Why ‘Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ Isn’t Very Good

The first video game I ever played was Pokemon Red, back in about 1999 when I was seven years old and would play late at night, with the aid of a flashlight, while my unsuspecting parents assumed I was asleep. I, much like a lot of you reading this, have a deep history with the Pokemon franchise. My love for it is probably just about unconditional, though GameFreak has really pressed that assumption over the last decade or so. Enter Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the first Pokemon game in over a decade that I went in without knowing exactly what to expect. 

Even though Arceus opens up with an overly-long tutorial, there is a freshness that is hard not to notice. The Hisui region is vast, Pokemon roam around (and not in the sort of robotic way they do in Pokemon Sword and Shield) in trees, bushes, swamps, and hilltops, and there are a bevy of characters to interact with and gather side-quests from. If you do have a history with Pokemon, the newness of it all is hard not to be excited by. 

And here’s the thing: Pokemon Arceus does so many of the things I’ve wanted a Pokemon game to do for years – it just does most of them poorly. 

Still, I found my playthrough of Arceus to be deeply conflicting. I do have a love for the series that feels unconditional – so watching a Ghastly roam a swamp in the middle of the night is really, really cool. Finding a Pikachu tucked away in the corner of a forest feels just as good as when I ran into one in the Viridian Forest way back in 1999. This is what Pokemon should feel like, and Arceus takes several, sincere steps forward in the right direction. So where does it all go so wrong?

Arceus Doesn’t Respect my Time

From the onset, I realized that Pokemon Legends: Arceus had no regard for my time. At best, GameFreak is intensely concerned with accessibility and wants to make sure everyone can play and be a part of the world of Pokemon. At worst, the multi-hour long tutorial is an attempt to pad what might be one of the shortest Pokemon games in franchise history (which is not to say it’s short, at over 20 hours long). 

So let’s assume the best of GameFreak and move ahead with the understanding that these opening game tutorials are just a way to help newcomers. Why not have an option to allow players an opportunity to skip the tutorial – which includes catching several Bidoofs and intensely researching them – and allow them to dive into the newly found freedom that Arceus seems to prioritize? 

These kinds of roadblocks are found at several points through Arceus, where the game would stop and make sure I’d hit a “research level” before progressing forward with the main quest. The research level mechanic isn’t altogether uninteresting, either. In fact, it served as one of my favorite parts of Arceus. The way it works is pretty simple: the more you interact with a specific type of Pokemon, the more you learn about it. As you learn more about Pokemon, your research level goes up. 

The easiest way to research these Pokemon is to capture them several times over, battle them, or observe other little facets of their existence, like watching them eat some food or getting them to use a specific move in battle. It’s a mechanic that explores the best parts of what makes Pokemon so wonderful: the Pokemon and the nature in which they exist. 

Still, Arceus force feeds you the mechanic and, unless you’re very careful, you wind up having to do it in large chunks that can take several hours to progress. It interrupts the flow of the central plot – which is too bad, because in a lot of ways, it’s the best and most focused story a Pokemon game has told since the Black and White games (or perhaps Platinum before that). 

I loathe “pacing” as a general, overused critique for video games, but in Arceus there is essentially none of it. I’d go several hours catching Pokemon only to be hit with a wall of exposition after. A better game would have integrated the story alongside the research mechanics, but Arceus would have been quite a bit better had I not been hit with arbitrary walls early and often. 

Instead, Arceus would have been better served by having you spend time in Jubilife Village, the game’s central hub. The music is pleasant, it’s one of the most dense towns in Pokemon history, and there’s a handful of cute side quests and conversations that make it worth hanging around.

Battling Isn’t Fun

One thing I’ve taken for granted about the Pokemon franchise is that the battle mechanics are almost universally fun. Even though the games have gotten remarkably easy (perhaps as part of familiarity with the mechanics), it’s still fun to type-match and strategize over what Pokemon will best serve a particular matchup. 

Pokemon Legends: Arceus ditches the strategy of a typical Pokemon game for something much more simplified and archaic – which the game attempts to excuse as being because Arceus, canonically, takes place before any other Pokemon game. The concepts are still familiar: each Pokemon has a set of four moves and type weaknesses/strengths. The significant differences are that each move does quite a bit more damage than it used to – even when the levels of each Pokemon are substantially offset – and a new mechanic allowing Pokemon to prioritize speed or strength. The latter adds some, but not a lot, of depth to the battle system. 

In all of this, Arceus removes several things, with the ability to teach Pokemon new moves or add them via TMs being the most substantial. As a result, Arceus’ battle systems have become completely and utterly brainless. Type matchups are more important than ever, with severely under-leveled Pokemon being able to carry their weight by having moves that are super effective. Basically, as long as I had the right matchup (and the game very generously will tell you in the roster), it was smooth sailing. 

As is so often the case with newer Pokemon games, I find myself not having to think. And maybe that’s the point – but if so, then Pokemon is no longer a series that is appealing to people like me, who enjoyed the strategy and challenge involved in earlier titles. 

Making Exploration Fun Again

One thing that I’ll say about Arceus is that it does several things that I want to become mainline staples of the franchise. The game is surprisingly large, with a handful of areas that – even with plenty of hours logged into each – I haven’t seen all of, let alone at specific times of day when certain Pokemon may be available. 

