I finished the game in early November (Besides the DLC which has the first part releasing tomorrow (technically in a few hours from now oops)), so I wanted to kind of just ramble on my thoughts with it. This will be another “off-the-cuff” review (so no particular order of thoughts– just me spewing words), but before anything else, I want to state a few things that will explain some of my feelings:
1. I did not like Legends: Arceus. It is one of the only “main” Pokemon games I didn’t even bother finishing. My frustration with it is why I never planned to get another Legends game.
2. Graphics never matter to me and rarely have any effect on how much I enjoy a game. I won’t be talking much about them.
3. I only bought this game because Mega Audino was in it. If Mega Audino hadn’t been confirmed, I had no plans to get it.
In general, I think whether you enjoy this game will depend a lot on why you wanted to play. It’s very much a “your mileage will vary” and even my own opinion goes back and forth, but I will say I was fairly invested in the story either way.
With that out of the way, let’s get to it.
I actually really enjoyed X/Y so I was kind of excited to get back to Kalos and see the story continue to unfold. While it is a bit disappointing to be locked solely to Lumiose City, I didn’t necessarily mind until I remembered one little issue: I constantly got lost in Lumiose City in X/Y and had a terrible time finding my way. While this at least didn’t have the headache inducing camera swinging of my journey with the handheld game, I very quickly got frustrated with the verticality added to the city as I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get to certain roof tops and it wasn’t always clear if it was an area I just couldn’t get to yet because the thing to help you get up there wasn’t activated or if I was just missing the way to do so.
I think if the roof-top areas were more compact or just… specific areas only, maybe it wouldn’t have bothered me so much, but as someone who struggles with getting around, any time I needed to find my way to a specific roof top often ended up with me feeling especially frustrated, let alone the number of times I accidentally fell off said rooftop and needed to find my way back there. Any feelings I had of them being kind of neat vanished pretty fast especially as despite the numerous numbers of quick-travel spots, you never actually unlock any on the rooftops so it’s always just re-finding your way.
Adding onto the navigational troubles was a new feature that felt especially out of place: Scaffolding. I get the idea that because of all this maintenance going on, there is scaffolding/construction everywhere that turns into these weird obstacle courses, but honestly, they just felt out of place here and like an eye sore. Most of the courses were pretty similar as well while others were just expecting you to either jump off a rooftop or glide a certain way than any kind of actual route through them.
Wild Zones were also a bit frustrating as while you start out with some there right away, most get unlocked as you get further into the story. The issue is that these areas do literally take over the map so old teleports change, you may need to run through a wild zone to get somewhere, and while I’m not sure how it could be done, I really kind of wish they were their own areas instead of places getting made over for them. Or if they were at least clearly set to be ahead of time to help with getting around.
Not being a fan of Legends Arceus, it should be no surprise that I got tired of being chased by Alpha Pokemon really fast. I do not like the system and especially in this game where it is present day and the whole point is to protect from Rogue Mega Evolutions in the meantime while letting people and Pokemon live in harmony– it sure doesn’t feel very harmonious when there is at least one Alpha in every single area. There also just isn’t a lot of room to even run away due to how small the areas are… Plus, the need to use Mega Evolved Pokemon or Plus Moves to be able to even do much to them.
In that same sense, I really did not enjoy the Rogue Mega Evolution battles. While they were less frustrating than Legends Arceus overall, I think my biggest issues were the changes done to Mega Evolution in the first place due to these (I’ll get to that later) and that having to both deal with your own health while also trying to keep your Pokemon out of harm was exhausting. I’ve never been particularly good at dodging which is why I kind of struggle with more extensive battles, but even if I could keep track of everything on screen, I didn’t necessarily manage to react fast enough to handle it (Or sometimes I just panicked and hit the wrong buttons).
When they first mentioned this real-time combat system, I was kind of expecting more control over my Pokemon’s movements, but instead, you really just had your trainer and depending on what attack you picked, your Pokemon may move closer to you. Pokemon also have set walking speeds so even if you’re running for your life, there isn’t any guarantee your Pokemon will stay close to you.
The most frustrating part of the system though is that you constantly have to hold down ZL to target a Pokemon to use an attack. I don’t know why it doesn’t work that once you target them, they stay targeted so you can attack easier, but nope, constantly have to hold it down which just felt so unnecessary to me. It also frequently led to me accidentally pushing the left stick down causing my character to crouch often when in the middle of running for my life which absolutely did not help.
