SWITCH 2 REVIEW | Pokémon Legends: Z-A

I can’t quite put my finger on the reason, but Pokémon Legends: Z-A was one of the Pokémon releases I was least looking forward to whenever I saw a new trailer or new info on the game being shared. All screenshots looked like they were taken in the same biome, and the more active battle approach was not something I thought I’d enjoy in a Pokémon game, least of all in a year where Expedition 33 has proven that turn-based combat can still be a lot of fun.

But I’ve played every single mainline Pokémon release before this and also didn’t want to break my streak, so I went in with an open mind and was pleasantly surprised with what I found. Let’s dive into the review and see what it did well to tide me over, and where it left room for improvement.

Things I liked!

• Active Combat | Let’s address the best improvement: you no longer have 100% turn-based combat, and this is a game-changer. You still pick which of the 4 moves your Pokémon performs, but positioning, targeting, and timing now play an even greater role. And I absolutely loved how this makes moves that I never liked before at least somewhat tempting. You see, dealing damage is still the end goal, but in between your big-hitting moves, while those attacks have a cooldown, you can use some moves that lower their defence or accuracy, or increase your own power. At least at the start of the game, whereas I’d NEVER use them in the other games. Now, near the end of the game, I personally went back to my dumb old strategy of 4 big offensive moves on every single one of my mons, but I finally saw the purpose for trying them after 25+ years, and that’s huge. Especially moves that completely prevent an attack from hitting are suddenly crucial, especially in online PvP.

• The main story is decent | I don’t play Pokémon games for the story, and usually don’t remember much from them other than “Team Rocket are the bad guys” or “Team Aqua wants to flood the world.” I often found myself skipping through the main story moments because I couldn’t bring myself to care. That’s something that still lingered in the overarching plot here, but I cared about some of the characters like AZ, who’s the 3000-year-old hotel owner driving most of the plot, and especially the moment-to-moment chatter with my team members. The writing was also full of puns and returning jabs between characters, and it was more enjoyable than any other Pokémon game I’ve played so far.

• Mega-evolutions are back! | I love the Mega-evolution mechanic. It gives us new designs for our favourite Pokémon without permanently making them overpowered, and there are a bunch of new designs I really enjoy (not you, toilet-seat Mega-Feraligatr). You also face them in special battles where it’s vital that you as the player, also dodge these giant incoming attacks. Some of them were quite challenging, especially if you didn’t have the right type in your team to counter them, and once or twice I was really happy with the option to retry the battle against these mega-evolved monsters while keeping my progress on their health bar from the previous fight. That’s good accessibility design.

• Good flow | The last part of the name, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, comes from the rank you climb through as a Pokémon trainer. You start all the way at rank Z, and it’s your goal to become an A-ranked player and master mega-evolution so you can handle the big boss encounter at the end. During the day, you’ll focus on catching new Pokémon in gated-off regions, where you can face them in combat or just throw pokéballs at them and hope for the best. It’s fast and addictive to try and complete your Pokédex yet again, just like it was in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. During the night, Battle Zones will appear where you face off against other trainers and try to gather enough points to earn the right to face off against another player looking to climb to the next rank. I especially liked how those zones has extra challenges like “start with a surprise attack” or “use 10 fire attacks” to add some extra strategy and motivation.

• Lots of side content | You’ll get various quests running around Lumiose City, and they’ve designed some pretty nice side-events for you to engage with. I’ll name a few that stood out to me.
  • There is a person making cosmetics who gets inspired by seeing Mega Evolutions in battle. It’s a reason for you to search for such Pokémon and make sure you get their Mega Evolution stones.
  • There was a person training her Scyther to become a hairdresser; you have to use attacks like Leaf Blade or Psycho Cut on a doll, and then Scyther learns how to give Furfrou a new haircut. The final quest requires you to make a team of Furfrou and face other trainers across the world with just that Pokémon.
  • There are various other trainers similar to this who’ll limit you to using either one single and specific Pokémon against theirs, or to make a team entirely from a specific type and facing off. It’s a pretty big ask to train an entire team for just a single fight, but damn if I wasn’t tempted for most of them, and I’m still curious to see what the rewards are

• Constant Rewards | Throughout all of this, you’re constantly getting rewarded or seeing progress. Your Pokémon get experience, you pick up items across the world, you can destroy purple crystals, which you can use to purchase Mega Evolution Stones, you’ll do minor platforming sections to find coloured screws that can be used to buy passive boosts, and all of the above is tracked by a central system that also rewards you with new TMs. It’s the closest Pokémon has ever felt to the new line of Assassin’s Creed RPGs, where there’s always something just a few feet away that makes it hard to put the game down. (some people see this as a negative; for me it’s videogame comfort food).

Mixed & disliked!

• The entire game takes place in one city | This is by far the biggest issue of the game. It’s no exaggeration when I say that you’ll spend all of your time walking through the same streets, staring at the same concrete buildings with very, very little visual variation in between. It’s not a great sign when I get excited to go into the sewers just because it’s a change of scenery. I got so tired of the location about 20 hours, in and that was only the halfway point. Thank Arceus it has fast travel and you can skip a lot of walking.

• Required platforming and it’s bad | There are a lot of rooftops in the game, and you can access them via ladders or elevators, and later on in the game you’ll have to jump between them with poor controls. What makes matters even worse is that at least two times in the game I had to get to a specific mega-evolved Pokémon on the roof and had no clue how to get there. There is a map with a waypoint, but sometimes there is only a very specific way to reach those places, and it’s not at all obvious. It’s not quite as bad as it was in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, but it got close a few times.

• No voice acting | It’s 2025, and perhaps the richest video game franchise in the world can’t afford to have voice acting. This is starting to become a real dealbreaker for me in RPGs with as many lines as there are here. Especially when you see them try to emote with special characters, fonts, and exaggerated animations. But it becomes REALLY ridiculous when you hear effects like claps, rustling, and footsteps, to no background music and the very obvious omission of any voiced lines. I just can’t forgive them for this anymore.

• Visual design | Pokémon Legends: Z-A is not a pretty game. Not even on the Nintendo Switch 2. I did play it more in docked mode, and that’s the first time I’ve ever done so for a Pokémon game, as it vastly improves how the game looks and plays, but it’s still not a great-looking game. There are some efforts, like the character designs and the interior of the hotel, but 90% of the game is running through bland streets or parks that don’t feel “designed” in a way that is interesting. Pokémon models look fine, and we’ve grown to love them, but they are not very high in detail if you start looking closely. There are also hundreds of different moves, and I respect how difficult it is to animate those properly, but I’ve seen Dragon Breaths come from Charizard’s forehead and lots of other attack animations that just don’t make any sense. Again, it’s because this is coming from such a resource-rich developer and publisher that I expect more. If this was made on an indie game budget, I wouldn’t be as critical of this.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 40 hours
How long to beat the story? 25-30 hours
How long to achieve 100% completion | 60-100 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Any other mainline Pokémon release.

CONCLUSION

Score: 86/100

Pokémon Legends: Z-A surprised me with its more active battle system and a story that actually had me interested for once. But most of all, it really nailed the moment-to-moment progress and made the flow of the game as addictive as it is. For a few months, this has been my video game comfort food: a game to relax with and easy to pick up and play if I had a few spare minutes to kill. If only it had a better-looking world and finally invested in voice acting, this could have been the best Pokémon release since the original ones. I’m excited to dive into the DLC next, so that’s a great sign!