Kalos Reborn: Pokémon Legends ZA Reviewed

A city still healing. A legend trying to atone. And a battle system that dares to change the rules. We dive deep into Pokémon Legends ZA—why Lumiose feels alive, how mega evolutions shape every decision, and where the game soars or stumbles along the way. We start with first impressions on visuals, performance, and the choice to confine the adventure to a single metropolis, then trace the story’s emotional core: tasteful XY callbacks, Lysandre’s unexpected path toward redemption, Mabel’s penance, and AZ’s quiet, devastating farewell. If you loved Kalos, this is a homecoming with scars and hope.

On the gameplay side, we break down the new active combat: the thrill of real-time pressure and move swapping, the pain of sluggish inputs, odd “caught off guard” calls, and why bulky megas outshine fast glass cannons. We share loadouts that carried us—Lucario, Houndoom, Charizard X/Y, Metagross—and the strategies that cracked tough bosses like Zygarde and the Lumiose flower fight. We also explore the city’s Wild Zones: tense spawns, aggressive mobs, rooftop rarities, and QoL boosts that keep the loop moving.

Then there’s the ZA Royale: a bold ranking idea with grind-heavy execution. Free-for-all chaos, no SBMM, and reward gating that pressures casual players to jump in. Still, between generous megastone access, side quests that actually matter, and a score that reimagines Lumiose with a softer, weathered warmth, Legends ZA earns its place as a meaningful step for the series. We close by looking ahead—why Johto or Hoenn could sing in this format—and what polish would turn this into a classic: tighter inputs, smarter stealth, and less repetitive ladders.

Hit play, share your team comps, and tell us where you want the next Legends to land. If you’re enjoying Culture Cretins, tap follow, drop a review, and send this to a friend who still swears by Kalos.

Transcript

Welcome And Spoiler Warning

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hang out if we're not ready. Okay, welcome back to Culture Cretans. This is our episode second episode where we're going to review Pokemon Legends ZA. I'm Nate. He's Will.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

And so Legends Z A has been out for several weeks now. We don't want to give too much spoilers for anybody who hasn't played it, but if you haven't played it by now, I'm sorry you might want to tune out for some potential spoilers.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

This will be a very spoiler-heavy podcast. So if you if you have any spoiler heavy, please, please play it and come back. But if you have no intention on playing it, this might also be something you might listen to to see if you want to pick up the game in the first place.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

So, Will, what were your first impressions of Legends EA? Positive, negative?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

So I was very excited for this game whenever they announced it several years ago. I know it's kind of been in a pretty rough development cycle. It was announced alongside uh Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl. Um, and I was a really big fan of Pokemon X and Y. Uh when those games came out, I was really getting back into Pokemon. Um and I I liked the theming. I feel like it had a very um pronounced theme, very rich in characters and environments, and um I was excited to see more from this region. Um the thing that I was skeptical of, of course, everyone else was, um this game only takes place within Lumio City. You don't get to see the entire rest of the uh Kalos region. Um so that could be a point of contention, but coming into this game, that didn't bother me too much. Um I really liked the setting and I was curious to see how it went. And I was surprisingly disappointed with some aspects of this game. Um so we'll get into that. Uh Nathan, what did you think?

SPEAKER_00 2:10

So overall, I was very pleased with the game. I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially for the first, you know, 20, 30 hours of of playing it, which I'm pretty easy to please. I I've liked pretty much everything that Pokemon has put out for forever. But um I really honestly, in some ways, it probably exceeded my expectations. And the the reason I say that is while Legends Arceus is widely beloved in the Pokemon fan base, Legends Arceus is one of my least favorite games that Pokemon has ever done. And that's not to say there weren't some good things about it, it just wasn't really my thing, and so I didn't really know what to expect. And like you said, with it all being in one city, okay, well, how's that gonna work out? And and with this being the first Pokemon game released on the Switch 2, what is that gonna look like? I really enjoyed Legend CA. I thought I I thought the setting was beautiful. I I enjoyed the ZA Royale to it to an extent, and we'll talk about that uh more here in a second. But overall, I really liked it. I liked the experimenting with different battle mechanics, and whether or not that was a hit or a miss, we'll talk about in a second. But I thought it was an improvement over Legends Arceus' battle mechanics, and I thought it was an ambitious thing to do. So overall, I I really enjoyed the game, and I think it's a I think it was a good entry from Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02 3:59

I think this is going to be really interesting because we although we share a lot of views on some of these uh Pokemon games, I feel like this one we have such a dichotomy in views that's going to make it more um I don't know, more in more intriguing to see kind of where we each liked or disliked uh different aspects of the game. Um because I I really liked Legends Arceus. Um and I'm not usually into that kind of game. It took me a while to warm up to something like a Breath of the Wild game, but I um I really liked the crafting system, the Pokeballs, and so on in this in that game. So I'm I'm curious to see what you think of some of these other uh features.

Graphics, Hardware, And Cross-Gen Tradeoffs

SPEAKER_00 4:42

Yeah, it it's gonna be interesting. And yeah, with Legends Arceus, I mean, I felt like there were certain aspects that everybody liked, you know. The Pokeball throwing system, the catching system was really was great, and I'm glad that they largely brought that back. It wasn't the same, you know, you're not throwing the featherballs across the map and hitting flying Gyarados anymore, but you know, it more on that later. Yeah, I like that that they kept some of those things, but I thought it was I personally thought it was sharper, better looking graphics and uh it's a very very visually pleasing game.

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah, and that was I've seen some discourse that I've noticed.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Yeah, I I've seen some people online, I mean, which this is the way the Pokemon fan base is. It's just some people are not going to be happy no matter what they do. And yeah, I I did I saw a lot of people saying, you know, that it was it, oh, it was so bad, you know, this is the best thing a Pokemon Pokemon company can do.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

Well, and I I don't know if you saw, but there were some uh early builds of the game during the uh period of time where Game Freak was having some like major leaks. And I uh you know on Twitter you could see some people would have a video of like a build of the game that they shouldn't have had their hands on. And the game was originally very well textured, uh, a lot of depth to the buildings when they were focusing on making it for the Switch 2 hardware, and at some point in the development of this game. I don't know if it was Nintendo Game Freak, it's unclear, but they were essentially, I believe they were given the ultimatum that they have to make it also for the Switch 1 for multiple audiences, kind of like what PlayStation is doing for the PS4 audience. Like you don't want to lose customers on the PS4, but at some point you have to have a cutoff so the technology can advance. And I think we're gonna have some issues coming up with like you know, the PlayStation 6. We're we're gonna have maybe even games sold on three generations of hardware. And I think Nintendo is trying to find a way to navigate that, and you know, having this trade-off with the graphics might be eye-opening for some consumers who maybe want a better-looking game that speaking with your wallet and purchasing a different version of the game might actually be better for the longevity of having more advanced graphics in your games. Yeah, I mean, as long as they can continue to make money that way, I mean consistency is also a major thing in that.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

And on the gameplay, so we'll we'll just get into the game itself. So I felt like I I think we both are of this mindset that the story was very good, which you and I both are big X and Y fans, both the games and the show. So there was a lot there to work with, and I thought they did a really good job. I thought they did a really good job of you know honoring and calling back to the story of X and Y.

SPEAKER_02 8:07

Yeah, really tastefully so too. It wasn't it wasn't egregious, like there were characters from X and Y, but it was it were it was characters you wouldn't have expected to be in a different game.

SPEAKER_00 8:18

Right. And it wasn't like, oh, we're just hitting that X and Y well to try to get some fan points or something. It was like, you know, certain elements like when you're in the hotel and you know, the music that's playing and everything is a callback to X and Y. And it they were did a really good job of kind of stirring up those emotions and those memories that you have from the previous games. And, you know, I I really liked the way that they handled uh the stories for some of these characters, and there were some redemption arcs that didn't feel totally cheap, you know. Um, and you know, I really thought I really liked the way they handled ZA's story and making him a big but not extremely focal point of the story. I thought I liked how they did that. We've obviously I mean, I think m both of us agree we liked a lot of the characters. Yes, and then the new characters, even uh, I think we both really liked Lyda.

SPEAKER_02 9:32

Um she was uh Tiernos sister.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yes, that was the way I understood it.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Uh yeah, I don't know if they ever really came out and said that, but she does the same dance as him, and uh like I know it's probably like a trend kind of thing, like roller skating wasn't X and Y, or like maybe dancing is like the new fad in Lumiose, but like I it seems like I saw something where someone mentioned that there was a direct connection, a piece of dialogue, and I don't recall myself if I saw that or not, but I do think I remember her mentioning her brother.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

I just don't think she used his name, but I I think it was clear that she's supposed to be his sister.

SPEAKER_02 10:14

Yeah. And who was oh sorry.

SPEAKER_00 10:17

I was just gonna say who were some of the other character new characters that you like.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Oh man. Uh Corbeau is one of my favorite characters. At first I didn't really like him, the syndicate leader of the Russian Syndicate. But he he really grows on you. Uh like these characters. Uh, something that's really unique about this game that I haven't seen in a Pokemon game since probably actually Sword and Shield did this a bit. But um, you know, they talk like real people talk. Like you have these really funny, intimate moments with the characters where they are having a conversation or they say something, and of course, you know, there's no voice acting in this game. That that's a gripe that I feel like most people do have with this kind of game, like they are turning over a lot of profit on these games, and there's still no voice acting. Um, but like, you know, even without that, like it comes across so funny that I I actually would laugh at laugh out loud at some things that some of the characters would say, or like some of the interactions they would have. Um, you know, like when there's some parts of the game where they're sitting in the um hotel and having like a meeting or eating dinner, and Naveen would like intervene and say something about the cooking, or like uh Leto would say something talking back to Naveen, and it it would be really funny. There would be some really good quips, and I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah, I thought they did a good job of you're like building relationships with the characters, and things are natural, things are you know, you are are making a connection with characters and stories, and you know, even some of the side quests, there would end up being characters would come up later, you know, or they would there would be something you know powerful about a side quest that you didn't think there was gonna be any, you know, emotional depth there, and it ends up being like, ooh, a gut punch, or you know, or people coming back into the game later. And I thought another thing, like you said about Corbeau, there are elements of the game, times in the game where something surprises you, like the Rust Syndicate just seems like they're going to be thugs, and then that's not really what happens. And there's things in the game that I thought they did a really good job of surprising you and not making it so obvious and not making it feel lame or something like that, you know, that sometimes in a like a Pokemon game or something where it's kid friendly, you're not going to want to do anything scary or you know, something like that. But I felt like they did a really good job.

SPEAKER_02 13:07

Should we uh also give you know a brief synopsis on some of the events?

SPEAKER_00 13:11

Just uh Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I like we said, there's spoilers in this. If you haven't played it yet, you're not gonna want to listen to this.

New Characters And Team Dynamics

SPEAKER_02 13:20

Wait to watch this until you've played the game. But uh essentially your character, this takes place five years after the events of X and Y. Um, no one is roller skating anymore. Um you show up to Lumios, not Lumios, yeah, Lumios. I'm so sorry. Um you show up to Lumios station uh by train, and you're immediately greeted by Donnie at the very beginning. Um she's filming a promotional video for Hotel ZA for her group. There's this um sort of like a battle tournament town called the ZA Royale, and it's essentially put in place by this corporation. Um remind me what the name is again, Nathan. I don't remember. Oh let me check. Yeah, so this corporation essentially is over the development of Lumios now. Um, since the events of X and Y have ended, and Team Flare has kind of dissipated, and you know, they did some pretty bad things and destroyed a lot of stuff, so they're they're out of here. So this group is trying to rebuild Lumios Tower in like a nicer way, it looks like, and they're trying to develop the city, but in doing so, um, crystals are growing out of the ground everywhere, like uh mega crystals, and they're urging people to collect them and bring them to them for rewards. Um, we find out that the earth is fighting back against the development of the town, and so as Pokemon also start to enter um the city, they've started creating these wild zones using the holo technology that this company has been creating. And um this kind of corrals them and keeps them out of the streets um from harming people because the Pokemon in this game are so extremely aggressive. Um you cannot get anywhere close without a Pidgey attacking you or something. Like it's it's crazy. But the um megastones are actually powering up Pokemon that are not intending to evolve, and so there's this rogue mega evolution that's happening. And the purpose of the ZA Royale is to find the strongest mega evolution trainer so that a character from the previous game, AZ, who created the weapon that destroyed um most of the world during the Pokemon War 3,000 years ago, um, he has a flowette that can evolve, and he wants to find the strongest mega evolution trainer to control flowette to kind of put this problem to rest. Um so in doing so, you come across Tawny, who is one of the other main protagonists in this game. She brings you to Hotel AZ, um, which is you know run by AZ, and he lets you stay there. Um you participate with the team, and they're trying to gain rank in the Royale. It's you, Tawny, Naveen, and Lita. And Lita likes dancing, Naveen likes sewing and making different clothing designs, and Tawny likes being super competitive and kind of annoying.

