Pokemon Legends: Arceus

It was late Saturday night when I finally finished work for the week. I had made up my mind to play something. It was too late for a board game, but some Animal Crossing perhaps? A put a bit more of a dent in Horizon Zero Dawn?

I realised I hadn’t picked up Pokemon Legends: Arceus again since last week. Grinding away at some research and pottering around sounded like a great idea!

Kick back for a half-hour or so, let the mind unwind, and call it a night. Great plan.

It was a smidge over two hours later that I realised Rabbit had nodded off. Netflix was asking if someone was still there for who knows how long.

I did a couple of small errands (side quests), including finding lost items. It turns out in Arceus if you get knocked out, some items can appear in other players games. Find and return these satchels, and you get a little bonus.

It’s a very non-invasive and optional way of ‘online play’ that I don’t mind at all. It’s not that I am against online play, I don’t want it in my face when I am trying to solo play though.

All this exploring allowed me to get to a Two Star Rank – progress!

I also got to evolve a few more of my Pokemon. Owlsley has evolved into Dartrix, so looks like a trendy professor. I am looking forward to the final evolution into Decidueye, where Owlsley looks like a Lord of the Rings ranger!

Pokemon Legends: Arceus has a different take on evolutions than other Pokemon games. When evolution criteria has been met, you have the option of evolving your Pokemon.

The animations do look better than ‘flashing between two forms’ from previous games. They do look rather sinister though!

Speaking of the graphics, there has been a lot of talk about the quality of Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Digital Foundry’s John Linneman pointed out the art direction fit more in 1999 than 2022.

It’s hard to find fault with this argument. Games like Breath of the Wild and Mario Odysee make the newer Arceus look slightly wrong on the Switch.

The graphics are serviceable and generally don’t get in the way of gameplay. Spotting collectibles and draw distance are a factor though.

Five hours in, and I have found one mushroom and one piece of wood – items that should be plentiful. They blend into the surroundings too well.

Other resources stand out for miles though – it’s inconsistent. Pokemon also sometimes feel like they phase in and out if you turn around too quickly. And no, I don’t mean Drifloon that does actually phase in and out.

I’m not trying to come down on Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The gameplay is good enough that I got drawn in for two hours for a ‘quick’ grind session.

But ignoring that Game Freak still has things to learn in making a ‘modern’ game would be a disservice. Pokemon Legends: Arceus is great, but if they had some help maybe from the Breath of the Wild team it could be fantastic.

That said, the gameplay (at least this early in) is still more than enough to draw me into the game world. At the end of the day, this immersion is what makes games amazing. Game Freak has a little bit of clean up on the immersion-breaking aspects for next game.

It was another small bout of Pokemon Legends Arceus this week. I didn’t try to do anything in particular. I spent about an hour trying to do some requests and exploring the area.

It doesn’t sound like anything exciting, but that’s exactly what I was after when I was playing. A bit of resource gathering, a few XP levels gained, and some research points added.

The whole vibe of the play session was pretty relaxed. That was until I found a couple of Pokemon that I want to catch!

The first was an Alpha Snorlax that seems to stick around a particular spot. For no good reason, I want to catch this one. I will need to level up my team quite a bit more, and possibly optimise my moves and type combination.

Why? Because the idea of an aggressive ‘boss’ Snorlax makes me smile. No more, no less. It’s a silly little goal that makes me smile.

While exploring around for more Eevee’s I found something that I haven’t seen for a while – an area with Abra!

I tried for about 10 minutes, but I couldn’t get close enough. I haven’t had an Abra in my team since Pokemon Yellow. I would like to make a ‘psychic’ team to tackle Hisui for fun.

There isn’t a better reason – it’s all for giggles. In a similar vein, I want to make a team of Eeveelutionsas as well. Is there a gameplay benefit? Nope. But it’s fun and relaxing, and that’s what counts.

I should be trying to take on Kleaver, the first ‘boss’, to progress the story. I can see another five hours just generally pottering around though!