The wait is finally over! Pokémon Legends Z-A has been officially released! Comment below are share stories from you adventure so far!
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Boots up game
Starts running across the roofs of a fictional alternate Paris in crisis with a young French woman.
Not again…
https://preview.redd.it/wvwz20aydgvf1.jpeg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4624ca611ded8266c937d9542a4780de4e4a2fb4
2025 is the year of French people running on roofs and fighting colourful monsters
TAUNIE: for those who come after...
Got a chuckle out of me, good one!
Atleast there is no gommage in pokemon. Probobly.
What do you think happens to the Pokémon who’s spawns are reset?
Huge tip, there's a market near the fancy sushi place in the north, it's the only place I was able to find Adamant and Modest mints for purchase. Timid and Jolly ones are pretty common to find in stalls around the city
I'm returning to Pokemon since gen 3, is there no need to reset to get the proper nature for the starter? Just use the mints?
Also when capturing pokemon for my team, no need to capture a bunch until I get the correct nature?
Correct, there is no need. However, mints cost 20k each which is pretty steep, so it can be worth catching a few weedles to get the right nature if you want it ASAP from the beginning.
Let’s go, the “Power of Science is Amazing” guy is back
I don't know if it's a mistake or it's coded that way but in the Italian version AZ Floette is referred to be male. Not just once, all the time.
Floette line is 100% female...
So "Eternal Flower Floette" was just a gender difference this whole time... !
In French, masculine pronoun "il" is always used when referring to a Pokémon because Pokémon is a masculine word. For example, you would say "Charlotte, mon Raphlesia femelle", which means "Charlotte, my female Vileplume" and "mon" is the masculine possessive.
man the tutorial is a slog, i just wanna explore
How long did it end up taking to get through the tutorial? Is it as bad as SuMo?
I’m 3 hours in, and it’s a massive slog so far. On par or worse than SuMo.
It’s been non-stop talking and mandatory fights. You can "explore" tiny areas and if you so much as look in the wrong direction you’re hit with a "Hey, I’m waiting for you this way!"
Taunie/Urbain are particularly infuriating. They stop you to talk literally every 5 steps.
There’s two entire dialogues with multiple lines each to teach you that there’s no fall damage. It’s kind of ridiculous.
Edit: Happy to report that I made this comment when I was unknowingly pretty much at the very end of the tutorial. Taunie/Urbain take their boot off your neck about 3-4 hours in, and the game becomes much more enjoyable
Half the story content of SM felt like a tutorial lol
Wait is it officially out or is this a time zone thing?
Timezone thing
Just making sure lol. Waiting to see extended gameplay before I buy. Though it does look good for Pokemon
Herovoltsy has an hour long gameplay video out, so I'm going to check that out
I love herovoltsy! I'm waiting to get my copy and play it first though
Time zone thing. Spoilers have already been posted in the sub, so we’re starting this a bit early.
I mean if it’s out in another timezone then it’s still an official release?
Yeah I thought it came out at midnight on the east coast
1:00am here, unfortunately, because we in the Atlantic time zone always get lumped in with the Eastern time zone for some reason.
Nintendo treats all of NA as one time zone for some reason.
Us in Pacific time get it at 9 PM.
You'll see places that obviously need gliding to get to. But you won't unlock the glider until after you beat the local celebrity in a promotion match, around when your pokemon should be lvl 40. You'll get the ability as part of the main quest.
Also Eevee is located in a plaza with grass and water and a bunch of mega crystals north of Wild Zone 1 but it is crazy hard to catch
Two of the mint vendors, the ones that sell +Def and +SpDef nature ones, are by "Magenta Sector 6"
Eevee has a few spawns, I've encountered a pair on top of one of the buildings.
I've really struggled to find any blue flabebes, need it for a quest but they just don't spawn anywhere as far as I can tell.
Just found a blue one, it's on a rooftop between Vert Sector 6 and Coulant Waterway. Now I just need an orange!
Thank you so much! I can't remember where I caught an orange one but the summary for one I have says Bleu Sector 8
At the Museum. Something has caught my eye (pretty cool Museum if You’ve played Legends Arceus.
However theres a little lore implication that i found, when you look at the commanders armour. It mentions that it came from the Galar region. It’s also the same type of suit that Wilstrom wears. He mentions his suits could be some of the suits that his ancestors gave to the Galarians. But what’s the most intriguing part, is that it’s then mentioned its hard to verify such claims due to the relations of Kalos and Galar at the time.
This is really interesting, as this is direct confirmation that Kalos and Galar had strained relations at one point in time, which is also one of the first time in the series that regions have had confirmed strained relations with each other. Could this be indirect confirmation that the Kalos war involved Galar? I mean, everyone kind of guessed it due to their world world counterparts. But a little fun food for thought.
It also confirms that our character and train guy returned back to the present at some point
I haven't see any mention of this, so I assume it's not a thing but HUGE missed opportunity to not have even one new Furfrou Trim. It's trivial, but a new special Trim or even a handful would have been fun
Aw man, definitely a missed opportunity. I always thought it was such a fun mechanic
Right? Plus, you're in the literal city where you got them originally...
