It seems that online discussion of Pokémon Legends ZA mostly comes in two forms: critics saying that the graphics being less than photorealistic makes it unplayable slop, and fans saying that if you're experiencing anything less than unending joy it must surely be because you're one of those haters who think the graphics make it unplayable slop. Myself being an intelligent human who likes games and Pokémon, I thought I'd take some time to share some valid observations on the game. Welcome to a sane review of Pokémon Legends ZA.
A few particulars: first, yes, I played the game. I played through to the end—credits rolled, got the "Fin"—but haven't done the postgame or DLC, so this is a review of the main game. The other stuff is functionally a separate experience, so there's no reason to blend them into the same review. Second, I played the Switch 1 version. I assume that means some of the technical aspects are better on the Switch 2, but I can't verify that; either way, what I describe will be the floor.
Speaking of which, let's go ahead and make that our first section of analysis.
Production & Presentation
As you may recall, Pokémon Scarlet/Violet had serious quality issues—not in the "I demand higher quality" sense, but in the "this literally struggles to function as a piece of software" sense. Thankfully, PLZA is at least a finished product: it doesn't randomly crash, you won't witness randomly spinning limbs or other body horror on your player character, or any of that kind of thing. Which should go without saying for a major release from the most profitable franchise in human history, yet here we are: acknowledging that it clears the benchmark of existence.
Okay, elephant in the room: let's talk graphics. The infamous argument is about textures and tree realism and whatnot, which I think implies the complaint comes from people wanting the game to look photorealistic, like modern GTA and RDR types of games. Obviously this is absurd, as creating photorealistic landscapes and filling them with colorful cartoon animals would be weird as hell (as would suddenly shifting to realistic depictions of those creatures to match said landscape). What you could compare to, however, is other cartoon-styled games, like Kirby and the Forgotten Land. That game does have more detail and visual polish, so it's disappointing that PLZA isn't as clean and evocative as it could have been. On the other hand, KFL has a lot of focus on environments and not that many character models, while PLZA has a ton of character models that all look much more polished than its environments do. "How good are the graphics?" is a question that has different answers depending on whether you're looking at the buildings or the critters/people. And while it would have been nice (and should have been doable) for the environment to look as polished as the goobers, it's also true that when you're actually playing the game you don't really notice it that much. It's not distracting, not hurting the experience.
However.
Graphical polish is not the only facet to presentation. Character movements and expressions are often stiff and lifeless. Vinnie sits at a table like he's an alien trying to blend in despite having never sat down in a human body before. People's transitions between movements/poses are broken and clunky. Some of the facial expressions (especially shock) look like a kindergartener's first attempt at theater. Camera work and establishing shots can get weird—like when Taunie/Urbain is going to show you how to do a dodge roll, there's a sequence of about 3-4 different camera shots of them just standing still, waiting for nothing, before they finally do the thing. Damn near every time two or more humans were interacting, I was in pain.
Then there's also the voice acting issue. Now, much like with the graphical fidelity issue, I don't think we need to fully voice every line in the whole game. That said, there's a range of "types" of dialogue, and some of them beg for voice more than others. Like, some background NPCs have a single line, and it felt fine for those to just be speech bubbles or text boxes. On the other end of the spectrum, some of the cutscenes looked like movies whose existing audio had been deleted: fully-articulated custom animations, bespoke mood music, detailed sound effects, even lip movements where the words would be, and then vocal silence. I actually, physically, real-life cringed at that. There should have been voice (or the scene shouldn't have been made to look like it was expecting voice). The scenes were made for voice, but it wasn't there. Felt like it was ripped out after the fact.
Also, in between those two extremes, there are scenes that are just people talking to each other. Do those need voice? It would have been nice, but I'd have settled for Zelda-style gestures and chirps. It definitely needed something, in part because there were scenes where I lost track of who was talking, because they only visual cue was lip movements. If there was voice, or if each block of text began with the speaker posing and chirping, it would have been much more digestible. So, bit of a failure there as well, even if not quite as bad as the "major" scenes.
Okay, a couple of final notes for this section. Framerate was fine. I don't know what the framerate actually is, but I don't recall any humanly-perceptible drops. It's possible it happened during chaotic moments when I might not have noticed, but at the very least there's no Lagtree Thicket in this game. There was some amount of pop-in occasionally, but not like in SwSh where you'd run into something before it was visible. Also, it's possible this is better on the Switch 2 version.
Gameplay
First, let's talk about the tutorials. Other discussions on this boil down to one person complaining that the tutorial is three hours long and then somebody else pointing out that hey, you're an adult, this could be some eight-year-old's first Pokémon game, they need things explained. So here's the thing: nobody who played Pokémon Red/Blue had ever played a Pokémon game before, and it didn't have three hours of tutorials. None of the early generations did. You got the absolute basics through a few minutes of tutorial play, then there was a "Trainer School" where you could get more info if needed, and then the rest you either figured out through play or got tips through background NPCs giving a line or two (but only if you stopped to talk to them, and even then it's less than 10 seconds).
