Background

Pokemon: Legends Z-A (which I'll be referring to as Za) is the most recent Pokemon title as of the time I'm writing this. It is available on both the Switch and Switch 2 and has been selling very well. It occupies a sort of weird middle ground between spinoff and mainline. Gamefreak, the company behind the games production, seems to treat it like a mainline game, but the differences in mechanics between it and the typical mainline games are pretty apparent. My aim is to write a sort of psuedo-review of the game based on my experience playing it, and also what I think about the current state of Pokemon as a whole. I think that its important to note that I am not a professional game reviewer, I'm just Some Guy.

Introduction

I am a lifelong Pokemon fan, it is a huge part of my life. Some of my earliest memories of video games is playing Diamond on my DS, and I've been hooked ever since. Seriously, Pokemon takes up so much space in my brain that it's probably unhealthy. There's more space in my head dedicated to Pokemon than there is for like, I don't know, geography. I can name each one of those 1025 bastards by heart, but if you need to locate Germany on a map then you're on your own. I've played every mainline game since generation 4, a lot of the spinoff games, and I even play Pokemon competitively in VGC and Draft leagues. I LOVE Pokemon, that goes without saying. But I also hate Pokemon. I hate everything about it. It's becoming increasingly obvious that Pokemon is becoming emblematic of the deleterious rot that plagues everything through the passage of time. Now, you might think I'm being dramatic, and you'd be right, but my madness is not without method. I'm going to first explain my opinions on Za in particular, and then give my opinions on what I think this means for Pokemon in the long run.

My Review

The Good

The Region

Za takes place in Kalos, a region that sorely deserved a second chance. The original Kalos games, Pokemon X and Y, were plagued with a number of issues that made the game kind of devisive. Personally, I liked it. I'm not of the opinion that a gmae needs to be difficult to be worthwhile, but I digress. Regardless of what people think of the game as a whole, one of the strongest suits of Pokemon X and Y was the world. It had a lot of interesting set pieces (like giant trees and a purple crystal sundial thing...?), vibrant colors, and some great designs for key buildings like the Tower of Mastery and the Pokemon League. It makes sense that region was beautiful since it was based on France, a country known for its beauty and elegance. So, given how much Kalos would benefit from a second chance, did Gamefreak do right by it? Weeeelll, this is supposed to be the positives section, so I'll get to that later.

Open World

Pokemon games have been recently trending towards a more open world style (along with every other game in existence after Breath of the Wild released). A format that gives the player more agency in what they do and when they do it is definitely a good thing, though, so I'm not complaining. You can do as much or as little of the side content as you want which helps with makes the game flow much more nicely. The wild areas where you can catch more Pokemon are also largely optional, though the Pokemon generally get stronger and more interesting as you go, so you are incentivized to explore them.

Megas

There are three new mega evolutions that I think are cool. The rest range from meh to awful. These three megas are the Kalos starters, and I think Gamefreak know that these three are the best ones since they used them to advertise the game like twenty times. These three have the kind of soul that the others lack, and I fear the only reason that the designs are so good is so that Gamefreak could have something to use to advertise the game, which means that the only reason the other megas aren't as interesting is because Gamefreak is lazy. I'll talk more about this later, but for now just know that only three of the twenty-six new megas have good designs.

Corbeau

Corbeau is a character in the game that's sort of an enigmatic anti-villain. He appears a little more than halfway through the game when one of your friends, named Taunie, takes a sketchy loan from him. After one day, the loan has accrued 1000% interest and he/she (the gender of this friend depends on your gender) is now in debt. In order to help pay off their debt, you agree to do some odd jobs for Corbeau and his company, The Rust Syndicate. Something that immediately strikes you about Corbeau is that he is the most villain villain to ever villain. He is so obviously evil right from the start. First off, if you own a company and call it a "syndicate," you are evil. Sorry, I don't make the rules. Only villains have syndicates, everyone else just says "incorporated." Second of all, if your company is named after rust, you are evil. Rust is an annoying and undesirable side effect that plagues useful items with instability and fragility. Why would you ever name your company that unless you're explicitly trying to be evil? Third of all, he has the most stereotypical mafia bodyguard of all time. His name is Philippe and he is huge, calls Corbeau boss, and has sideburns that curve into spikes. The only thing that's missing is him saying "you're gonna be sleeping with the fishes," to someone. Fourth of all, He has a tendency to lose his temper and talk to himself when he's upset. He says things like "Is this person testing me?" just in case you couldn't already tell he was evil. Fourth of all, he was very close to the main antagonist of the previous game, Pokemon X and Y, named Lysandre. Apparently Lysandre saw potential in him and gave him some seed money to start his company. However Chekov's Gun states that, regardless of how, if you have a relation to an antagonist, you are also evil. Finally, there's the whole predatory loan thing, which, given that its your first introduction to his character, establishes from the get-go that he's evil. At this point in the game I was pretty fed up with how cliched this character was and how painfully obvious it was that he was the main antagonist, but then something I could never expect happened. Gamefreak gave a character depth. As it turns out the odd jobs that Corbeau has you do are closer to community service than to shady mafia dealings. You go around helping people out and each time you do Corbeau knocks a little off the loan. After doing only three of four things, Corbeau says that the interest is forgiven entirely, but there is still the matter of returning the original amount that was borrowed. Almost directly after Corbeau visits Hotel Z, which is the base of operations for you and your gaggle of friends. The hotel is also famous for never getting any customers, at all, ever. Everyone is naturally on edge and wondering what the mafia boss is doing here when he asks the owner if he can rent a room. The next day, he returns to the lobby while noting how pleasant his stay was and saying that it was obvious that much care went into maintaining the hotel. After Taunie reveals that they're responsible for the hotel upkeep, Corbeau gives them a tip that is implied to be the full amount that they borrowed. Shortly thereafter, Philippe arrives to collect the loan money which Taunie pays back in full. At this point I was extremely confused as to what Corbeau's character was supposed to be. He's so obviously evil, and yet he was very generous in how he allowed you to pay back the loan, even if the original agreement was predatory. It's also shown that the daily activities of The Rust Syndicate is a sort of jack-of-all-trades business that helps out citizens with their daily problems. Whether or not they get paid for these deeds is never directly stated either. Regardless, the people that the Syndicate helps always seem pretty happy afterwards, so I can't imagine that their rates are absurd or anything. Corbeau is a character that I really can't get a read on, and that's precisely what I think makes him a good character. He's trying to make the city better in his own twisted kind of way, and its kind of working. He oscillates wildly between seeming irredeemable and seeming like a kind of mayor-ish figure, and I can never tell what he's going to do next. He states at one point that he grew up poor until Lysandre gave him the seed money and he was well off afterwards. I think that it's a good way to justify how kind and cold he can be at the same time. He doesn't like seeing others in pain since it reminds him of his past, but living on the streets made him hardened as well. This is one of the first Pokemon characters in a long time that I found myself actually being interested in. He's not perfect of course, I wish that the "evils," that he commits were a little less obvious, but Gamefreak has such a rapport for making dry characters that Corbeau practically made me ecstatic. He has flaws, motivations, goals, personality, and everything else that the rest of the characters lack.