It’s finally here! I have been wanting to play it ever since it was announced
Gameplay
As we all already know, it’s a completely new approach in the franchise, and my honest opinion is: it works fantastically well for Pokémon. It’s so incredibly fun to go through the maps, discovering new Pokémon, exploring and finding new landmarks, etc. It just fits Pokémon like a glove. I always have huge amounts of fun with the mainline games, and this one is no different
Battling is so much faster, and it got revamped and overall it’s just full of improvements. The styles give a lot more strategizing to the battles, the turn order is so much more interesting now, the effects and buffs work differently as well, etc. It’s just all so good. Catching is also so fun, and the different types of balls just add to the experience.
Alpha Pokémon are also one of the biggest things in this game, and I absolutely love how they were done. They are a blast to fight, and very hard to catch. You have to put real strategy in many of them, and it’s hard to cheese them, but it’s still possible! And if you manage to do so? It just feels so good
I really really miss having a minimap and a way to check the pokedex progress of a Pokemon I own directly from the boxes. They are little things, but they could have added a huge amount of quality of life, tbh
Story & My Completion
Of course, spoilers alert!
We start off by selecting our character and meeting Arceus! We are most likely a time traveller from what I can guess. My starter pokémon? Easy. Rowlet. I didn’t even hesitate, I love this cute owl
We are now in Jubilife village and I can recognize a lot of faces! I’m gonna have a blast guessing which characters from the mainline games have ancestors in here. We also have our first trainer battle, and holy fuck it is cool! Plus, it’s against Cynthia’s ancestor so that makes it even cooler
I… I would have liked to record my reaction to every event in the game, but it gets extremely tiring to do so for each game, so I’m just going to give my general opinion of the story instead as I used to do in the past
As for my team, I mostly changed around a few Pokémon I really liked, but I tried not to stay with the same team for long. The most prominent ones were:
- Decidueye, whom being my starter I just couldn’t part with. His Hissuian form is cool as heck, and he was super fun to use
- Luxray, who was the Shinx you first capture in the game and proved to be really useful since paralysis is pretty good in this game
- Goodra, caught him as an Alpha Sliggoo and I just loved his new form, so he had to stay in my team no matter what
- Gastrodon, who I didn’t expect to stay in my team for so long but I just love this little thing
- Kleavor, who was a Scyther for most part and my first Alpha Pokémon
- Sylveon, who started being a little Eevee that I didn’t think would evolve into the fairy-typed evolution, but I was extremely happy that it was the case
- Drapion, who I captured as an Alpha and was extremely useful for type coverage
Overall, those are the most important ones, but I also used Ursaluna, Lilligant, Raichu, Torterra, Vespiqueen, Golem, Machamp, Roserade, the shiny Rapidash, etc. And this aged badly fast, because in the end I had used almost two entire boxes of different Pokémon (which is something I greatly appreciated, being forced to use different Pokémon if I wanted to fill my dex with research level 10)
I loved the noble Pokémon sequences, and since I hadn’t been spoiled on any of these new forms, it was an amazing experience to see them for the first time in-game. I liked the detail that most of them are unobtainable Pokémon unless you train their preevolutions too. Kleavor and Ursaluna were a f*cking pain in the ass to get though, their evolving items are so hard and tiring to get. And don’t get me started on Wyrdeer or Overqwll, they were just boring to grind
I must say, the part where we are done with the five frenzied nobles and we are exiled from the Galaxy Team was better than I expected. Plus, the fact that the music remains grim and sorrowful during the battles and exploration is a top-tier detail
The end segment is really cool and got me very excited, and I loved facing against Dialga (in my case) as if he were a noble, while with Palkia you can have a normal legendary battle. The best of both worlds. The festival and credits were cute
As for the post-game, I had a lot of fun collecting the remaining plates and catching the legendaries! Although I wish the legendaries had gotten a much more eerie or epic encounter, their battles or encounters were really good but I wish they lived up to the hype of encountering a mystical being
