Pokémon Legends Z-A: Review. When the original Pokémon X&Y games…

When the original Pokémon X&Y games were released back in 2013 on the Nintendo 3DS, it was expected that Pokémon Z would follow as per tradition. Even though the anime progressed into the XY&Z series with a heavy focus on Zygarde, Pokémon Z never came to be to give Zygarde the chance to shine in the games, and it felt like they tacked on Zygarde’s lore into Pokémon Sun and Moon with a tedious fetch quest.

12 years later, Pokémon Z is reborn as Pokémon Legends: Z-A, with a journey back to the Pokémon world’s grandest city, Lumiose City. With this being a Legends entry and a sequel to Pokémon X&Y, a shakeup to the format is to be expected, not just in lore around Zygarde, but also around plot, setting, and gameplay.

So how is the game?

Premise

You play as a new Pokémon trainer just arriving at Lumiose City, which is going through an “urban redevelopment plan” to integrate Pokémon and citizens living together in harmony. You are quickly made to join Team MZ, a team of young trainers aiming to help out the citizens of Lumiose City and aiming to climb the ranks of the Z-A Royale, a battle-royale series where the highest-ranked trainer can have their wish granted.

Setting

One of the biggest shifts in this game is that unlike previous mainline games in the series, the entire game takes place within Lumiose City.

The city is decently sized, but the environments it presents do not feel varied enough to make up for the monotonous city aesthetic. Pokémon does tend to be able to provide varied environments for its regions to keep them fresh, and with most differences being only available in limited “Wild Zones”, it doesn’t give as much of an adventuring feel that previous games have. This game is clearly not a “explore the world” journey that many may have been expecting from previous games.

All that said, the tighter environment of Lumiose City does provide some benefits and drawbacks for the rest of the game that I’ll get into throughout.

Narrative

Plot

With any Pokémon game, the plot isn’t going to be some kind of deep story with meaning, it just needs to be serviceable and not egregiously bad.

There are some aspects of the initial premise that were interesting. I like the context of the “urban redevelopment plan” surrounding Lumiose, and some of the mysteries about it, especially how some of my expectations around it were subverted in a reasonable manner.

On the other hand, there were some strange pacing issues in the story. While I’ve heard complaints about the opening tutorial being too handholdy, I didn’t feel as affected by it as I spent most of my time catching stuff in the wild zone tutorials. But the main one is the progression around the Z-A Royale, where some decisions about the rank progression in the plot come off as bizarre. It becomes even weirder because after those strange decisions, the pacing felt relatively good. It makes me question if the premise of the Z-A Royale could have been improved, or if those strange decisions could have been made less weird in the first place.

One notable complaint is the lack of voice acting in certain scenes. There are only some scenes that feel like they should have had voice acting (2–3 scenes total and it’s very obvious), but it’s very awkward to watch cinematic scenes where someone is very clearly talking but nothing is coming out of their mouths, just text on the screen. This trend started in Pokémon Sword & Shield, and I hope they either add voice acting, or stop making scenes that look like there should be voice acting.

The finale of this game is different from previous games, where the finale itself is the big chaotic end-of-world fight, reminiscent of the Pokémon Legends: Arceus finale but more chaotic and more anime. I think the ending is enjoyable for what it is — the cutscenes here are a great improvement over previous entries and it’s fun and grand, while maintaining some of the cheesiness that you can get in shonen anime. I think this is a good indicator for climatic finales in future Pokémon games.

Overall, the main plot is fine for a Pokémon game. While I had some complaints about pacing, there wasn’t anything that was egregiously bad compared to some previous titles (looking at you Pokémon Sword & Shield)

Characters

I think Pokémon Legends: Z-A presents the best set of characters in a mainline Pokémon game ever.

The core of Team MZ are enjoyable characters. With their fun dynamics between each other, it feels like you are integrated into their core team smoothly. My personal standout is Naveen, who has a nice backstory that people can relate to, while also having his own separate interests that keep him from being one-dimensional.

There are also many other characters that you encounter in the Z-A Royale that are also great to know. My favourite out of them is Corbeau, whose own backstory and subversion of his role in Lumiose City also stood out to me as another standout.