The tutorial problem is not necessary. It's the result of the choice to incorporate that information into story elements and characters. They could have explained move-swapping, for example, by having a pop-up the first time you open the menu with a 5-move pokémon in your party, instead of doing a whole forced tutorial scene that ends with Ivor being impressed that you've mastered the art of learning moves. ("But they needed to introduce the character!" Yeah, but that could have been done any number of smoother ways, after you'd been turned loose to play the game.) Even when a bit of teaching is siloed off into a minor NPC interaction, it's gone from the 1-2 lines of optional text of yesteryear to a whole Side Mission involving a long conversation with a little girl and beating up her favorite pokémon so she can learn to love Beedrill as much as Kakuna, along with waiting for the animations of activating and clearing the Side Mission.
Battles
Tutorials aside, let's look at how most of the game actually plays. The battling is mostly for trainers, whether randos in a nightly Battle Zone or characters dueling you at certain story checkpoints. The real-time battles are mostly pretty fun! It's the same traditional sets of moves, except the system they plug into is different. For example, Speed no longer determines who goes first, so you can't assume your fast attacker can do an OHKO sweep without taking a hit. Also, in the Battle Zones, you can sneak up on people and launch your first attack before they know they're in a battle. (What's that old saying? Every RPG eventually pushes you to be a stealth archer?) There are also battles against Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon, which are kind of their own thing: they're oversized, they have bespoke moves that you'll have to run around the battlefield to evade, and they have inflated HP to make the battle last long enough to be a big event.
The battles are not without issues, though. I mentioned before that the software was basically stable, but I've seen some problems in the battles. You have to target the enemy pokémon to get your button prompts to execute moves, but sometimes those button prompts randomly disappear even though you're still locked on, so you just stand there and take a beating until you realize what's going on and cycle the lock off and on again. Also, many moves are blocked by terrain obstacles (trees, etc), but since you can't directly control your pokémon's exact positioning, this creates random failures rather than offering tactical options. Also, you have to aim the camera at the enemy to target them (which is fine), which means if the Rogue Mega flies up in the air, you have to look up to get a lock (also fine). But there's one Rogue Mega battle where the [REDACTED] never leaves the ground, but it's really tall and for some reason only the upper half counts for targeting. So you can go toe-to-toe with it and have it filling half your screen, but you can't fight back until you look up.
Exploration
I think the modern fad of open-world games set in large, mostly-wilderness maps set people up with bad expectations that made "whole game is in one city" seem more negative than it is. A better way to think of it is that the street level of the city serves as an access hub for playable elements. The streets themselves are simple and mostly just lined with shops and NPCs, but there are also access points to little "chunks" of other stuff. The simplest is the Wild Zones, but also there are backyards that will take work to find an entrance to, there are rooftops with rare pokémon and items that you need to find a way to reach, and so forth. Exploration is about finding a new access point (ladder, holovator, breakable obstacle) and seeing what you can find within the connected zone, then heading back to the street when you're done. Personally, I found it pretty engaging.
Also there's scaffolding, which forms obstacle courses full of valuable items. It doesn't involve your pokémon in any way but I found it way more fun and satisfying than I expected. And they're everywhere.
Catching Wild Pokémon
Trailers advertised that you catch pokémon in Wild Zones in the city, which I think made it sound more restrictive than it is. There are birds and bugs throughout the city, but there are also rare pokémon like Eevee and Dratini in various places that you can find early on, which is part of what makes the exploration feel exciting and satisfying. Wild Zones do give you the bulk of your captures, and more zones open up after each major story checkpoint, thus sort of pacing out your access to more variety and power (and makes finding something "early" out in the city feel special).
The capture process is similar to Legends Arceus in that you can sneak up and throw balls without battling. Of course, doing that means they're at full HP, which will make some critters hard to catch. You can battle to lower their HP and try that way, and even if you KO them you'll still be given one last chance to capture them. But if you keep spamming balls and failing, they'll eventually become enraged and be immune to capture unless you KO them. Overall, this feels like a good implementation.
But there are problems. Somehow, the throwing that was pioneered in PLA actually got worse since that game. Both games let you lock on before you throw, but that's not a guarantee that you'll hit. PLA addressed this by letting you manually adjust while locked, or freestyle it with the aid of motion controls for precision aim. PLZA doesn't offer either of these options. Either you lock on and use exactly the aim it gives you, or you aim manually with just the stick (which is nearly impossible, especially if the pokémon is moving around). Also, it's weirdly common to be able to throw balls through a pokémon without hitting. I've had times where I was hiding behind a pokémon that was sitting still while I through ball after ball, watching each one disappear into the pokémon's flesh.
