Pokemon Legends: Arceus Receives New Details on Setting, Battles, Traversal, and More

Updates on Pokemon Legends: Arcues had been pretty much non-existent since it was announced earlier this year (other than its release date randomly getting announced out of nowhere), but as promised, during the recent Pokemon Presents broadcast, The Pokemon Company and Game Freak lifted the lid on the upcoming open world action RPG, with various details about gameplay and its setting.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus is set in the Hisui region, which, centuries later, will go on to be known as Sinnoh. At the time this game takes place, the region is wild and untamed, with different regions of the world having different varieties of Pokemon and ecosystems.

Jubilife Village (which presumably becomes Jubilife City centuries later) will serve as your hub, where you, as a member of the Galaxy Expedition Team will be tasked with setting out, capturing Pokemon, surveying different parts of Hisui, and completing the region’s first ever Pokedex. What connection (if any) the Galaxy Team has to Team Galactic remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, exploring the open world will see you coming up against various wild Pokemon, all of which will behave differently. Some will be docile, some will run away the moment they see you, while some will be aggressive and attack you, so you’ll have to take different approaches while trying to capture them.

Battles have also bee revamped and are no longer strictly turn-based. Instead, each attack now has two variants- Strong Style and Agile Style. Strong Style increases the attack power of whatever move you’re using at the cost of speed, while Agile Style will decrease the strength of a move but make it quicker, allowing you to unleash multiple attacks in a row.

Traversal also looks quite interesting, and we’ve seen the protagonist riding and swimming around on the backs of Pokemon, as well as gliding through the air thanks to a contraption attached to a Braviary. Speaking of Pokemon, some new Pokemon as well as new variations of older Pokemon have also been revealed.

Get all of the details in the videos below. There’s a trailer, followed by the recent Pokemon Presents timestamped to the gameplay deep dive.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus launches for Nintendo Switch on January 28.