Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Year: 2022
Rating: E
Time Played: 3,312 minutes / 55.20 hours
For decades, the Pokémon franchise has continued to use the same turn-based formula for their games. But with the rise of more open-world games, it was time for a change in how the monster training/battling gameplay could (for lack of a better term) evolve. Enter Pokémon Legends: Arceus, a pseudo-open-world adventure that plays to the strengths of a 3D space that had been long overdue. Unfortunately, as was also the case for Pokémon Violet/Scarlet that came shortly afterward, the truly limited graphical considerations thwarted the effectiveness of the game.
Growing up with the Pokémon franchise, and especially the early years of the anime, there was this conceptual idea that battles were a much more fluid and challenging experience than the one-at-a-time battles that mostly boiled down to knowing the most type-effective move to use. Legends: Arceus still has turn-based combat, but with the twist being that you can sacrifice speed for power and vice versa. It’s also a nice touch that battles aren’t in a separate battle screen and take place right there in the world you’re exploring—not to mention the addition of “harder” alpha Pokémon to battle and capture. And while it takes some effort to complete the Pokédex in this game, it’s worth it for being able to obtain a legitimate Arceus for your collection.
Normally, if a game concept is good enough, the graphics shouldn’t matter. The puzzling thing is that other games that came out earlier on this same hardware (like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey) look way better than the almost PS1-level graphics we got here. It’s almost distracting how low-quality the textures are—most of which become obvious during cut scenes and exploring the vast empty areas from above. Still, I have to give them points for at least trying something new, even if they needed more time to make it look good.
A great new tangential concept for Pokémon but with awful graphics, I give Pokémon Legends: Arceus 3.5 stars out of 5.
1/2