If this can be answered without spoiling: has anyone found a good method for shiny hunting in ZA like Mass Outbreaks in Legends Arceus? or does the game have no way to shiny hunt with boosted odds?
I didn't really look, but it seems like it could be hard. There might be some catch chaining thing behind the scenes, but wild areas don't seem to respawn pokemon that quickly. But there are pokemon outside the areas that are just hanging around, like fletchling and weedle. I was walking around and heard an agressive and loud shiny sound, and turns out a full odds shiny weedle was just chilling on a tree around the city.
There is an unlockable shiny charm, if it helps
From my testing, shiny hunting is bad in this game. Probably one of the worst games for farming them as you can't breed but they also don't spawn that quickly in the overworld.
Does it make a sound and sparkle at least m
Yes! They are a bit more subtle than I'd like but they do have a sound and sparkle
Hey that's a win in my book! How's the game feel compared to ZA? I was kind of skeptical after some of the gameplay I saw
thank you. that is extremely disappointing to hear especially since for now it will be the only way to hunt for some pokemon like Patrat, the monkeys and Furfrou.
If you walk in and out of buildings the Pokemon reset until it's shiny, it will not despawn once it is a shiny.
Man, if there’s one thing Pokemon consistently does perfectly, it’s slowing the game to an agonizing crawl because apparently this is your first Pokemon game ever and you have to have your hand held step by molasses covered step for two hours before it’ll let you have any actual freedom
The downside of enjoying games made for 6 year olds.
I mean I played red/blue gold/silver when I was a kid and those games don't hold your hand at all and I had no problems beating them or navigating. Kids aren't going to want their hands held for over 2 hours.
For all the talk of kids not having attention spans anymore, holding their hands for the first 2 hours of gameplay seems counterintuitive to actually getting them into pokemon games
I just replayed Let’s Go Eevee and really appreciated how little there was in the way of hand holding compared to the more recent gens
Alpha pokemon can be shiny if anyone was curious, found a shiny alpha Krokorok while I was hunting for a Gible.
Every time I start a modern Pokémon game, I’m like Ron Swanson in a Home Depot. I know more than you tutorial people.
Mmmm always a magical feeling to start a new Pokemon adventure
Been playing since Gen 1 with some hiatuses in between. Now I'm 36 and this will be the first time I'm playing on day 1 of release
Same here! Started with red tapered off after crystal came back for S/V. Very stoked to be day 1ing it with everyone else
Yeah there’s something so exciting about playing a pokemon game for the first time - what will the new mons be like? What will the region/towns be like? What kind of gym leaders? Even though they’re not the most complicated of games, they give you the excitement butterflies in droves.
Can you obtain all 3 starters?
Yes
Can you get all three starters mega evolutions also? (This is my first pokemon game with mega evolutions)
I love how our trainer has 0 personal agency. Goes on holiday, gets dragged around by this dude for three days and isn't allowed to do what they want. 2-3 hour long tutorial where I get led around by the nose by some overly friendly dude and forced to be his friend. I wish we were "less amazing" cause god damn, three jobs for three different institutions in three days?! I loved the forced Rival fight where I am MADE to fight him to learn his backstory and he's like "YOU WANNA KNOW MY BACKSTORY THAT BADLY?!" and I went "No, I didn't get a chance to reject this fight. I don't actually care about you at all."
It really is bringing back memories of X&Y. Where they try to force a friend group onto my trainer and I just end up hating the lot of them. lol
I like to think our character was having a stressful time and came for a nice break, drink some coffee. Visit some art galleries and then they get dragged away to save the city and they just don't want to upset anyone by saying no,so inside they are screaming every time they get a new job.
Interestingly if you start with a male character you get dragged around by a woman
WAIT WHAT i thought taunie was a girl?! i have a girl character! does taunie change gender based on player character?
Yeah, sadly. Looks like Girls get Urbain, a boy, and Boys get Taunie, a girl as their guide. Woulda preferred a choice. lol
At least we got a free stay at a hotel and free croissant curries lol
Yeah but I dunno about you but my character ain’t sleeping like ever!
Tl;dr: Overall, it's OK. Not as good as Arceus.
Wall of text:
There's good stuff: A pretty decent amount of customization, definitely a lot more than any of the previous games. The new Megas are cool and I like the mechanic so its fun to see it come back.
No Mega Talonflame tho 😞 (I think).
But it's just...not as good as Arceus imo. Better than ScVi in a lot of ways tho. I saw an article saying some ex-Nintendo marketing guy said that the things they've added will be "divisive" because fans are "resistant to change". To an extent I agree but honestly? It's mostly bullshit.
It's less about what they added and more about, as usual, what they took away. They've removed or toned down lots of features from Arceus and the things they DID add are ultimately not utilized very well.
