Platform: Nintendo Switch 2
Genre: Adventure, Role-Playing Game, Monster-Collecting, Pokémon

You have to hand it to Game Freak; for how complacent they are when making their flagship pocket monster-hunting role-playing games, they come across a great idea now and again.

Case in point: their new spin-off game Pokémon Legends Z-A. Instead of the traditional turn-based combat approach, Game Freak are making fights real-time and mass multiplayer role-playing game-like: as a new Pokémon trainer in Lumiose City (from Pokémon X & Y; this is a sequel, by the by), you’re helping out your new friends in Hotel Z by exploring the large town and doing battles.

Quite A Catch

Whether it’s wild Pokémon in designated Wild Zones at daytime or against competing trainers in Battle Zones at nighttime, all fights are in real-time and all Pokémon abilities have different cooldown times and startup animations. Your big-body attacks from your larger Pokémon like Emboar come out slow, but hit hard when they’re out. Faster moves come out quick but aren’t so powerful. Your best big-area moves come with long cooldown times, so you need to rely on your other skills (or other Pokémon) to compensate. Your trainer can also dodge out of the way, and can even sneak attack other trainers via pre-emptive attacks. It’s pretty funny to watch your trainer hiding out in the bushes as your Pokémon “sneak up” onto other trainers in plain sight as they body them with moves that are super effective against their Pokémon’s type, but still effective if you want to get ahead.

You also get to fight Mega Evolution Pokémon during the story; they are giant rezzed-up versions of existing Pokémon with bigger moves and patterns befitting a raid boss in your MMO of choice. Fortunately, you can gain access to plus moves (upgraded movesets) to damage them or just have one of your appropriate Pokémon to hold onto a special stone that lets them Mega Evolve with amped-up damage. You still need to adhere to the game’s confusing elemental/type strength-and-weakness chart (Fire beats Grass, Bug beats Psychic, all that nonsense) and build your team for the Mega Evolution raid fights and trainer battles ahead, but that’s the fun of the game. You are given ample time to level up, grind, and create your mega team, either as all-rounders or with specific counter-builds. I love my Emboar as it has awesome Fire and Fighting moves like his fast-as-heck body splash, but it’s going to get one-shot against Ground and Water types like Garchomp and Blastoise respectively.

Switching up your teams is very common in Pokémon Legends Z-A, and you’ll get rewarded for putting in an effort while also uncovering sidequests and secret stashes, and even helping out a professor named Mabel fill up the obligatory PokéDex (Pokémon database) for new moves. Short of fighting in rare cramp spaces and in-between doorways, the real-time battles are engaging and fun as you just mash out your Pokémon moves while also sidestepping and positioning properly to gain the upper hand.

It’s a shame that Game Freak drop the ball with everything else. For all the effort they’ve put into making battles a little fresher and engaging, the game’s open world city of Lumiose is a friggin’ bore to explore. Its plot isn’t trying too hard, even for an all-ages game, with characters who just look cool but don’t seem to stand out (save for the streamer girl and dragon maid), just spouting words and forwarding the basic-ass narrative along. It’s one thing to not have voicework done for your clearly big-budget game, but to have animated in-game scenes and talking bits that look like they should have VO added to them? That’s just a bizarre exclusion, not helped by the fact that the overall aesthetics just feels standard and not completely eye-catching. And while most of the Mega Evolution battles feel fun and fully thought-out, a few of them to drag a bit too long and wear out their welcome, even when you’re exploiting their weaknesses.

Not Quite A Mega-Evolution

I’ll say this: GameFreak isn’t completely slacking off here, otherwise my playtime of 20 hours traipsing through this France-like Pokémon city would have been much, much shorter. There’s still some good gameplay changes and additions in this noteworthy Pokemon spinoff. Although with the high standards & effort they’ve demonstrated in past titles, you can’t help but feel that they aren’t putting in their all in Z-A.

At the very least, the real-time combat system has potential, enough so to replace the turn-based combat of mothership titles if improved upon and refined further. As it stands, you could do worse than with this new Pokémon title.

Final Score: 60/100