As for the plot twist in the end, I really really did not see it coming: Volo being evil all along, being the reason behind the time-space rifts and Giratina’s ally, huh. It’s even funnier taking on account how I remember hearing from a person how much they wished he turned out to be a villain in the story, and oh my god they predicted it with capital letters. It’s a cool twist to be honest, and hearing a new take on Cynthia’s theme was great, but his new design was a flop
But holy fuck, I was not ready for the Giratina cutscene coming after it. That was RAW, I loved it. It was just so cool. BUT AFTER THAT, IT’S NOT OVER YET, AFTER GIRATINA’S HP BAR GOES DOWN, THE MUSIC GOES BALLISTIC AND YOU CONFRONT ITS OTHER FORM. So cool, so fucking cool, I loved this segment. It’s actually harsh too, since I wasn’t prepared for the 2nd Giratina phase so I got wiped out once. It was at this moment I knew: I should have probably prepared healing items beforehand for the first time ever in this game
Volo, defeated, hands us over the last plate and: THE AZURE FLUTE! I didn’t think they would actually make it canon! It seems we have to catch every last Pokémon in order to meet Arceus, so that’s my goal now
And it’s done! The entire dex with research level 10 except Arceus! The Arceus battle is cool as fuck too, I love these segments the game is surprising me with all the time. I did not expect the Legend Plate either, it makes Arceus such a overpowered reward for finishing (almost) everything the game has to offer
Can you believe Bonsly was the last Pokémon between me and the Shiny Charm? Anyways, it’s done! I completed the Hissuian pokedex with research level 10 on every Pokémon! It feels so good, and it was SO fun from start to finish
Not only that, but I also completed every single request, and the funniest part was how the last request I had to do was the one related to finding Combees on different zones, kind of a pain. But with that, every request is done at last!
I must say though, overall the story of Legends: Arceus is just… is just there, and it’s not bad by any means, but it’s just there to complement the game and that’s it. They didn’t take any risks overall, but I really liked how they built the story around the game and mechanics
Characters
Spoilers during this segment too!
Characters are not really a focus on this game, but I’ve loved seeing some familiar faces in here, and trying to guess the ancestors of characters we already know.
Volo was a nice surprise. I didn’t think he would turn out to be this important and charismatic, given how he was revealed in the teasers. However, being a Cynthia ancestor, it should have been more than expected. And if that hadn’t been enough, his unexpected betrayal in the end solidified him even more, which made me appreciated his character even more.
Ingo fucking surprised the hell out of me, I could have never expected him coming back as a time traveller. It’s not an uncalled thing to see in the franchise though, since we have many examples such as Handsome or Anabel, I think. I’ve always loved his design and wished he had more focus as a character and I can’t believe they brought him back, even if he’s alone. It’s super sad to see how he talks about how he remembers having precious Pokémon partners and someone he could always rely on, since he was separated from Emmet
Irida and Adaman were great, and I loved seeing their interactions and moments, but I really wish we would have seen more of them and that they got much more screentime or appearances than that. I love their designs a lot though, definitely some of the best in the game
As for the rest of characters, I liked the cast overall, but most of them are very forgettable or do not impact the story or its development at all
Music
Holy fuck, this music transported me back to the good old days when I played Pokémon Diamond for the first time, it’s so good. All the battle themes are espectacular and the ambient music has so many nostalgic tunes and it fits the game so well. Overall, a very solid soundtrack, I loved it
A lot of old songs became even better with the new remixes they received in Legends: Arceus, and I love the new approach they took with many tracks, such as Origin Dialga and Palkia’s theme
Conclusion
Please Game Freak, keep this approach for future Pokémon games, this was such an incredibly fun adventure and it suits the franchise so much. I love the mainline games just as much, but this was definitely the step in the right direction for the future. Just… imagine a Legends game centered around the old Unova, which has such a rich folklore to explore and so many legends to unfold. I’m praying that this game will get DLC at least too, I would love to explore new zones and catch new Pokémon
Silvy 