It’s an incredibly thorough and comprehensive overhaul of the series formula – almost nothing about the games hasn’t been touched and rethought of in some radical way here. From core tenets such as catching Pokemon, battling Pokemon, and evolving Pokemon, to how stats work, how traversal works, how items and resources work, how your inventory works, how the story progression and map layout work, how the Pokedex works, how moves, status conditions, Pokemon stats and builds, all work, everything has been torn down and built back up in a fresh new context here. The result is a gamed that feels like such a dramatic modernization of the long running and beloved property, that after Arceus, it will actually feel extremely difficult to go back to the traditional style of Pokemon games – these open world kinds of games need to be the future of the franchise moving forward.

Among a lot of long suffering fans of the series, however, there is this fear that Game Freak might do what they are wont to so often, and ditch a lot of the well received improvements and changes in this game and revert to the old format with no rhyme or reason. That might sound irrational – but that is literally the kind of thing Game Freak tends to do. The series’ history is a graveyard littered with fan favorite features and content that inexplicably got the cut after a game or two and never came back – so fearing that that might happen here as well isn’t quite as uncalled for here as it might be with some other franchise or developer.

However, there is reason to suspect that we may not have to worry about this kind of thing with Legends’ template and future games. Apart from the obvious “this is the best received game the series has had in almost a decade” consideration that I am sure factors in with Game Freak to at least some degree, there is also the simple point that Game Freak has gotten more responsive to and mindful of player feedback in the last few years – in fact, Arceus itself exists as a direct response to player demands for where they want the series to go.

Even if you still have no faith in the developer to do the smart thing, however, there is evidence pointing at the fact that this is basically what Game Freak has been slowly building up to ever since they started working on the Switch a few years ago. Every Switch Pokemon title by Game Freak seems to have slowly been building up to Arceus – from the overworld Pokemon and first brushes with tweaking how catching, battling, and stats work in Pokemon Let’s Go to the Wild Area in Pokemon Sword and Shield bringing an open world with systemic properties to the series, to even the integration of overworld traversal puzzles and dungeons in an open map with the Sword and Shield expansion packs, Game Freak does seem to have had the end result we got with Arceus in mind for some time now. So we should probably, until we are (presumably inevitably) given reason not to, believe that the next Pokemon game will also be an open world title, following on from Arceus.

If that is the thesis we are working with, then, we get to the next part of the question – which is, what should that follow up game be like? Arceus is a fantastic game, but it is also very clearly a first game of this style. There is a lot here that is ripe for improvement, even more that can be built upon further, and a lot of things that didn’t work, and that we would like to see changed.

The most obvious improvement to ask for with the next game is the visuals. Look, I love Pokemon Legends, it’s probably among my favorite games in the series, and of the last few years, but goodness is it an ugly looking game. Not only does it drop the ball on the technical front totally, it also very often fails to come together in terms of art style and general aesthetic as well. I honestly have no idea why it falls apart on the art side of things so badly – for all the criticisms that Game Freak’s technical deficiencies have rightly gotten over the years, the one thing they have always nailed is a strong art style and aesthetic for their games. But for whatever reason, Legends does not look good.

So that’s an obvious area of improvement for the next one. Ideally, the next Pokemon game will look worthy of being a flagship product in the biggest media franchise on the planet, but even if it doesn’t meet those standards, at the very least, it can look, well, good. The Switch may be technically far weaker than competing consoles, but it is capable of hosting some beautiful looking games, as titles such as Nintendo’s own The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild show us. The next Pokemon open world game should at least strive to look that good.

Looking that good will be helpful for it in other ways too. While, obviously, a better looking game is far more marketable, it also works for an immersive and systemic player driven open world game like Legends is. If the world itself is pretty and offers the chance to view some gorgeous vistas if the player goes off the beaten path, then it is likelier to induce exploration and organic moments of discovery – the exact kind of thing the gameplay loop in this game emphasizes. Legends sidesteps this problem by making the world a means to an ends – the ends being the Pokemon themselves. But if the series is to continue with an open world format, then it can’t ignore the, well, world. It needs to put more effort into making that world inherently appealing.

But the graphics, while making for the most obvious point of improvement, are not the only point of improvement either. There are other changes and fixes I hope the next Pokemon game ends up having. The biggest one would be to the stats system, actually. I really love how stats work in Pokemon Legends. Invisible values like EVs and IVs are out, as is the frustrating guesswork and RNG that players had to content with when raising their Pokemon. Instead, you can directly add modifiers of up to +10 into each of the six stats a Pokemon has. The problem is, you can add +10 modifiers to each stat for each Pokemon. Meaning literally nothing stops you from having every single one of your Pokemon with every single one of their stats maxed out. Not only would this be extremely boring from a competitive and PvP perspective (we’ll get to this in a second), it also means every single one of your Pokemon ends up being pretty much the same.