This is one of the aspects where the single location of Lumiose City helps with the character building. As you are staying in the same city, you get more chances to interact with the main and supporting cast more often, which is something that isn’t as doable in the traditional style of Pokémon games.

Pokémon X&Y Sequels

As a sequel to the original Pokémon X&Y, the hope would be that there is a balance between the references of the past while giving the new cast a chance to stand out.

While some characters were initially revealed to be returning such as the detective Emma, former Team Flare admin Mable, and the hotel owner AZ, there’s only 1 other unrevealed character that returns proper in the game. There are some minor references to other characters that you can catch in brief conversations such as the region’s Elite Four and Champion, but none of them appear. One glaring omission is the Lumiose City Gym Leader Clemont, where I have yet to see any mention of him or his sister by the end of the game.

There is one location later in the game that you can traverse that is cool though that I won’t get into too much, but exploring it was something that brought a smile to my face on how they re-created the location.

Overall, I think they made a good choice to let the new cast shine, but I do wish there were some more explicit nods to the previous games, given that in-universe, the game takes place only 5 years after the original X&Y.

Gameplay

Exploration

With a single city location, the structure of the game is much less focused on exploring dynamic environments, and more focused on exploring the city.

The game’s traversal is primarily focused on running through the city, along with running across the rooftops of the city. There are some parkour mechanics with a roll that can gain extra distance + a flutter mechanic to gain further aerial distance.

However, there are no big mechanics such as flying and wall climbing that were present in more recent entries like Scarlet & Violet, or Legends: Arceus. It does make sense — being given a flying mechanic doesn’t make as much sense in a restricted environment, but it feels a bit disappointing on the exploration front to lose those mechanics.

Furthermore, the traditional mechanics such as bike riding, or even X & Y’s original roller skate mechanics do not make a return either, though with the vast number of fast travel points present, this is not nearly as much of an issue as it sounds.

I think one of the biggest issues with “exploration” in here though is that, asides from catching Pokémon which is a fairly big part of the game, there isn’t much to do in Lumiose City. There’s a cool museum and looking for collectibles, but I think the city could have benefited from extra activities in the city to make it feel more alive.

Catching Pokémon

Catching Pokémon in this game is like Legends: Arceus, where you can easily catch Pokémon with the throw of a Poké Ball, or engage in the battle mechanics to weaken them before catching. This system for catching was always more fun to me — you can throw Poké Balls pretty freely to catch them more easily without having to go through the longer battles that the mainline games typically have for catching. There’s also a neat mechanic where you can retrieve Poké Balls that may have missed your target later on.

Side Quests

Lumiose City has many side quests to tackle. Most side quests are fairly inconsequential in the grand scheme of Lumiose. Some side quests involve teaching more in-depth battle mechanics, which are cool for those less familiar with the competitive scene. Others are pretty simple i.e. “go catch this Pokémon and show it to me”. There were some that gave me a good chuckle and some others were slightly surprising (one side quest involved an inattentive husband whose new Pokémon taught it to be more attentive to his wife). The vast majority of these are short, and while some did tie to each other, they weren’t that substantial. However, it is worth noting that though they are short, they do provide pretty good rewards in the form of money, evolution items, and combat items, so they always felt like they were worth doing whenever they were unlocked.

While not exactly a quest, there is a system where you can complete a number of tasks to gain rewards such as TMs. These tasks are primarily focused on catching, such as catching x number of Electric-type Pokémon, though there are others such as evolving Pokémon, participating in battles, completing more of your Pokédex, etc. This combined with the satisfying catching mechanics did encourage me to try to complete more and more of these tasks as the game went on, as TMs are re-usable once again in this game and are fairly helpful.

Battle System

Unlike the mainline series and Legends: Arceus, Z-A’s battle system is a real-time battling system where you need to time and position your moves in order to be effective. The combat is similar to Xenoblade, where your moves have a cooldown after use.