Battles no longer used the Style mechanic, which is fine. But the cooldown system is poorly implemented. Battles end up slowing to a bit of a crawl as you just run around waiting for moves to recharge. I'm not sure how this could be improved but I'm sure something could be done because as it stands, they get boring. Which is probably why very few trainers have anything close to a full team. There are some cool ideas though, like moves like whirpool or stealth rock becoming hazards that you have to position your pokemon away from, etc. Also it's satisfying using AoE like Dazzling Gleam and knocking out like 4 wild pokemon at once. Doesn't happen super often but cool when it does.
The boss battles are much less interesting despite the Mega Mechanic. The Pokeball aiming has been dumbed down. The game hypes up rooftop traversal but it's slow and clunky, and the lack of ride Pokemon doesn't help.
As for what was added, the Battle zones are a fun concept: an area with roaming trainers that can sneak up on you or vice versa...but its sort of half assed. Nothing that interesting ever really occurs in these zones and most trainers are extremely easy with only 1-2 Pokemon.
The Day/Night cycle is just plain obnoxious. Every single time there is a transition, the game interrupts you and forces you to watch an unskippable cutscene. Afterwards, anything you were doing (for example, battling a wild Pokemon) will be completely undone. The Pokemon will be completely despawned and encounters immediately reset, erasing any progress. (I think the exception is trainer battles and Bosses as they freeze the clock) Its pointless when they could have just had a smooth day/night cycle like almost every other pkmn game for the past few decades.
The story I have not finished but so far it is nothing special and not as interesting as Arceus. I'm around 75% done though, so maybe it will turn around.
Arceus was such a good foundation for an even better sequel. its a shame to see them take so many steps back, which is unfortunately a common issue with Pokemon games. I'd give it a C+ so far. But it gave me Mega Meganium so actually 100/10
My thoughts exactly so far.
They day night reset is completely fucking whack, I've had so many alpha pokemon taken from me because I found them very late at night.
It basically means stop exploring when the times about the change, because chances are you aren't catching anything you find.
Imagine that with a shiny.
The way to fix battles imo is to fully copy FF7 remakes battle system. Let us control the Pokemon in battle, not the trainer and give us a basic attack where the actual Pokemon attacks are basically the magic attacks. This seems like a halfway to that already anyways.
More games need rebirths combat system
I can't believe they actually don't have a properly functional day/night cycle in this game. Wtf...
It's because of the Battle Zones that spawn at night. They 100000% could have managed to open and close the battle zones without this archaic system that totally interrupts gameplay but this is Game Freak. I guess I shouldn't be shocked.
The company that can't be bothered to make anything more than a couple of generic cutscene animations, so there are fades to black all the time to hide such wild action like someone sitting down behind a desk. But it's honestly baffling that they fumbled such a basic mechanic, one that even worked in their previous games. One step forward, three steps back, thirty steps behind competition.
I think that the trainer running around the battle scene is the dumbest thing ever. Why does the trainer need to put in cardio for his Pokémon to move lol. Either give full control of Pokémon movement to the player or make it random movement.
"The Day/Night cycle is just plain obnoxious. Every single time there is a transition, the game interrupts you and forces you to watch an unskippable cutscene."
Nice to see that Castlevania II: Simon's Quest's legacy continues on 37 years later
“Boss battles are much less interesting”
They cannot be worse then how awful they were in Arceus at least
Idk i felt like at least I was doing something in the Arceus boss battles. Here I'm just waiting and running in circles. Idk it might just be me.
IMO that’s how the accuse boss battles were too. I haven’t done the legends z-a battles so idk. But the arceus ones was nuts throwing stuff while moving around in circles with nearly 0 effort
I want to use a Chandelure and Gallade on my team so how early can you get litwick and ralts? Also how early can you get their evolution stones
You get a free ralts and gardevoirite as a mystery gift. It gender is randomized I believe so have to get lucky.
Litwick is somewhat late, definitely past the halfway point of the game. Ralts you can find just in the city but it's usually hidden in these inner courtyards that are tricky to get to. Evolution stones are plentiful if you just pick up items off the ground.
Yeah I get the distinct impression this is a "wait for a sale/used copy" game. Not total garbage, but not worth $60 either. And honestly I'd say the same about Legends Arceus.
The problem is that Nintendo games don't go on sale.
Damn, you're being very nice to the game, IMO it's a giant pile of crap. The only good thing is the battle/catch system, which is very nice. The other aspects of the game are complete shit, disappointing, not worth 100 dollars (base game + DLC), and not worthy to be called a main or spinoff game from the biggest franchise in the world. It's shameful how little Game Freak can achieve.
What were they thinking by not getting Voice Acting for their heavy-text RPG game? By doing a very small map with only flat JPEGs on every building? By not taking their time to make said buildings, in this very small map, fully explorable? By not letting you use ride/bike/other transport methods? By having a very EMPTY map, with no assets/biomes variety?
I can keep going, but I'm already tired, so yeah, 3/10 for this pile of crap.
Your impression is correct. I bought it and while some bits are fun I can't shake the "I can't believe I paid full price for this" feeling lol
Where’s Tyrunt?
You can buy fossils pretty early on, you'll get a sidequest at the lab to revive em.
He's a fossil, you'll be given a side quest at some point
How soon can you get Skrelp?