They need to absolutely keep this stat system – please don’t make us go back to IVs and EVs – but they can at the very least limit it a little. Instead of allowing players to max out every single stat, give them the opportunity to invest in maxing out up to two, and then a few remaining points they can spread into the other stats. This is no different to how every other RPG with a stats system works – it’s no different to how Pokemonitself has functionally always worked with its EVs, in fact – so it shouldn’t be a big change for Game Freak to implement.

Allowing more build diversity and variation in your party also has second-order effects (and beyond) for other aspects of the game. For instance, this means PvP and competitive battling can return with the next game. Arceus ended up cutting those out – I think it was the right decision to excise those portions of the series to focus on doing the PvE side better, and it obviously paid off for them here. But ultimately, PvP and competitive comprise a huge portion of Pokemon’s enduring fanbase and popularity, and they can’t be sidelined or ignored forever. The next game will have to bring them back – at which point the stats system, as it exists in Legends, has to be rebalanced.

Similarly, there is Legends’ battle system. While it works really well for this game, it is also undoubtedly not suited for the current PvP meta; in fact, it might not be suited for any PvP, since it introduces a lot of fuzziness and guesswork that adds an arbitrary element of randomness to proceedings, which can feel fine for a PvE game, but certainly not competitive. But even if the battle system itself is to revert to the one we have had in older games, I would hope the seamlessness of Legends’ battles is not abandoned. Meaning battles should still take place on the field in real time rather than in breakout battle screens, there should still be no transitions, player movement should still be allowed in the middle of battles, and so on. Essentially, taking all the best things of Legends’ battle system – which tie more into the non-battle side of things – and melding them to the traditional battle system (which tie more into the actual battle side of things) – should be the way to go with the future game.

There are opportunities for changes, areas of improvement, and iteration present elsewhere in the game too. For instance, I would love it if they made the world more systemic and more dynamic. The Pokemon World is built for something like this. Imagine, for example, weather. Legends has the weather in the overworld change dynamically, and that weather can influence what Pokemon spawn, but I don’t think Game Freak went all the way with that. I would love it, for example, if the player character was cold and taking damage in snowy conditions, and needed a Fire Pokemon constantly out to provide them heat (as an example); or if extreme weather conditions such as sandstorms required, for example, a flying Pokemon creating a passage for you through the storm, to traverse. We’re already almost there – Pokemon do respond to weather, you can use your party Pokemon to interact with and traverse the world, and the player character already takes damage from the world. We have even had older Pokemon games use weather conditions as traversal obstacles that require Pokemon to be negotiated – remember needing to use Defog in the heavy fog in Sinnoh in Diamond and Pearl? This would be more of that, but in an open world, and without the need to lug around an HM slave at all times.

I also wouldn’t say no to seeing a new region in a contemporary adjacent time period for the next open world game. I honestly loved Legends’ ancient Sinnoh setting, but there is no question it comes at a cost – the number of major settlements in the game came down to under a half dozen (rather than very literally twice or thrice that that older games have had until now), for example, and trainer battles are extremely deemphasized in this game. The next Pokemon open world game bringing back multiple major cities that you have to travel to and from, as well as trainer battles populating the world, would be great. At the very least, more trainer battles need to return – I honestly don’t necessarily mind it if the next game is largely set in the wilderness again, sure, but trainer battles need to be more of a thing with the next game.

One more change I hope the next Pokemon game makes is to the world itself – currently, it is broken out into five discrete chunks. Now, those chunks are absolutely massive – even the smallest map in Legends is bigger than the entirety of the Wild Area in Sword/Shield by a factor of many, and we end up with the biggest composite map the series has had yet – but them being broken out like that is definitely a bummer. Being able to go from one map to the next seamlessly and out in the world would be so cool. They can even discourage players if they want – throw in a lot of high level wild Pokemon and environmental hazards – but allow the option. Let the world feel like more of a world.

The most exciting thing about Pokemon Legends, paradoxically, is not just how much it gets right, and how exciting a game it is in and of itself – it is how many doors it opens for the future of the franchise, and just what it could portend for future games in the franchise. It took us 25 years to get here – but getting here was pretty much 24 years of staying in the exact same spot, shuffling feet, and then making one giant leap to get from there to here in one swoop. So hopefully future improvements aren’t similarly slow to come. Pokemon Legendshas finally painted a roadmap for Pokemon games where they can have an exciting future – now let’s hope the series actually sticks to it.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

So it makes sense that for a lot of people, Pokemon Legends Arceus, announced last year, had, in the lead up to its release, not inspired confidence. Ideally it should have, of course – a systemic open world Pokemongame that brings the emphasis back on exploration and adventure, and seems to make some long overdue changes to the formula is just what the doctor ordered. But Nintendo and The Pokemon Company’s marketing for the game has been curiously subdued, and everything we saw of the game not only looked lacking graphically, but also seemed to indicate a game that, while conceptually sound, was not going to get the time and resources it needs to properly realize its potential, and would end up being another half-hearted and disappointing effort instead.

