Poké­mon Leg­ends Arceus

MISHAWAKA – Poké­mon Leg­ends Arceus has fi­nally re­leased to ve­he­mently var­ied re­views.

            There comes a time in every pop­u­lar game’s life where the de­vel­op­ers de­cide to go the route of the mas­sive-open-world, make-your-own-fun, RPG-es­que re­boot. At least, that is the case in most Nin­tendo se­ries: Breath of the Wild, Su­per Mario Odyssey, Kirby the For­got­ten Land, and now, Poké­mon Leg­ends Arceus. This Poké­mon game sees your char­ac­ter dropped out of a rift in the sky that leads from the mod­ern world into an an­cient re­gion of the Poké­mon world called Hisui. Af­ter a brief pow-wow with the Poké-God it­self, you are given a smart­phone that can gen­er­ously be de­scribed as os­ten­ta­tious and the sec­ond-ever in­tro­duc­tion to Poké­mon that was nei­ther de­riv­a­tive nor ob­so­lete. 

            It is roughly five min­utes from face­plant­ing in some com­fort­able-look­ing sand to learn­ing to use the old­est Poké-balls to date, and that is some­thing that I ap­pre­ci­ate, as some games, like Di­a­mond and Pearl, force the player through se­quences nearly twice as long and zero times as fun be­fore you are given your fa­mous red-and-white cap­sules. The cap­ture sys­tem also un­der­went a ma­jor glow-up in Leg­ends Arceus: in­stead of be­ing trapped into a one-on-one with an­other Poké­mon, beat­ing them within an inch of con­scious­ness, and par­a­lyz­ing or poi­son­ing them, your char­ac­ter and the Poké­mon are freely roam­ing around the en­vi­ron­ment, al­low­ing the player to be­gin to hurl their Poké-balls be­fore the Poké­mon even sees them. 

The catch rates in this game now have an ex­tra fac­tor: ag­gres­sive Poké­mon are more likely to break out and ini­ti­ate com­bat, which pro­gresses sim­i­larly to pre­vi­ous ti­tles, save for re­tain­ing com­plete con­trol over your trainer through­out the fight. The trainer can run, dive, throw Poké-balls, and or­der the Poké­mon around si­mul­ta­ne­ously, al­low­ing for some re­fresh­ing free­dom in bat­tle. The point to catch­ing all these Poké­mon, aside from get­ting some ridicu­lously cute crea­tures to join your crack squad of an­i­mal as­sas­sins, is help­ing to as­sem­ble the Pokédex, which has yet to be cre­ated at this time. The game stresses just how lit­tle peo­ple know about Poké­mon, mak­ing every­thing seem like the fresh and ex­cit­ing ad­ven­tures of a Poké-pi­o­neer. 

The aim of the game as a whole sprouts from this. As you travel across the re­gion, plagued by storms, you’ll col­lect more Poké­mon, as­sem­bling the com­po­nents of a Pokédex, and meet­ing with other clans. These clans will point you to­wards No­ble Poké­mon, which are of spe­cial note due to their strength and size. Many of the clans also treat the No­ble Poké­mon like the name im­plies: the first No­ble Poké­mon you meet has a shaman/​war­den watch­ing over them, treat­ing it with the sort of rev­er­ence char­ac­ter­is­tic of an­cient re­li­gions. The No­bles are es­sen­tially the boss fights of this game, and you will have to al­ter­nate be­tween us­ing your Poké­mon to fight them and throw­ing up your own dukes. Af­ter all, what kind of trainer would you be if you did not jump into dan­ger along­side your part­ners?

This game is fairly new, hence why this is not as de­fin­i­tive as some of my other re­views, but I am look­ing to play a great deal of it. The con­cept of fight­ing Poké­mon as a trainer, or along­side your Poké­mon is ridicu­lously in­ter­est­ing, and I have no doubt it will make for some en­ter­tain­ing sce­nar­ios.