I actually only found it very late, like level 45's. But maybe you can get into the sewers earlier than the story lets you.
Relatively
earlylate. Check the sewers.Edit: I messed up here. I thought about another fight. My bad!
What about venipede?
pretty early, first few hours
Quite late, it's possible you can get to the sewers early, but all the ones I've found and caught have been late 30s.
For me it was well over 20hrs in, but I've been doing everything, so you can probably push to do all the main line quests faster
Litwick, Skrelp, and Noibat are all in the sewers when you're like level 35-45
It's fun but the wild areas are so lackluster. They have maybe 15 pokemon at a time with each wild area only having about 6 species. It's not good. It feels forced and strange.
However the combat is really fun and the alphas are really intense lol!! That part of the game feels really fresh and exciting. I find myself using items instead of hording them like pervious iterations.
Also If you throw balls and miss, a person outside of the poke center will give all your balls back. I will say there is jank. The animation for jumping off a building is outright weird. Also running up hills or raised ledges is painful.
Story is nothing special. Kind of bland and bad lol.
My main small problem with them is that they feel cramped, you constantly under attack by like 5 Pokemon at the same time
this. they want you to sneak around, but its almost impossible. i go to sneak up or fight one pokemon and then more spawn in and spot me and suddenly theres 2 alphas and 5+ normal pokemon running at me
Honestly, after 2 hours and still being in the tutorial, I'm not impressed.
I understand there's probably a lot more to see afterwards but absolutely nothing about this is grabbing me. I was sold on Arceus within the first 30 minutes but this is just meh. I'll keep playing in the hopes that it gets better but after 3 years of no new game, I was really hoping for something that would come out the door swinging.
The battle system is fine, but nothing about it screams that we needed an entire game dedicated to that specifically.
Edit: One last thing - the no voice acting has got to change going forward. There's literally no excuse. You've got us in a tutorial for 2 hours+ with non stop character dialogue and I'm having to stare at subtitles the entire time instead of what's actually going on because there's no VAing. It's honestly bad.
There's far more than just the voice acting that's way beyond excuses
I agree. I only mentioned VAing because of the long ass tutorial in which the character mouths move but not a word comes out, so we have to sit reading subtitles, which raises the question why they even animated the mouths in the first place.
Back on the ps2, Persona 4 had a 3-4 hour tutorial that was almost completely voice acted. No excuse for pokemon not to have voice acting at this point.
I mean if we go off those recent leaks,this game only had a $12 million budget.That's completely insane for how well these games sell. They could definitely start factoring in Voice Acting
Its literally the biggest franchise on the planet and they put 12m into their main game. Its an actual joke. Being a Pokemon fan sucks so much ass nowadays.
I haven’t felt the need to finish a pokemon game since Pokemon Sun. I’ve burnt out on every single one since then.
Im scared if they ever do voice acting. The anime voice acting in English is horrendous these days. It sounds like a baby show style of writing.
How does it run on Switch 1? I'm on vacation and coming home soon, really wanna get the game but I feel like it might explode my switch if I get it. If it's basically the same as scarlet and violet then good enough.
https://youtu.be/H34ZUA-DD3M
TL;DW: Surprisingly the performance is pretty good. Stable 30fps for 99% of the time. Might dip to 28-29 for a fraction of a second during battles. Overall, nothing as bad as SV.
People say it looks rough in docked mode, but in handheld mode it should look fine
Shouldn't it be the other way around, that is too funny
Can anyone confirm if the Pokemon having varying visible sizes in this game like they did in Arceus?
Yes but they are a lot rarer. I've caught an XS Pidgey for example
I'm having fun with the game but I do feel some buyer's remorse cuz it doesn't feel like it's worth 60-70 USD
Same, while there are some fun enjoyable aspects, every time I get close to a building and see they couldn't even bother to model some blocks for balconies and everything is just a flat texture I get the "I can't believe I paid full price for this" feeling
Just finished story. PL:ZA is a 3DS game in HD trench-coat.
I got back into Pokemon with XY, caught them all, went back and played what I missed, and have kept up since.
I think this game broke me somewhere on the inside. My general thoughts below, before getting to the crux of my point.
I'll parrot some of the headlines I've seen. The hand-holding is excruciating, not being able to go after the shiny things within my sight really bugged me. I JUST WANTED TO SEE WHAT WAS BEHIND THE HOTEL; IT WAS NOTHING BY THE WAY!
The lack of ANY real nostalgia pandering really irked me. Where's Clemont? Where's Bonnie? Give us some, nay ANY cameos other than the plot relevant ones. I would have loved to see Diantha again. Maybe I'm biased as I loved the XYZ season of the anime, so I already have an image of all the gym leaders coming together to stop a threat (riffing off of missed opportunities from Black and White's season).