Which brings me to the biggest let-down for me– the change to Mega Evolution being a timed thing instead of a one and done button. Not only was this incredibly frustrating in the actual boss-esque battles on top of needing to build up energy first as that was the main way to do damage (You could also use “Plus moves” from non-mega evolved Pokemon but it also required constantly re-hitting buttons and using up that same mega energy– Similarly, even if you had the energy maxed out before entering these battles, it would be reset when it started to force you to deal with the stupid energy gathering system), but it led to a lot of issues just playing in general:
- No other character has to deal with this so where they have neat moments to immediately mega evolve their Pokemon, especially during certain battles in the ending, you’re stuck still trying to farm up energy.
- Unless your Mega Pokemon isn’t currently out, that bar is always draining. Just wanted to take pictures? Too bad, you are now timed as the energy keeps dwindling down.
- Similarly, they let you run around with a Mega, but it’ll still eventually turn back…
And it’s just… so frustrating. Like fine, if you need to earn energy in the boss battles, still earn the energy slowly, but then let it last. Don’t make it go away or at least let it go down slower in general. I really wish it could have stayed to being one button immediately that stays for the entire battle like how it worked in ORAS and X/Y. These having real-time combat should not have had any change to that. And it makes them feel less special and gimmicky like Dynamaxing where it can only work for a short time. Megas were a form transformation and they shouldn’t have been changed to some stamina system.
Or just, I don’t know, actually add some difficulty/accessibility modes like Megas do not have a stamina bar, your trainer can’t take damage, etc. The biggest issue with Pokemon lately is it wants to appease both hardcore and casual players but it ends up disappointing both because the former will find it too easy and the latter will get fed up with stuff clearly aimed at the former.
Such as the Restaurant Battles which are side quests that involve doing multiple battles in a row without being able to use any items (outside of held items obviously, but if you’re mega evolving, you can’t exactly give them a berry to hold). It’s not something I enjoy so those side quests will end up just… not being completed in the long run. Or the annoying side quests that require you using specific Pokemon only.
Considering I bought this game specifically because my favorite Pokemon was finally back, I was just… so incredibly disappointed that I couldn’t fully hang out with it. Even ignoring the timed issue with photos, Megas were a bit shafted in terms of poses/animations as well. While a Pokemon may have different animations depending on the music you play while taking a photo, for megas, the only pose they get is the “ready to fight pose”. Audino cheers, sits down to sleep… Mega Audino just stands there smiling, but hey, at least they actually modeled their mouth opening which is more than I can say Pokemon GO did as Mega Audino absorbs food through its face. As mentioned, only pose that is the same is the battle pose for obvious reasons, but it feels disappointing that they couldn’t give unique poses (or even just… animate the non-mega evolved poses onto the mega evolution like they did with the ready to fight animation) for the other things.
Or you can watch my video showing them here
I really wanted more cute cafe moments, but for both that and sitting on a bench with your Pokemon, mega evolution is automatically undone, regardless of the timer. I also wish we could have multiple Pokemon out with us while we’re sitting at the cafe.
Regardless, for a game that I bought in hopes to hang out with Mega Audino, I barely got to do that due to all of this.
Of course, that wasn’t the only big disappointment for me… Customization was really upsetting as well. I will say if you are more of a pants and jackets type of person, there is plenty to choose from. Lots of hats, lots of shoes, more colors for most things, and even a neat customization option where you can mix and match parts of the same type of item. Unfortunately, there are some styles that are unique or maybe only have one other option and were also be limited in overall colors as well so while some things give you a lot to mix and match with, others fall incredibly short.
The main issue is the lack of skirts and dresses– something that had a lot more options in X/Y. In fact, there is only one actual skirt in the game which comes with tights forced in (which, as someone who was wearing tights anyway, it would have been nice to pick from any tights and not just the designed ones with the mini skirt)– every other skirt is a “skort” which unlike actual skorts that just have shorts sewn into the underside of a skirt, these are skirts in the front and shorts in the back making it feel more like wearing a loincloth in front of some shorts rather than a skort or a skirt.
There are no dresses at all. Despite how many characters around Lumiose may be wearing one.
And it’s like, sure, I guess I can take a cute picture but considering you will usually be seeing your character from behind, I just had to see her wearing these ugly shorts that really didn’t work as well.
I had been so excited about customization considering the long wavy ponytail and cute dresses and skirts in X/Y, but not only do we just have that huge lack of options skirt/dress-wise here, most of the hairstyles are on the shorter side as well with the ponytail being a short straight ponytail because the only long wavy hair is some mid-length style down to your mid-back. If there was at least a ponytail version of it, I’d be a bit less annoyed, but there isn’t. It feels like they put all the detail in the color options at the expense of actual hair styles.
It just really sucks. And especially with the skirt/dress issue, the only excuse I can think of is laziness due to all the verticality and not wanting to deal with any possible issues of dresses flipping up or something which just… I don’t know, you could make actual skorts or just do the weird black blob, who cares, just let me look cute.
