Pokémon Legends Z-A review — Welcome to battle city

Pokémon as a franchise hasn’t evolved much over its almost 30 years of existence. There have been spin-offs, gimmicks, and slight alterations to the formula, but the core has remained the same. That’s for good reason, mainline Pokémon games always have a baseline amount of fun within them, even with boring stories, characters, and design. There’s just something inherently enjoyable about building up a team and taking them through various challenges, seeing how your earlier choices and setup knock down the various dominos in your way. That’s not unique to Pokémon, Dragon Quest III did it way back in 1988, Wizardry in 1981, and so on, but Pokémon has a unique breadth of options and choices that rivals and copycats have never managed to capture. However, holding on to what works and never trying to change it has led to the series feeling pretty stale for the last few entries. Pokémon Legends Arceus shook things up in an amazing way, being what I called the best Pokémon game in over a decade, and its follow up has finally arrived.

Pokémon Legends Z-A could have just stuck with the catching first battling second approach of Arceus, but instead flips around that entire premise. Z-A takes players back to Lumiose City in the Kalos region, where Pokémon X and Y took place (hence the Z), where they find themselves taking part in the Z-A Royale as part of Team MZ. Lumiose City has initiated an urban redevelopment plan after the disaster five years ago to create a place where people and wild Pokémon live in harmony. To accomplish this, Quasartico Inc. created the Z-A Royale and is walling off certain portions of the city for Pokémon to live in, called Wild Zones. In addition, each night a random section of the city is designated a Battle Zone, where trainers engage in a free for all to earn points, battle rivals, and eventually ascend from rank Z to rank A and get a wish granted by Quasartico (within reason). Your and Team MZ’s goal is to reach A rank, find the cause of the rogue Mega Evolutions that keep popping up, and generally protect Lumiose City.

Every Pokémon game has a lengthy tutorial, and while Z-A is no exception it does get things moving a bit faster than most other entries. After some opening cutscenes, you pick your starter Pokémon and are thrust into the new battle system. Z-A seems to be taking notes from the Xenoblade Chronicles series, specifically 2 and 3, as combat is pretty similar. Everything happens in real time, with you moving around the battlefield, your Pokémon following you, and you selecting from four moves assigned to the four face buttons. No turn-based combat really changes the dynamic of battles, as you can’t just totally sweep another trainer’s team anymore, they are going to get at least a few moves off and damage is always high. In battles against wild or rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon, you also need to worry about your own health in addition to your Pokémon’s, leading to battles that feel exciting and frenetic, encouraging you to always be acting in some way even if it's not the most optimal choice. 

This also makes Z-A one of the more difficult Pokémon games out there. I never lost a battle, but more often than not in the late game battles came down to my last Pokémon or I needed to use a revive or two. It’s a lot of fun and really makes you consider your team in a different way, not just to hit weaknesses but to also buff up the rest of your team for survivability. For example, I set up my starter, Chikorita, to be very tanky, using Giga Drain and Leech Seed to drain my opponent’s HP and Reflect to protect her from further damage. Meanwhile, my Greninja was all about hitting hard and fast while being ready to block with Protect at a moment’s notice. There are tons of different ways you can set up your team, and while just going for type weaknesses will work a lot of the time, the most interesting fights force you to think outside the box and stay on your toes.

That said, the game really does run out of steam quickly. About 10 hours in I realized there’s really nothing to do in Z-A but battle all the time, with the story seeming afraid to let you go more than 5 minutes without getting into a scrap. Even the majority of side quests have you battle someone just because. Most of these forced fights feel completely pointless too and don’t offer much of a challenge, letting you grow complacent in just sending out a heavy hitter, Mega Evolving them, and spamming a move that one hit kills your opponent every time. This is especially true in Battle Zones, where you need to grind out battles to earn enough points for your next promotion battle to progress the plot. You can pick up challenge cards, which ask you to do things like K.O. with grass type moves 5 times or sneak up to a trainer and knock out their first pokemon before the battle starts 3 times, to earn more points, but the further you get the more it feels like a mindless grind. 

The tougher battles, like rogue Mega Evolutions and even the final boss, end up feeling like you’re just throwing your biggest numbers at them over and over with very little strategy. Mega Evolution as a returning gimmick also ends up feeling like a stat boost button rather than a strategic choice. Some Pokémon do still gain new types when mega evolving, but I never found that to really matter. There’s no reason to save Mega Evolution for a key moment or pick one of your Pokémon to be the designated Mega Evolver when your best option is to use it constantly.

There is one other thing to do in Z-A that I went back to a lot when tired of battles, and that’s buying clothes to play dress up. The fashion in Pokémon games since X and Y released has been pretty lackluster, so it’s nice that Z-A finally has a sense of style again. That style is still pretty limited, with most tops, bottoms, shoes, hats, etc. being recolors of each other, but I was able to create multiple outfits I was happy with, so that’s progress. Eventually, though, you’ve bought all the clothes that catch your eye, and you’re back to battling constantly. Though at least you look good doing it now.

Speaking of looking good, while I will always prefer the Ken Sugimori art style of games pre-Scarlet and Violet, the character designs are moving in a better direction again. I have no issues with the Pokémon themselves, but the human characters in Scarlet and Violet looked really weird and uncanny. Z-A returns to a more flat, less realistic look and greatly benefits from it. Honestly I think Game Freak could go even further into cartoon stylings, with animated textures for the eyes and mouth, but if the series retains this look going forward I’d be fine with that. 

I also hope the games retain actually good performance, as the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of Z-A runs at a beautifully smooth 60 fps almost constantly. There are some dips in cutscenes and other intense situations, but it is so nice to play a Pokémon game that doesn’t struggle just to exist. I played about half the game with the Switch 1 version through backwards compatibility, and while it is mostly a locked 30 it can dip below that target more frequently and really suffers from aliasing. Weirdly, the backwards compatibility version runs noticeably worse than just playing on a Switch 1, so I’d highly, highly recommend the upgrade pack. Your eyes will thank you.

It’s easy to see how Game Freak attained those target framerates in the environment, as every building in Lumiose City is basically just a flat box. When you notice that every window or decoration is just a texture, it’s impossible not to see it everywhere and makes Lumiose City feel very unreal and cheap, even though part of the appeal of the Legends titles is letting you feel more like you’re living in the Pokémon world. I can’t help but think that the most profitable franchise in the world should be able to go above the bare minimum when it comes to visuals and performance.

I love that Z-A took a risk in changing things up, even if it didn’t fully pay off, and I do hope the Legends sub-series continues to experiment, with the mainline games taking what works and discarding what doesn’t. (Like the fashion. Please keep the good fashion.) I think collecting and catching ‘em all, even without the full dex, is a key part of Pokémon’s appeal, and de-emphasizing that in Z-A works to its detriment. While I was disappointed when I skipped over more than half of the letter ranks early on in the game too, I think that was actually a blessing in disguise as, at 30 hours to finish the main story, it feels like it drags on for far too long. Maybe I would have enjoyed things more if I chipped away at the title over a longer period of time.