The Legend of Arceus
On the latest Pokémon game, the one I've been waiting for my entire life, it turns out
I have been intrigued with the idea of Pokémon Legends: Arceus for almost a year now. The news dropped in the same Direct as the announcement of the Gen IV remakes, Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl. Those remakes were long-desired, maybe the most wanted remakes in the entire series. Generation IV is a flashpoint for a lot of Pokémon fans anyway. I thought it would be the final one, but obviously, I’m glad to be wrong, given how ambitious a project Pokémon Black and White was, then the move to 3D and finally the move from handheld to primary console. The thing about the Pokémon franchise is that it has always been evolving like the creatures contained within each game. Most changes have been small, like tweaks in the arch-moves in battle. Some have been huge, like the introduction of gender and breeding in Generation II, Natures in Gen III, and the jump to 3D in Gen VI.
Pokémon Legends: Arceus promised to be something unique, differing even from Pokémon GO! on mobile or the successor games Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee. There were a lot of buzzwords like “open world,” a lot of lofty comparisons made by people based on screenshots and 30 second shots of footage like “Breath of the Wild,” and given that the Gen IV remakes felt almost like an afterthought from announcement. I played Shining Pearl, and I loved it because basically, there hasn’t been a Pokémon game I haven’t liked. However, compared to prior remakes, especially the magnum opus Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, it felt threadbare. They tried making up for the lack of real new features in the game by giving away mythical Pokémon Manaphy, Jirachi, and Mew, but for as much of a nostalgia trip as it was, it was basically good for being able to play with otherwise unplayable Pokémon from Sword and Shield. As fate would have it, Game Freak and The Pokémon Company had a reason to leave the Gen IV remakes as straightforward as they were.
Of course, I copped it on release day. One of the perks of being a grown-ass man with gainful employment is that I don’t have to wait for special occasions to get all Pokémon’d up anymore. The anticipation before picking it up was at fever pitch. The last time I felt like this before a game was way back in the late ‘90s, when I eagerly Xed out days on my calendar before the release of The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time. After three days of playing and progress of about halfway (from my estimation) through the game, that anticipation was richly rewarded.
It's no secret I hold The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild in high estimation as the best game I’ve ever played. The comparisons between the two work, but not on a one-to-one level. If anything, I’d say those comparisons aren’t fair to Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Breath of the Wild is expansive, but there are long stretches of terrain where there is nothing going on but movement and foraging. There are plenty of Bokoblin camps, and the late game Lynels are not hard to find, but Hyrule truly is a land to be explored for more than just battle. The Hisui of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is teeming with Pokémon life, so much so that it gets a little hairy at times if you’re trying to make it from point A to point B and you don’t really want to be bothered. The real kicker isn’t even the interaction between your Pokémon and wild ones. It’s between the wild Pokémon and you.
In past games, you wouldn’t be allowed to venture anywhere that had wild Pokémon without your own partner because it would be “too dangerous.” Although you’re not exposed to wild creatures without your own by your side in this game, you see why the professors in nearly every game would tell you that you needed one. You can interact with wild Pokémon without throwing out your own partner to mixed results. Some creatures, like the mild-mannered and somewhat dull Bidoof, will approach you without threat. Others, like the skittish Starly, will flee as soon as they notice you. However, most other Pokémon will see you and start to attack. For the first time ever, wild Pokémon will attack you. It’s an entirely new wrinkle that raises tension and forces the player to adopt new strategy for avoiding wild Pokémon that doesn’t just involve spraying a Max Repel and scooting back to the nearest town.
