Review – Pokémon Legends: Z-A

Finally, the opportunity has arrived to return to the Kalos region with , a title that since its revelation promised to revolutionize the franchise with real-time battles and the return of the beloved Mega Evolutions. Developed by and published by Nintendo, the game takes place five years after the events of X and Y, completely set in Lumiose City. The proposal is bold and represents a significant step for the series, but perhaps this title demonstrates what an incomplete evolution would be and what prevents the game from reaching its true potential.​

Evolutions in every way

The biggest advance in Legends: ZA is the definitive abandonment of the turn system, just as we saw in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Battles now take place in real time, almost like JRPGs have adopted and migrated to a more adventure style, with trainers and Pokémon moving freely around the field. Each movement has a specific cooldown time, eliminating the traditional PP system, and attacks have different ranges and areas of effect. This new addition to the franchise’s basic mechanics requires consideration not only of type advantages, still based on Pokémon types, but also of the precise timing to switch Pokémon or execute moves.​

It’s a radical change that works surprisingly well and takes up a fun space, both learning and gameplay. Combat gains layers of strategic depth, especially when compared to the franchise’s recent predecessors, having you use A, B, X, and Y button commands when locked onto a target with ZL, adding a tactical dimension that was missing from Legends: Arceus. The ability to roll to dodge attacks while commanding your Pokémon also creates tense moments, especially in battles against Rogue Mega-Evolved Pokémon, that is, Mega-Evolved and out-of-control creatures.​

However, from this excellent addition to the game we encounter the game’s first issue with the camera system becoming an issue. This is because you need to keep ZL pressed throughout combat to lock onto the target is uncomfortable, however the right analog stick also works for switching targets at the same time as the camera, requiring you to release ZL to move your view. There were several times when this system failed to detect the correct Pokémon, especially when changing targets, in addition to making it difficult to move the camera during frantic combat.

After many years of absence, Mega Evolutions return as a central element of Pokémon Legends: ZA. The system has been redesigned so that when your Pokémon deals damage, the opponent drops Mega Energy orbs, which the trainer must manually collect to fill the Mega Meter. Once full, pressing the right analog stick activates the transformation and, unlike X and Y, which basically served as a guarantee of victory, now Mega Evolutions are necessary to be able to face the most difficult challenges.​

The game introduces twenty-six new Mega Evolutions, distributed among the different generations present in Lumiose. Just like Mega Charizard X and Y, for example, Mega Meganium gains the secondary type as Fairy and increases its Special Attack, exemplifying how these transformations elevate historically underrated Pokémon. The Mega Gauge slowly decreases, but can be replenished during battle, allowing for multiple Mega Evolutions in a single encounter.​

Mega-Evolved Rogue Pokémon function as boss encounters, reminiscent of Hisui’s Noble Pokémon in Arceus. They attack not only your Pokémon but also the protagonist, requiring constant dodging while managing your team. These are long, intense battles that represent some of the game’s most memorable moments, even when the lack of a Pokémon of the right type with the ability to Mega Evolve could make this experience somewhat frustrating.​

A city that doesn’t breathe

The decision to set Pokémon Legends: ZA entirely in a single city was a courageous feat, however the execution of this space ended up being quite disappointing. Lumiose City, inspired by Paris and structured like a wheel with spokes, should be a vibrant protagonist just like its inspiration. However, the city ended up being presented as a gray, boring and repetitive maze, with flat textures and lifeless buildings.​

Unlike open-world games where you have the freedom to enter and visit, most of the buildings in Lumiose City are rectangular boxes with images of windows pasted in as image textures, pasted directly from Photoshop. After many hours of gameplay, due to the high replay factor that Game Freak always adds to its titles, you will get sick of looking at the same window textures. Compared to every other Switch game before it, even Arceus, Pokémon Legends: ZA feels like an entire generation behind.​​

The Wild Zones, habitats specially developed for Pokémon to thrive, are extremely small and full of random creatures, in a non-creative or uncreative way. In this edition, for the first time, we have the loss of the natural habitat and exploration proposal that other games have always brought, even Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Finding a Hippopotas in artificial sandboxes within the city just doesn’t have the same impact as finding it in the mud in Pokémon Scarlet or Violet.​

