Pokemon Legends: Arceus Review: Is it worth playing?

It doesn’t matter how good Pokemon Legends: Arceus is. Let’s get that out of the way first. It will inevitably be one of the highest-selling games on the Switch, and it will be lauded and praised because it didn’t recycle the same formula the franchise has used for over two decades. It’ll be touted as a “flawed but firm foundation for the future of Pokemon.” My question, though, is how many more foundations does this series need? My rose-tinted glasses are fogging up.

With each main series release, it seems like Pokemon is slipping further and further back. Game Freak constantly introduces features in each generation and forgets about them the next. The final straw for many fans was Dexit, where the series tagline of “Gotta catch ’em all” was invalidated, ~~so players would have to purchase the Expansion Pass DLC~~ because making all those models is hard work.

So, Pokemon Legends: Arceus is impressive in some respects. It overhauls the atrocious UI into something more modern and gives players quality of life changes that have been asked for since Red and Blue were released. It also drops the Pokemon League storyline. There are no gyms, Elite Four, or league champion here. Instead, it puts players in a wide-open world and tells them to find their way to their objective on their terms.

This is all great, but the overall package feels unbalanced. The Switch hardware doesn’t do the game any favors as far as graphics and performance go. With the more open game design, it lost some of the character that has been a hallmark of the series. It’s a much lonelier game and lacks the joviality of past titles. As a result, Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a step in the right direction but still doesn’t hit the mark completely.

Once Upon a Time in Hisui

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is the first game in the series to travel back in time. You take the role of a present-day trainer sent back in time to the Hisui Region, which will eventually become known as Sinnoh.

In the period you arrive in, Hisui is still a vast wilderness, and people and Pokemon don’t enjoy the same relationship they do in modern times. The Pokeball has just been invented, and many humans are still frightened of Pokemon. This makes you seem like a pro when you’re able to help catch three starter Pokemon that have gotten loose. In fact, your ability to catch Pokemon and your lack of fear impresses the inhabitants of the nearby Jubilife Village so much that you’re immediately recruited to the Galaxy Exploration Team.

The Galaxy Exploration Team’s main objective is to compile the first Pokedex of Hisui’s Pokemon. In addition to research, The Galaxy Exploration Team is dedicated to the prosperity of Jubilife Village and helping both the villagers and the local tribespeople.

Since you’re basically the best trainer in the world, you’ll be called on to take the most demanding missions. Along the way, you’ll try to unravel the secrets of the time rift that brought you into the past so you can find a way home.

Poking Around

So, remember in every Pokemon game, when you got a key item, the text would freeze on the screen for a few seconds, and a little musical cue would play? It’s pretty cute the first time, but it starts getting a little stale when you’re on your 20th adventure. Same for the XP page after every battle.

Well, all that kind of stuff is gone. The UI is completely redesigned, and it’s so, so much better. It’s sleek looking, fast, and a lot of the fluff is gone. Want to change your starting Pokemon? Just scroll through them in-game with the shoulder buttons. Want to use items? Hit X and scroll through them the same way.

Little things like evolution being opt-in through the Pokemon menu instead of opt-out make a world of difference. The game is so much more enjoyable without the UI getting in the way.

Wilding Out

Random encounters continue to be a thing of the past. Pokemon spawn in the world and are (mostly) easily avoided or engaged. They’re also shown to scale both in and out of battle, which is a great carryover from Sword and Shield.

Catching wild Pokemon is a lot more streamlined too. You can throw Pokeballs out of battle, which means you’ll catch most Pokemon without a fight, especially in the beginning. However, each creature does have its own personality. Some Pokemon are skittish and have to be snuck up on. Others will get aggressive if you get too close or fail a capture attempt which will force you into a fight.

Pokemon battles are streamlined as well. You can send out a Pokemon into the world at any time, and tossing one near a wild Pokemon will start a battle. During battle, you can walk around to your heart’s desire instead of being stuck in one place.

New to Pokemon Legends’ Arceus are Agility and Strength moves. Once a Pokemon has mastered a move, they can use an Agility or Strength variation to affect the turn order or to do more damage. Agility moves do less damage but increase a Pokemon’s chance of acting twice. In comparison, Strength moves cause more damage but risk giving opponents an extra turn.

Overall, the difficulty has been raised considerably. EXP Share is always on, but that’s a good thing because Pokemon hit hard in this game. Typing is much more critical, and you have to be careful when fighting even much weaker creatures. A Pokemon with a super-effective type can take out one that’s 15-25 levels above it within just a few turns.

Open but empty

Unfortunately, though Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ has several open-world biomes, there’s not a ton to do in them aside from proceeding to your next objective, farming items, and catching Pokemon. There’s only one main settlement and one smaller one, and this game lacks things like Pokemon Amie, Poke Pelago, Pokemon Contest, etc. There are also not that many trainer battles, which makes sense in the context of the game, but also makes it feel a lot lonelier.

This is where the game really broke down for me. You get stuck in a loop where you:

Go to Jubilife Village
Talk to an NPC or two.
Look for new sidequests.
Go back out in the field.
Catch Pokemon and walk toward an objective
Complete objective
Repeat

There’s no breeding or much of anything extra to do outside of the main story except completing the Pokedex and side quests that mostly consist of “show me this Pokemon” or “bring me this item.” Completing the Pokedex in itself is obnoxious because it requires you to perform some grindy tasks. To completely fill out a Pokemon’s page and get credit for it, you can’t just catch it. You have to finish specific tasks. These can be as easy as watching a Pokemon perform a particular move or as frustrating as having to catch 25 of the same Pokemon.

Completing Pokedex objectives gives you research points. You move up in the Galaxy Exploration Team ranks if you get enough of those. Each rank gives you access to more items and blueprints, but it can be a grueling task.

Long in the tooth

Part of the issue is that Game Freak is working with limited hardware. The Switch is using a system on a chip that was two years old when the console came out. It just doesn’t have the power to meet the ambitions found in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. As a result, the game has severe pop-in, sporadic frame dropping, and it’s just not a good-looking game. So much had to be sacrificed to keep it running at a playable framerate that the biomes have little to no character.

See, it’s all the little doodads that developers put in a level that bring it to life. The Switch doesn’t have the power to handle too much, so each biome is defined mainly by color and one or two terrain features. It’s like, “Oh, this place is a forest because it’s dark green and has trees,” or “This place must be a swamp because it’s a drearier green, more watery, and the trees are different.”

This game would have been an excellent opportunity to show Pokemon in their natural habitat. Instead, it feels like a crawl across terrain in places that are mainly differentiated because of what Pokemon spawn there. Fortunately, there is fast travel, and you get some Pokemon friends that speed up traversal along the way, which does ease a bit of the frustration but also negates the point of having a big open world to explore.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus Review: The final verdict

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a step in the right direction for Pokemon, but the series keeps shuffling back and forth so much that I’m not sure if it really matters. If Game Freak takes the improvements in this game and applies and builds upon them for future titles, then we’re headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, if the past is any indicator, the studio is just as likely to ignore everything here when making the Gen 9 games.

For its flaws, Pokemon Legends: Arceus does have a decent gameplay loop, even if it is a bit too tight. I hope that with Nintendo’s next console, we can maybe see a game that doesn’t have to make such significant compromises when it comes to graphics vs. performance. For now, let’s just clap our hands and try to forget that any other studio would be roasted alive for releasing a game like this in 2022.