Thankfully, that’s not how it happened.

"Pokemon Legends is so marvelously, thoroughly, and comprehensively well designed, and so good at what it does, that it’s actually shocking that Game Freak managed to get so much so right on their first go."

I’ll put it plainly. Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a total delight, an incredible revitalization of the Pokemon formula that delivers its best thought out, most daring and ambitious, and just overall, its best game in years. It is so marvelously, thoroughly, and comprehensively well designed, and so good at what it does, that it’s actually shocking that Game Freak (who until now have mostly made glorified handheld games) managed to get so much so right on their first go. It’s an incredible game that provides the exact kind of evolution of the formula that everyone has been dreaming of for decades now, but most had given up hope on by this point. It’s a dense, long, high quality adventure, putting the emphasis squarely on player driven gameplay loops, a game that manages to feel and be good not just “for a Pokemon game”, but, much like the series’ highest points to date, just be an incredibly compelling and addictive adventure by almost any metric.

The degree to which the formula has been rethought cannot be overstated. The open world format is the obvious change here, of course, but on a micro and macro scale, so much more has changed now too, and it has so many far reaching and immediate implications in terms of the moment to moment gameplay loop. And all those changes end up feeding into and perpetuating the same core gameplay loop, also in the process compensating for typical pitfalls that a game of this nature might otherwise have. For example, the way the Pokedex works in this game is crucial to its gameplay loop working. Essentially, Pokemon Legends takes place in the distant past, in medieval Sinnoh, the region from Pokemon Diamond and Pearl, back when it was being populated by people for the very first time, and it was called Hisui.

In context of this setting, Pokemon Legends sees players catalog and observe Pokemon for the very first time. This means that unlike other Pokemon games, simply catching a Pokemon isn’t enough to learn everything about it. No, you have to go out into the wild, catch multiple specimens of each species, see how they behave and interact in their environment, with each other, and battle. Think of how New Pokemon Snap handled its missions, actually – that’s pretty much identical to how the Pokedex in Pokemon Legends works. The reason this is important is because it makes every single encounter you ever have be meaningful. Even if you are just catching your sixth Bidoof or Starly, that still means something because it contributes to fleshing out those creatures’ entries in the Pokedex further.

This, in turn, is important because Pokemon Legends uses the Pokemon that populate its multiple massive maps as the singular incentive to actually explore. The actual world design in Pokemon Legends is nowhere near genre stalwarts such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild or even something like Ghost of Tsushima; the world itself does not necessarily invite much exploration in and of itself. Rather, the player is incentivized and pull to go off exploring and adventuring in all directions because you’re going to find different Pokemon in different areas. In fact, to find the rarer Pokemon species, you have to explore all the nooks and crannies of all maps; put simply, the more you explore, the more Pokemon you find, and the more Pokemon you find, the more you complete the Pokedex. The more you complete the Pokedex, the better the rewards you get to go back out to observe and catch even more Pokemon.

"A game like Pokemon Legends can only work if it sells the fantasy of these creatures in the wild being, well, actual creatures in the wild. This means that each Pokemon needs to look good, act believably, be distinct, and organically fit into its environment. Legends excels at that."

It’s a beautifully designed core loop, but it is elevated further by just how much every other system in the game feeds into it. Take crafting, for example. As you explore Hisui’s various biomes, you pick up a lot of resources – from plants and fungi to ores and rocks, and more beyond. This raw material can then be used by you, the player, to make everything, from Pokeballs (to catch Pokemon) to healing items (to keep your party’s health topped up) to treats that can be used to lure and attract Pokemon (the better to be able to catch them) to items that can help your character sneak around better without being noticed by wild Pokemon, and more. This means as you are exploring the map, you’re always picking up on these resources, that you can then use to craft more items to catch more Pokemon, which requires you to explore more of the map, which sees you picking up more resources, and so on and on. As I said, the way things fit together is almost beautiful from a game design perspective.

