My thoughts on Pokémon Legends: Arceus [Review].
Pokémon is known for being one of the franchises that make the most money in the world, competing with companies like Disney or Marvel, it's not surprising because the Pokémon franchise is a mass phenomenon that even today keeps constant. Pokémon is also known for being a franchise that has been stagnant for a long time, leading to rather mediocre games today, without any substance at all. This is how Pokémon Legends Arceus was born from Game Freak with the promise of rehabilitating the franchise and giving it a fresh air.
Pokémon Legends Arceus is based on the idea that you are a explorer in a different world where you can catch Pokémon with certain restrictions. I have to clarify this because people gets confused, this is not an open world video game, there are areas that are considerably big, but it doesn't reach the levels of an open world game, the structure of the world itself is too linear : You have a village which works as a link to other regions that you can explore, to visit these regions, you have to return to the village, then you can select whenever you want to go, think of it as a Monster Hunter game.
Pokémon Legends Arceus is a fun video game, one would think the idea of catching Pokémon would become repetitive and boring in a short term, since you are farming and nothing more, even so the video game manages to keep a good game feeling, making the captures fun and addictive, you have a Pokédex too, so you can record what you are capturing, in addition, there are many tasks within the Pokédex so you can raise your level research. There is a crafting system which is pretty basic but it´s fine enough.
Capturing Pokémon is the central core of the game, but there are battles through the whole game too, said battles take place on the field without any interruption, something weird to see in the franchise. Despite still being turn-based combat, it adds a mechanic to keep a fresh air, I'm talking about the Agile Style and Strong Style, which as its name suggests, you can reduce or increase the hit your Pokémon does to the opponent, it's nothing too great but still works.
I said the game is fun, still I have my issues. The world is quite boring to explore, in fact, the game doesn't reward you for exploring, quite the opposite, when you try to, the game just stops you and forces you to do what the game wants, it' s true as you progress in the game a range of possibilities will open up for you, even so the exploration doesn't get any better. Through the game you'll be able to complete secondary missions, which are very boring to do. To be honest, in most video games the secondary missions are a filler to extend the duration of the video game, the issue is, in that kind of game usually there are some secondary mission that are worth to do, that doesn't happen here... absolutely all of the quests in this game are nonsense, the rewards are not valuable enough to complete the missions.
Another issue I have is the visual section, or rather, its performance. I don't want to be misunderstood, because I genuinely think the art design looks beautiful, in several occasions I was amazed at how cute the world looked, however, it's impossible to deny that the performance could be better, especially if we talk about GameFreak, a company which has plenty of money. To give an example, the game has excessive popping, the textures are unpolished and there are many frame drops, there are times when said frame drops can be quite annoying. It's a shame really, because the beautiful art design is overshadowed by the poor performance of the video game. Despite all of this, I don't think the game looks as bad as many detractors want it to look, yes, the game has a lot of room for improvement, but it's not unplayable either.
The story is weird, on the one hand, you can see that there is an effort to make the plot interesting, not to be more of the same, which I really appreciate. In the game you can see things like religious disputes between clans, themes about death and how to overcome loss, fear of the unknown and so on. Each tribe you visit is well marked and you can understand their backstory, it's not super deep either, but you do notice there is an effort to tell a good story, the problem is that the execution is bad, there are even plot twists, but they lack a base, which is difficult to take them seriously.
In conclusion, I consider Pokémon Legends Arceus is a good try to give the franchise a fresh air, the game fulfills what it promises, however, it is impossible to turn a blind eye to things such as the performance of the gamel, as well as how boring it feels to explore the world itself. It'a good video game, but it has many negative things that overlap the experience. In my humblest opinion, I feel that Pokémon Legends Arceus is a half-baked video game, it lacked a few more years of development. At least Pokémon has already taken the first step to try to be different.
All the pictures included here are captures taken by my Nintendo Switch while playing the game by myself.