SPEAKER_00 16:44

And uh Yeah, Tawny is one of the we were talking about characters. Tawny is a character that Will and I both really didn't like. And at first, I didn't find her annoying. I I found her somewhat endearing at the very first part of the game. And for sure, as the game goes on, she becomes insufferable, and in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 17:05

She does not learn from her mistakes, she constantly is trying to one-up you, and when you do one-up her, she doesn't like accept that, she doesn't want to accept that, and it becomes a point of contention later on.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

Tawny's entire character arc is basically telling you she's the leader of team ZA and or Team A Z, and saying that she's the best. And that's pretty much the character arc right there. Yes. And and running off and not helping the team when she's supposed to be helping the team.

Plot Synopsis: Lumiose, Crystals, And The Royale

SPEAKER_02 17:40

One of the blunders includes uh at the beginning, when she's filming the video, evidently she took money from a syndicate as a loan to do I don't know, to produce this video for some reason. And of course, it got no views, so people aren't staying at the hotel. You're the only guest there. And so she has to pay back the syndicate, but she didn't tell anyone. So the syndicate comes up to you, Corbeau and his people, and they're like, hey, you guys owe us a million yen. And we're like, what why? Well, Tawny took out a loan with us and it has to be paid back. So, you know, things like that resolve themselves in the game as you play it. But you know, these problems come up, and communication is never a focal point for anything Tawny's doing. She's always just off doing her own thing and leaving the problems to Team A Z. Or Team MZ. I we've been saying it wrong this whole time. It's Team MZ. My apologies. There's a lot of acronyms in this game with Z in it. AZ is the character. ZA is the game. Is the Royale also?

SPEAKER_00 18:51

Yeah, it becomes a problem. Like I realized I called him ZA. There's just there's too many, there's too many acronyms for sure in the game.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

And it's it's not even just that, it's all of the acronyms involve the same. It's a two-letter system with Z somewhere in it. So it's you we are in Team Imz, and you know, Naveen has created this logo that we put on everything. It's on this banner in the meeting room, it's on everyone's jackets. Um, and essentially, you know, we're trying to gain rank to get the mega evolution stone for flowet.

SPEAKER_00 19:27

So that's and so that's the general synopsis of the game. And and that's another aspect where we talked about characters and callbacks that I thought was a really good part of the game. Is so at the end of X and Y, you know, uh ZA No, I'm doing it again, man. A Z. A Z and Floette. He's been wandering the earth for 3,000 years wanting his Pokemon back. And you have this extremely heartfelt reunion between the two now that he's basically learned from his mistakes and been repentant for so long. And so they are reunited in this game. However, he's 3,000 years old, he can't really be a Pokemon trainer anymore because he is nearing the end of his life, which is a a topic of this game, but he's not strong enough to do what you need to do to use mega fluette, and so that is where a lot of this is coming in. And so I thought that was a good way to I mean, it's not all just happy rainbows after the reunion. He's he's not the same man in a good way, but he's also not the same man as his capabilities are severely diminished, and that shows up throughout the game. And so um, those are some of the characters, some of the synopsis we liked, did not like. Um as far as Pokemon in the game, I thought there's a fair amount of we had a pretty fair selection of Pokemon to choose from in the various generations for everyone rather. And go ahead, Will.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Oh, sorry. I have to cut that. Sorry. Oh, that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

So uh who did you pick as your starter Pokemon? Okay, so this was one thing in the game I didn't love was the selection of the starters. Um, but I chose Totodial. Uh out of those three, Totodial is by far my favorite, and I like for alligator better than uh the other two fully evolved Pokemon. So I chose Totodial. Who did you choose? I also chose Sto Totodial. I I feel like everybody probab most everybody probably chose I think I know one or two people who picked.

SPEAKER_02 22:00

Something else, but no one I know chose Chikorita. So everyone else chose Tepping. Like yeah, the choices weren't great, and we saw from like some previous like leaks of the game that there was going to be a different selection of Pokemon, and at some point in the development this did change as well. And we ended up with like a really just odd selection of Pokemon. I'm surprised that they picked two Gen 2 Pokemon to be in the same selection with a Gen 5 or something instead of having like three different. I don't remember what what all were the um starters and Legends Arceus?

SPEAKER_00 22:38

Uh it was Rowlet and Oshitwat and Cyndaquil.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

And then it was three different firms, huge gaps in in years of Pokemon. So I feel like that's a pretty solid selection. Having different Pokemon here is good, but like I feel like maybe picking between Totodial and Chikorita would have been the play here.

Starters, Team Building, And Megas

SPEAKER_00 23:01

Yeah, I I agree. I thought it was a little weird to have two Gen 2 Pokemon. And I mean, you can say whether you like this mechanic or don't like this mechanic in the Legends games, but it felt kind of weird to me to you're like, okay, I'm in Lumeo City, the lab is here, but I'm not getting in, I don't even have the choice of any of the Kalos starters. Now, you do get an opportunity through quests to get them later. And so that's a good way that you could get all three of them relatively early in the game.

SPEAKER_02 23:35

I will also say those side quests are pretty difficult, especially I think it's the Froki one. You have to do some pretty intense parkour with a strict time limit, three times to get the froaky. And the mega evolutions for these are locked behind a competitive wall. Uh initially, you had to get to rank, what was it, rank M or something? So like the ranking competitive is K rank K. So it's like rank Z going up to A. And there is no skill-based matchmaking. It's a 1v1v1v1, four-player just team death, or not team death match, free-for-all. And everyone gets leveled up to 50 in this free-for-all, but it's so unbalanced, especially if you're early on in the game and you know other regions get the game sooner than you. So you're just kind of like fighting to get Froakie was the first one, and then after Froki was finished, they decided for the next season they would let you get Froki's stone at rank Z, and then at rank T or S, somewhere around there, you would get the uh the next stone for the uh different Kalos starters. And then they started making it rank S and Rank T so people could get it, but still it's just weird that it's behind that at all.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yeah, that's something neither one of us liked. Uh neither one of us is a competitive Pokemon player. We that's not why I play Pokemon. And so I definitely wanted to be able to get Greninja or Greninja's Mega Evolution. So I did the competitive, I got to rank K and got it, but it it wasn't as hard as what I expected it to be. There was a little bit of a learning curve with it, but I did not th thoroughly enjoy that, and I haven't done it since, to be perfectly honest, because I didn't care enough to get the other mega evolutions to go through competitive. But I I just messed like you're in Kalos. You should be able to have these new mega evolutions, which was another baffling thing why they didn't have mega evolutions to start with, but for these starter Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02 25:38

But so far, I've done every single competitive, and it's just uh it's still not great.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

Yeah. I mean, well, really the whole system is is weird to me. I don't really understand.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

Yeah, you're basically just like we'll talk about this more also in the battling tube, but like, yeah, like you what were you gonna say?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

I was just gonna say you're basically like constantly switching out one of your three Pokemon, trying to not have a type disadvantage and trying to get around behind someone unsuspecting. Because if you get in this melee, if you let someone hit your Pokemon, you're you're out, basically.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Or if or if someone grabs the Pokemon before you, they can just snipe your elimination. And if you don't get one elimination during it, you don't really get any points.

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Yeah. So basically, what you're trying to do is get as many cheap eliminations as you can without you know getting eliminated repeatedly. But like you said, we'll talk about the battle mechanics here some more later. But I guess so while we're talking Pokemon in the game, who did you choose? Who was were the members of your team in the game?

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Okay, so from the start, you know, I had Totedile to for Alligator, and then in zone one, I chose a Mareep. I didn't end up so I evolved him eventually into Amphros, and he stayed on my team the entire game because he could learn you know ice punch, electric thing, whatever, whatever moves he had. I I don't recall. But um I kept him the whole time. I didn't even evolve the shiny one, I just kept that same one. Uh at first I had the Gardevoir that you would get the Ralts from the Mystery Gift, but I found that in this game they really nerfed Gardevoir, kind of like they did with um Mega Blaziken from X and Y's Mystery Gift. Just because everyone got it, I guess they decided uh but in general, uh psychic Pokemon were just very weak in this game, I noticed. So eventually Gardevoir left my team. I didn't keep the Absol that they gave to me. What else did I have? I had Bunnelby at the start um to hold all my TMs and stuff, and then this game does a really good job about letting you switch moves out so you don't really have to have one Pokemon focused on TMs. So later on, I had was it Feraligator, Amphoros. Um I'll have to think about this. I'll I'll let you I'll let you go and I'll I'll think about the other ones because it's it's been about a week or two since I I finished the game, and there's a lot of swapping of Pokemon in the uh DLC.

SPEAKER_00 28:25

Oh yeah, the DLC you're uh definitely a lot different Pokemon. This was a game that, and we'll talk about these two things together as far as the quality of life features of the game. I typically do not use more than four to six Pokemon in a game unless I'm just really trying to decide between different Pokemon that I want to use. However, in this game, I used way more Pokemon than I normally use. I couldn't even say I had a six team. There were certain Pokemon that I used the vast majority of the time. But, and this is part of the quality of life improvements, it was so easy to just switch the Pokemon that I mean just and leveling them up was like nothing, it was so nice. So you were able to just continually rotate out different Pokemon. That the primary Pokemon that I used, I kept Toted Alge for Alligator on my team the whole time. It was one of the better Pokemon. Um early on, I had Ariados and uh Fletchling, Fletcher, Talonflame. However, they did not really stay on my team. And a big part of that is because a major element of this game is it's so focused on mega evolution that if a Pokemon can't mega evolve, if it does not have a mega evolution, there's very little incentive to keep it as a main part of your team. And so some of my other core team members, Hound Doom was major for me, uh Charizard, who you can pick a Canto Starter later in the game, and I chose Charmander. Um I used I used the Ab Saw you get a fair amount. I used a Gardevoir some, I used Greninja a fair amount. Um I used Agron some. But the really the main Pokemon for me throughout the game was there's an in-game trade for a Riolu. A Riolui, I believe is the nickname he gave him. So you get the expedited um experience points from a traded Pokemon. And I used Lucario as my main, pretty much the the horse of my team throughout the whole game. One because it was leveling up quicker, but because of the move pool and how easy it is to switch out moves for these Pokemon. Steel type has been so heavily emphasized the last few generations, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

I mean especially in this one, is it was insane.

Move Swapping, Types, And Team Variety

SPEAKER_00 31:02

I basically ran Aura Sphere, uh, Flash Cannon, Extreme Speed, and Bulldoze with um with Lucario the whole game. And so Lucario was, and you have the mega evolution, obviously. So Lucario was the main Pokemon that I probably used, and there were others that I used and rotated out, and occasionally I would use an EV evolution, you know, a Jolteon or Sylveon or whatever. But generally speaking, those were the team, the uh members of the team that I used.

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah, also a post script to that. The names of traded Pokemon from side quests in this game were awesome. Like some of them were puns, some of them were really cute. I really liked how they did that. Like they they really kind of made it an in-universe sort of it made you feel like it was real, you know.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, dramatic improvement over like I mean, some of these other ones, like right now I'm actually playing through Soul Silver, and like if you get the Voltorb, its name is Billy. If you get Onyx, its name is Rocky, which I mean I guess is funny, but and then in some of the older games like Fire Red, Leaf Green, you trade for one of those Nidoran. It's you know, what, Nido or Mr.

SPEAKER_02 32:18

Nido or whatever, and it's just really slam names, but it's also like something a kid would name a team.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

Yeah, that's true, that's true. But I think that the nicknames in this game were a lot better.