Those Pokemon that you are catching, they are the stars of this show. A game like Pokemon Legends can only work if it sells the fantasy of these creatures in the wild being, well, actual creatures in the wild. This means that each Pokemon needs to look good, act believably, be distinct, and organically fit into its environment. Legends excels at that. Pokemon in the wild interact to each other, to the player, to the world – you might see a bunch of Buizel gathering around an alpha Floatzel, for example, or you might see Bidoof scampering off when they realize you just caught one of their number. You might see a Luxray curling up to go to sleep under a rock when it rains, or you might see the cordyceps inspired zombie-like Paras and Parasect shambling and pursuing you (or really, anything else they see) hilariously aggressively, launching their attacks to try and immobile you. I mentioned earlier the world itself isn’t particularly special in terms of how it is designed and laid out, and that it uses Pokemon to cover up for that and incentivize player engagement – that would never have worked if the Pokemon weren’t so thoroughly well designed in Arceus, better than in any other mainline game to date. And thankfully, they are really well designed here. Each species has distinct, and intuitively believable, behaviours, individual Pokemon can still have perceptible personality traits, and Pokemon interactions – whether it is passive interactions as with the environment, or active interactions in a Pokemon battle – are all a sight to behold. You can even send out all your Pokemon into the world and just see how they interact with each other, or you. It really adds this sense that these creatures are actual unknowable wildlife that you are learning more about.

This wildlife is also dangerous. Pokemon games have always told us that Pokemon are dangerous, and can attack people – but the games, much like the rest of the property, are increasingly sanitized to take away this edge, and present the Pokemon world as a happy one where everyone and everything gets along. Arceus goes right back to the original premise – Pokemon are dangerous creatures, and people are, rightly, terrified of them. The game’s setting, which predates people and Pokemon having created a society of coexistence, emphasizes and repeats this fact constantly. You are told by everyone how afraid they are of Pokemon, you are even told, in very literally as many words, that you might die if you don’t take care when out in the wild (yes, the game actually tells the young player character upfront there is a good chance of them dying, which was a bit unexpected, to say the least).

"This game marks the first time Pokemon can directly attack players. This creates a very real sense of danger and threat when you are exploring in the wild, and more than anything, makes you as the player be careful when approaching Pokemon."

But more than telling us, Legends shows us. This game marks the first time Pokemon can directly attack players. While it depends on the species – something like Starly is skittish and will run off if it sees the player, while something like Ursaring is an apex predator, and is going to viciously attack and pursue the player – this creates a very real sense of danger and threat when you are exploring in the wild, and more than anything, makes you as the player be careful when approaching Pokemon, taking measures to mask your approach and stay out of their sight. If a Pokemon sees you, they often can and will attack you – not just physically, but sometimes they might use their elemental attacks, such as Rock Slide, Hydro Pump, or Hyper Beam, on the player. And the player can’t take too much damage either – four or five straight hits and you get knocked out, returned to the nearest base camp, and lose a good chunk of the resources and loot you may have collected. So you have to be careful.

This kind of Pokemon behavior pervades the game’s design in other ways as well – for example, you might decide to engage a Pokemon in battle to try and catch it, but if there are other particularly aggressive Pokemon nearby, they may end up joining the fight too – and then gang up on you and your Pokemon to knock them out and then come after you instead. It’s delightful. And I haven’t even mentioned the Alpha Pokemon! These are supersized, hyper powerful, high level variants that you can find for any species in the wild, denoted by an icon next to their name and glowing red eyes. They are extremely difficult to take down (because they have great stats as well), harder still to catch, and they are far more aware of the player’s presence, and far more aggressive about doing something about it.

All of this comes together to make the most challenging Pokemon game we have had, well, probably ever honestly. To be clear, Legends isn’t a hard game. It is, however, a game that demands you actively pay attention to it and engage with its systems, and a game that isn’t afraid to slap back at the player if they get careless.

The rewards of finding these great rare Pokemon and resources to explore definitely incentivize exploration, but if traversing the world was not enjoyable, then ultimately many players would end up just giving up on going off the beaten path and stick to the critical path. This is another area where Legends is shockingly great. The core player character movement is, from the get go, more full featured than in other games in the series (you can run, crouch, and dodge, that last one being critical to avoid Pokemon attacks aimed directly at you), but once you start getting ride Pokemon, traversing the world becomes a joy. From Wyrdeer, who can dash across massive expanses rapidly and jump up vertical surfaces you may otherwise not have been able to reach, to Basculegion, which you can use to traverse water, to Braviary, who lets you glide and soar over the maps in a near infinite lasting take on Breath of the Wild’s glider, the actual act of traversal and exploration can be surprisingly fun, and at the very least ensures it doesn’t get in your way to deter you from exploring and finding more Pokemon.

"The new battle system mostly works well enough for this game – it isn’t something that I can see existing in a future mainline title, especially not if it will have PvP and competitive battles. The system right now is well balanced enough for a singleplayer game, but there is too much fuzziness around the edges for it to have the predictability that is necessary for a PvP driven battle system."