Where the game does excel is with its characters, even if it did one thing I really hate, but that is a spoiler so I’ll be talking a bit more generally and mention when we’ll be getting into spoiler territory.
I think every character, including returning ones from X/Y, get a lot more fleshed out in the game. You have more moments hanging out and bonding with them and it helps give more of a connection than a lot of other Pokemon games have with your friend group. That said, while it does a lot for most characters here, I still found myself wondering about a lot of the other X/Y characters where most just get a footnote or cryptic response without more information.
I’m hoping maybe we’ll see more of them in the DLC, but who knows.
Even each Pokemon Center has an actual visually distinct Nurse Joy and you can even find some of them, with unique names, in the Z-A Battles.
The story itself was also interesting to some extent but was definitely carried by the characters more so than anything else. Where things got frustrating was with the choices it gave to our character. Without going into specifics, the most frustrating things were how many choices we got that were either:
-The same thing but said different ways. (To some extent, I didn’t necessarily always mind this as I often wanted to pick just one option of the two, but sometimes my answer wouldn’t be there at all and it becomes a question of why they gave us a choice in the first place)
-It doesn’t matter if there are other choices– there is only one right answer, and you can’t pick anything else. This is something that really killed one of the final choices in the game for me.
There was also a choice during a Mega Evolution side quest where you could pick your favorite mega, but it only actually gave you the choice to pick from the new starter ones. My disappointment was immense.
And with that, anything below this point goes into detailed story spoilers. If you do not want to be spoiled, I’d recommend stopping here, but otherwise, keep reading!
As mentioned, we’ll be going into spoilers. As this is an off-the-cuff review, I won’t necessarily be going in story order– just talking off the top of my head.
The game kicks off with you coming to Lumiose for reasons, your bag gets stolen, and you are given one of the starter Pokemon. You’re likely a young adult (or maybe late team, but the former works better with certain plot stuff) and have never had a Pokemon before or done battles or anything, I guess. I don’t know why they couldn’t let us have some experience or something or even pick it based off choices, but I digress.
Anyway, you get caught up with helping out at Hotel Z which is owned by AZ and his Floette. Team M-Z consists of Urbain/Taunie (As I played the girl, I had Urbain so I will be just referring to that character as Urbain from now on), Naveen, and Lida who each joined essentially to help out AZ due to him helping them out in turn.
Like I mentioned, we get to learn more and hang out with each character which is really nice. We also get to learn a lot more about AZ and his backstory (which we only really had a glimpse of in Z-A) which makes the fact that they essentially brought him back just to kill him at the end of the main story really frustrating.
Of course, that wasn’t the only frustrating thing about the ending. For getting to A-Rank in the Z-A Royale, which was the main goal of the game (which a lot of people were upset that we skipped a whole bunch of letter ranks– I don’t really know how I feel about it personally, but I do think advertising that aspect just for it to be cut down was a bad choice), you get to make a wish. Unfortunately, the game decides this wish for you.
The only actual wish option you can pick to continue the story is for the Z-A Royale to continue which is the one thing I DIDN’T want. I hated it. I hated it so much. And then they have the nerve to be like “AZ suggested it so we were considering it anyway and now we’ll definitely put it through” and just, why even bother. What was the point?
And that happens a lot. It seems you’re actually given a choice or decision only for it to really be a cop-out for the game to do what it wants. Another example is the final battle with Urbain where he wants to see who gets AZ’s Floette and is considered the best Mega Evolution user. It doesn’t matter if you win because he says he really wants to do it (so I guess you DIDN’T need to win and be the very best which was the whole point of getting to A Rank) and that we need to go with Zygarde.
Why not just say that!! Say since we have to go with Zygarde, he’ll take AZ’s Floette and mega evolve her, and that’s it! What was the point of the battle build-up only for it to not matter?
Then, rather than having a fun postgame like X/Y, you have to grind the new Infinite Z-A Royale until you get 15 tickets to actually get the full story closure of who Urbain was looking for and then he’s made head of a company which is why I’m assuming we’re young adults and not just late teens.
You have to do 5 more for a total of 20 for one last side quest, but I never want to touch it or the tournament again anyway so! It’d be one thing if I could have just knocked it all out at once, but because of how the timer works in the game, you only have until day comes and while yes, you can switch it right back to night, I’d rather it just stay night until I want to switch back and vice versa. It doesn’t help that we have to deal with the stupid cutscene every single time it changes from night to day and day to night– I get it early on to explain how it works, but after we know. We can see the new Battle Areas on the map. It’s just a waste of time and annoying to keep going through.
But yeah, I wouldn’t say I hate the game. I do like a lot of the characters. But story decisions, changes to Mega Evolution, certain timed mechanics, and the customization choices really dragged the game down for me.