I care about NONE of these people. Maybe the stupid dojo guy got a chuckle out of me, but I hated everything that had to do with the streamer. I was down in concept for the mafia plot, but I just didn't care about what was being asked of me. But most of all: They. Just. Kept. Talking. I miss the days when something could be conveyed in a few lines at most (Understanding this was also storage space related), but I didn't really like any of the rivals except the dancing one since its the sister of XY's dancing friend, I think? Like why, WHY are there no appearances of our old rivals like was done in Black2White2? And movement was so slow, where is our
bikeroller-skates?And the scaffolding everywhere? WHY?! I have stick drift on my controller, and I fell off soooo many times. Plus my stick would drop input, so I kept having to press run every time I turned right. And the rewards were always crap except for the Colorful Screws, but you can't even get half of them 'till you get a movement upgrade, so I just ignored them figuring said upgrade would appear eventually. But even still, once you are down to like a handful left, you're stuck wandering the streets and rooftops like an idiot. It's asinine that there is no unlockable radar or something, considering we used to have Item Finders to do this shit for us.
The game was harder than I was expecting, and I felt like soo many of the missions/areas were ordered/scaled wrong. Why fast track me to rise the ranks, just to slow the plot down with all of these additional fights that could have been for W-F. Why level up my lv 20 team slowly when I can catch a lv 30 something Pidgot that you let me freely use? Why are there two 1v1 matches within the Pikachu family, but unlocked in the opposite order? Then in any of the serious fights I'm spamming the bag button like it's a bonus action in D&D. If you don't use it when you can, you regret it when you need it.
Locking the starter's megastone to online is scummy. WHY DID YOU REMOVE THE LINKING CABLE?!? I'm not above using other methods to obtain trade or version exclusive Pokemon, so this doesn't really change much for me, but I could do what I wanted in-game before, and now I can't.
But my main point, this whole game's presentation reeks of 2013, if not earlier. Clunky animations. Static cameras with recycled start/stops. The same empty-handed giving of nothing. I especially laughed when someone put their rotom-phone on speaker, and they just pressed the air. The fade to black every time the animator is asked to do something that isn't already in our back-catalogue of reused and upcycled assets. And the one area they did heavily pander to XY fans was the environment that was clearly intended for a top-down viewing angle, and not the game I was actively playing. Lumiouse was remodeled and expanded for this reimagining, and no one second guessed it, but you couldn't have expanded and reimagined the callback locations without being to beholden to the original.
But it's the smaller things. "Use this item," "It Won't have any effect." THEN WHY GIVE ME THE OPTION?!?! THIS HAS BEEN A THING SINCE RED AND GREEN! And the sort filters in the Pokedex are next to useless. WHY, WHO, ANYONE CARES ABOUT WEIGHT OR HEIGHT. I want National Dex numbers, I want uncaught and missing enteries, I want types. Same for the PC's search filter; I want to find specific sizes, shinies, Pokemon that can evolve.
It just frustrates me. I understand the growth of the gaming industry has ballooned development cycles, but this just feels like it was done because it was mandated to be done. Not because someone has any particular love for XY. Some upper excec was going through their unused idea pile, saw the ideas that would have went into Z before they decided to make an elephant game instead, then passed it off to a new team to will into creation.
But then I get into the catching, filling out checklists, battling, and I have fun for like 15 minutes before I'm interrupted by the plot.
Spoilers spoilers for the end of the game
And the thing happens and stuff is bad, and... I just could not care. There was no excitement. No suspense. No nothing other than the slight worry that I might not have enough revives. Then the final boss fight happens. And it is just so lame. Sure, the visual and metaphorical stage might be set, but the mechanical ridiculous of the three phases being drawn out with me team of level 70 somethings just left me emotionless. And then it's ultra mega megazord time with 3 attack options, but you only get to press two before the final attack? Like, bruh.
And now it's post game clean-up, and I'll likely find a map and go through the motions like the whipped pokefan I am looking for those Colorful Screws. Even after the tutorial sections ended and I was given free reign, the game was beads of fun strung along by elongated moments of annoyance and frustration.
Shoutout to Bois the Heracross they give you at the beginning. Insane they let you trade a Pikachu for a pokemon with a 500 BST. That guy nuked everything in my playthrough.
You weren't just Bois, but you were da boi.
Where do you get the kalos starters ?
Each of them is found via a side quest. All of them have the starter sitting around, so you should see it right away as you're walking around. I got Chespin super early, like level 10, Froakie a little later, and Fennekin pretty deep in, but I think I just missed it until later. Froakie needs an unlockable ability later, so you gotta wait a bit for him I think
I got Froakie at rank Y so you don't need any unlockable abilities. Tip: press Y to roll off platforms
Promised my son I’d buy this for him for his 8th bday. Gonna trade some old things in tomorrow at GameStop to make it happen for him!
You’re a good dad :) hope he has a blast playing it!
Thanks so much! We got the Scarlet/Violet double pack when that came out, and Arceus beforehand. He's been into Pokemon since Let's Go Pikachu, when he was like 2. It doesn't help that I grew up with Pokemon as well haha. We're both excited!
The areas where you can catch pokemon are so tiny ...
Personally I think this is one of the best Pokémon games. Legends Arceus was fun but it got boring trying to max out the Pokédex. This game I spent 60 hours before finishing the story and I could have spent more time doing all the side quests before it. Story was awesome. I give this game 8.5/10 just because some things need improvements like the JPEG walls or the rotoglide. I had fun and I think once all the dlc is released I will play X&Y and then start this right afterwards for a replay.
