Pokemon legends arceus is a spin off prequel taking place before the events of diamond and pearl as its set in the hisui region long before you see it today with a more feudal Japanese setting. As such the game had a pretty interesting focus on what was life like with pokemon in the past and more into the world of pokemon than ever before.
Pokemon legends arceus is a spin off prequel taking place before the events of diamond and pearl as its set in the hisui region long before you see it today with a more feudal Japanese setting. As such the game had a pretty interesting focus on what was life like with pokemon in the past and more into the world of pokemon than ever before.
Your character suddenly wakes up one day in the Hsui region and is taken in by the galaxy team and your job is to work with them as well as the feuding diamond and pearl clans to solve the time rift issue that’s going on as well as document and keep track of many pokemon for the pokedex.
For the most part characters like Arzeru and Adaman were pretty fun and enjoyable to interact with others like Melli they were particularly not only the worst written characters in a pokemon game since they did not really do much of anything, but honestly one of the most unlikable characters in video game history rivaling Jasper Blatt Jr In No More Heroes since both were really obnoxious and annoying any time they got screen time.
Theres a dialogue choice feature but the story plays the same no matter what so it really shouldn’t have been there really.
Lots of pokemon from diamond and pearl return but sadly not all of them do and its only 200 and something pokemon which is still quite less compared to what the other games had in the past.
Now for the pokedex you have to complete tasks which is either capturing,defeating or any miscelaous task given to you to fill up and the more points you get the higher you move up in the galaxy team hierarchy to acess more areas and also even be able to control more powerful pokemon as well too with recipies for more powerful pokeballs and also you can craft other items like medicine as well too.
The world is open ended and much linear than say, Breath Of The Wild yet still fun to explore and discover stuff and you’re also able to fast travel and set up camp with side quests and the world design especially in cobalt and the mountains were really well made and very fun to explore around.
The combat takes a more fast paced action rpg approach and its game freak’s first attempt at it.
Its turn based where you can choose which pokemon and like in typical pokemon games you can learn and evolve pokemon and capture them and also learn different moves and use their special abilties to gain a easy win.
You can sneak attack by throwing pokeballs at enemies to capture them outside of combat or to stun them so you can get the advantage.
The boss fights in the game were especially one of the best highlights and not spoiling anything but one particular boss fight late in the game was just one of the best I've seen in the pokemon game.
You can also choose agile or strong variations of moves which either slows down your character or speeds up with either strong or weak attacks which can be useful in certain situations.
The graphics,art and animation for most of the time were pretty good but I noticed a good amount of the animation for the pokemon were from the 3ds games which did seem pretty lazy on gamefreaks part.
The music was pretty good as well too.
There's also a day and night system which was pretty interesting and certain pokemon specially the ghost type ones come out during the night period and sometimes you can also find alpha pokemon which is roided up versions of pokemon that are challenging to fight but well worth beating for rewards.
Theres also the abilty to ride pokemon where you can use certain pokemon to get you around places quicker and acess areas you may not have able to do so before as well which was pretty useful.
The game has its filler and padding the tutorials especially felt like this too which only made the game longer, than it really should be.
Also get ready for a steep difficulty curve as time goes by which is why the pokedex serves as a buffer to help you prepare for it.
Keep in mind as well you can take damage while exploring and if you faint you can recover but at the cost of half your items falling.
You can also find missing satchels in exchange for special items in the game as well too.
Despite how large the world was, there really wasn’t much to do than just wander around and fight and take part in side quests no minigames to take part in which would have really helped made the game more livelier.
Big missed chances for the story as well too one such example would be the fortune sisters and siding with them to go on persona 5 like scenarios would have been fun and pokemon has expiramented with it before in one of the mangas pokemon phantom thief 7 I believe its called and it would have made for a fun adventure. Not to mention they appear not that often in the story which is bit of a shame though.
Some pokemon you can only get if you have a save file on brilliant diamond or shining pearl like darkrai oddly.
Overall it’s a good step in the right direction for innovation in the pokemon series.
It gets 4 out of 5 stars.