There are many other changes as well – the changes to the battle system are well publicized, with Legends seeing the first time in 26 years that the series has made any meaningful user facing change to how battles work. Battles are no longer strictly round based, with the turn order (which you can pull up at any time) instead being determined by a combination of the combatants’ speed stat, move priority for what attacks they are using, and, in the headlining feature for this game’s battle system, what stance your Pokemon uses when using that attack. There are three stances – Normal, Agile, and Heavy, with Agile modifying the attack to hit less hard, but be far faster (getting you more turns, including consecutive ones at times), and Heavy modifying the attack to hit far harder, at the expense of losing you turns.

The new battle system mostly works well enough for this game – it isn’t something that I can see existing in a future mainline title, especially not if it will have PvP and competitive battles. The system right now is well balanced enough for a singleplayer game, but there is too much fuzziness around the edges for it to have the predictability that is necessary for a PvP driven battle system. Other changes to the battles, however, are game changing, and not something I can ever go back from.  There are, for example, no battle transitions, and all the fights with Pokemon and trainers take place right on the open world, seamlessly. This is such a small, simple, and obvious change, but the impact of it is so profound and far reaching – for example, in maps as large as this game’s, having constant battle transitions could well end up disorienting the player or making them lose sight of where they were headed to; the length of those battles could also well act as a deterrent to engaging in too many (which in a game about observing and catching Pokemon, would be a bit of a disaster).

This might sound like a small thing, but I can’t tell you how slick it is, and how well it works – you can, for example, send a Pokemon in your party to go tackle a tree and collect the berries that fall from it, another to mine oar from an oar outcrop, you can sneak and throw a Pokeball at a couple of Pokemon, and engage another one in a battle – all at the same time, in real time. It saves so much time and tedium – the battles taking place in real time on the game world with no broken out screens or transition is honestly the most revolutionary change to the series’ core loop that I can think of, and it will be outright impossible for me to go back to how the old games used to play after this.

Special note also needs to be made of the game’s setting, and how well it sells it. As I said, this game takes place hundreds of years before any other game in the series, and Legends sells that setting remarkably well. From NPC dialog to more environmental storytelling, everything in the game does a great job of establishing the time and place of ancient Sinnoh that you as the player find yourself in. The game runs with its conceit of being a prequel to the entire series, and is chock full of references to things that will happen in the other mainline games that long time players should really enjoy picking up on.

This is also a surprisingly story focused Pokemon game – you’re not just randomly going out into the wild to complete the Pokedex, there is an actual, active, pervasive story here that is associated with every single main mission you take on. It’s written well enough, and probably ranks as one of the best stories in the series – usually, no one plays Pokemon games for the story, but Legends is probably the first time I can see the story being an active factor in someone’s enjoyment of the game. It also has the good sense to stay out of the player’s way and let the game loop take over for the bulk of your play time, though the beginning especially can see a lot of cutscenes, between a surprisingly extensive (if justified for once) tutorial sequence, and a lot of world building and stage setting for the story that follows.

Not everything Legends does is great, though, and there are definite telltale signs here of a game that would have benefitted from some more development time. The chief of these is just how bad the game looks. There are no two ways about it – this is an ugly game. It’s an ugly game not just technically (with low resolution textures, poor draw distances, pop in, flickering shadows, and thankfully sporadic framerate drops), but even in terms of the art style. You can kind of see what Game Freak was going for here, which seems to have been an almost impressionistic Japanese aesthetic – but for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out too well. There are times the game threatens to be somewhat pretty, due to the art style actually coming together, but most of the times, it is a fairly ugly game. In my experience, it is never disruptively so – as in, the game’s graphics stop mattering after the gameplay loop gets going and you stop noticing the visual deficiencies. However, that’s ultimately a subjective threshold, and for those who do place importance on how the game they are playing looks, I can see the graphics being single handedly deal breaking. I want to say that if you think there is any chance you can see past how it looks and play it, you should, because it’s an amazing game – but if you can’t bring yourself to play something that looks like this, I honestly can’t really blame you either.

"There are no two ways about it – this is an ugly game. It’s an ugly game not just technically (with low resolution textures, poor draw distances, pop in, flickering shadows, and thankfully sporadic framerate drops), but even in terms of the art style. You can kind of see what Game Freak was going for here, which seems to have been an almost impressionistic Japanese aesthetic – but for whatever reason, it doesn’t work out too well."

For as bad as the game looks though, I want to make note of the fact that the music is incredible – it might rank as one of the best soundtracks in the series (and that really is saying something). From the Jubilife Village theme (that slowly builds up and layers on itself to slowly start resembling the Jubilife City theme that players might know from Diamond and Pearl as you build the town up) to the battle music (which is usually excellently done remixes of battle themes from Diamond and Pearl) to the amazing music you experience out in the wild (which includes mostly new compositions, though you often hear snatches of songs you might recognize from older games), this game’s music is flat out incredible, and almost singlehandedly makes up for the visuals being what they are.

