Pokémon Legends: Arceus - Pok. Mon Legends: Before You Buy
Hey, we're back with another episode of Before You Buy That Show. As usual, we give you some straight-up gameplay and our first impressions of the latest games released. It's me, Jake, and today we're talking about Pokemon Legends Arceus. It's finally here. It's been a long time coming. This is what some Pokemon fans have been looking for a long time.
You know, a big shake up and a fully 3D adventure in a massive open-ended world where you capture and battle Pokémon in a more fully realized way. While game freaks have dipped their toes into this with some previous games, Arceus kind of marks a completely new step for the Pokémon franchise. It's definitely not perfect, but we've all been playing it here on the team and have absolutely been having a ton of fun.
The world has its issues, and there's a bit of an emphasis on grinding from the early hours where it starts a bit slow to the end game stuff, but the open world concept, the exploration, and the way catching and battling and progression with the pokedex works, yeah the graphics aren't great, but the game is really cool and fun and fresh and I think it's what the series needed.
And just so you know, before we go any further, this footage was captured through a switch running docked on a TV, and we're keeping it as spoiler-free as possible, but that's tricky, because I know some Pokemon fans are very sensitive to seeing certain gameplay elements, so if you're big on spoilers, keep that in mind.
We still want to show different points of the game and various levels of progress. So, getting into it, the basic step is that you create your character and you end up in the heart region. You don't know how or why, but you quickly meet the local people and get drafted into their sort of Pokémon discovery expedition.
As was revealed in that original official reveal trailer, this is a much earlier point in the span of Pokemon lore in history. Technology is scarce, life is simpler, and people frankly don't know too much about Pokémon, so there's a bit of fun that comes with all that. It's different your goals involve helping the people settling on this land to learn to live with and understand Pokemon, so it's up to you to battle and catch and build out a big pokedex.
Now the general flow has you going along on story missions, but there's a lot of stuff to mess around with. In the meantime, villagers and locals will give you side quests, called "requests," that usually net you some rewards or just help the town or community. In some ways, but what you're mostly doing is getting out there and doing the Pokemon thing.
You're catching them, leveling them up, getting stronger, and building out the pokedex. You don't catch a Pokemon once and that's it, you catch them multiple times to complete a certain pokedex objective. You're always progressing. For a new rank in your group, which serves kind of like how badges from gym leaders in previous games helped you work with stronger Pokemon and stuff like that.
the perks now along with that, there's also a bunch of crafting and recipes to learn and work on as well, and your Pokémon are also rewarded with xp and stuff just from battling but also catching. This all goes hand in hand with the open world stuff. You venture around and find Pokemon in real time just hanging out in the environment, and it's more involved than a sword and shield.
You know, they're floating in the water, they're walking around, they're flying around, they're hiding, and you can hide in the grass and creep up on them and try to catch them. Or battle them, and battles go down in real time right there in the environment. And it doesn't get old, and for me, yes, this is the Pokémon you'd always kind of been hoping to see.
It feels much more real and cool, just like how you've conjured it up in your head, probably since you were a kid. Sometimes the Pokémon wandering around in the environment seem kind of dumb and kind of dopey. With a pokemon to like battle, battles themselves are pretty straightforward. The newest thing is the ability to change how much power you put into an attack, so if your Pokemon has battled enough and mastered a certain move, you will have the ability to add more power into an attack or less than normal power into an attack.
This is for various reasons. You know, you can put more behind your attack to hopefully cause more damage, but you'll likely lose a turn. Put less power into an attack. Maybe you're trying to catch a Pokemon or something like that and also have the ability to get a second attack in a second turn.
I'm kind of explaining it terribly simply for time's sake, but it can shake things up a bit in a good way that isn't overly complicated but lets you strategize a bit more, and your ability to see who moves next makes it all just feel a bit more RPG-ish. Also, there's an added level of freedom in learning new moves and swapping them in and out.
It makes things a bit more consistent. It's pretty interesting to just go to town and learn some new moves, swap them in, and jump back out into the field. It's nice, but battles can be pretty challenging too. I've noticed the last few Pokemon games have stepped up the challenge a bit here and there, and in Arceus we found it pretty noticeable.
It's not the hardest game to cruise through, but you will still be challenged from time to time, especially because you can find bigger, more powerful red-eyed Pokemon out in the environment that can, frankly, really kick your ass, but it's very satisfying. They feel almost like little bosses. The Pokémon in your party are also just used for various things, like throwing them at a tree to get them to shake some berries out, or smashing a rock for crafting resources, or to fly, or mount them.
It really does a good job of selling that whole, like, Pokemon and humans working together on an adventure type thing. It's really cool, and it makes getting around and exploring, crafting, and grinding a bit more fun. Does it get a little repetitive here and there with the catching and battling constantly?
Yeah, but it always feels like you're stumbling across a new Pokemon and you're getting that little adrenaline rush or you're always learning something else and you're always progressing. You're always building that deck. You're always gaining, so I liked it unfortunately. The world itself is lifeless.
If you have seen any gameplay of it before, you probably already know what I was going to say. It's really big and it's fun to venture through and stumble upon the Pokemon like I said, but other than some shifts and biomes, it's just so weird and dead. Part of the reason comes from the fact that it doesn't look all that great, especially docked to a TV.
