conscious Pokémon to battle for you, you can ‘die’. You end up getting rescued and get brought back safety, but you will lose several stacks of items. If you have online access, another player can find your bag and return it. You can find other players’ bags and return them to earn ‘merit’ points, a special currency you can use to buy rare, hard-to-find items like evolution stones.
But you can still 100% the game without internet or trading at all, since there isn’t 2 versions of Legends unlike all preceding Pokémon games. Some Pokémon that required trading to evolve can still do so via trading, or you can use an in game item called a Patch Cord to do the same thing. So for all you misanthropes, this is finally a Pokémon game for you.
Even if you can’t play online to earn merit points, you can still get these rare items in “space-time distortion” events, where an area of a map with spawn in rare items and Pokémon not found anywhere else for a limited time. Indeed there are always options for people to play however they want, and the game fairly accommodates offline limitations. Playing online offers conveniences, but no actual advantages that can’t be gained offline with time and effort.
There are a lot of other things I'm leaving out, like the little details about the Pokémon interactions, literal item farming and other things. But if you're not enticed by now, nothing else is going to sell you on this game.
All said, Pokémon Legends Arceus is a fantastic game and I love it. And if you can’t get over being hung up on the graphics debate, or the game not being a true hardcore classic Pokémon game, then honestly you are just missing out on a great experience. Even if you don’t consider it a mainline game, (and honestly, idgaf if you do or not) it’s still worth your time to play it.
If you like Pokémon, play it.
If you like Breath of the Wild, play it.
If you like Monster Hunter, play it.
It’s just damn good, and really I hope Nintendo and Game Freak are paying attention to its success. It’s a risk that paid off and I hope that if, and when, they make another one like it, they will really invest the money, people, and effort into a product with graphics and writing more befitting such an amazing core game experience.
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Honestly, the graphics and story have always been weak points of Nintendo; the fact that Pokémon, as an RPG, has more need than most to have a story is just one of the things that makes it the janky mess we all love.
Oh yeah…there is a Main Quest going on…huh…
Should probably actually do that and stop screwing around in the first two regions.
Most of my playtime thus far has been getting paid for research, selling goods to the town, and using the money to appease Yog Sothoth, who teaches me how to fold the physical space of my tiny satchel that I will inevitably have to start using to capture Wild Pokémon because my Humanity will be so corroded by the aforementioned dealings that no creature would willingly stay inside any Pokeball that I’ve physically touched.
And I’m actually having fun thus far.
I’ll be honest: I didn’t like how there was no real rival whatsoever. Volo doesn’t count, as he functions more like Coltress from BW2; the Miss Fortunes are Jessie and James fodder to sweep; finally, Akari/ Rei end up having a team… of three Pokémon. That’s worse than even X and Y’s subrivals.
Granted, I’m aware of how rare owning Pokémon in that time period was, but as a member of Team Galaxy, and especially a fellow member of the Survey Corps, would it have killed Game Freak to have made Akari/ Rei an actual challenge and interesting outside of cutscenes?
Sounds pretty accurate based on what I've seen. Too bad I'm too poor for games. Perhaps I'll watch a playthrough and pretend?
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My recommendation to new players: ignore the main story until you want to go to the next area.
Stay a while in the first region, get to know it a while. Take time to build up your team.
Though I will say that progressing through the story gives you access to riding, swimming, and flying mounts that give you access to places in the early regions that were previously inaccessible.
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*laughs in Ruby and Sapphire*
The other player character disappears like halfway through, and the other guy with a claim to rivalhood disappears even earlier only to show up out of nowhere at basically the last possible moment before you challenge the Elite Four.
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To be clear, I don't think the 'story' was ever the strong suit of a Pokémon game. So that's really a minor gripe for me.
The fact that the gameplay is so much more fun than any Pokémon game before is what makes this game a home run.
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At least ORAS made his theme song an absolute fucking banger.
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That's what I do in any open world game. :)
You know I'm going to post it. You cannot possibly expect me not to. Stay tuned to the end for more friends and neighbors,
Now as to the game itself: I'm fully going to admit my utter loathing of anime and by extension Japanese games has been present for sometime, so I fully admit I'm biased on the matter so I'm not particularly interested in the topic at hand. That said I will say that what Nintendo is, in general, competently done, mostly, and their fuck ups occur less from retread old turf then it does trying to keep up with western trends. So I more or less expected here a well put together if trope tired affair, and we get what we pay for. It does what its supposed to and does it well and one can hardly expect more then that. The only thing one can expect is for them to FUCKING BRING BACK GOLDEN SUN AND DO IT RIGHT THIS TIME AND FINISH THE FUCKING STORY YOU TWATS!
All that said though, innovation is somewhat anathema to Nintendo, and argueably hasn't been done since RE4 and Majora's Mask (although personally I go for Wind Waker on that front where we find the only where Link has an actual personality and even Ganondorf shines.) But at least they are ones who somewhat care and haven't become loot box chucking shills or ego trips like Kogima or Final Fantasy ( fuck that galoshes wearing technicolor dream coat bedecked unicorn riding fighting Galactus at 15000 feet tripe with a barbed wire wrapped lemon juice spritzed rusty pipe) who don't care because they don't have to and make games that ideally involve the player as little as possible.
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...