SPEAKER_02 32:32

I have recalled some of my Pokemon that I had on my team, by the way. So I had Foralligator, I had Amphoros, I had Um Garchomp, uh Tyranitar, sometimes I had Sylveon. Uh of course I kicked Gardevoir off my team because Gardevoir was kind of weak sauce towards the end. Um I really wanted to have Umbreon, but there was a glitch in the game where you couldn't evolve it from simply getting XP at nighttime unless you unless you used rare candy. And that was something that I experienced, so it kept me from getting Umbreon and Espion until the very end of my Pokedex. They were the last two that I had to get. Um I had Charizard as my fifth on the team. He was great for a lot of stuff that I had. And I I I think I used the Guard of War, or not, I used the Charizard X Stone. I had Char I had Pokemon Y when I was playing originally, but I love the design of the blue and black on Charizard, so I I went with that this time regardless of the power-up he had. Um and then my sixth slot went to Metagross when I finally got him towards the end of the game. There's a like you were saying, a lot of poison types in this game. So steel types are immune to that. Having Metagross means that I wouldn't get just immediately poisoned without being able to heal, because there's a lot of cutscenes while opponents' Pokemon are doing things, and your your Pokemon is getting damaged during those as well. They they do not let up whatsoever on the poison. So Flash Cannon was great. There's a lot of distant things you had to do, and we'll talk about that in the battling later. Um, and then towards the end of the game, I also put Wyvoltal on my team. Um so I swapped someone out here and there for that. So that was my main team I had going.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Yeah, I found in this game it was a little bit odd. Like I typically have a good type mixture, and in this game I felt like, of course, I was able to rotate out a lot, but and when you're doing some of these boss fights, you're going really heavy on certain typings. However, I was puzzled at the way my team kept being comprised was really heavy on dark fire type Pokemon. And it was like those were what was available, those were what was pushed to you, those were what you know were cool. And you had to use them.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

There were tons of ghost types you had to fight against. The opponents were mostly ghost types, psychic, you know, grass type, like things that you would need dark type for. And that's mostly what you would get from like TMs and leveling up your Pokemon too. It was it was very heavily focused in this game.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Yeah, and so I honestly I didn't really feel like there were enough like electric was a typing that I struggled to have a good electric type Pokemon. Um Amphros was crazy though.

SPEAKER_02 35:37

I had the reason I had Amphoros was Amphoros had such a variety of moves that I could have of different typings. I was able to have Electric, I was able to have an ice move. Uh he may have had a fire move, he definitely had a dark move like Crunch or Bite or something like that at some point. So uh there were a lot of Pokemon where you just have a variety of moves instead of just a focus.

SPEAKER_00 35:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 36:00

And that's kind of what I like about being able to swap out moves in this game. You're not just locked into one track for each Pokemon.

Battle System Pros And Frustrations

SPEAKER_00 36:07

Yes, this the swapping out moves, how easy it is, and and the incentivizing of having a variety of different moves is is very good, especially if you're like in a situation like I was. A lot of times I had two or three water Pokemon, two or three dark Pokemon, two or three fire type Pokemon. And so you're like, hey, I need a little bit of variety on the moves. And so that was that was a good feature. And so before we get too much into more of the battling, the battling mechanics, we've already started talking about that some a little bit, but let's talk about some of the the moments in the game that had good connections to X and Y, some of the characters. So right off the bat, and I said something about this, I really liked the hotel, and you're staying in O A Z's hotel with A Z and Floette. They're playing the music from X and Y. Like I really liked those callbacks. And I felt like every time I was in the hotel lobby, I was being emotionally stirred a little bit from you know the ending of X and Y. And so that was something, you know, it was peaceful and a callback to that. And so I enjoyed that. Uh, what were some of your favorite connections to X and Y?

SPEAKER_02 37:26

I I think starting out, I I really do like the uh the composition and the music. Like when you first show up in Lumiose and it's playing the uh recontextualized arrangement of the Lumiose theme, it's very it it almost like it's like returning to an old friend, you know? Like it's it's very quaint, very somber, um, and it's not as like it's not as bright as it feels in X and Y. So you you're immediately like faced with this like you have this curiosity of this new place, but it's also somewhere you're returning to. And I think they did a great job of capturing that feeling with the music. Um a lot of the callbacks with AZ were pretty good. Um one of my favorite parts of X and Y was the cutscene discussing the um Pokemon War 3,000 years ago and firing the uh ultimate weapon. And they actually at a certain point in this game, if you're already to this point, and we've given so many spoilers, but there's um a basement to the um Team Flare Cafe that you visited in the original game. You had to fight Lysander at. And the Lysander Labs is in the bottom of it. So you're exploring this abandoned uh Lysander Labs, and that's where you get Beldum to get Metagross, and you're you're trying to get a key card. Um and there's a computer you find at the end, and it's right beside the capsule where you would have found uh Xernius or Wyveltol and X and Y. And you watch essentially the truth that you as your character would not have known because you were not there five years ago, and it's it shows everything that Lysander did, it talks about the firing of the ultimate weapon, but then they also do an extended version of that cutscene, adding more information we didn't get in X and Y, and it's in the same art style, they have the storybook kind of thing, and I really, really appreciated that uh attention to continuity, and I I thought that was very intentional.

SPEAKER_00 39:37

Yeah, I loved the team flair base going back, and it's it's been worn, you know, it's it's five years of no one being down there really. And I like that they make callbacks to the kids in the original games, the kids who thwarted Lysander's plan. You're like, hey, I know those kids. And you know, there was just a lot of especially yes, and there were a lot of emotional good connections, and I I liked that this is you're getting a picture of look, this is AZ is a guy who nearly destroyed the planet, you know, nearly killed all life 3,000 years ago, and then Lysander uh shows back up. You the mystery character and him dealing with what he has done and a city dealing with nearly being destroyed five years ago, and so it's very interesting. And then you've like you said, in the museum, there's all kind of callbacks to there's callbacks to Legends Arceus and different things in there in there that connect to other games without it being like over-the-top fan service or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 40:51

It's like history within the universe, and uh I like how they treated it as such.

SPEAKER_00 40:56

Yes, and it very I thought everything was about that those types of aspects were handled very well. And and something we were saying earlier that goes into this, I found myself looking out past Lumios, really wanting to know what was get to experience again what was out there and know what it would have looked like in this art style, and and we'll never get to see the PowerPoint and see what Kalos is like five years after this, because you're seeing what Lumio's is like five years after, but what's what's going on with the whole region? What's going on with those characters that you were involved with in the previous games? And so I thought those were some really good, and there's other callbacks, but I thought those were some of the really good callbacks.

SPEAKER_02 41:43

I think two of the other major callbacks I I I really um resonated with uh Mabel, one of was he was she uh one of the admins for Lysanders? She is now the researcher in Sycamore's lab. He's or not was it Sycamore from X and Y? Yes, Sycamore, yes. So she is actually in his office now doing research, and she got in trouble for being on Team Flair, and so she actually has to do research at this lab and cannot leave Lumia City. So I thought that was really cool. And her her dialogue and stuff is super funny. We'll talk about some of the research she has later on in this review. Um, but she's one of the main characters that they call back to. I liked another one that I really liked was Emma from X and Y. I was a big fan of the uh the Looker Bureau and his escapades and you know Gen 4, 5, 6. Um, you know, he's always investigating the uh criminal organization in the game, and then you know, at some point he goes missing. And he I I I think I don't quote me on that, I don't remember this, but I think he fell through a portal or something in Omega Ruby Alpha Sapphire, and we haven't seen him since. Like he's he hasn't been there, so Emma was kind of taken in by him in X and Y, and she has become the lead detective at his agency and has more of like a responsible role, and she's investigating things in the town, really looking after the city that kind of cast her aside in that game. So I I think that's a really cool character growth off-screen that we see too.

SPEAKER_00 43:21

Yeah, it's it's really cool to see, and like Professor Professor Sycamore is gone, uh Looker is gone, and you're seeing you know the story move on without them. And I actually thought Emma was gonna be a bigger part of the game. Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

It was like a red herring almost.

Royale PvP And Ranking Grind

SPEAKER_00 43:40

Yeah, they kind of drop her about uh not very long into the game. And I mean she comes up every now and then, but she's a very small player in the in the game, in my opinion. And I thought they maybe could have done a little bit more with her. But now let's talk about what we've been keep saying we're going to talk about. Let's talk. About the battling mechanics. So obviously, there was a very heavy mega evolution focus in this game, especially in the boss battles, um, which I found to be fun, but they were also kind of tedious and repetitive. And again, like if you're doing one of these boss battles with a rogue mega evolved Pokemon, there is no reason to bring a Pokemon that can't mega evolve because it is going to do so little damage. So if you like one of the main criticisms I had over the game is I did like like there are fletching all over the city. You know, I did like some of the fan favorite Kalos Pokemon being there, but okay, you can't mega evolve Talonflame, it doesn't have a mega evolution in this game.

SPEAKER_02 44:48

So I also dropped it from my team because of that specifically.

SPEAKER_00 44:52

Yeah, and and so it was like, why would I not use Charizard over Talonflame? Or, you know, especially in my situation, because I was using uh Hound Doom as well, is like Talonflame can't mega evolve, it can't help me in these rogue battles. So I thought that was a I thought more Kalos Pokemon, especially fan favorites like that, should have got mega evolutions.

SPEAKER_01 45:12

And I thought there should have been Eevee Evolutions.

SPEAKER_02 45:16

It's bizarre, no Eevee mega evolutions. There's yeah, duplicate mega evolutions for things like Absol in this game, but nothing for Eevee.

SPEAKER_00 45:25

So those were some very questionable decisions, but they did want to push you into using mega evolution in the game, being about mega evolution. So that was cool, but I wish they had get if you were gonna create more mega evolutions. I wish you had created more for some of these other Pokemon. So I guess the main thing to talk about was is this is obviously not the battle style of turn-based most Pokemon games, nor is it really the battle style of Legends Arceus. So, what things did you like about the battle style, if anything, and what did you not like about it?

SPEAKER_02 46:02

So I I have probably more qualms with this than I have positives. Um I think this kind of battle style would be excellent if they did another Coliseum game. I think keeping this in maybe even a legends game, polish it up a little bit. Uh this is a great direction to go in, but every time they add new features like this, it feels like they're not fully realized or they're part of a feature from a previous game where it was fully realized and they've just stripped it of something that gave it more pizzazz. Um I I like that it's active time. I think that's really cool. It makes the game feel more upbeaten alive, but the game focuses so heavily on it that it feels redundant. Your Pokemon aren't very responsive, buttons aren't responsive. You'll send out a Pokemon and they have to roar every single time they come in of Pokéball. Yeah, it's a good thing. And you can get attacked during that. However, your opponents they just have a cutscene, you cannot attack them while they're roaring. So it's it's a really weird, like cheap thing the game does for art. There's a lot of artificial difficulty at this game created by things like that. Um, when you're sneaking up on opponents in battles, sometimes you'll use a move, and then midway through the move, the other Pokemon evidently catches you off guard and it stops you from using the move they attack you, and then you have to restart your attack animation, and that can be a little frustrating, especially when it happens over and over and over again. Because there is a massive focus on battling in this game. I think the biggest problem I have is that battling and catching are separated in such a um such an intense intense manner that it it almost it almost makes it feel more bland because you you've you're stripping away the blend of the two. I don't know how you felt about this.

SPEAKER_00 48:02

I mean, I think in talks we've had, I liked the battling style better than you did. I I especially the first few hours of the game, obviously there was a learning curve, but right at first I was like, oh wow, this is this is very different. I like this and everything. And I want to say that by and large, I like it. I would like to see it again in another game. I am glad that they decided to take this bold step, and I saw good things about it. However, like you said, it was very much like something's missing here.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

Something's missing very unpolished. Like it this could be great, but it's it's like there's something keeping it from that.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

It's not there yet, and it's not fully executed well. And like here's an example of what I liked versus what didn't like. Okay, I liked this a lot better than Legends Arceus batting style. I didn't the whole what was it, you know, aggressive stance, defensive stance, whatever. I hated that. I hated all of the battles.

SPEAKER_02 49:06

I never really battled unless I had to in that game.

SPEAKER_00 49:08

Yes. And then, like at the end of the game, your whole boss battle, you got to battle like three times in a row, and you've got terrible battle mechanics. So I thought it was an improvement over that, and there were times where it was fun, and you could use some kind of different strategy rather than it just being turn-based, who's going first, you know, type of thing. But like you said, the inputs were not responsive enough. I did not like the whole moving the cursor thing where the Pokemon is running over to where the attack point is instead of.