Have fun and take your time everyone!
lol take your time. some of these folks are already halfway through the story. I'm gonna pick it up tonight, might finish the main story by Christmas.
Tips
Colorful Screws : can be traded in at Racine Construction, it is located in the south east side of the city on the outer ring. A Construction Worker wearing a tank will be stationed outside of the building
Mega Shards : can be redeemed at Quasartico Inc. They are located in the north west side of the city, this only becomes available after a point in the main story mission, you'll know when it becomes available
Dusk Stone : 1 is located Slightly northwest of Wild Zone 9, you must do some of the parkour on the scaffolding.
Mega Shards are capped at 999, if you reach cap before being able to redeem them, all you gain is a bit of xp for the pokemon destroying them. Keep an eye on how many you have and regularly redeem them.
If you have questions, I'd be more than happy to try my best to answer them if I can
Can anyone tell me if there’s any mythicals in the game?
Ok. I’m trying to reserve judgement until Im further in the game. The intro is a major slog and the first wild area is just really disappointing. You’re in the city for the entire time? I’m not sure if this is it, but I’ll continue to play and see. Will give it an honest effort
I wish that interacting with other trainer’s pokemon in the overworld (ex: first roselia in first pokemon center) added them as “seen” in your Pokédex. Like I’m literally interacting with them. I know I’m not catching them so I shouldn’t get the full dex entry but I should at least register them as seen
https://preview.redd.it/47fhh4vs9jvf1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93eb4c69ada3be07f1e63b0a377e01f8cec5d661
I just knew I would wind up getting the starter I wanted least as my mystery gift lol
I miss the PLA catching system and open world
does Z-A take place before or after XY?
5 years after the events of x/y from what I've seen posted.
And after Sword Shield. A NPC mention Leon's defeat.
I don’t care about spoilers, is there an in-universe explanation as to why the new megas were discovered 5 years later than the ones we got in X/Y?
Because this game came out later x)
I still haven’t finished all of the tutorial set up stuff (thanks, adult job.), I just got the Emma side quest tutorial. So far the obligatory -10 mile an hour Pokemon tutorial is the only downside for me. I’m loving it besides that and I think the game looks great!
City is bland and a bit cramped, but everything else is really fun
My biggest concern with Pokemon games over the last few releases is how bland every environment is. How does the environment compare to recent releases (I thought S/V and Arceus were bland) and how much does it affect the overall quality?
Well 90% of the map looks identical, it's just a city. And all the buildings are literally 2D textures. The Wildzones are also urban "parks" inside the city, and are incredibly bland. One of them is like an ice one, but its also just, still inside the city? Random isolated snow biome, ok.
Luckily, the gameplay is damn fun, but once you play for 1 hour you've seen pretty much all the sights.
That one threw me off too, especially as it wasn't like that before they set up that wild area lmao
Yeah I was like wtf, isn't this where the slowbro was?? It is weird that areas of the city get eaten up by the wild areas.
Isnt the city the while game?
Do the new megas have abilities or will that only happen when they’re in a non-legends game
According to datamines they just have the regular abilities in the game’s code so we’ll have to wait until they are available in Champions (or maybe Home?) to know their new abilities.
There’s one that we kinda know though. The pokemon who have Huge Power/Pure Power got 40 attack increase to compensate for the lack of abilities. So for example Mawile gets an extra 140 stats (instead of just 100) when it mega evolves, with an extra 40 attack that it doesn’t get in other games where it has Huge Power.
The same thing happens with Mega Starmie, it gets a 140 base stat increase with a lot of that going to its attack and it also suspiciusly got a few physical moves added to its movepool so it seems very likely that it has Huge Power.
Nothing has abilities in this game. The game would be waaay too hard with abilities due to the new battle system, so I actually agree with not including them.
But I'm very curious about the mega abilities, I feel that so many old megas are reliant on their abilities. I found a shiny weedle full odds in my playthrough, kinda sucks to not have adaptability tbh
Adulting means going to work instead of resisting the urge to call out and play this in bed all day 😅 Can’t wait to boot up my download later today. Have fun, y’all :)
https://preview.redd.it/2uupnesp5rvf1.jpeg?width=4032&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1115a47516916e998a7a9239da32748841d42ae9
This whole scene was a dig at competitive players, right? 😭
Someone spoil to me if the Hoenn starters are here or nah? I just want my Sceptile bruh 😭
it’s been datamined that they’re coming in the first DLC
they're not
I loved the new battle system, really refreshing for a spinoff game.
Most of the new megas are really awesome, especially in motion. The new Mega Scolipede is geniunely the coolest damn thing I've ever seen, took me by surprise. Now Mega Feraligatr on the other hand.... possibly the most missed shot on a design I've ever seen imo
I wish it's totodile appearance was always active until it attacked
Yeah exactly. Like with it's head closed, its pretty badass. But why is bro walking around with a nodule 2x his size hanging off his back completely perpendicular? It just looks an oversight or a glitch it's so jarring.