All arguments are invalid. I wanna see a Nintendo game with hip thrusting and baby dropping damn it
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I'd recommend going to a used book or computer store or GOG.com. Lot out there that were and are great and mostly go for 5-10 bucks a pop. I recommend Planescape: Torment and the first two Fallout myself or if you're feeling particularly ballsy System Shock 2 or Pathalogic
Also
I've been dodging reviews on youtube for this game (I search a lot of fan-made Pokémon content that messes with my algorithm). I don't own a Switch because it's too much like a tablet which is like a mobile device and mobile devices are evil so I avoid it.
My Nintendo DS doesn't count because it isn't connected to the internet. It can't either because I bought it used from an old videogame store in town and it had stuff missing.
Anyway, seeing a review of it here on good ol' Shakespearacles's blog is perfect. So convenient! No cringy Youtube clickbait stunts or bad music, just the meat and potatoes. Educate me, Strong Man for I know nothing. How did this game go?
Take me down to the Pokémon City
Where the grass is tall
And the Sylvs are pretty
Hell yeah! From what I've seen online (mostly YT) the video title reviews for Arceus are pretty mixed. Some say they love it, some say it's okay, some say it's boring and still others said it was the worst thing evaaaaah.
How awesome is that!? Dammit, I need a Switch!
I'm not getting any younger and am happy to cheat whenever possible to save time and happy for the zoomers who have the internet to make things as easy and efficient as possible as far as team building is concerned. I think so long as you aren't breaking a game in such a way that you earn badges/achievements or otherwise force it so you don't have to learn the core game mechanics, just saving time is fine. Most RPG-type games have items in them that are specifically created to make life easier.
I'm the kind of person who think Fallout 3 graphics look amazing to this day. I don't think graphics are really that important.
I love when the NPCs have a lot to say but you can't shut it off? I mean World of Warcraft addressed this shit back in 2004 when they made quest text instant. They couldn't add something in there in motherfucking 2022 to address this?
I got my popcorn ready. Here we go!
Good thing they didn't break their legs or anything. You know, I have questions about why pokémon want anything to do with humans anyway, especially children. Children are completely useless. They are weak, unsanitary little calorie-gobblers that may or may not grow up to become productive members of society. Pokémon are magical creatures with innate abilities that make them almost godlike. If it wasn't for the subjective need to create a power fantasy for children, humanity would serve no necessary function whatsoever in Pokémon World.
Mystery Dungeon for life.
Mmm. That's good cringe. (Chefs kiss) Mwah!
From what I can tell, this is pretty by the books as far as pokémon is concerned. Turns out the guys Arceus put in charge of time and space are just looking for a reason to become rampaging psychopaths.
The correct number of circles is very important! Actually, since Arceus is a tangible living thing you can talk to, why not just ask him? Why does Arceus care at all?
This is awful but PMD Darkness isn't wildly better. I just don't think the story behind Pokémon is all that amazing to begin with but PMD Darkness does have some powerfully emotional character scenes. Honestly, I just feel bad if you're a writer working from Gamefreak and have to write within the rubric provided for you by Nintendo. I would hate my life so much. I can't even be mad at these people for shitting out such lackluster stories because I can put myself in their shoes.
I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing at your situation. Man, that writing does suck ass, my dude.
Dude, that story is fucking great and they totally need to use it! Good stuff.
This sums up my take on music in Pokémon generally. I've picked my way through playlists and as a rule, I don't find the music all that great. 2 maybe 3 really high-quality bangers. 2 or 3 really annoying clunkers, and rest of the soundtrack running a solid 5/10 throughout.
They're not rolling with Nobuo Uematsu is what I'm saying.
The music to Treasure Town and this amazing track are fucking killer though. Treasure Town is an outstanding bit of Celtic Folk that captures the feel of the location perfectly while Sealed Ruin in particular really blows my mind. It's like Nintendo put JS Bach in the Gamefreak studio and let him play with the synthesizer.
The forgetting moves thing is so annoying. I mean I know money in PMD Darkness is useless because the devs neglected to install a reasonable gold sink (for fuck's sake, Fallout 3 at least had house customization, Nuka cola machines, and crap like that!) but do I really need to visit the Link Shop Every time I want to do things even a little different? Dumb.
But it's still on my mind.
I came.
This is one of my all-time favorite things about Fallout 3 and NV. I hoard like a sonofabitch and the only thing I care about is which locker, box or trunk to sort my ammo, armor, guns and crafting material into. Having infinite storage at my home base really isn't breaking immersion.
Achievement unlocked: You died. The trophy we all earn at the end of our run.
Death in Mystery Dungeon games works like this too, more or less.
Yay! I can do what videogames allowed me to do for DECADES before some wiseguy decided to force people to play online!
I feel bad for not having a Switch, I really do. If it weren't so dependent on its internet functionality and cost so damn much, I'd buy everything Pokémon and just binge it. Thanks for the review though. I was really curious about this game and how it plays.
There's just one thing I want to know. Did this game release any new sexy pokémon? What's the dating scene like in Sinnoh?
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Yes and no.
I will say there are some very good regional variants, in terms of type, and aesthetic appeal.
For example, Typhlosion is now a Fire-Ghost type!
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Typhlosion is a stud. Time to start searching for his Hisuan form.