Catching, Wild Zones, And Spawn Design

SPEAKER_02 49:41

Sometimes it would stand still, rotate 90 degrees, wait a few seconds, and then it might attack. Sometimes it won't even attack, or it'll run behind a tree that you didn't tell it to go to and attack the tree instead of the Pokemon, then you you have to wait for the move to charge back up to use it again.

SPEAKER_00 49:57

Yeah, it just becomes a mess. You're trying to hurry up and attack and your Pokemon's running around and running to a different point and attacking. And so that was a major problem I had with it. Another aspect of the battling that I did not like in typical mainline Pokemon games, turn-based Pokemon games, speed is extremely important. And if you take for example, X and Y. Okay, everybody loves Greninja. I use Greninja in both X and Y. What's great about Greninja is the speed. And so, like a lot of glass cannons, like Jolteon, what you're trying to do is you're hitting the other person's Pokemon before they can hit you, and you're trying to take them out, basically, especially if you're using something with high special attack power or something like that. In this game, Guard of War is another example in this game. If you are using a light, not very defensive Pokemon that has high speed, sorry about your luck. Because it is so disincentivized to have a small, fast Pokemon in this game because you're going to get hit, period. There is no knocking the other person's Pokemon out and never getting hit. Your Pokemon is going to get hit, and if they have low defense, they're almost certainly going to be knocked out. So I used Greninja a lot early in the game, and I finally just ended up kind of dropping it because it was just getting knocked out a lot because it's not responsive enough to where you're moving it to take advantage of the speed. See, the way this battle mechanic should have worked is you have a Pokemon literally modeled after a ninja, you should be able to dodge these attacks.

SPEAKER_02 51:46

Oh, dodge. That was the first thing I was looking at. I was asking everyone about this. I was like, where is dodge at? Well, you can use protect. Well, yeah, if you use protect, you have to use it at the exact right moment. If you don't use it in time for your Pokemon to wind up and use it, then it's useless. If you do use it, you're still getting hit and hurt from it. If you use it too soon, it lasts for 0.2 milliseconds, and then your Pokemon gets hit anyways. It's it's not very effective for anything, and even running away and having your Pokemon follow you or putting your Pokemon away isn't too effective because you're going to get hit and then you have to restart the battle.

SPEAKER_00 52:21

It's like Yeah, there's just a lot of things about it where it's like, okay, do you want this to be a dynamic battle like in the anime style or whatever, or don't you? And so I thought there were some things that were good about it. I enjoyed it, but there was also, especially as you do it over and over, it gets tedious, and you feel like, okay, this doesn't really work the way that it's supposed to work. And you are, like I said, smaller, quicker Pokemon are very disincentivized. And I, okay, the sneaking thing, I have to say something about the sneaking thing. This is the made me more angry than just about anything in a Pokemon game I've ever played. So I don't think we really discussed this, but in when you're doing the Royale and you're trying to move up the rankings, um, one of the primary mechanics is that you need to sneak up on the other person. If you sneak up on them and attack their Pokemon before they see you, you catch them off guard and that free causes them to freeze, hesitate. That is very helpful. However, if they attack you when it deems that you are not ready, which is kind of an arbitrary, weird mechanics.

SPEAKER_02 53:35

Sometimes it'll be if the trainer sees you or your Pokemon, sometimes it'll be if their Pokemon sees you or the Pokemon. It doesn't seem like it's very consistent.

SPEAKER_00 53:43

Like you can be clearly walking towards them ready to battle, and it'll be like, You were caught off guard. So you can be you can sneak up on this person, crouch, sneak up, be hidden, launch an attack. You're like, say you use flamethrower, the flames can be inches from the Pokemon's face, and it will say, You were caught off guard, and then you're frozen and they're attacking you. And I'm like, and every time I'm like, I was not caught off guard, I was attacking them. I had already launched an attack. So that is very frustrating.

SPEAKER_02 54:18

And it's especially difficult because most of the time when you're fighting these trainers, you're on a time crunch. You have these quests to get the tickets at nighttime in these battle zones. So you're trying to fight as many trainers as possible, trying to use as many sneak ups as possible to get the most points. And there's these alleyways, and they're walking up and down them with minimal, minimal cover to no cover whatsoever. And this is this is a gripe I have for the actual Pokemon too. Like, there's few bushes that actually count as cover in the game, and the ones that do, they can still see you through them, even if you're sneaking. So it's just very arbitrary what the game considers sneaking or not. And and you know, Legends, was it Legends ZA that allowed you or not Legends ZA, Legends Arceus that let you go back into the bush and eventually lose alert? Yeah, that that's gone. They they just decided whatever mechanic they had in that game is just out the window. And I I think they had it down pretty tightly in that game, and you know, they carried that over to Scarlet and Violet, and I think I think it worked in both of those games just fine, and I don't really know what the disconnect is.

SPEAKER_00 55:29

Yeah, in this game, you're pretty much like you said, there's so little cover and the sneaking doesn't work very well. You're getting seen most of the time. There someone's going to see you, and they're going to chase you to the ends of the earth. You know, it's just it's not as aggressive as Legends Arceus. Well that was really hard.

SPEAKER_02 55:48

But only because there's holotech to protect you from like if you leave a wild zone, they will stare you down until you come back.

SPEAKER_00 55:57

And that's the boy. We'll talk about wild zones more here in a minute, but there are certain wild zones that you go in, especially if you're early in the game and you you don't have really strong Pokemon yet, that it is like a death wish. Yes. And you're trying, you're getting play this game before they it's hard to catch the Pokemon while it's going on. So let's go. We'll talk about catching, unless you had anything else you wanted to say about battling.

Zygarde And Boss Fight Strategies

SPEAKER_02 56:24

No, I think we covered everything we talked about competitive earlier. I will say it before we talk about catching, I want to loop back to some of the gameplay again. This is a very, very long game, and I think part of that you know has to do with the battling mechanic. Like you have to do these ZA Royale tickets. So the way the game works, every night the game forces you into a cutscene, and then on the map there will be a um a battle zone, similar in fashion to the wild zones where the Pokemon are, but it'll be full of trainers that you have to fight, and you'll have a uh amount of points you have to get from fighting them. And you sometimes you have to fight 20, 25 people, sometimes it's 12. The further in the game you get, you know, the more you'll get used to it. But this takes a long time. And by the time I finish with this game, I think I was at probably like 80 hours before I got to the DLC. And really, I yeah, I did every single side quest. I did the entire Pokedex. And towards the end of the game, to get the final side quests in the game, you have to do I think it was five Royale tickets, and a ticket is getting the entire battle zone thing completed, and you have to fly between them a bunch too, because they'll just like run out of trainers or like they won't respawn. And um then you can you know get the ticket to fight the actual main event trainer that you're fighting. So there's five, ten, fifteen, and twenty to get to the last side quest in the game, and then the last side quest is fighting the same person. I think it was like five times in the row in a row, and their Pokemon do not change whatsoever. So a lot of things contribute to that. A lot of redundancies, and I think that the the battling system is mostly to blame for that. And it just made the battling system get old really fast, but yeah, we'll get we'll get into catching now, because this is uh we could we could go on for a while about the redundancies in this game.

SPEAKER_00 58:33

So on the catching, um like you said, the sneaking up wasn't great. Like have fun trying to sneak up on a Pokemon. I thought it was it was relatively easy to catch Pokemon in this game. I appreciated that. I enjoyed that, and and getting Pokeballs is very easy. And if you lose a Pokeball by missing, you can get that from someone at the Pokemon Center. So as far as is this game, you know, user-friendly, quality of life, that is very high in the game. Very positive as far as making it easy on you in ways that maybe previous games wouldn't have been. However, um there were some problems, like we were talking about this the other day. Say you want to catch Dratini, and there's a Dratini on a rooftop. Drattini's probably going to see you, even if it doesn't, and you throw a Pokeball at it, it's probably coming out of the Pokeball, and then it's going to immediately disappear. And there's a lot of that in the game, a lot of Pokemon that disappear or that get angry. Like it's especially if a Pokemon gets angry, you cannot catch it until it isn't angry anymore. Yes, and not being able to hide really makes that difficult. And if you knock the Pokemon out, um it'll be there for a second, but there's no guarantee that you can catch it then. And so if you knock it out, throw a Pokeball, it doesn't stay in the Pokeball, the Pokemon's gone.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:17

Or if Pokemon swarm around it, you can run out of time by hitting those other Pokemon instead of the one you're intending to catch, and then that Pokemon that you're trying to catch disappears while you're trying to catch it. And I ran into that a lot. Because the wild zones were filled to the brim with Pokemon that are just all after you all the time.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

Yeah, like when I'm in the wild zone, uh, I don't remember which number it is, the one that has Kangaskhan and Clefairy and some of these other Pokemon. You are basically catching Kangaskhan just to get them off of your back and to get them out of your way while you're trying to catch another Pokemon for some type of mission or whatever. Right. And I think anybody who's played this game probably knows this by now. If you are going in Wild Zone 17, make sure you are right with your maker because Wild Zone 17 is instant death. Usually, like you have I had to flee out of Wild Zone 17 so many times because of all the pyroar and you know an alpha pyroar is just dude.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:32

There's a ladder to climb on the roof in that area, and if you climb that ladder, pyroar can still attack you with a ground attack while you're climbing the ladder or were it while you're on top of the building out of their view. It is insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

That's something the range of these attacks don't really make sense. You're just being for wild Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:53

Wherever wild Pokemon.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:55

There's another zone. Okay, so one of the zones I really didn't like. I don't want to skip this one, was four, where the cemetery is.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:02

Oh, yeah, the ghosts.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:03

You cannot go in there without a plague of ghastly and Ekans trying to take your life and leave you in that cemetery. Wild Zone 8 was also a danger zone.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:16

That was the one with the um the gabbo. Yeah. And so it's in a circle, and then drillbirds are constantly emitting themselves from the ground at you, and they're in the same shape hole as Gabite, and Gabite's like one in like Gibble. Gibble. Sorry, yeah, Gabite's the middle one. Gibble is like a one in maybe like 15 or 20 chance, right? For some reason. Well, when I first went in there, it was everywhere, but then when I was trying to catch it, then it was like really hard to catch. So I'm watching around this area.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:48

What you're trying to do most of the time in that zone, you're like, oh, I want to try to catch a gibble. And it's just like the drill burr are everywhere, the machop are everywhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:57

They're waddling behind you.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

You're like running the whole time trying to find a gibble. And I thought early in the game, it wasn't really a big problem later in the game, but early in the game, Wild Zone 6, where the Hound Our and Hound Doom, Alpha Houndoom is when your Pokemon are not leveled up very high and you're getting mugged by Hound Hour and an Alpha Houndoom. That's a lot. There's a lot going on there.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:28

And you know, I I had an issue with the um catching a specific Pokemon in almost every grouping of wild zones. Like in the gameplay loop, you would have like a set of wild areas pop up after a story mission, and I would immediately try to catch everything in them, get the Pokedex filled out as quickly as I can. There would always be one Pokemon that would be at night or a rare spawn, and it would take me probably 30 or more minutes to try to get this Pokemon because you have to fly away and fly back. Uh you have to wait until the next day, because if you knock out a Pokemon, it won't respawn until the next day in that spawn queue, I guess you could say. So there were a lot of things like even outside of the wild zones, Eevee only spawns in weird places, like on a rooftop over by what wild zone was it? It was one with like I think it was 15. The one with the uh the pump caboos and haunters and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:25

Yeah, there's one specific um rooftop where and it's like fenced in. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You have to go through the and hope that it's there. Now, where I usually caught them, and I don't have the map pulled up right now, but where I usually caught the Eevees was there's basically a little park um with lots of the crystals, and there's people just sitting on benches, and it's part of the drainage system, is all around. And um, so you kind of go behind, like you go down an alley and then go behind this retaining wall, this this cinder block wall that's like hiding the park, and then you go in there, and typically I would find Eevee in there, but then even then, Eevee is not always that easy to catch. Sometimes they get in the water, you know. So Eevee was not super easy to obtain. Once I found that it spawned in that park pretty often, I ended up catching quite a few of them. But like we said, it the use of Eevee is a little not great in this game because you can't mega evolve. I did use Sylveon and Jolteon some. Sylveon's very helpful in your um there's different times where you're gonna battle Zygarde, there's different times where you'll battle a dragon type trainer or something. So I found Sylveon to be helpful there, but by and large, you're not really using. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:58

Oh, yeah. So the Um in the Zygarde fight because he is uh is it dragon and ground type?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:06

I decided to go because I I remember Oivalto being like super good against him because he's you know dark and flying, and he has oblivion wing, which heals you. So I was just keeping my distance from Zygarde and just spamming him with like Oblivion Wing, keeping myself healed. He couldn't hit me with the ground attacks, and then he was weak against um several of things I had. So I um I found that to be probably the easiest way to beat him, but that was a really tough boss fight. Otherwise, I don't without cheesing it, I don't really know what you would do.