They should’ve just had it slightly opened and then snap shut when he attacks instead of it being fully up like a toilet lid
Has anyone who pre ordered on pokemon center received tracking info? I haven’t yet and am hoping my copy and pre order plush arrive tomorrow
In the past my Pokemon Center pre orders ALWAYS arrived Saturday after a mid week release. I stopped preordering with them because of it.
Do we know if the Vivillon patterns work like they did in X/Y?
If so I’m gonna need to change my region settings before firing it up
I’m getting used to the new battle system and I respect the attempt to do something different, but by god I hope it isn’t the norm moving forward. It’s not that bad, but I am not at all a fan. I’ve always preferred RPG type battles to be more turn-based. Idk if I’m just missing something, but it feels annoying to have to hold the button to focus to attack. I hate the idea of having to wait for my move to charge before I use it. It’s not super fun, though I can see it being okay for wild battles, I guess. Trainer battles feel so fucking weird with it.
Whoever designed the tutorial should be put through a tutorial in life. That would be hilarious and harmless but annoying for them.
I’m having fun, but I see why this game is lower rated and not as well-liked as other games. It’s a massive step back from Arceus IMO.
I get to bump fists with Totodile. 11/10 game.
Was wondering what the other two will do in this situation 😄
Tepig uses its tail
We can totally see the vast fields and mountains out there. SURELY there will be content in the same game that lets us venture out, right?
Unimpressed so far, unfortunately. There's a much bigger focus on combat. The wild areas are... tiny. There's like 5-6 native pokemon to each zone.
The pacing of the story is absurd. I've been playing for 2 hours now and it's the most hand holding-y game they've ever had. I just wanna explore the f ing map and I can't walk 2 meters without being bombarded by dialogs and story.
For context. I'm a person who played all games, I liked sword and shield, I liked the DLCs, I liked bdsp and I liked scarlet and violet (and dlcs). I'm a verrrrrrrrrry hardcore pokemon fan. It's very tough to not please me with a pokemon game. I liked all ranger games, the detective pikachus and the mystery dungeon remake for the switch. But so far... and I hope it changes.... it's not feeling fun.... I just wanna play and it's slogging the boring story. And having 0 voiced characters at this day and age and in this game is very jarring. It's so silent and dead and the soundtrack does not make it worth it.
I've completed it, and I would say that you're right at the cusp. The tutorial is egregious, as usual with these games. But once you actually get past it, and can grind your levels, explore the city, and get more pokemon, I found it very fun. I'd stick with it and see if opinions change. Wild areas are definitely a let down though, I agree. Wish they were a bit more interesting.
How soon can you get Magikarp?
How's the difficulty of the game?
It's not exactly "hard", but its such a different battle style that it makes it more challenging in a different way. You can't as easily just outspeed and OHKO pokemon, since often times you guys attack near the same time, as moves take real time to come out. So you get beat up a lot more, and often pokemon of yours faint pretty quickly. I got knocked down to one or two final pokemon for some of the bosses. Never whited out though.
The Rogue Megas are by far the hardest part, they are incredibly badass, and some of them are ridiculously powerful.
What psychopath decided that start should be the map and X should be pause
once you get past the 10 hour tutorial this game is honestly amazing
im having more fun than since maybe gen 5, just reached rank C and there is so much great stuff. ive got like 120 pokes in the dex, done like 60 quests, and battles are so much fun if you rotate your team around, already have like 10 megas. im def not the completionist type but this is the first game where it feels like you actually want to catch em all
actually feel attached to the setting and characters for the first time, and the city does not feel small at all; just dense enough to explore and remember places to run back to
If this were a $30 game i would clap (alas it is not), but all my issues are just with top down org/budget choices, clearly a lot of love put in by developers
So what I think will happen is people will cry and scream that the new Megas look bad, and when GameFreak decides to introduce new Megas again people will hate those and say that Z-A Megas are peak
I mean I think 80% of the new designs are awesome. A few of them are super stinkers, but I actually think they hit with most of them. I was ready to hate on Starmie, but it's actually so ridiculous that I quite like it. Seeing it with it's animations is just hilarious
I was a super hater on the design until I saw gameplay. It’s so funny I have to love it.
Initially seeing Starmie during the leaks I was like “this is the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen”
Seeing it animated made me genuinely laugh, it’s so stupid it becomes funny.
Yeah seeing stills and artworks doesn't do many Pokemon justice. You need to see them in action to get a good feel.
What about those of us who think (most) of the new megas suck and think (most) of the old megas also suck?
Gen 6 is the only one I haven't played (never had a 3DS until well into the Switch era) and I just don't vibe with the concept or designs in general. Feels like Digimon stuff. I know that's a really unpopular opinion here but temporary evolutions have never really appealed to me. Same with Gigantamax tbh
Tbh, I think it’s a lot better than wearing a stupid crystal hat or getting ridiculously huge
What's the earliest I can catch Cleffa? Looking it up says Zone 19 but that sounds awfully late for a baby Pokemon. Though I don't have my hands on the game yet so maybe it isn't?