Mable & Emma
There's a scientist named Mable who recruits you to do "research tasks" in exchange for rewards (almost exclusively TMs). This feels like a callback to PLA, where people didn't know much about pokémon so you needed to observe them in various ways: catch them, feed them, defeat them, watch them use certain moves, evolve them, even scare them off with scatterbangs. This is like that, except it's nothing like that. Instead of doing anything that even thematically feels like "research," you're mostly just filling your Pokédex. Ultimately it just comes down to making sure you Gotta Catch 'Em All if you ever want to teach your Gyarados Earthquake. But of course it has to be introduced in-universe via a character and even more tutorial time.
There's also a detective named Emma, a side character with a little bit of story relevance. Most of your interaction with her is, you guessed it, tutorials. She introduces the concept of Side Missions: incredibly dull and uninteresting tasks behind which are locked an unpredictable mix of worthless potions and rare or even unique items. And unlike PLA, which at least softened the tedium somewhat by making most of the Side Missions feel like they're contributing to easing human-pokémon relations, these just feel like busywork that was added because someone said they were required. Honestly, probably one of the worst parts of the game.
User Interface
Does Game Freak not have any UI people working on these games? Consider this: open the main menu and go to your satchel to look at an item, such as a TM. The lower-right part of the screen is a rather large text box where you can see a description of what the item does. But for some reason, they put that description into tiny, barely-readable text that's squished into about a quarter of the available space, while the rest of the box is empty and wasted. Whose idea was that? Similarly, the text used in lieu of voice in the major cutscenes is just floating over the visuals (no text box), with only a faint shadow to help with contrast, making it often nearly unreadable. Shameful.
The map has problems too. You can turn on guidance Side Missions and main story quests so you can find your way around, and you can also pin a followable waypoint. But you can only place one such pin, and you can't place any other sort of stamps or markers. Did you spot an item you want to try to reach but you're in the middle of something so you want to mark it to come back later? Fuck you. Did you find a spawn point for a rare pokémon and want to catch another tomorrow? Fuck you. Want to remember where that unlabeled mint market is once you have the money and some final party members? Fuck you. Stumble across the place to trade in Colorful Screws and want to remember it because the game won't acknowledge it and put it on the map until you're 20-30 hours in? Fuck you.
Story
I'll try to keep this vague, but the story is mediocre at best. You're introduced as a tourist, but next thing you know you live there and you've promised to spend every day helping three sets of people (Mable and Emma, as described above, plus the main cast). Then, you learn about Rogue Mega Evolution, and immediately start a series of unrelated mini story arcs, each centered around a different random set of characters. The usual "true strength comes from your bonds" pokémon line makes you Very Main Character. In fact, you Main Character so hard that all the other people you met in those unrelated mini stories all come together to coordinate your day-saving. Hooray?
That said, the story does introduce a broad cast of characters, and many of those characters are fun and interesting—which I think is what a lot of people nowadays actually mean when they say something has a good story. I like Naveen (also fuck Lida for violating his privacy), Canari and Gwynn are both fun (and I ship them), the little worldbuilding gag with Corbeau is fun, and so forth. But actual story? Eh. SV was better, I think.
Faces & Fits
If you like seeing cool new character designs, dressing up your own character, and taking selfies with your pokémon (or even the NPCs), this game has you covered. I know I've talked a lot of shit about a lot of aspects of PLZA, but Pokémon continues to put lots of banger character designs in their modern games. This applies not only to their outfits, but also to their personalities and general vibes. (Shout out to Canari for the honor of being the first Pokémon character to swear on-screen.)
Thankfully, we have full wardrobe customization this time, unlike the school uniform fiasco of SV. Also, none of the customization options are gender-locked (which combined with how rival selection works to cause the Kalos Mass Feminization Event). That said, I personally felt the options were limited. Certain items (like jumpsuits, very large pants, and shirts worn exclusively on top of other shirts) seemed weirdly overrepresented, while other items (jacketless shirts, alternate colors of the default shirts, or skirts that are not actually skorts instead) were weirdly absent or underrepresented. The hairstyle selection felt similarly skewed (though mixing colors is pretty cool).
Additionally, you can go to any of a number of cafés and get picturesque views of your OC having coffee with their pokémon buddy. They even brought back "following pokémon," letting you have one of them out of their ball and following you around (which was necessary for how battles work). Sadly, though, they removed the feature from PLA where you can then turn around and interact with them. Boo.
Conclusion
I hope you're not expecting a numerical score, because I'm not gonna do that. You should see by now that it's got a mix of strengths and weaknesses that are all over the place. If you wanted a good story, you're probably going to be disappointed. If you thought you wanted a good story but actually you wanted a cast of fun new characters, you're probably going to be delighted. If you wanted a good game, you're going to more-or-less get it but have to suffer through some bullshit along the way. If you wanted to play dress-up with your OC and take selfies with your favorite pokémon, you'll probably love it.
And if all you wanted was to get to the postgame stuff, guess you'd better find a different review.