Items, Megastones, And Economy

SPEAKER_00 1:06:39

Yeah, I found that to be one of the hardest boss fights. And not to get through the first two layers of it, but the third layer. Yeah, the third layer. What I thought was okay, he's dragging the ground. Right. I'll use a Glaceon. And I I typically I love Glaceon. I've had a lot of success with Glaceon, particularly in Scarlet and Violet. But when I used Glaceon in this game, it was just like just not doing anything.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

And so I was finding for some reason it was like ice type Pokemon, which there's not a ton of in this game, especially that you would want to be that high level.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:12

But and if they are, it's like a very weird mix. Like you'd have something like is it uh carbink or whatever, or like um Gallade, like a ghost and ice type, like you'd have these just like odd mixes or like steel I don't know, I'm thinking well, and that's part of the thing because you don't have a lot of ice types anyway.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:36

But so what I primarily did when I fought Zygarde was the first two layers of the fight, I was primarily using Sylveon, and Sylveon's, you know, got draining kiss, you've got moon blast, you know, you can use things like light screen and reflect. So I was doing I was basically just taking the first two layers with Sylveon, and then in the third layer, the Pokemon that I was actually found to be the most helpful for me was Clefable, which is weird because I don't honestly don't think I've ever used Clefable. Clefable was a tank in this game.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:11

Anytime I had to fight with it.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:13

Clefable is very good in this game, and so you could mega evolve, obviously, in this game, and uh that's I used that and I would use Gardevoir and use reflect and light screen, and that's why I did it.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:25

I constantly I always made sure at least one Pokemon I had had light screen, even if they were going to die or something. I would pop light screen, have protect on every Pokemon in case I needed to use it, and then I'd have an extra line of defense, and that's that's really important in this game because everyone just getting one shot constantly. I also had to cheese that fight against the flower underneath the Lumiose tower at the end. Oh yeah. Okay, so I don't do that right. You're getting you get sent back an hour and a half of gameplay because you can run out of potions.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:57

That was an interesting fight to me in some ways. Okay, so when I was doing that fight with the flowers, what I found was it was odd. It was like certain Pokemon were positioned better than others. I mean, literally, I'm talking about like based on height, based on where they're standing. There's a lot of calling your Pokemon back in that fight. You definitely don't want to leave them out there, but I would have Pokemon that's like same typing, same attacks and stuff, and one would be significantly better than the other just based off of where it was standing, or you know, so for me in that fight, Hound I rode Hound Doom to a dub right there. Hound Doom bailed me out so much in that fight. It's awesome. Now, like Charizard, I was having a really hard time when I was using Charizard. But so you would think Charizard was like they're both using Flamethrower, but no, Houndoom was the goat on that. And the other Pokemon I probably used a lot on that was Lucario, but um yeah, Houndoom was awesome in this game. I love Houndoom. Again, the only problem with that was he's a little bit lighter, faster type Pokemon, so that was a little bit of an issue in the game. But but yeah, it was certain, and and you could kind of say that about a lot of the boss fights where you're fighting rogue mega evolved Pokemon, depending on what their attacks were, depending on how they were, you know, how those attacks manifested themselves, different Pokemon might be better just based off of responding to what's around you, which is actually a pretty cool dynamic feature, as though it were a real fight. However, like you said, there are definitely moves where it's like your Pokemon's getting one shot if you don't call that Pokemon back, especially against like Zygarde. So you had to be ready to call your Pokemon back. And there were times in boss fights where I knew if I stopped and called my Pokemon back, I would probably get hit, but that I would rather do that than my Pokemon get taken out. One thing I will say about this game in a in a lot of the battles, it is very easy to stop and heal Pokemon in this game. For sure. And you're not having to take a turn like in a turn-based game, healing, and then you're going to get a few.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:32

You do have a time period, which is the odd, or it's not odd, it does keep you from spam healing, but like it like a recovery feature of and you will use items in this game. You I I usually hold on to my items, you will be using them. They throw money and items at you, you'll be picking up hyper potions in the street. Like it's it's very friendly in the regard that you will always have enough items, and if you don't, then you can get them from rewarding yourself with money.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

And that's one thing, like you might see early in this game and say, Oh, I could never buy that mega stone from the Stone Emporium or whatever. It does not take you very long to get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

I but I think you're talking about if you do every side quest, you will have like four million or eight million at the end of the game after you get all the megastones, like easily you will.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:27

Like you were saying about mega Charizard, relatively early in the game, I had both megastones for Charizard and just swapped them out depending on what the type advantage I wanted in that fight. And like if you had told me that in a normal Pokemon game, that I just early in the game would be like, Yeah, let me buy all these megastones. Right.

Customization, Map, And QoL Gaps

SPEAKER_02 1:12:46

You know, like I liked hunting them down in X and Y, and I really think that this they did a really good job of making it feel that way without having to look for them.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:56

Yeah, because you could easily miss them in X or not be able to get to them or something in X.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:01

Very specific ways of getting to them. Even the crystals, like uh there's another currency of the mega crystals that you break around the city to give to the quasi-cordo, I remember the name, uh company. And they um they'll exchange them for stones, and that's a bit more of a grind, but it isn't as big of a problem when you get to DLC because they throw the stones at you. But uh initially I noticed this in the game, is you could only have 999 at a time, and so I didn't know this. Nothing tells you that at first, and it just starts deleting them after you get 999. Um, they've recently fixed this, it's now 9,999. So for new players it's fine, but for people who were playing the game originally, if you didn't buy Mega Stones as you were playing, you're kind of out of luck with the ones you lost. But they do respawn in the town, albeit less so after the game's completed because of story-related events.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:58

Well, and why we're talking about purchasing items is something I I meant to discuss earlier and I skipped over it, but um customization in this game and item purchase. So item purchasing is pretty easy, however, customization on this game I felt was a little bit lacking.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:20

Yeah, it was really strange.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:22

Big part of that is if you are a male character, if you're playing as male, virtually every article of clothing in the game is for female characters. And like, unless you want to be a guy character wearing a skirt, you know, like there's just not a lot there.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:45

Everything's pretty feminine, and I understand that this game you're we're is supposed to be Paris, you're there's a lot of fashion and that type of thing, but there's not a lot of fashion for guys, it's mostly like suit and tie and like very formal wear, if you have the normal clothing, or like very like odd articles of like exotically um like patterned clothing, I guess, that don't really match with things.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:13

Yeah, it was very much like you're a GQ celebrity, you know, some of the weird things that you see singers and actors wear and stuff. It was like that kind of deal, and they're just very few choices for male characters. And I ended up most of the game, there's a part of the game where you're instructed to buy luxury clothing for an event.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:36

And I didn't wear that.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:38

Yeah, you don't have to. I ended up doing it because what I decided I liked best out of everything I wore the whole game is I was wearing like this greenish-bluish um detective trench coat and like a black sweater and white dress pants and dress shoes. And if you had told me that's what I was gonna be wearing in a Pokemon game, I would have been like, are you insane? But no, like that's what I wore most of the game because I was like, there's so few, I don't want to wear a women's jacket, you know. It's just like there was so little for me to customize there. I did kind of like um there were a lot of features with hair and eyes that I thought were cool, but clothing not so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:27

What I also think kind of held it back was there were many stores in the game, many clothing stores, all looked exactly the same, all had different items, and you had to click into them to see what they had. You couldn't walk into them, so it kind of took that liveliness away from it, even though people were in like a mall that had these stores. It had like a hologram that had just inaccurate data on the window showing what clothes they had at each store, and having to go all over the city to find certain things or not knowing what places had what, you couldn't really coordinate any of that very well for your outfits. And I think that's that was kind of lame.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:08

Yeah, you don't it was really hard for me to remember, like there was no memorable, oh, this store is here, you know. It's just there's a lot of like not knowing where things are and running around, and um and that was one thing. The the map is largely easy to navigate, and there's a lot of fast travel, and but there's also a lot of times where I felt like, uh, I'm tired of being told to go back to the hotel and having to manually do it by myself, or I'm tired of being forced to go here, or you know, it just there was a lot of you're constantly pulling up the map and and trying to fly somewhere closer because it gets old trying to run and scale buildings, which I like the scaling buildings, but you use fast travel a lot in this game, in in my experience.

SPEAKER_02 1:18:01

I've been playing Persona 5 lately, and whenever you go into like the dungeons in the game, the palaces, whenever you finish a certain area of the palace, and you don't have to walk all the way back out or navigate uh using the map or whatever, it asks, would you like to go to the beginning of this palace so you can leave? Yes. And so it'd be I don't know, it'd be nice in this game. Would you like to go to Hotel Z A Z or whatever to continue the story? Yeah, let's do that, even if they had like a character mention it or something. Just some way to expedite that process because it would it, there's it's a map game. There is a lot of just clicking in the map. You're probably in the map a quarter of your gameplay.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:44

Yeah, I mean, that's not an exaggeration. You probably are, and I mean, I did like a lot of the the menus and things that they had in this game being very user-friendly. Yeah, but there were also some things, uh, there was something I wanted to talk about that I remember feeling like it was complicated, but I don't remember.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:02

Was it the side quest getting to those if you didn't mark them immediately?

SPEAKER_00 1:19:06

Yo, that was definitely that was not what I was thinking of, but yes. There was a early in the game, like I did a side quest or was trying to do a side quest and did not tell it to track it.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:18

I had to look in my settings to find a keybind for that. You had to go to the map and hit a certain button, but I couldn't figure out where it was.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:25

And so there were some there were some things like that in the game that were less than optimum, but I mean, I feel like I've been all I've been doing is criticizing the game. By and large, I loved the game.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:38

But I I think it's fair to mention things that are shortcoming of it, because like we we have mentioned there are a lot of great things with this game, but the things holding it back, I I feel like it it's only fair to mention those as well, you know.