The way that you approach battling, at least with wild Pokémon, is radically different as well, mainly because it puts control directly in your hands as the player. In Generations I through VII, Pokémon battles were mostly done as random events in that you couldn’t see what battle was coming. In Sword and Shield, the invisible element was taken away, but even though you could see and presumably hunt for the kinds of Pokémon you wanted to battle or catch, the mechanics of how things went down were generally the same. Basically, you would touch the sprite on the open world map, and it would go right into the battle sequence. In this game, the dynamics change. You have to initiate the battle by throwing your Poke Ball. If you run into a Pokémon, either they’ll attack you or they’ll run away. Having to initiate the battle by throwing the ball at them adds a layer of strategy, especially since you can surprise attack by throwing the ball at their back to battle them. Even the mode of catching a Pokémon feels refreshed from both the mainline RPG and the Pokémon GO!-style. Much like in the latter paradigm, you don’t have to battle a Pokémon to catch it, but there’s more than just throwing the ball at one and hoping it sticks. There are methods that vary between species that will make things easier to do without having to engage in battle.
The end result is this game that feels like a Pokémon game at heart but one that also feels like the most monumental shift in how the game is played ever in the series. In the past, new Pokémon were the draw for each new game, and this game has both new creatures and new regional variants of old ones. The hook for old school players like myself was the opportunity to catch and raise new Pokémon like Kleavor or Basculegion and different variants of existing creatures like Psychic/Flying Braviary or Normal/Ghost Zoroark. What we got was this masterful spin on the existing Pokémon paradigm that borrowed elements not only from Breath of the Wild but also from the Final Fantasy series and Minecraft. There may not be much new under the sun, but no one ever said you can’t tinker with combining different elements of the existing stuff that we have to craft a new experience. It took a few months, but now we all see why the Gen IV remakes were as straightforward as they were, even down to the graphical style being a combination of the Link’s Awakening remake during the overworld and Sword and Shield during battles.
Of course, the graphics of this game are where you start hearing the complaints. Even before release, all the reviews bemoaned how “bad” the game looked, like it was going to be this blocky, clunky slop-fest. From the first time I was dropped into the world of Hisui, my fight reflex towards all these criticisms started growing. Honestly, I think the game is gorgeous. The region of Hisui is a bold expansion of the Sinnoh region from Generation IV, and the landscapes are a stunning backdrop for the lush and wild world of Pokémon contained within. Still, the main complaints are that the terrains look bad, which to me is a baffling critique to make. I don’t want to say that “it’s a kids’ game, of course you’re not going to see Call of Duty-style realism” because that’s not really an excuse. Kids shouldn’t have to play games with shitty graphics either.
Nintendo is a console and game manufacturer that operates in a space away from hardcore gamers, but hardcore gamers tend to be the ones writing self-serious reviews of things for most publications. To this group, games journalism is serious business, but what does that mean? There are set criteria, and Nintendo rarely meets them because they have an aesthetic that works for people, like me, who happily eat it up. Nine times out of ten, that aesthetic doesn’t mesh with the view of the greater games media at large, but that also doesn’t account for why they still give great reviews for games like Breath of the Wild or Super Mario Odyssey without nicking for graphical precision. What is “wrong” with Pokémon Legends: Arceus? One could say that I don’t have the high standards of a “true” gamer, but while that’s true, it’s also not true in this case.
If you notice the designs of the new Pokémon or regional variants, they are designed very much in the style of the art of Japan from that period in time where this game is set. The terrains evoke the same sort of feeling. Even if they’re not hyper-realistic, they feel like they were taken out of a painting from that era in Japan. I don’t know if that will fly for everyone, but personally, I don’t give a shit if Jimmy Game Informer can’t play the game because ground looks too matted for his liking. For me, the graphics aren’t a negative or something that I just ignore. They evoke a positive response, and it’s for the exact reason that it’s such an aesthetic fit with the rest of the themes of the game.
Pokémon as a series feels “plug-and-play” at times. Even with the changes from generation to generation in the mainline series, every game felt like it built on the prior game, but not too much. Pokémon Legends: Arceus felt like the first real big renovation in the series ever. I don’t know if it’ll change the core DNA of what the mainline RPGs will be, but if it did, I wouldn’t be too broken up about it. I said at the beginning I waited almost a year for this game, but it’s not true. I think I’ve been waiting for it my entire life. It’s that good.
Not enough games have a distinct style and too many go for realism and they age worse.
I haven't played a mainline Pokemon game since the GBA, but we just got a switch so I might get this one.