Guest Review By DaNoble Damonicus
The Pokémon series has always balanced tradition and transformation. For decades, its core formula — catching, training, and battling creatures — has endured with only incremental tweaks. But recent years have shown a franchise in flux. There have been bright moments like Legends: Arceus and New Pokémon Snap, and also growing pains, with games struggling under the weight of aging hardware or over-ambitious ideas. Pokémon Legends: Arceus in particular felt like a breath of fresh air: a bold, imperfect experiment that reimagined Pokémon as something more immediate, more alive.
Now comes Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the first major Pokémon release for the Switch 2. It builds directly on Arceus’ foundation, but with a completely different focus. Instead of the sweeping wilderness of Hisui, Z-A centers on Lumiose City — a bustling, vertical hub filled with life, activity, and danger. And rather than doubling down on exploration, it does something even riskier: it reinvents Pokémon combat from the ground up.
The result is a game that’s thrilling in the moment-to-moment action yet constrained in its world and structure. Z-A is one of the most exciting Pokémon games ever made — but it’s also one of the most confined.
The turn-based combat Pokémon fans have known for decades is gone. In its place is a fully real-time system where moves operate on cooldowns instead of PP. You can move freely during battle, repositioning to dodge or flank, while your Pokémon mirrors your movements and responds dynamically. The first time a Totodile sidesteps an incoming attack or you circle behind an opponent to unleash a quick strike, it’s instantly clear: Pokémon battles have never felt this alive.
The new system draws clear inspiration from games like Xenoblade Chronicles or Final Fantasy VII Remake, but it’s smartly tuned to Pokémon’s strengths. Every move matters. You weigh timing, distance, and risk with each attack — a longer-range Bubble Beam gives you space, but its charge time invites counterattacks, while a close-range Bite is fast but risky. Terrain even plays a subtle role, affecting how moves connect or how Pokémon move across the battlefield.
This approach transforms Pokémon’s familiar chess-like strategy into something that feels fluid and instinctive. You’re not simply issuing commands; you’re part of the fight, weaving in and out of range and adapting on the fly. Moves like Fire Spin or Toxic Spikes now serve as environmental traps, letting you control space or bait opponents. Even casual players will find themselves thinking like competitive battlers, adjusting tempo and positioning to seize an edge.
Then there are the Alpha Pokémon — towering, aggressive versions that demand precision and patience. These encounters make excellent use of the new combat system, forcing you to stay alert, study attack patterns, and exploit openings rather than brute-forcing with type advantages. For the first time, Pokémon’s battles feel truly dynamic, something you react to rather than just calculate.
Mega Evolution returns in Z-A, and it’s better than ever. Transformations are fast, dramatic, and seamlessly integrated into the action. No longer a mere stat buff, Mega Evolution changes the tempo of battle — altering move behavior, expanding range, or unlocking brief windows of overwhelming power. You’ll find yourself planning entire strategies around when to trigger it.
The system is at its best in major story fights, where dueling Mega Evolutions create bursts of intensity and spectacle. Using yours at just the right moment — after dodging a devastating attack or setting up a combo chain — feels deeply satisfying. It’s an evolution of Pokémon’s combat both literally and metaphorically, finally matching the fantasy the series has always promised.
Lumiose City serves as the heart of Z-A, and it’s a world that never stops moving. By day, it’s a glittering metropolis of cafés, boutiques, and back alleys full of side quests and trainer encounters. But when night falls, the tone shifts dramatically. That’s when the Z-A Royale begins — an underground tournament where trainers compete for rank points and rewards.
The Royale is brilliant. It gives the game an ongoing sense of purpose, with new challengers and conditions keeping the action fresh. Bonus Cards offer additional rewards for completing objectives like inflicting specific status effects or winning without damage, rewarding creative play. Climbing the ranks feels genuinely exciting, and the mix of skill-based combat and adaptive conditions adds layers of replayability.