Side Quests, Cafés, And Difficulty Spikes

SPEAKER_00 1:19:53

What I one thing I'll say about this game, and I've felt this way about a lot of Pokemon games, but when I was first playing this game, I mean I was staying up till one, two, three o'clock in the morning playing the game. I have I have a job, and like I'd be staying up till you know, two or three o'clock in the morning playing the game. I loved the game, and it was it felt new, it felt different. It felt, you know, I'm on an adventure and I'm really doing something with my Pokemon and bonding with the Pokemon. I love that the Pokemon can be out of the Pokeball with you and running around. And I I thought that some of the features were not as great as what they were going they were made out to be, as far as like sitting at the cafes with them or going to the parks. You couldn't really do anything with them.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:38

I really wish the that was like the Pokey Ammy from X and Y where you could raise their stats and like play with them and like picture mode and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:46

I even thought the camping feature in Sword and Shield or the picnic feature in Scarlet and Violet allowed you to get the feature. Yeah, very sandwich eccentric game. You got to uh interact more with your Pokemon in those play a sandwich. Yeah, apparently people in Spain in the Mediterranean you eat a lot of sandwiches. Because I did not know that was part of their culture.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:09

So boy, they love that like a Jimmy Johns, good hoagie.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:15

But so I would have liked to have a little more interaction with the Pokemon, but I liked them being able to get out of the Pokeball, and that type of thing was very good. Um you and me are both players where we try to protect our Pokemon all the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:30

I don't like my Pokemon dying, it makes me sad.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:32

I never want my Pokemon to faint. I like systems and games, Pokemon games that incentivize that. Like, I know Brilliant Diamond Shining Shining Pearl got a lot of flack. I will disclose this. I had not played the Gen 4 games, and I won't go into the long discussion before Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl came out. So my first time playing through Gen 4 was the remakes, which I know most people hated. I loved them, and one of the features that was in that in that game, and it was in some of the other games that I really liked was the friendship mechanic of if you don't let your Pokemon get knocked out, the Pokemon battles harder for you. The Pokemon won't get knocked out, it will hang on with one hit point, you know, it will dodge attacks, it will push through poison, you know, hold out so you wouldn't cry or whatever. And it builds a bitter, better relationship with your Pokemon and it it's incentivizes, it helps you. The player who doesn't just toss their Pokemon out there like Cannon Fodder and actually treats their Pokemon with love and respect for this code.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:46

This game hates Pokemon, it you are rewarded for everyone's feigning left and right, is a Lumbios now.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:54

And in Lumio, you don't have that. It is your Pokemon are getting knocked out. You are going to lose, even your strongest Pokemon is going to get knocked out a few times in this game.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:05

And if you ever do the battle cafes, good luck to you. Oh, yeah. Because I was trying to do the side quest as I went, not the play.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

Some of the battle cafes are absolutely brutal. And like, yeah, what was the one like seven trainers in a row?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:22

You can't use ten trainers in a row, and you can't use any healing items. The first one poisons Pokemon, so you have to have a steel type. Ever uh towards the end of them, um, one just has all dragon type Pokemon, and then one has a mega evolve Pokemon. You have to make it through all ten of them, they're all like level like what, 70 or something, 80, and like that was high level.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:47

That was really hard because so many times you would get a Pokemon poisoned to start with. And it and you like you said, you start with poison, but it's not just the first trainer, there are other trainers who can do that, and so you're you have to play multiple times to even know what they have, and you know, because you get one shot immediately.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:06

You uh at certain times I almost had to write down what order I needed to throw things out because there were so many in a row.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:13

It is very much a taking multiple stabs at it and figuring out what you like if you the first six Pokemon you take in there are probably not going to be the right six Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:25

And I wouldn't have a problem with it if it wasn't such a time sink. Like I'm spending 30 minutes every time wasting that time adding to that in-game clock that we talked about. Why are why am I not allowed to heal my Pokemon?

SPEAKER_00 1:24:37

Why are my Pokemon nothing?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:39

And then they'll actually replenish super arrogant if they beat you and they've just they're the first one to fight you, or what am I trying to say? They fought you for the first time during that battle. It's like, well, I've fought four trainers before you train or so yeah, that was that other one where they send three out at a time and you only get one Pokemon out at a time, and you have to fight all three of them, and sometimes it's like three different typings, like uh the Flareon, Jolteon, Vaporeon, all at the same time you're fighting them. And so you have to like decide what order to hit them in, because like you can get burnt, frozen, paralyzed in the same battle, and they're making you fight not just the one set of three, but I think it's like six of them in a row, no healing. So, like, yeah, it becomes an issue.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:28

One of the hardest fights for me was okay. So, when you're doing the first fight against and I'm drawing a blank on the name, but you are at the fighting dojo and you are fighting the big tall.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:44

What's his name? Um what was his name? Was it Ivor?

SPEAKER_00 1:25:49

Yes, yeah. Okay, so when you are fighting him, you are thinking, okay, he has fighting type Pokemon. What do you use against fighting type Pokemon? Well, you can use psychic, you can use fairy, you can use flying. If you are using flying type Pokemon in that battle, get ready because virtually every single one of his Pokemon has strong rock type moves. And when I stepped into that battle, that was the first battle of the game that I lost on my first attempt. And it was just like I had like Charizard out there and Talonflame or whatever, and okay, well, that's four times weak against Rock, and like all the Pokemon have rock type moves, and then I think he had some of his other Pokemon had strong moves against Psychic, too. Yeah, and so I found that to be really difficult, which I'm fine with some of them being difficult, but it's just like unexpected, where you just you go into the battle having no clue that that's what you're about to get hit with.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:55

Yep. Yeah, and I I I really do think kind of in the same vein, there's a lot of very unique characters that I think are really funny in this game. Like, you know, Ivor's sister, Gwen, has a very different theme, like the ghost type Pokemon. You you really only fight her like once or twice, or Laban, you fight like once. And these characters are they all are like just uh bleeding with the character to them, the personality. But they choose like several of them, like the Kanari, I think you fight her like five or six times during the game. And it's her her team doesn't really change that much, or like uh Jassant, you have to fight her. She's at the bonus side quest if you fight 20 C A infinites, and she just has the same team that you fought originally, and then you have to fight her five times in a row with the same team. And it's like, why why am I doing this?

SPEAKER_00 1:27:54

Yeah, that just feels silly, you know. Yeah, it's it's like a time like Legends Arceus. I brought it up earlier.

SPEAKER_03 1:28:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:01

In that last battle, why am I doing three three battles, you know, in one battle? And like that doesn't, I mean, that's not really that that fun, especially if the team doesn't change up, like you said. And you fight Kanari's grandfather several times and and it's always the same team, which I mean I don't mind it too much, but it is kind of like, hey, can we like change the team up or something? And but yeah, so overall the characters in the game are really good. I love getting to know them. Yes. In this game, they're they have character.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:35

And they they become tight-knit. Like you they all come together at certain points and like interact with each other more. At first, they're all kind of strangers, and then the world becomes more friendly to you and towards them, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:50

There's a development of a larger team in a city together, you know, working together.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:58

Yes, precisely.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:59

And and I think, you know, it was a very good way to way to do it and to build bonds, and you know, it's a very unique Pokemon game. And I thought it was a a really good, you know, you they were taking a chance with this game, and I think it really paid off in my opinion. I thought it was a great game, and I thought it was beautiful. I I and one there were features like seeing Pokemon land on light posts, seeing Pokemon in trees, and you could catch those Pokemon, they weren't just in the world. I thought that was great. I would have liked to have seen more of it, and so I thought those were really good features. The only shiny Pokemon other than the Mareep that everyone gets as part of a side quest that I have caught so far is a Pidgey. I was just standing in the street and the Pidgey just landed on a light post right beside me and it was shiny. I found like shiny beckons towards the beginning of the game, but I didn't find anything else after that. Yeah, okay. So personally for me, I am not a I don't like to grind on games, especially for something like that. I I know a lot of people love shiny honey. Are you shiny? That is not my and I just don't take the time to do that. I am very story driven. I like to start the game, train the Pokemon, do the battles, win, beat the game. That's what I like to do. And so for me, I preferred Scarlet and Violet's approach of shinies being not that rare. Um this game, they were more common than in some other.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:39

They actually acknowledge them too as shinies in this game.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:42

Yeah. But I personally would like even more shinies. I I get some people want that to be protected and harder to get. I do not. I would love there to be shiny Pokemon.

Themes Of Redemption And AZ’s Farewell

SPEAKER_02 1:30:52

One thing that I was a little frustrated on that aspect, the shiny charm, you always get it from completing the regional decks. If you complete the regional decks in this game, you get nothing. Like there's a regional dex, there's a mega Pokemon decks, and if you complete either or you you get nothing. Everything is based on Mabel's research. And that could be catching Pokemon, that could be doing something. Initially, when the game came out, you had to battle, what is it, a thousand trainers to complete her research to get the shiny charm. You know, like if you I've beat the game with every side quest, I've caught every Pokemon, I've caught a lot of them many times, and I still I'm I'm maybe like five or six levels away from completing a research, so I don't have the shiny charm yet. And most of my Pokemon are level 100. Um, like I have several teams of level 100 Pokemon, and it's it's just kind of weird to me that everything is focused around the research instead of the actual research of completing the Pokedex like the other games. Because it's it's very redundant. Like, why would I be catching a water type 400 times in a row?

SPEAKER_00 1:32:05

Yes, and that's a that is one of the main elements of Art Legends Arceus I did not like it. Was catch the same Pokemon 20 times. No, I'm not going to do that. Like, I I don't have time for that. And so to me, I I really don't even always go and complete the Pokedex. I haven't completed the Pokedex in this game. It's not something I I typically do a lot of, especially when you're dealing with situations like trade evolutions and things like that.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:33

But I do think they made it a lot easier with having evolved Pokemon in the wild. I I think so. It's made it a lot more manageable to complete a Pokedex.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:43

Well, and like in this game, you are given an opportunity to catch Gengar. Yes. Okay, well, that is not that it's very good in the game, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:53

Right, but it's kind of trash.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:55

But yeah, I tried using it and it just wasn't good, but but you have the opportunity to catch it, so that's positive. But what I mean is I need an incentive to actually even bother to catch all these Pokemon. And you know, the idea of keep catching multiple of the same type, you know, I I'm not really I'm not really into that. And a lot of times the rewards you're getting are TMs that your Pokemon probably already know. And so I didn't think there was a huge incentive there. One thing about this game I do want to say from a mechanic standpoint that I I really like. So I have always favored, and this is probably me as probably honestly being a bigger fan of the anime than the games, is I have always drastically preferred the tournaments in the show to battling the Elite Four. And one of the things that I've really liked in the show, if you watched Journeys, was the World Coronation series. And so Ash is, you know, moving up the rankings, battling people from all over the world. Then he's battling in the, you know, battling in higher levels of the tournament against better trainers on bigger scales until he finally reaches the Masters 8. I loved that format. They kind of went with a format sort of like that in Sword and Shield, and I a much scale, way scaled down version, but I like that. In this game, they were trying to do something very similar to the World Coordination series. I would Pokemon, if you hear this, I would honestly just like the World Coordination series put in a game.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:46

I mean I mean they did that with the Battle Frontier and Gen 3, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:52

This to me was I liked it, but it was repetitive, the stakes didn't seem super high a lot of times, yeah. And the I didn't really like that, you know, it it felt like it was just some a box you were checking.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:14

You had to grind to get a single ticket for the main event fight many times and then dreadful skip.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:22

You skip once you go up about three levels. I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this 26 times, which whether you like that or not, people have a very different view on that. I didn't want over half the alphabet to be handed to me on a silver platter, and so I didn't like being moved up that high. I would have liked to have seen I thought.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:45

That would have been a 200-hour game.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:47

Yeah, yeah, it would have been way too long. But I just would like to see me earning it up the rankings to a tournament is really what I would like to see.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:58

And it's funny because at the end of the game, they basically make you do that if you want the other side quests and the floet and so on. You have to fight 20 more of those. So, like, and and what's weird is you you do these ZA Infinite ones, the first one you fight's the ranked Z guy that you already fought. He's not changed at all, but then some of the characters that you fight have.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:17

Yeah, that threw me a little hardcore. So when I did that, I was like, Are you kidding me? You're just having me fight the ranked Z guy with his scrub like level five Pokemon, and then so I went into the next fight, not thinking I even like needed really good Pokemon because I thought it was gonna be the ranked Y, you know, and that was not the situation, it does not stay like that. But so I mean, I like this direction. I just I would just like it to be instead of like a tedious fighting people in on the street, you know, give me big battles to do, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:54

And you don't make me fight the chumps at every single moment, no chumps. Like, I I want to start with that, but at the end of the game, you don't want to fight all these like amateur trainers over and over again just to fight one person, then go back, and like it's just dreadful. And um there there were a lot of gameplay loop things like that. Like uh I I noticed like it'd be like do a small story dialogue mission, fight a boss, three boss fights, always three. Every time there'd be three uh mega evolved boss fights of rogue-mega evolved Pokemon, and some of these were easy, and then some were just like borderline impossible sometimes because they'd be sending out Pokemon. I've noticed in any kind of fight with a wild Pokemon or the rogue Pokemon, they would be targeting you directly instead of your Pokemon that are actually fighting them. So I'd be getting chased by all these chump Pokemon that my Pokemon could not catch up with to do moves in time because they have to like pause before they attack, and then the move misses, so I'm like running for my life. So you do like a story mission, three of these fights, and then you would do whatever I think they do two wild zones at a time with that, and then like five or six side quests, and it would just be that, and then the exact same order of operations, exactly the same again. And we'll maybe in a different episode we'll talk about the um the DLC once we've had a chance to play it some more. But the um I've noticed so far with it, it's exactly the same. Like they just have this very redundant gameplay loop, loopy.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:31

And and like I don't want to we'll talk about it in that episode, but I do not want to keep making donuts. And yes, you do like I don't enjoy that. And then, you know, some of the rogue battles in that, you're just like, what in the world? I do want to talk about there is a if you haven't played the DLC yet, I'm just gonna say this. There is a battle, and in these battles, the Pokemon are drastically leveled higher than what you play in the game. They're like well you what you need for is for your Pokemon to be well over 100. And that's the one.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:06

By the end of the main game, you are intended to have every Pokemon in your party as level 100. You cannot play the ELC feasibly with the city.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:14

Which is definitely not where I was at, which is why I guess it gives you all the experience candy and stuff. But yeah, I got in a battle with where you have to fight two rogue crabomitables at the same time. I haven't I don't even think I've done that yet. They're like giant, by the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:36

You wait, you fought that before the um the sushi?

