‘Pokemon Z-A Review

Video Games

Apr 2

While I wouldn’t call myself a Pokemon fanatic, I certainly have a love for the games. Ever since I got my first game, Gold, I have played through most of the main titles. Ruby remains my favorite. When a new Pokemon game was announced, I knew I wanted to play it. I got the game for Christmas and fired it up.

I was hopeful because the game fell under the “Legends” umbrella. Arceus was an excellent game that made everything feel fresh, and so I was looking forward to seeing what they could do with it this time. The results? Well…

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You start the game by exiting the train to Lumiose City, a Paris inspired map, complete with an Eiffel Tower knockoff in the middle. You’re approached by someone who wants your help making a commercial for the hotel he stays at/works for, and from there, your life gets turned upside down so thoroughly that you might as well name your character “Fresh Prince.” This one small request leads to you solving the mystery of why certain Pokemon are going nuts, getting to the pinnacle of the battle tournament, and saving the city, and potentially the world.

The story is engaging enough. I wasn’t completely blown away by its complexities, but that’s never really been the strong suit of Pokemon games anyway. Sometimes they have some good story moments, but the games are really about catching and battling Pokemon, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time on story. Beneath the new polish, there’s still a lot of familiar story beats to it. You’re a new Pokemon trainer, you are trying to reach the top of the Pokemon league, there’s a team that’s antagonistic, and there’s some grand threat that you have to stop. I do hate to say that the story really did not grab me. It was fine for what it was, but at no point was I emotionally invested about why the Pokemon were rogue mega evolving.

The setting feels like a bit of a missed opportunity, too. Pokemon games are known for their grand scope and scale. You’re never in one place, there’s always a whole region to explore. In this game you’re stuck in the one city. Instead of running into Pokemon all over the place, you have specific zones where you can catch them.

It removes a lot of the majesty and wonder of exploring different routes and towns that made the previous games so fun. Lumiose City is very well rendered, and there are some fun details like certain Pokemon outside of the wild zones just hanging out where you’d expect them to be, you can catch trubbish by any dumpster, for example. That’s a neat touch. There are also outdoor elevators that will take you onto the city roofs. While it’s interesting to get a new perspective and see what Pokemon you can catch up there, the roof sections aren’t really all that interesting, and there’s nothing about them, again, other than a few Pokemon you can’t catch on the ground, that really warrants their inclusion in the story.

Instead of the traditional “fight trainers, go to gym and get badges” formula that the series has mostly stuck to over the past three decades, this time you go out at night to “battle zones” where you fight trainers for the right to get a ticket that will let you get in a battle with a similarly ranked trainer. The trainer who wins moves up in the rankings, and it’s everyone’s goal to get to rank A, as you get a wish granted if you do. I hate to say it, but the battle zones aren’t all that fun. You can do little challenges in them that gets you more experience and money, but it’s nowhere near as enjoyable as walking down the road and making eye contact with some trainer who had doubtlessly been standing there for nine hours waiting for you. Plus there’s an “ambush” system that didn’t quite get the level of polish that it required. There would be times when I’d sneak up on a trainer and their pokemon, order my pokemon to attack, the trainer would turn around and see me, and my pokemon would be stunned because we were “caught off guard” allowing the other pokemon to attack first. No, I wasn’t caught off guard. I had literally just ordered my pokemon to attack yours. There’s no charm to the battle zones. They’re just tasks you have to do.

The biggest change that this game has is in the way the pokemon do battle. In every single other game, it was turn based. One pokemon attacks, then the other, and so on until someone is knocked out. This time it’s far more button mashing. You target the opposing pokemon, and press the corresponding attack button for whatever move you wanted to use.

And it. Was. Awful.

I have to give some points for trying something new, but if I find out the next Pokemon game is using the same battle format, I might not get it. There’s still some strategy to it, but it was horrible. It was fast paced in a way that just doesn’t fit a Pokemon game. Whenever a pokemon makes a move, a little box pops up on the right side of the screen telling the results of that move (super effective, not very effective, etc) but the text is tiny, and you’re focusing on the battle, so you never really have time to see it. Also you’re not just trying to win the battle, but you’re also trying to avoid the opposing pokemon’s attacks, because you can get knocked out too. This was definitely the worst part. It makes a bit of sense in the wild zones, but it also applies to trainer battles. I lost a few trainer battles because I got caught up in the blast of the opponent’s flame attack or whatever. Can you knock out your opponent with your pokemon? Nope. But they can knock you out with theirs and win.

The idea of pokemon knocking you out came from the last Legends game, Arceus. It made sense there, though. You played as someone who was living in a time where humans were just starting to figure pokemon out. Pokeballs were hand made. The world was far more dangerous and unforgiving. It made sense that you’d have to avoid pokemon attacking you. Here, though? It doesn’t fit at all, especially during trainer battles. Everything about the combat in this game is a giant black stain, and it prevents the game from even approaching great.

I’ve also played through most of the DLC. It’s… fine.

Overall, this is definitely one of the weaker games I’ve played. It certainly gets points for trying something new, but I’d rather see them taking risks in the story department, maybe a Pokemon game that would be rated in the PG to soft PG-13 range, then messing with the mechanics. The graphics are nice, but Lumiose City limits the grandeur of a Pokemon game, and it’s not all that interesting of an area to be in. The combat is atrocious. The game is lacking in charm. Having said all of that, I did have some fun playing it. It’s not a complete waste of time, but I have a hard time thinking of why it’d ever return to it, as opposed to some of the other games in the series. It’s a decent enough game, but it has some heavy flaws.

Final score: 5/10

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