Part of what makes Arceus so fun to explore is that the game’s movement options are extremely good. And remember the thing I said about pacing? Well, Arceus absolutely nails it when it comes to the Pokemon riding mechanic. So what is it, exactly? 

Early in the game, after conducting a specific amount of research, Arceus rewards you with a rideable Pokemon. Each of these Pokemon come with a special movement ability, such as Wyrdeer (the first unlockable Pokemon) who can sprint and jump across the terrain as long as it’s not water. As the game progresses, new options present themselves – including a Pokemon that allows you to cross bodies of water, and another that allows for climbing up mountains. 

As such, going back to explore old territories with the new mounts made exploring and finding new Pokemon a lot of fun. I would have much rather gone back later in the game, with a wider variety of movement options, to explore – rather than the game forcing me to revisit the same areas over and over again for the sake of getting my research levels up. This just speaks to how much the versatile movement improved what otherwise might have grown stale over time.

It’s not just how well the movement works, either. Arceus is absolutely at its best looking when you’re flying high in the sky and observing everything from afar, or racing through a giant lake on the back of Basulegion. Sneasler, the Pokemon that can climb mountains, tucks you into a backpack where the character’s eyes pop out through a hole in the back. It’s cute, and the animations are surprisingly good. 

Suffice to say that I never want to play a Pokemon game again without these movement options. Being able to dive out of the sky and latch onto a mountain, only to find something I’d been hunting hours for, is a feeling that recaptured the magic of older games. 

Arceus is Uniquely Ugly for a AAA Game

There is no other way to put it: Arceus is incredibly ugly. Everything from the character models – which often exhibit characters with bizarre facial patterns – to bland, textureless terrain is just hard to look at. Even the color palette, which some have argued is aiming for a Japanese watercolor art style, just feels incredibly washed out and bland. 

So why does this matter, exactly? It’s hard to argue that Pokemon no longer feels like it fits in the modern era of game technology. It no longer feels like it has a distinguished sense of style, and its move from top-down to fully three-dimensional has only exacerbated the issue. Worst of all, this would have been an ideal time for GameFreak to up the resolution and fidelity of its Pokemon. The concept of Pokemon Snap level looking Pokemon in the design of Arceus is enough to make my heart melt.

Similarly, the characters look very odd in Arceus. One of the central characters, Beni, is distinctly odd looking – with green facial hair that looks like one of those purposefully ugly Miis that you’ll see in Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. It feels like GameFreak took the feedback about the stylish characters in Sword and Shield, decided to thrown whatever weird looking clothing or facial feature they could on a character, and then hit a randomizer button to mash it all together.

Not to mention, almost all of the battle animations fall completely flat. It’s especially noticeable as you are now able to walk around during battle, but when a Pokemon uses a move like Bite and only makes a small little lurch forward (dozens of feet from its opposition) it just feels like this weird middle ground of not feeling practical but also not being able to imagine what it might look like practically. 

Catching Pokemon is Addicting

One additional thing I really liked about Arceus is that the new capture mechanics are really fun – especially when paired with the expert set of exploration tools. 

Arceus emphasizes those precious moments of intensity between throwing a Pokeball and hearing the click (now a little firecracker animation instead) confirming a successful catch. In Arceus, the capture process relies a lot more on the pre-battle approach than it does successfully whittling down the health of whatever you’re hunting for. 

For instance, approaching a roaming Pokemon from behind and chucking a Pokeball (of which there are several different types, each with their own benefits and weaknesses) at it is more likely to lead to a successful capture than throwing one right in its face. The capture mechanics work in tandem with the exploration – as you can’t just mindlessly sprint from one area to the next. In fact, if you do, Pokemon will angrily charge in your direction and force you to use the new dodge-roll mechanic to get out of the way.

The capture systems serve as a fun game of cat and mouse that makes the days of mindlessly exploring grass and hoping for a random battle encounter of whatever Pokemon you’re hunting for feel desperately outdated. There isn’t a world in which I want to go back to not seeing a Pokemon out in the wild – even if the limited animations and graphical fidelity prevent it from being as astounding as it could be. 

The Future of Pokemon

There is little doubt in my mind that Arceus is a tremendous step in the right direction for the Pokemon franchise. The ability to explore freely, to see Pokemon roaming more natural habitats, and the new movement options are all a little taste of what the future could be like. All of that – on top of the new catching mechanics – and a future iteration with more focus than Arceus would be primed for success. In a lot of ways, it’s my favorite game the franchise has put forward since the Gameboy Advance.

But there’s also a yearning for things to get back to what Pokemon once was. The battle systems have been dumbed down to a point where you can essentially mash your way through them and the tutorials that were once ten minutes or so long now stretch into several hours. I miss the gym fights that would challenge my ability to form a cohesive Pokemon team, and adequately strategize.

Perhaps the future of Pokemon just isn’t for me, and that’s something I need to come to terms with. After all, Arceus does a lot of what I was hoping for in a Pokemon game, and yet, I still feel largely conflicted about it. But something tells me that this might be a step forward in the right direction. Something tells me that the next mainline entry might combine the best of what Arceus has to offer and the best of what made Pokemon such a storied franchise in the first place. 

Maybe, just maybe, it will be something worth turning the old flashlight on for again. 

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