SPEAKER_00 1:39:41

Yeah, I haven't fought. Dude, I had to fight a plate of sushi. I don't know. Honestly, I haven't finished the DLC. But the Crab Omitable thing, it's not actually one of the boss like rogue fights where like Karina's helping you and everything. It's like a side mission boss fight. Okay, every Pokemon, well, the first few times I tried it, like nearly any Pokemon I sent out there, even legendary Pokemon.

SPEAKER_01 1:40:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:10

Before they can even like finish doing their aura farming intro and launch an attack, or maybe they launch one attack, they are knocked out because there are two giant rogue crab hominals just punching them in the face. They're like coming after you with a vengeance, hungry, and it was just like, what am I doing? And so I got tired of even trying it for a while. I have passed it now, but it was like, Why are you just punching my Pokemon in the face before I can even do anything?

Legends Future: Regions We Want

SPEAKER_02 1:40:47

There's two side quests that I can think of in the main base game that were like this. I I you know I did all the side quests on the main game, and I have not done any of the side quests in the DLC because there's just too many. Like it's I was spending so much time in the main game, so I mean, just I put it to the side. I've been really burnt out on it for now. But like uh what was it? The first one was you have to have a um pupitar in your party, and you have to find this one Aegislash. And what you have to do is take advantage of their lack of special defense by using stone edge. Well, actually, first you have to use some kind of like um like bulk up type move, and then you have to immediately protect or the one-shot you, and then you have to um quickly use stone edge and then use quick attack to kill them. And it takes it took me so many attempts. I had to just look it up because there is if you don't use this exact specific moveset that it doesn't even hint at, you just have to know the inner workings of these two Pokemon and what they're good with, otherwise you are not going to win that fight. And there's another one that's like you have to fight the opponent's Pikachu with a Pikachu, and they have like a level like what is it, 80 Pikachu or something like that, or 60, no, it's 65, I think. And if you beat it, you get the uh electric ball or something that you can use to strengthen a Pikachu. But then there's another fight where you have to fight a Raichu with a Raichu, and then after you get done with that fight, they have the audacity to ask you if you want to trade it for an Alolan one. So I went and just caught another one and gave it to them. Like what these quests are just like it's irritating as it is, and then they do something afterwards that makes it even more irritating, and these they lead into each other. Um one of the side quests was a um it was the elite four of fur fro. And you have to catch like six of them, and you fight one single trainer with one fur frow at different battle cafes and four times, and then you have to fight the champion, and she has six of them, and her last one's a shiny one, and these guys are so tough. I think I I bulked my team up to like level 50 or 60 on these guys, and I could barely beat her. Um but yeah, there's a lot of just really hard side quests, but most of the side quests I think were great for world building. Like I kind of see where so people who think the game felt dull or empty, I really just don't think they were playing the side quest because I think they widened up the world a lot. And the more that you do, the more things show up in the world, and the more characters you recognize and things overlap in the side quests, and it really it made Lumio City feel alive.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:38

Yeah, and I have actually not completed every single side quest, but you need to do the side quests if you're playing this game because they open so much more up for you. Some of them are so funny. Some of them are just you know throwaway side quests, but some of them, you know, like there are side quests where you get the Kalos starters, there are side quests where you meet a character that is going to play a role later. And like so the side quests are not just meaningless in this game, they do things, and you know, so a lot of them have little stories to them, and so those to me, I thoroughly enjoyed the game. I have also gotten burnout on the DLC and have been taking a break from it. But as far as just the main game, I blazed through the game.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:34

Yeah, I it took me like I think I dropped the game after I played it the first day it came out, then I dropped it for a little bit, and then I just played through it all at once pretty much.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:44

So I have been very pleased with the game overall. I have not spent as many hours on it as you have, but I also did not complete all the side quests or catch all the Pokemon.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:57

I I think it's a solid like six and a half that could easily be brought up to like a nine, nine and a half if the battling system was polished.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:06

And if you're asking me, like, okay, just a super quick playthrough of the game, right? The story, you know, I would rate this game very highly. It I thoroughly enjoy the story and the setting and the Pokemon and the quality of life improvements.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:25

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:27

But if you are going to really try to like a completionist type thing, or you know, really spend a lot of time on it, there's some tedious things that and some um execution issues that might make it not as good. I would I would probably still rate the game pretty highly. I I this is not a game where I think I'm gonna be doing a lot of replay of it, you know, but as far as just a one-time playthrough or maybe one day a second playthrough, I thoroughly enjoyed the story part of the game. Yes, the DLC so far has been a bit of a slug for me. Uh yeah, I it's a little jarling going to be a bit more.

Final Verdict And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_02 1:46:14

And also, um I was gonna say to wrap wrap up this review, um, I thought we could talk about you know, maybe the ending to the game. Again, major spoilers. Um, but at the end of the game, you come together with everyone that you've fought so far in the ZA Royale, um, and there is a big threat going on. Apparently, Quasicordo is uh opening up a wormhole by accident, right? Um, that's the DLC. I'm sorry, but that is happening because of this. Lumiose Tower becomes alive from from the mega energy. And so Zygarde, who's been following you around this whole time to see if you're worthy, decides to fight alongside you to protect Lumios Tower. And AZ, he's been uh, you know. I don't know what what's he been doing? He's been sitting on the roof, kind of reflecting on his life, and he decides he's going to finally give Floet someone to help take care of this threat. And so you're the most powerful, but Tawny decides that she wants to take Floet to the top of the tower. Um almost immediately.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:26

This is a part of the game that I really didn't like, and this goes into the the Tawny situation. They make this whole big deal about proving who is the strongest mega evolution user, and you have this big battle with her. Yeah, you earn multiple times. You you earn Floet, you earn, you know, being the strongest mega evolution user.

SPEAKER_02 1:47:44

And she says the winner takes all, and then she still cannot handle that.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:48

Tawny just goes rogue, takes Floette. And then another part of the game with this that I really don't like is then she just like dumps Floet in the hotel, and never you never see the two of them together.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:00

She's you actually you have to do what is it, 15 missions of the ZA Infinite Royal, and then you finally you get Floette, and there's a cutscene of her just giving it to her.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:14

Yeah, it's just it's insane. And and Tawny is a terrible character, and she's extremely arrogant, and you know, it's just a lot of things could be alleviated if Tawny wasn't so prideful, and you know, and there's no redemption arc either.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:32

Like it's it's not like there's character development, it's just constantly being rewarded.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:37

It's not portrayed as that's a negative or that there's anything wrong with it. People just kind of shrug it off. It's like, oh, Tawny's just Tawny, she's great, you know, and everything. It's like, no, Tawny is the villain of the city.

SPEAKER_02 1:48:49

Yeah, like she she put us in debt with a syndicate at the beginning of the game. She almost like ended the city. Like it it's crazy.

SPEAKER_00 1:48:58

And but yeah, as far as like talking about A Z, the the ending is I've found it to be really impactful. I I I thought that I would have liked to have seen I thought that they kind of ended it a little quicker than what I would have wanted to see.

SPEAKER_02 1:49:18

We defeat the tower, uneventful then it cuts to credits, and immediately after the credits you see like what you're probably referring to. It was almost like it kind of like shook me up a little bit because I I it was kind of unexpected. Like I knew something was going to happen, but it didn't s really seem like that's what would be what happened.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:44

Yeah, and this big which I mean at this point we've said the spoilers, so um with A's A Z dies, which is just you're just like told about it after the credits, like that he died while you were yeah, you're in the cemetery. And and while you are fighting to save the city, he dies. And I it was impactful. I like it as a story thing, but I also was like, we couldn't have had like a scene of people with him, you know.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:18

Right. He also gives the hotel to Tawny.

SPEAKER_00 1:50:21

Yes. Who abandonedly? So he dies off screen alone, you know, and I just didn't love that aspect of it. But it is a really, you know, he has completed his 3,000-year life. He's been wandering on Earth carrying this guilt. He finally had his redemption and meets back up with Floette. And it's now it's the end of his life.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:52

I do like how they parallel this with Lysander, who is called L in this game. Um, I had to look this up because at some point in the game, Lysander, at the at the very end, I should say, he he comes up to you, he's been talking to you the whole game to see if you're worthy of Zygarde. And he comes up to you at the end and he's like, um, you know, like I don't he doesn't have any memories from what he did in X and Y, but he's like trying to grow, trying to be a better person, and he mentions trying to think of what he's going to do for the next 3,000 years and like what impact he could make on himself and the world. And I I think that's touching whenever you know that something happened to make him immortal, but it's only hinted at that he's immortal. So I look this up, I'm like, is Lysander immortal for some reason? They're like, yeah, so Zygarde saved him from the explosion at the end of X and Y, and for some reason he's immortal, completely unexplained. So Lysander is now just completely immortal, and I uh unexplained whatsoever. Maybe it's explained in the DLC, but I doubt it. It was kind of a walk-off for him. But yeah, I was cracking up at that.

SPEAKER_00 1:52:02

I was like, what story-wise? I mean, I certainly it's cool, and to he's it's the parallel of him and A Z. They both did this, and now they both will walk Earth for thousands of years. Well, apparently forever, but you know, that was not really explained and it didn't explain why Z uh A Z was coming to the end of his life, like it was immortal, but now he's not, or it may have just been a perception of immortality or something. Yeah, I think it kind of plays fast and loose with the definition of immortality in this game. It's yeah, it's immortality is you live a super long time. Yeah. And and I did, I agree with you. I liked at first when Lysander walks on the screen, I'm like, Are you kidding me, bro? I'm like, what do you mean? It was kind of a Emperor Palpatine, somehow he survived. You know, I was like, Are you kidding me? Like, all of that, and and Zygarde saves him and he's back. Well, I ended up really liking him as a character. Yeah, I think so too. I loved the redemption arc, and when he's he's sorry, like he can't remember a lot of it, especially at the beginning.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:11

And then people like bring it up and are angry at first, but then they come to understand, and like it gives these little moments that I I think really make the game better for it.

SPEAKER_00 1:53:25

Um and they give kind of some background of that uh, you know, what Lysander was wanting to do in the original games is you know heinous. There's not any other way to phrase it. But he at one point was a nice guy trying to help people, and he became embittered. And a lot of it was we talked about arrogance with Tani, his arrogance, and that's something that Lysander talks about. That you know, you can't let that your ego control you, and so I really like that he learns from that and he's very sorry for that, and he's gotta live with that, but he's also kind of given a new lease on life and given a new opportunity. And when he's walking away from you, I kind of I was kind of sad. I was like, I stick around with me, dude. You know, we're we're bros now, you know. Yeah, and will you ever see him again?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:28

You don't know, and so I thought it was a cool story thing, and even with uh Grusham and Grizel, like they were super pompous whenever you meet them in this game, still kind of like fanatics of Lysander. And then as you open up and kind of tell them about you know AZ and you know, they they know about Lysander L, whatever his name is now, but they you know don't want to accept it. But then, you know, as circumstances change, they also kind of soften up, and everyone in this game loses their um just crazy ego that they have. Like it I think this game one of the major yeah, I acceptance. No, I think the major like takeaway from this game is like setting aside your ego and coming together for a greater cause. And I tawny just does not care about that. Absolutely not about Tawny. Yeah, and you know, that's something like I love that syndicate too. Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 1:55:39

When you first meet some of these team flair characters, it's almost like they know what they did was wrong, but they can't they don't want to admit that they were wrong, and oh, you know, if the way we started it was good, you you just didn't understand, and now people are persecuting us and everything. But then by the end of the game, it's kind of accepted, hey, we really messed up, and you know, there is, I mean, the game kind of deals with can a person be redeemed and brought back into society after doing something horrible? And the game walks away with the answer of yes, you know, that there is a redemption for someone who's done a bad thing. And so I think that that's a good message because I think a lot of movies and shows and games take this super cheap redemption arc of no matter how bad the character was, we'll just have a token redemption at the end of the thing. Oh, they weren't so bad, yeah. No guilt, no repentance, no change.