Graphics aside, the game’s other shortcomings are also the kind of thing that would benefit from a longer development cycle – for instance, a camera that can get in the way (and especially in some high intensity boss fights that rely on prompt player response), or the storytelling scenes that are begging for some form of voice acting (even limited grunts and groans like in Zelda would be acceptable!), as well as some UX oddities.

These problems, such as they are, do exist, and honestly make me desperately wish the game had gotten just a bit more time in the oven – so that it could have ironed out that jank. But even though that didn’t happen, what we got here is so incredibly well designed and thoroughly compelling that the game overcomes those shortcomings and issues either way. A startlingly accomplished work of game design, Pokemon Legends Arceus is the game fans have been desperately hoping for for years, come to life at last – an incredible game that manages to deliver a fantastic experience, and not just “for a Pokemon game” either. For the first time in a very long time, there is reason to be excited for the future of the franchise.

This game was reviewed on Nintendo Switch.

There may be those who are tempted to say that the criticism the game’s graphics have gotten (rightfully, to be fair) will, for example, stay people’s hands – but at this point, how many times does it need to be proven that the criticism and discourse surrounding this series is barely representative of the massive, massive audience that it sells to? Remember the backlash against Pokemon Sword/Shield in the lead up to its release? Concerns about cut content, concerns about the lack of the National Dex, even more vociferous criticism of its visuals, and so on? And then that game ended up becoming the highest selling game in the series in 20 years. (which, when the series is as consistently as ridiculously high selling as Pokemon, means a whole lot).

The criticism around Legends (which to begin with is far more muted than the criticism Sword/Shield got) means nothing in the big picture – it’s a new flagship Pokemon game, and it is being marketed as such. It is going to sell. Especially given how much the marketing has evoked the whole “Pokemon but Breath of the Wild” sentiment that has been common among the broader Pokemon fan communities for years. Even though at this point we know the game itself is not like Breath of the Wild (in that it is a collection of multiple open maps, rather than a single contiguous one), it’s seemingly delivering on that promise enough to generate a lot of excitement among the literally tens of millions of people who buy Pokemon games.

Ultimately though, this discussion is not about Pokemon Legends‘ sales (which, it is a given will be massive), nor its graphics (which are definitely lacking even on the Switch, and should be better for a franchise of this scope and scale, no questions asked). It is, however, also a discussion about what the potential of an open world, systemic Pokemon game, one that is making many changes and course corrections that fans have been begging for for years to boot, could mean for the series’ appeal. Remember, Pokemon Legends is not only open world, but it changes up the battle system very dramatically, gets rid of the traditional gyms-based structure that has been a mainstay of the franchise for 25 years, reemphasizes exploration after the 3DS and Switch era games have done a lot to minimize and streamline that as much as possible, seemingly adds mechanics to include some player challenge (such as the player character themselves being attacked by wild Pokemon, and massive overleveled foes you can’t take out without pushback in the guise of Alpha Pokemon), and seems to integrate the world and traversal through it as a core gameplay mechanic. It’s also the first flagship launch in the series to not have two versions, and by all accounts seems to put some emphasis on its central story (at the very least the lore around it).

Which means that, even among the more vocal dissidents of the game in the Pokemon fandom, there is a very high chance of Legends finally winning them over when it comes out, should it actually deliver on those promises – especially since at that point, the only pending criticism against the game would be how it looks. And yes, as mentioned, it looks worse than it should, but Pokemon games have never really gotten by on how they look, but rather on delivering great and unforgettable adventures (with some barely acceptable graphics for their era) – if that’s what Legends is delivering on, even for many of its more ardent critics among the fanbase, that would be enough, and could end up contributing to a very positive narrative around the game, perpetuating strong and positive word of mouth. If the only complaint the game ends up having levelled against it is that it doesn’t look great – and if it actually delivers on the promise of being a systemic open world Pokemon game – then that’s not going to stop it from capturing the zeitgeist like major releases tend to do. While even among Switch games, Legends is definitely among the worse looking ones, criticism for its visuals is likely to recede into the background if it ends up actually meaningfully delivering on its promise (which is causing the anticipation around it to begin with). The potential of an open world systemic Pokemon game to go viral and live on for months and years, such as Breath of the Wild, is too great.