I found this combat system very interesting — some moves here behave very differently that can be much more useful. For some examples:

• If I click a move at the same time my opponent uses Dig, Dig often sends them underground first before my move hits them, and because of the cooldown system, I cannot hit them again with the same move for a while.
• Ranged attacks can vary in the speed that they reach the opponent, leading to them being able to move out of the way fast enough if possible.
• If a move is a “rush” attack i.e. say Take Down or Flare Blitz, their attack moves them to attack and get past you, making your attack possibly whiff them
• Entry hazards like Stealth Rock + Spikes persist in a field around them, forcing your Pokémon to either stay in the area to take persistent damage while trying to hit them, or forcing you to move around them, letting them hit you in the meantime. Or you have to resort to ranged attacks outside the range of the entry hazards.

There are more examples, but this is a cool evolution of the battle system that makes it closer to the anime battle system. I think outside of just making the game a fighting game entirely like Pokkén Tournament, this is probably the closest to an anime-style battle system we’re going to get.

While for most of the game I was fairly over-leveled to make use of the deeper mechanics, the later fights still made me think more actively in battle or use more items than I expected, despite being several levels higher. This is also something further seen in my experience of the Online Ranked battles, where I could tell that there were people who knew what the best moves were and were careful about their timings.

I’m looking forward to seeing if this combat style persists in future games, and if it can evolve further. I’m also interested in seeing if Z-A might also be adopted into competitive play as a side game as well.

Z-A Royale

The Z-A Royale is the main loop of trainer fights in the game, where every time night falls, you can enter a fight zone to defeat as many trainers as possible to be promoted to the next rank. There’s a mechanic where you collect cards that act as mini quests to gain more points such as “sneak attack 5 times with water moves” (yes you can jump other trainers).

These battles can be short, especially if you have a diverse team to complete the objectives, and getting enough points to promote can be done pretty quickly in a single night-time cycle. Pokémon fight club is a pretty funny concept that I think is done well enough for the main plot, especially since you have the ability to transition between night and day based on what you want to do at the time.

Boss Battles

Like Pokémon Legends: Arceus, there are boss battles here, in the form of Rogue Mega Evolution battles, where you fight a big Mega Evolved Pokémon using the same battle system mechanics and try to have both you and your Pokémon avoid attacks from the opponent.

These battles felt fairly easy, with none of them giving me too much trouble. There’s ample amount of time for you to react to what they’re doing. The only time I felt I was given trouble was for a post-game fight, which felt like it was supposed to be the hardest fight in the game. I just wish that some of that made it into the main story fights. But overall, I would say these fights were more engaging than those in Legends: Arceus.

Music

Pokémon Legends: Z-A features a soundtrack with both arrangements of old Pokémon X&Y songs and new songs as well. Special note that music cover artist insaneintherain who made an entire cover album for the Pokémon Diamond & Pearl soundtrack is also featured on this soundtrack as an arranger.

The theme of Hotel Z is an arrangement of a previous melancholy song from X&Y turned into a classy hotel theme, which is such a chill vibe.

The night-time theme for Lumiose City is one that has insaneintherain’s vibe all over it, that I would be surprised if he didn’t arrange this theme.

My favourite new battle track is this electro-swing song for one of your later opponents in the Z-A Royale.

Verdict

I’m happy that Pokémon made a more experimental game with Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I’ve seen comparisons of this game to the Yakuza series, with a single city focus but more driven by the characters, and I think the comparison is accurate.

The single-setting encouraged more character interactions that made the cast one of my favourites, at the expense of much more limited and uninteresting exploration, especially with the low-quality assets for the buildings. But I think that ultimately, this is not a game intended to be an exploration game. I think that’s fine, but your expectations have to be set properly for that.

The combat system is very interesting and fun — it’s the closest I’m getting to having a fun but accessible anime combat system. While the plot is serviceable and has some weird parts, I’m encouraged by the ending of the game to see how they handle the plot in future games. Just, please add voice acting where needed.

I’m not sure if I like the game more or less than Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Despite similar catching mechanics and boss fight concepts, they’re different in terms of exploration and battle systems altogether. Pokémon Legends: Arceus gives me my favourite fights in the whole series, while Pokémon Legends: Z-A gives me my favourite cast in the whole series, so it’s difficult to judge.

Overall, I’m happy that the Legends series continues and hope that the experimental nature of the subseries continues. And I’m happy that Kalos finally gets that third game that it deserves.