The city also offers cafes, restaurants and small establishments, all with unique identities, and in these smaller spaces we realize the potential of the game. NPCs eat, employees work, there is life and charm, different from life outdoors. After battling your way through a well-detailed restaurant, you return to the same drab streets with the same copy-and-pasted buildings. For a city that should represent Paris, the lack of architectural diversity ends up being very strange.​

The best story since Black & White

Pokémon Legends: ZA manages to explore interesting issues in its story, bringing elements from Pokémon X and Y that we didn’t expect. With AZ alongside his Eternal Floette, who returns on another mission and which we will not comment on so as not to spoil the surprises, we meet other characters who are part of a villainous core and who demonstrate their real intentions throughout the game. Answers about Mega Evolutions and Lumiose, directly connecting to the events of X and Y, but requiring them as a prerequisite, place Pokémon Legends: ZA on the same narrative level as Black and White.​

The phenomenon of Mega-Evolved Rogue Pokémon threatening the city serves as the main narrative line to justify the MZ team, made up of the protagonist and characters such as Urbain or Taunie, his main ally during his stay in Lumiose, Naveen and Lida, all with development that surprises and pleases. Each character with their own personal mission, you will see engaging moments that make us care about the cast of this edition.

Every narrative construction also justifies ZA Royale, a nighttime competition in which coaches battle in closed areas around the city. As you climb the ranks from Z to A by defeating trainers, earning Ticket Points, and facing skilled opponents in promotional matches, this tournament becomes intertwined with the story. The only bad choice, in my opinion, is to see the story making you skip most rankings for pure convenience, and the Promotion Matches end up becoming races against time, turning the initial premise into a superficial narrative façade.​

Due to these factors, even around an interesting story, Pokémon Legends: ZA ends up developing a repetitive progression. Resources constantly appear without clear explanation, eliminating the sense of exploration and management that Scarlet, Violet, and even Arceus offered. The game blocks content behind very simple repetitive tasks, which were one of Arceus’ biggest flaws, and returns here without lessons learned to demonstrate that the franchise insists on not evolving, especially when launched close to , which demonstrated how to expand within its formula.

Beauty that prevents greatness

There’s a genuine effort in the art direction, with Pokémon finally regaining its vibrant colors that have been missing since the transition to 3D, with human and Pokémon designs moving with added grace and realism, featuring some of the best animation the series has ever produced. Many scenes seem to be cuts from the anime, even though Brazilians still can’t enjoy all of this with dubbing or subtitles in PT-BR.​

Compensating for the lack of life and diversity in Lumiose City, the soundtrack for Pokémon Legends: ZA represents one of the game’s highlights, with compositions that incorporated keyboard and accordion, instruments that instantly evoke the French atmosphere of Kalos. The Lumiose City theme receives multiple progressive versions, as well as nostalgic remixes of the X and Y locations.

However, all of this cannot cover up one of the biggest disappointments due to the absence of Legendaries. While Pokémon Legends: Arceus offered several of these creatures to find and explore, building the first Pokédex as a record of legends, in Pokémon Legends: ZA we have the feeling of playing a long and repetitive story without knowing the real role of Pokémon in Lumiose. Even though the story about Zygarde appears, taking a long time to be told, it is far from being a great legend when compared to other games.​

In the end, Pokémon Legends: ZA is a game of brutal contrasts, with a real-time combat system representing a genuine and enjoyable innovation for the franchise. Mega Evolutions returned triumphantly, transformed from a gimmick into an essential mechanic, and the narrative with good character development shows unusual ambition by the franchise’s recent standards. All designed with a soundtrack that perfectly captures the essence of Kalos reimagined.

However, these achievements constantly collide with perplexing choices where Game Freak has demonstrated it can innovate. The problem isn’t a lack of talent or vision, but rather the complacency that comes from knowing that Pokémon will sell millions regardless of quality. Pokémon Legends: ZA is fun when it works, but frustrating knowing how much better it could be with more development time.