Pokémon Legends Arceus, a Tragic Retrospective

Legends Z-A is out, and you know what that means. If you don’t, blessed be your soul, but when you step into the proximity of series discourse, it’s more than apparent that we surprised Scar/Vi levels of animosity and defense. That is an insane thing to say.

Truth is, I have no interest in Z-A, at least not for now; the game itself doesn’t really speak to me, but its existence has given me a lot to think. We exist in a world where the sub-series ‘’Legends’’ is probably here to stay, and if the last mega leak is anything to go by, then we can change the ‘’probably’’ to ‘’most likely’’ —funnily enough, this won’t be the last time the leaks will show their face on here (no spoilers tho, do not worry). So, ironically, the one game that’s been floating around my mind the most ended up being that experiment from early 2022, a time frame I seem to be stuck on whether I want to or not.

And the one question that I still have, the only doubt, is to wonder how in the fuck we got here.

Hey so has anyone here ever played *Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum*?

Pokémon reached their key-art cenit at Gen 4 and they never quite managed to top themselves. They came close, tho.

Cool games! One of the cover arts was grey, introduced Carnivine, important stuff ya’ hear. They also are the quintessential first-RPG for anyone born between 1999-2003 (except me, the sucker that missed on the games till B&W and then went back, which made me the weird one out but also Unova truthers stand united so we win these), an arguably historical piece in the series mythos, both in an in-game and meta level, that painted the last strokes into what we now know as modern Pokémon, cementing the trends and cliches of the series Gen 3 seemed to embrace. Not are the few that point to the series insistence in repetition and abiding by the established order in progression and roles that the Pokémon fill, but few are the ones that pay attention to the *why*, and as irony would have it, it’s a habit born out of the desire to always start anew.

Gen 3 specifically is not one to bring up lightly, it wasn’t just a tone setter and a continuation of Game Freak’s downward spiral of production pipeline, there’s an argument to be made that it alone defined the entirety of the DS era to come. Gen 5, or at least B1/W1 , realized the concept of a total reboot with a whole unique Dex that ended up lying dormant in Hoenn’s making, but that alone could be its own story for another time, and centering on the scrapped ideas would be quite reductive. Bottom line is: Gen 3’s development changed Game Freak and its directors.

On the 2003 Nintendo Dream Masuda and Sugimori interview , fascinating as it is as a whole, is predominated by a self- doubt that is hard to scratch off while reading. There are few words of actual pride about the delivered game, overtaken by a sense of sheer relief that it’s all finally over. A relief that, in game dev, or even in art making in general, is usually accompanied by a wrenching disappointment. Hoenn is a fascinating region, an evolution of the nature/technology union this series venerates that, by design alone, wants to deliver a world that is more than the battles and captures, an actual space of discovery and lair building, where biomes take as much of a certain stage as the cities, evolving from mere archetypical dungeons. Part of me firmly believes that Hoenn’s idiosyncrasies stuck with Game Freak too, especially Masuda, a man vocal of the hardships during the development, the life changing events across it, and of the fear that the world was ready to move on from Pokémon. He doesn’t really describe this feeling as one of ‘’pressure’’ in later interviews, and I’m not inclined to believe that’s the word to describe it.

It may just be a collection of difficulties and a working culture that showed its flaws that pushed them towards something even grander.

“It’s really added up, all those late nights.”

I don't need to tell you how fascinating Gen 3's development was. Looks at this. This says it all. Also, as many things on the write up, this image is cortesy of Lava Cut Content and enhanced by HiResPokémon.

This internal desire festered in the studio, the desire to materialize the ultimate Pokémon game. The ultimate proclamation of pixelated peace, a real union of the man-made and nature, but a real connection that everyone in the world could have, the local advancing into the global, the tradition expanding into mythology.

And we got Gen 4 out of that.

They are, once again, games as the result of a soft-reboot, philosophies carried from 3 years prior, for both better and worse. It wouldn’t be until *Platinum* that issues such a poor national dex, an in-battle slow pace that was everything but deliberate, and poor enemy team compositions would be somewhat resolved, but the common denominator between all of these issues stem from balancing, an aspect that still shines through the physical/special split alone, but doesn’t change the fact that the focus may have been elsewhere: make Sinnoh a real, breathing place.

