Pokemon Legends Z-A

Genre: Open-World Monster-Collecting RPG

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless / Online), Online Content Sharing

The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

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Review:

I think it’s fair to say that the Pokemon series has started to become known for games that are increasingly a very “mixed bag”. In recent years, one of the brighter spots in this franchise was 2022’s Pokemon Legends Arceus, which streamlined the series’ gameplay and had players roaming around open areas in a manner that many fans of the series saw as a breath of fresh air. However, at the same time, this wasn’t a full Open-World game, and even though the breadth of these open-ended areas was a wonderful new type of area for the Pokemon franchise to explore, it lacked depth, without all that much to do in these areas other than battle and catch wild Pokemon, and gather up items strewn about the environment.

What’s more, Pokemon Legends Arceus was clearly struggling to perform well on Nintendo Switch, a problem that became even worse in the next major Pokemon release, Pokemon Scarlet and Pokemon Violet, which finally brought the Pokemon franchise fully into an Open World, but also suffered from severe graphical and performance issues. Given that Pokemon is the most valuable media franchise in the world, that these games continue to look and perform so poorly is a major embarrassment.

When Nintendo announced its follow-up to Pokemon Legends Arceus, Pokemon Legends Z-A, I think most players were cautiously optimistic. On the one hand, Pokemon Legends Arceus was generally fondly-remembered, but at the same time, people were starting to lose faith in the Pokemon franchise’s ability to produce games worthy of its stature in the videogame medium.

So, with all this uncertainty, how did Pokemon Legends Z-A end up faring? Well… it’s a mixed bag.

Pokemon Legends Z-A takes place entirely within Pokemon X and Pokemon Y‘s Lumiose City, a city loosely based on Paris, befitting those games’ French-inspired Kalos region. This area has been reimagined as a full Open World… the city, that is. The entire game takes place within the city. Unlike every other mainline Pokemon game, you won’t be visiting a wealth of varied areas and seeing new and exciting locales. You’ll just be spending the entire time walking the Paris-inspired city streets of Lumiose. And just to be clear, it’s not like the city has taken on some new, incredibly-impressive level of detail, either – most of this city looks very samey, and you could easily get lost without a map due to how boring everything looks.

This isn’t to say that Pokemon Legends Z-A looks bad, per se. Quite the contrary, this game’s creators seem to have heard fans’ complaints, and have worked to make this the most polished Pokemon RPG that we’ve seen in years. Even on Nintendo Switch, the framerates are mostly stable (with brief drops in places, but I must emphasize they’re brief), there’s noticeable pop-in of both characters and bits of scenery, there’s pretty heavy aliasing in some places, and there are a few blurry textures in places, but these are largely minor complaints and overall the game looks technically as good as any Pokemon game ever made. It’s just also stylistically and visually boring.

When looking at sound, the human characters are once again mute and the Pokemon characters once again use digitized computer-generated noises dating all the way back to the original Game Boy releases in some places. Thankfully, the music here doesn’t have that same low level of quality. In particular, this game’s orchestral cover of the Lumiose City Day Theme is really classy, and there are some other great orchestral and synthesized themes, like Z-A Royale Battle Zone, Detective Emma, Canari of DYN4MO, Jacinthe SBC Battle Music, Zygarde 10% Battle Music and Zygarde 100% Battle Music, and Lysandre Battle Music, to name a few.

When it comes to the gameplay, the major change here is that all battling now happens in real-time as a sort of hybrid of action-based and menu-based RPGs. Players can theoretically keep in mind movement and cover as they command their Pokemon to fight, and attacks are now cooldown-based rather than turn-based. In theory, this can make battles more dynamic and give players the capacity to out-dodge enemy attacks.

However, in practice getting your Pokemon to move to a specific spot is tricky at best, and while being able to use any of a Pokemon’s attacks without delay opens up new strategic possibilities, mostly it ends up in a mess of attacks as you try to get out as many attacks as you can before the opponent attacks. That said, it’s not all bad news – this new real-time combat system does make it a lot smoother to grind through battles as you can rapid-fire your way through them, or even opt to fight multiple enemies at once.

