Pokémon Legends: Z-A — Mega Dimension DLC review — I can’t believe it’s more butter!

It hasn’t been very long since we saved Lumiose City from Rogue Mega Evolution, but the Mega Dimension DLC for Pokémon Legends: Z-A is here to suck us back in. In my review of the base game, I said that Z-A kinda overstayed its welcome, with the game afraid to let you go more than 5 minutes without a battle over its 30 hour campaign. As such, I haven’t really touched the game since hitting publish on that review. It’s a good game with great combat, there’s just too much of it. And now there’s even more!

Despite feeling fatigued and putting the game down for a while, picking it back up reminded me why I found it so fun initially. Mega Dimension introduces Ansha, a little girl accompanied by Hoopa who’s looking for a certain legendary Pokémon in the city. She asks Team MZ to make her a donut, so Hoopa can take her through dimensional distortions into Hyperspace Lumiose where she’ll hopefully find what she’s looking for. Of course, the mere existence of Hyperspace Lumiose is probably a bigger problem, as another dimension encroaching on reality and slowly absorbing it can’t be a good thing. Once again, it’s up to Team MZ to save Lumiose by investigating the dimensional distortions, catching a whole bunch of new Pokémon, and making tons and tons of donuts. 

Mega Dimension distills the core gameplay loop of Z-A into its most basic form, with each distortion you enter feeling like a combination of Wild Zones and the Z-A Royale. After feeding Hoopa a donut, you’ll find yourself in a small section of Hyperspace Lumiose. Some distortions have Pokémon you won’t be able to catch anywhere else, some have tougher trainers to battle than in reality, and a few have unique side missions to them. The former two are what you’ll be doing for most of the DLC, as they give the most points for research tasks needed to progress the plot. These tasks can range from defeating a certain number of trainers to catching a certain number of Pokémon or even just a specific one. (There’s a lot more catching here than in the main game, but there’s nothing you can really do with your excess Pokémon.) What makes these interesting is trying to complete all the tasks you’re given within the time limit.

To enter Hyperspace in the first place, you need to feed Hoopa a donut, and you make those donuts by giving Ansha a selection of berries. The berries you give her will determine the donut’s properties including some special effects, temporarily leveling up your team, and how many calories it has. Calories are how long you can stay in Hyperspace, as Hoopa burns about 1 calorie a second. You can put some thought into making donuts, choosing the right combination of berries to balance abilities, levels, and time… or you can do what I did and just throw your best ones together randomly, either way will get you through the game.

Generally, I found increasing levels to be much more important than the other two factors, as Pokémon in Hyperspace are all above the normal maximum of level 100. Having ended the game with my team around level 80, I needed to grind all of them up just to stand a chance. This, along with a general lack of donut options, makes the start of the DLC a massive spike in difficulty compared to everything else. It was to the point where I simply wasn’t having fun until I reached the second tier of donuts. Once you hit that, things level out with only bosses posing much challenge. Honestly if I wasn’t doing this review I may have just dropped it right at the start due to how hard the game had suddenly become, though I am glad I stuck with it as the core loop is pretty enjoyable.

Mega Dimension doesn’t add much “new” to the game, and instead remixes what’s already there to create theoretically infinite, slightly randomized content. If you’ve already 100%’ed the base game and still want more, Mega Dimension will let you play around in Hyperspace Lumiose to your heart’s content. I normally don’t enjoy this kind of thing, like the radiant quests in The Elder Scrolls, but given Z-A’s unique gameplay compared to the rest of the franchise it is nice to know that if I ever feel the itch I can come back to it and not have to just replay the main story. It still has all the same problems as the base game, with a padded out story, throwing you into constant battles, and generally not having a whole lot going on other than combat, but it’s still enjoyable for what it is. Mega Dimension is simply more Legends: Z-A.