But all of that depends on Game Freak actually pulling it off, and pulling it off well – or at least well enough. Again, it’s going to sell well no matter what, but to capture the consciousness in gaming discourse over the course of the full year, it needs to have the quality that keeps enthusiasts engaging with it for months after it came out, even in a packed year like 2022 is looking to be. Can Game Freak deliver on something like that? It has been years since they were this ambitious – and many would argue that even within the increasingly safe lane they have stuck to for a while, they haven’t been able to deliver all that well for the better part of a decade. Skepticism surrounding a new game that is such a dramatic break from everything that came before in the series is always a given, and healthy – and when the developer is on as shaky ground as Game Freak, more of that skepticism makes total sense.

Ultimately, it comes down to the game itself. Can Game Freak deliver on the promise? Will they? If the answer is yes, then Pokemon Legends Arceus could end up catching the zeitgeist, and hold on to it through the year, lingering in general consciousness, propelling to higher highs than even its own series has known in a very long time – which, again, for a series like Pokemon, is saying something. The onus is now on them to deliver with Legends – if they do, whatever criticisms people have about its technical merits or graphics will look quaint and be long forgotten.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

FIRST MAINLINE POKEMON GAME TO NOT HAVE TWO VERSIONS

Since time immemorial, mainline Pokemon releases have followed the formula of having two variants of the game release simultaneously (sometimes they may be followed by a single, expanded and enhanced third re-released variant). Both versions tend to be largely identical – and you’re not meant to buy both, as much as you buy one and your family or friends buy the other. Because both versions have some Pokemon that are unique to them, and you have to trade across both to be able to complete your Pokedex. Arceus marks a strong departure from that setup – it is getting only one version, just one SKU, making it the first time in 25 years that a new Pokemon game launches as just one variant. This is actually because…

POKEMON LEGENDS IS MOSTLY A SINGLEPLAYER GAME

While typically Pokemon games have some fairly strong and meaty single player campaigns, the long legs and popularity they enjoy over multiple years comes down to their multiplayer component – Pokemon games include support for PvP battling, trading to complete the Pokedex, and occasionally, PvE cooperative play as well. Legends looks to be dropping most of the multiplayer side of the equation and focusing almost entirely on the single player side only. While there will be some sort of trading or connectivity with the other eighth generation Pokemon games, it’s unclear how full featured it will be (and could very well just come down to Pokemon Home connectivity). Fans who play the series for multiplayer may not find Arceus to meet their expectations – on the other hand, those who have been disappointed at the emphasis on the multiplayer side at the expense of the single player campaigns in the last few entries are probably going to find Arcues to their liking.

NOT ONE CONTIGUOUS OPEN WORLD, BUT MULTIPLE OPEN WORLD MAPS AND AREAS

Pokemon Legends‘ open world isn’t going to be one continuous world like in, for example, Breath of the Wild or Horizon – it’s actually a collection of multiple open world maps and areas. You can think of it as being closer to Monster Hunter Rise to get a better sense of how these maps are presented to the player. Hopefully, this can allow Game Freak to retain openness in each area while also keeping the design compact and layered.

CRAFTING

As with so many open world games now, Pokemon Legends introduces crafting to the series – using resources you find out in the wild, you can craft helpful items and consumables for yourself, including Pokeballs to catch Pokemon, Potions to heal, and more. You can craft either at Jubilife Village, or at work benches in the camps and outposts you set up in the wilderness; presumably, crafting resources are going to be easy rewards to incentivize the player to explore the maps.

CHANGES TO THE POKEDEX

Pokemon Legends Arceus is all about catching Pokemon and populating the first ever Pokedex in the ancient Sinnoh region (back then known as the Hisui region). But the Pokedex itself now works a bit differently than before – unlike every other game, where catching a Pokemon once populates its entry in the Pokedex completely, Legends is going for something more along the lines of 2021’s New Pokemon Snap, where you have to observe a Pokemon in the wild, often multiple times and in multiple biomes, taking note of its different behaviour and habitats, to fully flesh out its Pokedex page. This, again, encourages the player to pay more attention to the creatures, and treat them as part of their environment rather than just something you catch once and then forget about.

POKEMON CAN ATTACK TRAINERS NOW

Of course, you have other reasons to pay attention to Pokemon now, because they can and will attack humans and trainers as well. This marks the first time we have seen Pokemon attacking humans as a game mechanic in the series – while the games always traditionally talk about it, we never really see it. But no, in Legends, wild Pokemon can attack you, and if they knock you out, you’re carted all the way back to your base camp, meaning you need to make sure you’re not getting hit. Thankfully the game gives you some nimble dodge moves to avoid incoming attacks.

BATTLES TAKE PLACE IN THE OVERWORLD NOW

Pokemon attacking you isn’t just for show – it’s part of the overhauled battles in the game, which no longer break into their own separate battle screen, but rather, take place in the world seamlessly. This presents some interesting implications for the design of the game – for example, is it possible for your existing ongoing battle to be joined by other wild Pokemon that may be in the vicinity? We don’t know yet, but the series moving away from battles breaking out into their own screen is definitely an exciting prospect.