There’s a real sense of atmosphere, too. Wandering through the neon-lit streets, hunting for a rival who matches your team’s strengths, and landing a perfectly timed ambush hit never gets old. Getting caught before striking adds just enough tension to make each victory earned.
Outside the Royale, the main story revolves around Team MZ, a group trying to contain a crisis of “Rogue Mega Evolutions” — Pokémon driven berserk by unstable energy. These boss encounters echo Arceus’ Frenzied Noble fights but feel far more interactive. Instead of tossing items from afar, you and your Pokémon actively battle, dodging sweeping area attacks, learning patterns, and countering at just the right moment. They can be chaotic, but that’s part of their charm — it’s Pokémon combat as a full-on action spectacle.
Technically, Z-A runs beautifully on the Switch 2. The game maintains a steady 60 frames per second in both handheld and docked modes, even during chaotic boss fights. Load times are short, menus respond instantly, and the experience feels smooth and modern.
Visually, though, the game is more uneven. Lumiose City is impressively dense, with multiple districts stacked atop one another and plenty of side streets to explore. The sense of verticality is refreshing, and the city feels genuinely inhabited. But for all its energy, it’s surprisingly small. You can see most of what Lumiose has to offer within five hours, and the “Wild Zones” that unlock later don’t expand things much. These areas feel more like setpieces than true open-world spaces — parks and industrial yards rather than living ecosystems.
Art direction also lacks cohesion. Arceus had a distinct watercolor look that hid hardware flaws behind charm and atmosphere. Z-A goes for semi-realistic detail but ends up feeling flat. Textures can look muddy, shadows harsh, and lighting inconsistent. It’s jarring when your character’s outfit ripples convincingly in the breeze, yet city windows look like flat textures pasted onto walls.
The presentation stumbles most in storytelling. There’s still no voice acting, which feels like a missed opportunity. Text-only cutscenes and silent character reactions sap emotional impact from what should be heartfelt moments. The story’s themes of healing, identity, and cooperation deserve a stronger delivery — a few lines of voice work could have gone a long way.
If there’s one major step backward from Legends: Arceus, it’s exploration. That game’s open wilderness was filled with moments of discovery — spotting a rare Pokémon in the distance, climbing a mountain just to see what was there, or stumbling across a hidden ruin. Z-A, confined almost entirely to Lumiose City, doesn’t have that same sense of mystery.
The city is alive with Pokémon — Fletchlings dart between rooftops, Goomy hides under bridges when it rains, and the Unova monkeys play in the trees — and those details are wonderful. But the sense of adventure stops there. The Pokédex feels limited, and most wild encounters happen in small, designated areas. You’re not exploring; you’re checking boxes.
The catching system from Arceus remains intact, and it’s still satisfying to sneak, aim, and throw, but the thrill fades quickly without the wilderness to support it. For all its urban flair, Z-A feels smaller than its predecessor — less about wonder, more about structure.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a fascinating contradiction. It’s both a bold step forward and a cautious retreat. Its combat system is the most inventive in the series’ history — fast, expressive, and genuinely strategic. Mega Evolution’s return feels triumphant, and the Z-A Royale is an addictive, endlessly replayable centerpiece. On a technical level, it’s polished, smooth, and a strong showcase for the Switch 2’s capabilities.
But in narrowing its scope to a single city, Z-A sacrifices the exploration and discovery that made Legends: Arceus so enchanting. Its world feels smaller than it should, its visuals inconsistent, and its story delivery a generation behind.
Still, it’s hard not to admire what this game achieves. For the first time, Pokémon battles feel like real battles — not turn-based abstractions, but living, reactive duels. If Game Freak can pair this new combat with the wide-open exploration of Arceus in a future installment, the next Legends game could be something truly special.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A may not redefine the franchise the way Arceus did, but it shows how much room Pokémon still has to grow. It’s a confident, thrilling start to a new era — and proof that even after all these years, this series still knows how to surprise you.
Disclaimer: A review key was provided