It is continuist in certain aspects —the Battle Frontier, while different in form, is mostly the same in essence —, but it feels like it’s aiming for a whole different direction in others; it still represents a breakthrough and separation, but it’s dead set in achieving that longed union. A center anchor for every single region to ever exist, the cable links and bases of old now transforming into the MASSIVE GTS system, worlds that extend Sinnoh’s reality told in tale, and later down the line, factually playable. Feels redundant to say it, but just as Wi-Fi changed forever this series into leaning towards the massified context we see now, something that transcends the recess fairy tales and local tournaments, it made sure to swing the pendulum back as much as it could when it came to the actual region.

In yet another interview that otherwise should be focused on Platinum’s release , Masuda and Kawachimaru inevitably end up talking about the franchise as a whole, what else could they do when discussing THE entry that aimed on unifying and progressing it all, but the key aspect that interests me is the change in tone. The DS era seemed one of constant optimism for those at the helm of the Pokémon creative team, as if they finally struck the fine line between the ties to childhood memories that spawned the series and the desire for progress that blends into the falling leaves and the people’s tradition, and the kindness resulting in it. Sinnoh is a space for community and affection, where waiting takes even more of a spotlight and the opportunities for children and people from countries and seas away to interact in safe, meaningful ways flourish. I see D/P/Pt, and even tho I don’t see my ideal Pokémon game, I definitely see Game Freak’s, or to be even more precise, I see Masuda’s.

When this man talks about ‘’Drawing the world of tomorrow on a blank paper called Pokémon’’ I’m filled with a sensation of hope for humanity that I’ve only seen replicated by that one time I traded my Kadabra to a random person online, the internet went bust, and a day later, sad and defeated, I find the same person I traded my now Alakazam and they gave it back to me. That’s the kind of world I think Masuda was referring to; small actions in a vacuum, yes, but that mix the amicable coldness of the code with the love for people you have yet to know.

All worlds crumble after a while, it seems.

Masuda’s involvement with the franchise seemed to turn into more of a representative position after Pokémon X&Y, but now we may have the actual reason for that. Recent leaks, as much as I dread to take them as factual evidence, point towards a borderline draconian leadership on Masuda’s part that extended for the first 6 generations of Pokémon, helming a position of total dominance over its own team, a space where conversation seemed sparce at best and actively shut down at worst, and it seemed to only get worse and worse as time progressed, Game Freak’s own structural problems only worsening the ambience. Even after he was driven away and prohibited from taking a directorial position, it seems that Shigeru Ohmori followed a similar path on a kind of uroboros of absolute nightmarish leadership.

If I didn’t know any better, and I kinda don’t, I’d assume the entirety of the studio was built on sacred grounds and is now cursed for all of eternity, because holy shit man.

This is already very recent info, one I only became of after I began my search through interviews from when I was still a goddam fetus. The picture I was holding up until then didn’t crumble, at least not completely, but it recontextualized those flowery visions and ideas in not so pretty ways.

The repetition I thought was purely born from the search of digging into the concepts of duality and constant necessity for re-invention began transforming into the vision of a man incapable of moving on from the idea that once captivated the world and where the sole voice that dictated the rhythm was his and those he deemed worthy to be heard. Suddenly, the idea of burned-out staff struggling to keep up by the end of Gen 3’s development makes even more sense. Suddenly, it makes sense why they’d try to change course once the rains were finally free from the previous grip.

Modern Pokémon has been called a lot of things. Like, a lot. To me, the better term for them is tragic. Not out of a weird sense of passive-aggressive contempt or superiority, I really really love Gen 7 for one, but even at their best, they are games that even after trying out a sea of concepts alien to a series stuck on its mold, they never get off from the ground. A duality directly opposed with one another, trying to change time and time again what a Pokémon journey can even mean without ever daring to morph its own base. Totems, Stadiums, sandbox progression, all interesting in a vacuum, all inevitably tied to that which seems to have been set as stone. There have been strides and efforts to reach those points, but when the credits hit, they all still had abided by the definition of what *Pokémon* can only hope to be, seemingly not brave enough to ask ‘’what comes after next’’.

This is all ignoring the absolute chokehold TPC has on the property and the multimedia empire around it that conditions even the diameter of Pikachu’s cheek.