Most of this battling takes place in one of two locations – first, there’s the designated “Wild Areas” carved out of the city specifically for wild Pokemon to roam freely, an absurd idea that seems like a way for this game to try to have its cake and eat it too now that there are no “routes” to travel between areas or instanced areas like other Pokemon RPGs have. Similarly, other sections of the city are cordoned off at night for battles against other trainers to increase your “Z-A rank”, which is one of the ways this game handles progression. Overall, this is all fine, but it does feel shoehorned into the forced concept of keeping everything contained to one city.

On the bright side, this game fixes Pokemon Legends Arceus’ problem of having nothing to do in its wide-open areas other than fight and catch Pokemon. Now there are multiple types of side-quests to undertake, odd platforming challenges of a sort, rooftops to explore, and other activities to keep you busy. Where Pokemon Legends Arceus felt like it gave you multiple large areas to run around in without much to do, here you feel like you have one repetitive large area, but there’s a lot to do in it.

So… yeah, like I said, a mixed bag. Overall, I still like Pokemon Legends Z-A – the Pokemon formula still works well here, and while some of the new elements don’t work so well, others do, and on balance I would argue this is a solid new entry in the franchise. Only… yeesh, it’s difficult to get enthusiastic about this game when so much of it just feels samey. And after so many years of player complaints about how lacking these games have been, it’s a bit of a let-down to play the latest game only to find it’s still struggling to offer the spectacle that you’d hope for from such a massive franchise.

tl;dr – Pokemon Legends Z-A is a family-friendly Open-World RPG set within Pokemon X and Y’s Lumiose City, with battles now in real-time, plenty of things to do, but all in an area that looks very samey and unimpressive throughout. This is still a highly-enjoyable game, and it’s the most polished a Pokemon RPG has been in years, but it’s hard not to be disappointed to see this series still struggle to bring us something as grandiose as the Pokemon franchise seems like it should be capable of.

Grade: B+

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The Nintendo Switch 2 Difference

Pokemon Legends Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition

Genre: Open-World Monster-Collecting RPG

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local Wireless / Online), Online Content Sharing

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Review:

When Pokemon Legends Z-A was one of the first games announced to be receiving a Nintendo Switch 2 Edition release, fans breathed a sigh of relief. “At least this Pokemon game shouldn’t run like garbage”, many seemed to say. Yeah, that’s just how low our expectations of the Pokemon franchise have fallen.

Well, as it happens, the Nintendo Switch release of the game runs… just fine. Oh, it has its limitations, as detailed above, but as I said, this is the most polished Pokemon RPG in years. So that leads to the question, for the added $10 cost to upgrade to the Nintendo Switch 2 Edition of the game, how good does Pokemon Legends Z-A look on Nintendo Switch 2?

Well, I’ll start by saying, don’t expect this game to look stylistically different – the environments still look samey, and not as absurdly-detailed as many other modern Open-World games. Lumiose City in this game still looks like, well, a city in a Pokemon game. you also still have plenty of pop-in here too. In short, don’t expect this to be an entirely different game.

That said, the improvement here is significant. The increased resolution and framerates, and improved textures, all add up to an experience that’s so much smoother and cleaner than the Nintendo Switch version of the game. This is immediately noticeable upon playing this game, and I would definitely argue that the improvements here are worth the $10 upgrade.

There are also improvements to loading times as well. On Nintendo Switch, it took 18 seconds to start the game and another 15 seconds to load a save. Here, those times are cut down to 6 seconds and 5 seconds.

While I have my issues with Pokemon Legends Z-A and its graphical presentation, and those issues largely aren’t fixed by this upgrade, that doesn’t change that this is still an outstanding improvement to a game that was already pretty polished. While we’re still quite a ways away from a Pokemon game that looks impressive on modern hardware, I think Pokemon Legends Z-A – Nintendo Switch 2 Edition does at the very least help to distance the Pokemon franchise from looking outright embarrassing compared to its contemporaries. And if you have the Nintendo Switch version of the game, you will absolutely want this upgrade.

tl;dr – Pokemon Legends Z-A is a family-friendly Open-World RPG set within Pokemon X and Y’s Lumiose City, with battles now in real-time, plenty of things to do, but all in an area that looks very samey and unimpressive throughout. This is still a highly-enjoyable game, and it’s the most polished a Pokemon RPG has been in years (especially on Nintendo Switch 2), but it’s hard not to be disappointed to see this series still struggle to bring us something as grandiose as the Pokemon franchise seems like it should be capable of.

Grade: B+

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2025 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Best Action-RPG, Best RPG

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