SPEAKER_02 1:56:49

They have to carry the weight of their actions throughout the rest of their life for thousands of years for L. Like, it's not not a small thing. Like, he is stuck with this guilt that is going to carry him across the world for the rest of his who knows how long life.

SPEAKER_00 1:57:06

And I mean, some of the other characters, you know, Mabel comes to accept, you know, she she has to stay there and she and people look yeah, and people look at them differently and everything, but then society does forgive them and give them a second chance and everything. And so it I think it's a really cool game, especially the main plot storyline. And it just especially like when you're in Lysander Labs under the cafe and everything, just you're really looking at I mean, this is a group of people who nearly like wiped out all life on the planet, and now you know, moving forward from that. So I think it's pretty cool. Uh overall, I give the game two big thumbs up for sure. I would like to see another game like this. This is something we've talked about some, you know, will they keep doing the Legends games? I think they're gonna keep doing the Legends games. And it's a great original statement. Yeah, and then you don't have to, you know, you don't have to try different things. But one thing that we would have a question about is so when Legends Arceus was made, everybody kind of assumed Legends games were going to be set in the distant past. Well, this was not set in the distant past, this was set in the near future from the X and Y games, or I guess you would call it the present for us.

SPEAKER_02 1:58:35

Yeah, and even at the beginning, like people were like, Well, is this 1800s? Is it when Lumios was being built? Because that first teaser, it really seemed like that, but no, it's uh it's a sequel.

SPEAKER_00 1:58:46

And so what will they do with Legends games going forward? Well, you're kind of left with endless possibilities. We both have certain things that we would like to see for sure. I like uh I think a general consensus is everyone would like to see a back in time Johto Legends.

SPEAKER_02 1:59:05

I would love to see that, you know, the lore masters for the dragon lore masters from uh the Delta episode of Omega Ruby off of Sapphire that Xenia was part of. She's like the last in the line of them. I think it'd be really cool to see like something to do with that, like ancient Hoen, um something with the dragons, because I I don't know, like uh a lot of underutilized space kind of things like Deoxys. You know, maybe there's more about the meteors landing that had the megastones, because those aren't from the planet, from our understanding so far.

SPEAKER_00 1:59:38

Well, and there's so many more places you can go with mega evolution, and right you had the mega evolution specials, which not a lot of people would have seen, and and then the X and Y series, and I really liked the way that they handle Mega Evolution in those and then journeys as well. But so there's so many places you can go with mega evolution that I would like to see, you know, obviously don't go right back to mega evolution.

SPEAKER_02 2:00:05

Right. I think they put so many in this game just to satiate that hunger that people might have for it. I think going back to the primal forms might be an interesting thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 2:00:17

I would like to see, okay, so I know this is a mechanic people don't love, and I'm not arguing for whether it was executed well or not in the original games. Like, I feel like you could do something with Z moves in Alola that would be really cool in a Legends game. Um I would like to see, and this is me as uh I grew up with Gen 1, so I would like to see something. Kanto has never really been expanded beyond. I mean, I know we had Let's Go Eevee and Let's Go Pikachu, which you and I both love, but the game has not been expanded beyond the original map from the original game. And what I would like to see is we all know something went on in Canto, you know. Was there a Pokemon war in Kanto we want to explore in a Legends game? Do we want to take some of these towns and make them bigger, make them look like a Sword and Shield Scarlet and Violet uh Legends ZA type city in the world?

SPEAKER_01 2:01:28

Hopefully not Scarlet Violet.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:30

Yeah, so many sandwich shops, so empty.

SPEAKER_01 2:01:33

Everyone's eating sandwiches.

SPEAKER_00 2:01:35

But but I would so I would like to see something done in Canto again later. I know people have Canto burnout. Here's what I don't want to see, and this would be maybe a hot take, but I don't need to see any more Sinnoh for a while. I know there's a lot of history there and everything, but we went really Sinnoh heavy for a while, and I could stand a break from Univa.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:06

I know this is a hot take, not my favorite games, but I think the Unova region is really in need of some attention. Um for that kind of game, especially. Maybe even I think Johto is the perfect, like you were saying, Johto is perfect for Johto's what I want. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:25

And I think Johto, the Gen 2 games and Heart Gold, Soul Silver are some of the most widely beloved games in the series. And I think it was one of the games that they did the most with making you feel a history in the region and you know, with the legendary beast with also the end of Team Rocket in that game.

SPEAKER_02 2:02:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:02:53

And I mean, there's just so much about the Gen 2 games that were so ambitious and different than a lot of the games, and there's a very like ancient Japanese tone to the game that I think would be really cool in a Legends game. I mean, it's a very Celebi, Luke feeling.

SPEAKER_02 2:03:12

Like uh especially, well, even the crossover, I know we said Sinnoh, probably not, but you know, there was that mystery event that never came out in um the West where you go and you um the Arceus egg, where Arceus creates the uh egg for either Dialga, Palkia, or Giratina, and it starts showing real pictures of the world and a bunch of like unknowns flying around in 3D on your DS screen, and it's very unsettling.

SPEAKER_00 2:03:40

I feel like capturing that kind of like mystical thing with ancient I'm really glad you said understanding would be great about unknown, because to me there's so much you could do with unknown, and when Gen 2 and Johto came out, it was like, oh, this is an Uber big deal, but then it was when have they seen last other than Pokemon Go?

SPEAKER_02 2:04:02

Like it hasn't really been a thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:04

Yeah, the unknown were not really a thing in the Gen 2 games, even though you had the whole ruins of Alf and everything, which is never really explained or talked about hardly. Then you have the movie, Pokemon, the third movie, with Entei and the Unknown, and then Unknown periodically in the series pop back up just here and there.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:27

Um, and there's kind of been replaced by Zygarde cells, I've noticed.

SPEAKER_00 2:04:32

Yeah, and so like there was one episode of Journeys where unknowns show up and plunge an entire town into permanent darkness because they're granting the wish of a child, and it's actually pretty cool. Yeah, so there's so much you could do with unknown, and they have their own dimension and the time Deoxys took over that town in that movie, Destiny Deoxys.

SPEAKER_02 2:04:55

There's just dozens of them from space, and they just are taking people away to find it like a sound effect that they hear.

SPEAKER_00 2:05:03

But there's like there is so much you could do with Johto, so I'd really like to see that. Please, please, Johto. Five more Sinnoh games. Yeah, have some more Dialga and Palkia. You will have it and you will like it. Um, but and I say that because at the same time we had Brilliant Diamond Shining Pearl, um, Legends Arceus, you had the special from Netflix, the Arceus Chronicles. Uh a very heavy point of the plot and journeys at that point was Dialga Palkia, you know, these types of things. Like there it just threw so much at you, and I know people love a lot about it, and I'm not trying to say anything about it.

SPEAKER_02 2:05:53

When I was younger, unfortunately, that was when I fell off of the games, too. I think I when the series started on TV and the games came out, I couldn't get into it, so I just quit. So that was and I came back to it eventually, but again, yeah, that was like kind of my falling off point. So I've never cherished those.

SPEAKER_00 2:06:14

Well, and for me, which we can talk about this more in another episode, but for me, I quit after Gen 3. Right. So Senno was all new to me as an adult. I didn't have this love for it. And okay, here's another hot take that people would not like. Generally speaking, when I'm looking online, it seems like most people like the Diamond and Pearl series the best, and you have the whole um Paul plot line and all that kind of stuff. I'm not disputing that that plot line with Ash and Paul is really good. The Diamond and Pearl series is one of my least favorite series of the whole anime.

SPEAKER_01 2:07:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:00

Just as a whole, uh production-wise, voice acting-wise, Pokemon-wise. It that I feel like Diamond and Pearl is where you reach the absolute epitome of really overdoing the Team Rocket formula that was throughout the first four.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:19

It was also around the time they switched to Cartoon Network, and I I remember the art style. I think it was more like the 3D overlaid 2D instead of cell-shaded.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:29

I can tell you exactly when that happened because it was a big deal for me. Yeah. Okay, so at the end of Ruby and Sapphire, at the end of the Gen 3 series, about the time that he's about to do the Battle Frontier. Right. They changed the art style and all the voice actors.

SPEAKER_02 2:07:48

Because that happened right before the Lucario Mystery of Mew movie. Because that one had the 3D in it. I remember that. Because they were showing off the Gen 4 stuff in it.

SPEAKER_00 2:07:57

If you were a fan of the series growing up, that was extremely jarring. And I don't just say that as it was a change. I and I grew to like some of the voice actors later on, but they struggled to find their footing for a while, the new voice acting crew, in my opinion. And they weren't really sure what they wanted Ash to sound like anymore. And so for me, the voice acting, and here's something I have them to all be kind of older in that one too, like in Gen 4.

SPEAKER_02 2:08:32

I noticed they are the same, but it it really like they tried to make it targeted for a more mature audience or something, you know. Like it's like the Lucario Mystery Mew, and it was like super a great movie, but really just different from what had been.

SPEAKER_00 2:08:51

Well, and that the formula got so old to me by then that even like going back and watching it, like there are just episodes that I just skip because the filler episodes really feel like filler, which they didn't in some of the earlier generations of the show, and they don't in the later generations of the show. But I also felt like here has been a jarring shift for me as a fan that I haven't liked is the way the Pokemon were voiced changed with that voice acting change, changing production studios, and they sound a lot sillier, they sound a lot um kittier and less gritty, like yeah, less like uh like Magnemite is an example. If you hear what Magnumite and Magnetone sounded like in Gen 1 versus what they sound like when they're more like they really sounded metallic and like or and here's another example, and there's probably different ways of people would feel about this, but Pokemon like Nidoking and Rhydon, these real monster Pokemon, yeah, didn't re they didn't say their names, they growled and roared and yeah, you're they're more animalistic, and like Charizard, Charizard's very intimidating sounding in the first few seasons of the show. Now they're like really silly, comedic saying their names kind of thing. And I I always found that to be really jarring, and I say that as someone who I love the X and Y series, I love I love Sun and Moon, I love the journeys, but I felt like the end of Ruby and Sapphire, Diamond Pearl, and Univo were the worst time for the show for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:48

But one more loop back to the the game by the way to ZA.

SPEAKER_00 2:10:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:10:53

Um something that I could uh managed to catch every time I came across Pikachu. You know how in Gen 6 X and Y they switched Pikachu to saying its own name while the other characters still like yeah, Pikachu makes his Pokemon yellow sound effect in this game. I thought that was super cool, but none of the other ones do. They still do the uh Gen 6 kind of sprite effect.

SPEAKER_00 2:11:20

So that was that was really that's one thing I want to mention, and we won't go into this a lot on this episode here, but like and they've improved it a little bit starting in Scarlet and Violet, but I that why do the 3D models, especially of the Gen 1 Pokemon, have to be so so sucked of their color? Like, like if you watched the anime or looked at the old games, like I love the watercolor art. Look how vibrant, like if you take Charmander, Charizard, look how vibrant that orange is.

SPEAKER_02 2:11:54

Okay, I don't think that's the intention. Have you looked at this feeling like concept art? I really like the Uh the original concept where it's like super watercolored and watered down.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:04

I just feel like a lot of the new games they look pale.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:08

They did fix some of them. You know how um the shinies for Gengar and uh Slowpoke, I think, changed in this game because that was a problem. Slowpoke's more pink instead of white now as a shiny.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:20

I definitely think that they're they're better now, but they were just, I mean, yeah, I agree. It's kind of lifeless for a while.

SPEAKER_02 2:12:27

Really washed out in X and Y, extremely so. I think white Sun and Moon brightened things up a bit, but went back to the same way again.

SPEAKER_00 2:12:41

Well, I think we will wrap up this review of Legends ZA again. We would both say good game. I think I would give it a little bit higher score than you would, but a little too critical. But there are some things to be critical of, especially as you play the game for a long time. But by and large, we very much like the game. Good job, Pokemon. We would like to explore more cities and more regions like that. And uh so if you liked this episode, just uh make sure to follow, subscribe, like, share it with your friends, and tune in next week for our next episode. Thank you for listening, guys.