The brand of Pokémon has consumed the idea of Pokémon as games, and you could’ve said this fact out loud in 2013 and it would have had as much truth as it does now. Unless Gen 10 marks an absolute shakedown from top to bottom, which I really doubt and at this point I’d much rather see Game Freak bringing their A game to greener pastures (which seems to be the plan), there’s no universe mainline Pokémon can move on from its own cliches. But maybe that’s exactly it. Maybe what the creatives truly aspire to, and what the series needs, is to break those ties while holding onto them with caress.

To start anew is to try to find a new footing.

Hey so has anyone here ever played Pokémon Legends Arceus?

Because I did.

*Pokémon* is not new to the idea of spin-offs and sub-series, but none of them dare to touch the bastion that was the ones that had a color or mineral in the title, and the ones developed in-house stray so further away they pass the realm of ‘’new exciting ideas’’ and reach ‘’another game but with a Pokémon re-skin’’ territory.

Legends Arceus is different. Even now after ZA’s release, its legacy yet to be determined, it was the closest the series has ever gotten to a complete paradigm shift. An entry tied to the pathos and history of the series while being absolutely free to abide by its own rules, a vision beyond that one of Masuda’s, not preoccupied with the co-existence of technology and nature, but with the relationship that binds us with an ecosystem that is as scary as it is beautiful, dangerous as it is interesting. In Sinnoh, cities already have a name, routes at the edge of the continent have carried a number for ages. In Hisui, everything has yet to be discovered.

It's also a HUGE mess of a game.

It’s comprised of every single one of the problems you could expect out of a development that was either troubled and/or mismanaged plus the usual modern Pokémon fanfare; a wasteland of unrealized potential with plenty of interesting moments and cute interactions and personalization that just kind of fizzles out by the time everything’s said and done. So half-baked that, despite having the most unique art-style the franchise has ever shown since its jump to 3D, manages to be ugly as sin. Tasteless textures and seemingly unfinished shadows that would probably hurt a small child if they ran with them, plateaus and elevations that when put side by side do not feel like parts of a sensible, cohesive world, but assets placed in an area that tries to resemble nature as much as possible while only managing poor mimicry.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so egregious if the game wasn’t actively trying to sell its own non-existing beauty and wilderness; if it had embraced its more gamified look and world design, it still would have failed at communicating a supposedly vibrant region, but at least it would have made for an interesting collection of land to interact with. As is stands, it’s a poor man’s version of *Monster Hunter 3*.

The one thing that could have saved, or at the very least, elevated it beyond its clay-like caves and ruins that only exist to have one tablet to be read and nothing else, were the Pokémon themselves, and credit where credit is due, the initial promise is sound. They exist within space, not just relegated to encounters within the tall grass; every being has a place in the world to roam around, behaviors telling of its own nature or status, alpha mons and the likes of the Paras in particular being a standout simply because they pose a threat and puzzle to YOU. You are not beyond the wildlife, exercising a passive role and verbal dominance. Get in the mud and gravel and try to survive as a huge dog breaths fire on you, see how that feels.

Or don’t. You could always do the same thing over and over again.

Getting to the coastline was the exact moment something within me clicked and I though ‘’Oh so this is what’s gonna be constantly huh’’. Pokémon have a place in the world, and absolutely nothing else; they don’t have interesting interactions with one another, actual routines or relationships with the environment that surround them. They are, once again, assets in the world, put in their respective rock or pond with the sole purpose of being encountered by **you**. You are at the center, even when you are getting your ass kicked, you are once again a step beyond nature itself, for its catering to your own comfort. Fauna not as an entity, but a commodity.

I seriously cannot stress upon how fake it looks. It gets even worse in movement.

Throw a smoke bomb and spam heavy balls on their back over and over again, it works every single time. Every. Single. Time. And the ones it doesn’t. It’s because it’s either way too high up or the game itself forces you into a battle. Otherwise, get smokin’, because you are fooling EVERYONE.

Tragic. That word comes back yet again. Especially when you see Hisui not just a broken space of badly placed polygons, but as an acutal whole.

This is Sinnoh’s past, a region so tied to it that having a chance to play through its legends of old should be **everything**, and if the quest of Manaphy was representative of the whole game, then we’d be talking about a commendable effort. Instead, it borders on depressing.