ALPHA POKEMON

Not all wild Pokemon are equal – Alpha Pokemon are especially powerful and dangerous beasts in the overworld that  are easily identifiable because they’re bigger, more aggressive, and have telltale red eyes. These are the ones you want to steer clear of until you feel equipped enough to take them out – think of them as the Named Monsters in Xenoblade, or the F.O.Es in Etrian Odyssey. Like in those examples, when you do finally take Alpha Pokemon down, the rewards you gain will be greater than just defeating regular Pokemon.

CHANGES TO THE BATTLE SYSTEM

There are even more changes to the battle system than battles now occurring seamlessly in the overworld, and Pokemon being able to attack humans. In fact, Legends marks some of the most dramatic overhauls to battles the series has ever seen. You get two battle stances, Strong and Agile, with Strong emphasizing attack power but making you slower, and Agile, inversely, emphasizing speed over raw strength. You can switch between both at any time, and you will have to, because Legends also changes the actual flow of battles – it’s no longer strictly turn based like older games; instead you can stack up multiple turns for yourself based on stat buffs; similarly, the wild Pokemon you are battling can do this too. Strategically switching up styles to line up multiple turns, and then unleashing devastating blows on wild Pokemon, will hopefully change how battles are approached in these games.

NEW POKEMON

While new Pokemon are traditionally only introduced with a new generation, Game Freak has been blurring that line for the last few years, and introducing entirely new species in the middle of an ongoing generation. Pokemon Legends may not be the official start of the ninth generation, but it similarly does introduce multiple new Pokemon – how many is unknown (and it’s reasonable to not expect a lot of them, since as mentioned, this isn’t a new generation), but we do know of a fair few already, including Hisuan variants of existing Pokemon species such as Voltorb, and entirely new species such as the majestic looking stag Pokemon Wyrdeer.

TRAVERSAL

Traversal looks to be the most intriguing part of Legends, which is interesting since that’s not something the Pokemon series has traditionally emphasized. However, it looks like it will be building upon some concepts originally explored in Sword and Shield, which allowed for multiple immediate seamless forms of traversal for the player, but taking them to their logical extreme. So you can, for example, glide off of heights using a flying Pokemon (yes, this is an open world game in a post-Breath of the Wild world, of course it has gliding), surf across lakes and rivers on the back of your giant water Pokemon, and ride across the landscape on the back of your Wyrdeer (the aforementioned stag Pokemon). And these are only the confirmed ones we know of – will we, for example, be able to use a grass Pokemon’s vines to scale cliffs? Can we go from one form of traversal seamlessly into another? These questions remain to be answered, but the possibilities are exciting.

MISSION STRUCTURE

So how is Pokemon Legends structured? We don’t have the traditional gyms/Pokemon League setup that has become basically synonymous with the series, so we’re going into some uncharted territory here. We don’t actually fully know how Legends will work, but we have some idea – we know that we have to explore each new biome (one of those aforementioned maps), and that we accept missions to scope out the area, observe the wildlife, and catch Pokemon. These missions can take the form of something like Monster Hunter or New Pokemon Snap, and presumably once you are done with a critical number of missions for one area, you unlock a new one that you can then move to. But anything beyond this – including how the game integrates a narrative into this setup – has been kept under wraps.

CHARACTER CUSTOMIZATION

Character customization is one of the most beloved features in the series, and thankfully, it’s one fan favorite idea that Game Freak hasn’t tried to take away, with pretty much every new Pokemon release now including it in some form or the other. This will be true for Legends as well, with character customization already confirmed (and we’ve seen some pretty interesting looking outfits for both the male and female characters in the trailers already).

BONUSES FOR LINKING TO OTHER GAMES

Much like other Switch Pokemon games, Legends gives players bonuses if you have save data for other Pokemon titles on the system. If the game detects save data for Let’s Go, you get a Pikachu mask (corresponding to the version you played) for your character; if it detects Sword/Shield save data, you get two bonuses – the ability to battle and catch the legendary Pokemon Shaymin (after the credits have rolled), and a really great looking Kimono set based on Shaymin for your character to wear (which you get much earlier, about an hour into the game).

STARTER POKEMON

Much like in other mainline Pokemon games, you get a rare starter in Legends as well – and the selection this time is interesting. The Fire type Cyndaquil (from the Johto region), the grass type Rowlet (from the Alola region), and the water type Oshawott (from the Unova region); fans have theorized these Pokemon were selected for how they tie into Feudal Japanese imagery (which Hisui represents), which is definitely cool – we’ll see whether that aesthetic is something the game incorporates more when it launches in January 2022.