Rouge Sector 5 on the roof.
You can get one pretty early (lvl13)
So who else got the Best Buy digital download? I only got it bc it came with the game mat and I assumed a digital download meant avoiding a delivery delay
Played myself bc I think eBay buys archaic system is waiting for midnight tonight to send me the email
To anyone who's playing the game or has played the game. How is the gameplay compared to the main Pokemon games e.g. the battle system. Is it easy to get used to and how does the moves work in-game compared to the battle style in Legends: Arceus?
The names in this game are driving me insane. Are these all French names? I hope they're at least common French names because it seems like most characters were given by the translators smashing their faces on their keyboards.
Most of the names are not French, no.
Of the few that are actually French (so far), it’s really apparent that there was no French speaker on the translation team.
Like, one of the first characters you fight is a woman named… Yvon. Yvon is a French male name, and the only people named that are men 65 and over. To a French speaker, it’s as if they’d named her "Walter".
The female version would’ve been Yvonne. And although that’s just 2 letters different, it’s a massive difference in French. It’s like the difference between John and Jenna.
I am only a short ways in, but I'm not a fan of the active battle system here. It works in FFVII because you have basic attacks to do while waiting for cooldowns and mana, but here, I feel like I just click all four moves and then have to sit there for 5 seconds waiting for them to cool down.
Also, it seems like they removed Abilities, unless I'm missing something? Maybe that would've been too hard to incorporate in real-time combat, like Intimidate and Flash Fire, but they're my favorite aspect of Pokemon and make it so much more strategic. I didn't play Legends Arceus, are they present there?
Overall, while only about 90 mins, I went in to this game with no expectations and avoided all spoilers, and so far, I'm...disappointed. No Prof Sycamore. No non-city exploration. The battle zones are interesting but it's kinda weird to have battles restricted to very specific times of the game.
Maybe more of this changes as I get further in, but so far.....meh. I'd give it a 5/10 right now.
THE FLOWETTE WAS GONNA NUKE THEM OUT OF EXISTENCE LOL FINAL FLASH STYLE. <3
ALSO this game looks really GREAT in person Switch 2?! People say texture work looks bad and stuff but I don't see it? :o like the hotel and the character models and the opening train ride all looks amazing to me! maybe im' just not picky about wanting graphics to be hyper realistic? it at least looks crisp and colorful?!
For people who are farther along, do you ever unlock new hairstyles and clothes or what's available at the stores from the start is all you get?
PSA "Alpha" Gyarados will miss hydropump 9/10 times on smaller pokemon / those environment sludge things
I’ve put in about 10 hours so far and I’m struggling to stay engaged with the game.
The map feels confined. It’s not that it’s small, it just feels like I’m in a playground surrounded by fences, and there’s not much to do in the playground.
The gameplay loop isn’t doing much to keep me engaged either. It’s just: Roam around, night comes, battle, next cutscene.
I really really want to love this game. And I’m going to keep trying, but it does indeed feel like a glorified tech demo. Who knows, maybe it gets better down the road.
So I have a major issue in my game. I just completed a side quest, and now I cannot catch any Pokémon. I've closed the app, I've fast traveled, I've gone to the Pokémon Center, and nothing works. No Pokémon anywhere will stay inside any Poké ball. I have no idea what to do.
Edit: Okay, so I fixed it. But uh, it's not a great solution, so I hope this isn't a widespread bug and I hope it doesn't happen again.
I had to find a side mission with a gift Pokémon I did not have already, and then make an empty spot on my team so I could immediately accept it. If I accepted a Pokémon with a full team, and it needed to be sent to my boxes, it would not register in the Pokédex and it would not be in my boxes anywhere.
Once I could register a new Pokémon, it seemed to reset the catch issue, and I could catch wild Pokémon again. Insane.
Anyone else wondering what happened to clemont during and post ZA?
Man I wish you could start off with a black hair style. They don’t even have a mini fro option
Ive never disliked a game for the first 10+ hours and then really enjoyed it for the rest. The tutorial pacing and handholding really is that bad. This game definitely has glaring issues and visible lack of effort / resources, but at least it’s enjoyable.
Naveen is honestly a straight up weirdo I swear
Love the episodic nature of this games story tbh. For Rank B, theres a mini Tournament. like these are the type of random stuff that would happen in the anime, love it. It does justify the skipping of Ranks for me personally.
Finally finished the game. Ngl, straight to the point - this game was awesome. I really don't get why so many people were shitting on it. Because of some flat windows? Alright man.
This game btw made Zygarde shoot up in my fav Pokemon ranking quite a bit and also Lysandre up quite a bit in my fav character ranking, which i really wasn't expecting, especially Lysandre. Great writing
Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of performance on Switch Lite? I haven’t gotten a Switch 2 and was wondering if performance is gonna be ultra rough on a Switch Lite
I've been playing on a release switch 1 and it runs pretty well tbh. Not the prettiest but no performance issues
How much do you think I will be missing from the experience by playing this game strictly offline?