I’ve seen the story of Team Galactic and the Diamond and Pearl clans described as ‘’infantilized’’ elsewhere, but using that adjective is a severe misrepresentation of the ripple effects the mistreatment the treatment of Hisui has for the entire series. A region that was literally strippedfrom its name, the clans born of the very first settlers (it is implied there were never proper natives of Hisui other than Pokémon, but still) completely forgotten or unseen in their own future, the ruins once named in their beliefs and honor now either forgotten or actively devoured by colonizers that, as much as the game tries to present them in a positive light, are the biggest imperial force in the whole region, and ages later their remnants have turned into a fascist-inspired organization, the leader of which dreams to destroy a land their ancestors took and re-shaped so they can create their new, ‘’perfect’’ one.

The Sinnoh of D/P/Pt suddenly feels… strange. Still beautiful, still enormous, but with the context of a past so supossedly hopeful and fun, the only thing we got out of it was strengthening the ties between human and Pokémon, a noble objective that doesn’t fucking matter because the game makes an effort to show it was still happening either way, and the ones that were terrified of these animals until they found ways to use them for their own good and taming them was Team Galactic.

The world of tomorrow is shrouded in an uncharacteristic pessimism, a reluctant acceptance that entire cultures are doomed to fall into the background on a world accepting of the same kind of fuckers wanting to screw it all up over and over again. The Volo of today is the Cyrus of tomorrow, and who knows who will come the day after.

Legends Arceus feels like the end result of Japan’s own complicated history of colonialism and Game Freak’s current fears and state, whether it is intentional or not. For that, it is a game that fascinates me like no other, and the more I think about, the more I feel pushed away by the final note it decides to leave on, but the more I struggle to look away as well.

It is the eulogy of a studio that still lives on, a sad, complicated one. A tragic one.

Everything D/P/Pt brought is everything Legends Arceus forsakes: no grand trading system, no grand battles that extend for minutes you can play with everyone in the world, none of the same excitement for the future. Part of this is obviously the new setting, but be it accidentally or otherwise, it ends up being the antithesis to what follows it chronologically, in spirit and form.

I do not think it succeeds, but the truth of the matter is that, in essence, it’s a game about You, the player, and the direct relationship with the environment, the solitude that comes from it. The interactions feel smaller, sparce, and in turn they feel even more special when they happen. Every time another player retrieves you backpack after dying, the only form of direct online interaction besides trading via-code, it hits differently. You never see their name or from when they are. It’s just an act that happens, a kindness in the middle of nothing. Legends Arceus speaks to a quieter form of virtue, not to great results… but it feels sincere.

I still do not know how to feel about Legends Arceus. Its making couldn’t be more conditioned by the factors of its own franchise even if it tried to, and at the same time, it couldn’t feel more differently. Not because you get to fight Pokémon and dodge roll (the Dark Solusus of Pokimon???!!!!!1111), but because it finally wants to bring something new, add an ‘’and’’ the idea of the Ultimate Pokémon Game, even if that means crumbling the status quo of the series, by any means necessary.

I’m not sure I like Legends Arceus. It was a game I really needed back in 2022, a game that allowed me to focus on the cute interactions between my team members and to spend hours upon hours running in Hisui instead of thinking about my grief everyday all day. But now, 3 years later, I’m not sure I like what it has to show or even say, even if I cannot stop thinking about. It’s a game that sounds defeated with itself while trying to give everything it has, and even tho that everything ain’t much, it’s something. Something different.

When people praise Legends Arceus by just saying it’s a ‘’step in the right direction’’, I don’t think it’s a backhanded compliment, or at least I do not say it myself with those intentions. It’s a different direction, as flawed and reticent as it might be, at least it aims somewhere else.

Pokémon ain’t stopping, for one because it cannot be stopped, but also because it has some of the most dedicated creatives to ever lay fingers on the videogame medium; the fact the last three major Pokémon gens released in a playable state at all despite the HENIOUS conditions and budget/time constraints deserves an award and a hug to every single one of those poor bastards. Legends Arceus is, if anything, something they needed to get off their chest, in more ways than one. And maybe, just maybe, by dissecting it’s flawed, forgotten past, accepting a grim future that easts itself over and over again…

Maybe then they can fill out the goddamn canvas once and for all.

Massive shout-out to Lava Cut Content, a haven for information and intreviews that made this review/retrospective possible to begin with.

Thank you so much for reaching this point.