Games Beaten in 2025 - 23
* denotes a replay
January (Not Shit Beaten)
February (Not Shit Beaten)
March (Not Shit Beaten)
April (Not Shit Beaten)
May (Not Shit Beaten)
June (6 Games Beaten)
July (10 Games Beaten)
August (3 Games Beaten)
September (3 Games Beaten)
October (1 Game Beaten)
23. Pokemon Legends Z-A - Switch 2 - October 27
Pokemon Legends Arceus is my favorite main series Pokemon game, and I’ve been playing Pokemon since Red and Blue first released in the United States. The feeling of adventure as you have to sneak up on Pokemon to catch them effectively, the risk of getting absolutely trounced by a pissed off wild Pokemon, and the excitement of hearing the sound effect that denotes a shiny Pokemon’s spawn as you’re just walking along on a totally unrelated task all made it stand out from the traditional turn based Pokemon RPGs. When Legends Z-A was announced, I was understandably stoked for it. There’s a lot about Legends Z-A that disappointed me, but there was just as much about it that I loved. It’s definitely a divisive game, but there’s still a solid and worthwhile Pokemon experience here.
Legends Z-A is a direct sequel to Pokemon X and Y taking place in Lumiose City five years after the events of the Generation VI 3DS games. You play as a teenager of some age who is traveling to Lumiose for vacation. You find yourself accosted by an overly extroverted girl named Tuanie with a video camera who drags you into helping to film a promotional video for her hotel, Hotel Z. You quickly realize, though, that a random Pancham has stolen your bag, so you and Tuanie chase after it to discover that it belonged to a couple of random trainers. Surprisingly, the Pancham wasn’t trying to rob you, per se; it just really likes to carry stuff. Anyway, Taunie lets you use one of the three Pokemon she has with her - Chickorita, Tepig, or Totodile - and y’all battle the trainers. That’s how you pick your starter and get your tutorial for the game’s battle mechanics. To mention a minor gripe, let’s consider the visuals. On Switch 2, the game runs super well, but it legit looks like a Wii U game. I’m a retro gamer, so I don’t need the newest flashiest visuals to enjoy a game, but we had some gorgeous games on Switch, and Switch 2 is capable of a lot more; why does the Switch 2 version of Legends Z-A still look like an upscaled 3DS game with some moderately decent textures? GameFreak clearly isn’t incapable of making 3D games with impressive visuals - the upcoming Beast of Reincarnation proves that - and the Switch 2 is capable of pretty decent visuals even by modern standards - Yakuza 0 and Cyberpunk 2077 prove that - so why do they keep making Pokemon look like Baby’s First HD? I know that’s a super minor complaint, but it is bugging me now that we’re getting native Switch 2 versions.
Let’s talk about the battle mechanics, because that’s my least favorite part of the game. Unlike the previous over three dozen main series games, the battles are not turn based; they’re all real time. When you send a Pokemon out in a battle, you run around the field and manually target an opposing Pokemon (this is done by locking on with ZL), and you use the four face buttons to choose which of your Pokemon’s attacks to use. Because it’s real time and not turn based, PP for each move is gone and replaced with a cooldown timer. Stronger moves that previously had low PP now have a longer cooldown timer. From a stat perspective, nothing has really changed. Speed obviously doesn’t determine who goes first since there are no turns, but it determines how quickly your Pokemon can use a move after selecting it, so it’s still a vitally important stat. Similar to my complaints about Final Fantasy IV’s shift to the ATB system instead of turn-based fights, I don’t care for this real time system. It works perfectly fine, and it didn’t take me long to get used to it, but I’m a turn-based purist. I just prefer turn-based combat. I like being able to think through my moves and overall strategy.
The next big thing - something else I don’t really care for - is the setting. The entire game takes place completely in Lumiose City. There are no routes between towns, no true caves aside from the city’s sewers, and most wild Pokemon are only in set “wild areas.” I much preferred the way Legends Arceus did it with different areas that were full of wild Pokemon throughout the entire map. These wild areas were okay, and there was definitely a distinction between Pokemon that spawn in grass, near water, on rooftops, etc, but it just wasn’t as exciting as having a huge map to explore for wild Pokemon hiding in nooks and crannies. That said, the number of wild areas and thus the number of Pokemon available to catch expands steadily as you progress through the game’s main missions, so it’s not as limited as I’d initially feared. Like with the change to battle mechanics, it’s not that GameFreak did anything wrong with the game’s design here; it was just a change that I, personally, don’t care for.
My single biggest disappointment with the game is the lack of any new Pokemon or regional forms. There are something like two dozen new mega evolutions, and while I don’t consider it “new” since it was seen in-game and was in the game code for X and Y and just never had an event released, Eternal Floette is obtainable for the first time in this game. Legends Arceus had a few new forms for older Pokemon and a few new Pokemon, and each of the starters had new regional forms for their final evolutions PLUS new forms for Palkia and Dialga. The fact that NOTHING got a new form in Legends Z-A really disappointed me. I enjoyed catching the Pokemon that were here, but - and I fully admit that this could well change with the DLC or update to enable Pokemon Home connectivity - it seems odd to me that Alolan forms are supported (only available through NPC trades, but still), but as far as I’m aware, there’s no data in the game for Kleavor despite Scyther and Scizor both being in the game. I know most players won’t be super bothered by the lack of new Pokemon, but for hardcore Pokemon players like me, it’s a bummer. My favorite thing about a new Pokemon game is having new Pokemon to hunt to fill in the new spaces in my living dex in Home. Other than the Eternal Flower form for Floette, I don’t get that with Legends Z-A.
Now that I’ve laid out my complaints with the game, let’s get to some of the things the game did right. Lumiose City feels alive in a way it didn’t in X and Y. There are NPCs everywhere, and there are well ten dozen side quests in the game to complete in addition to the nearly four dozen main quests. On top of all that, there’s a ton of research tasks to complete that work you towards some really good rewards including the shiny charm once you hit the max research rank of 50. I’ve done everything except finishing one last research task - win 1000 battles - and it took me about 45 hours. Not once in those 45 hours was I bored. In fact, I got more engaged in the game the more I played.
I went into Pokemon Legends Z-A expecting to be disappointed and underwhelmed. While there was definitely some disappointment with some aspects of the game, I had a lot more fun than I expected to, and I’m still having fun with it. There are some mega stones that are locked behind achieving a certain rank in the online ranked battles, and while that’s a negative for some since they’re time locked and not otherwise available in the game, I think it’s cool because it’s actually really easy to reach that minimum rank, and it gives a solid reason to play online other than “get some stuff that’s also obtainable in the main game.” It only took me five battles and about half an hour to achieve Rank K and unlock Greninja’s mega stone, so it’s really not the sweaty task that I first expected when I saw “ranked battles.” All in all, Pokemon Legends Z-A, while my least favorite main series Pokemon game, continues the series’s signature addictive monster collecting gameplay, and it also continues GameFreak’s recent attempts to shake up the series to address complaints that “every game is the same.” I don’t like all of the changes they’ve made with this or other recent games - the lack of online battles in Legends Arceus and the (really crappy) attempt at pseudo-real-time battles in the Scarlet and Violet raids were major points of contention for me in those games - but I do applaud them for trying something new, and some of the changes, like the changes to the Pokemon Catching mechanics in the two Legends games, were a very welcome change to me. All in all, this was destined to be a very divisive game for long-time fans, but I had a good time with it, and I encourage all Pokemon fans to pick this one. Just don’t expect it to live up to Legends Arceus or X and Y.
