Pokémon Legends: Z-A: The Review of the Return to Lumiose City

Pokémon Legends Z-A, the Return to Kalos and Mega Evolutions

With Pokémon Z-A, Game Freak shines a spotlight back on Kalos, a region that marked an epochal turning point in the brand's history. After years of waiting, the return to Lumiose City is not just a nostalgic revival of Pokémon X and Y, but a narrative and thematic choice that closes a circle opened in 2013. Like the first Pokémon Legends: Arceus, this spin-off also attempts an audacious experiment, capable of redefining the foundations of gameplay with new approaches, in addition to the return of Mega Evolutions.
Introduced in X and Y, Mega Evolutions transformed the way of battling, offering a temporary and powerful form of evolution that redefined the concept of strategy. In Z-A, their return is not just an aesthetic or nostalgic choice: Kalos is the land of their origins, and Mega Evolutions are its beating heart; a side note: the release is not coincidental, as a set based on this (mega)element has just been released in the collectible card game landscape.

Gameplay and New Features of Pokémon Legends Z-A

The gameplay introduces some interesting new features, such as real-time combat and greater fluidity in animations, but these innovations clash with a weak narrative structure and uninspired progression. The combat system definitively abandons the turn-based structure to embrace a real-time model, where the Trainer directly guides their Pokémon on the field. During battles, you can freely move your Pokémon, issue instant commands for attacks or dodges, and use positioning to gain tactical advantages. Moves no longer have Power Points (PP), but work with a cooldown system, which imposes a waiting time between uses. This makes timing crucial, both for attacking and for switching Pokémon on the field. Some attacks have different areas of effect, and the distance from the opponent can determine the effectiveness of the move.

The capture of wild Pokémon has also been modified: you can directly throw a Poké Ball with precision, but some Pokémon flee if they notice they are being watched, while others need to be weakened before they can be caught... but with the extreme simplification made, you will no longer risk hitting too hard and making them disappear, so here too, very little work, besides distorting the combat – while I find the selective change of moves useful to learn based on the utility of the moment.

Evening challenges for tickets, on the other hand, are special events that take place in certain districts of Lumiose City. By participating in these challenges, the player can obtain Z tickets, necessary to climb the Royale tournament ranking from Z to A. Each challenge has different rules, often with type, time, or environmental condition limitations, and takes place in urban arenas lit by neon and holograms. The tickets obtained allow access to new areas of the city and to face increasingly strong opponents, but the system has been criticized for its repetitiveness and the lack of variety in the challenges, which end up feeling more like filler than a true narrative progression.

Pokémon Legends Z-A, Plot and Game Pace

The story, which could have explored mature themes such as the coexistence between humans and Pokémon in a transforming urban context, is reduced to a sequence of predictable and tension-less events. The main characters are stereotypical and underdeveloped, while the secondary ones, despite having potential, are relegated to marginal roles. The result is a plot that does not engage, does not surprise, and leaves no mark, so much so that it is perhaps the worst written in a Pokémon game (and an Oscar for screenwriting was not expected... but still).

Endgame, Duration, and Secondary Content

Even the endgame contributes to the feeling of incompleteness. After the credits, the game offers very little additional content: a few repetitive challenges, a final tournament that adds nothing new, and side missions that quickly run out. There are no new areas to explore, no significant events, or legendary Pokémon to discover. The endgame is practically non-existent, and this severely penalizes the overall longevity of the title.
The duration of the main campaign is around 20 hours, with a maximum of over 30 hours including all secondary activities (which are deadly boring, however, given that wandering around the city collecting items or subquests have no appeal). For a game that should represent the evolution of the Pokémon formula – or at least an attempt at progression-experimentation like Arceus – it is a rushed and poorly crafted work, aggravated by the fact that much of the time is spent on repetitive missions, uninspired dialogues, and unchallenging combat. There is no sense of progression or discovery, and the overall pace of the game is flat and monotonous.

Graphics and Art Direction of Pokémon Legends Z-A

The graphics department is perhaps the most disappointing aspect. Although the game is also available on Switch 2, the visual rendering is dated and poorly cared for. The polygonal models are crude, animations are stiff, backgrounds are static and lack atmosphere. Lumiose City, which should have been the beating heart of the game, appears empty and artificial, with environments that seem built with recycled assets and visual barriers that break the coherence of the world. The urban design, instead of captivating, repels, and the worldbuilding suffers heavily.

Pokémon Legends Z-A on Switch and Switch 2: Technical Differences

Whether you buy the game for the original Switch version or not, you will still have the same compatibility guaranteeing the same experience, but with obvious limitations in terms of resolution and fluidity. On Nintendo Switch, the game runs at a variable resolution between 720p (in handheld mode) and 1080p (docked), with an average frame rate of 30 fps that can experience drops in more crowded areas or during more intense battles. Loading times are normal for the console, but not particularly fast, and the overall visual quality is good, albeit limited by the platform's hardware capabilities.
The Nintendo Switch 2 version, on the other hand, is designed to better leverage the potential of the new console. The game reaches a resolution of up to 4K in docked mode and 1080p in handheld, with a stable 60 fps frame rate, ensuring fluid animations and greater responsiveness in combat. Loading times are significantly reduced thanks to the faster internal architecture, and the visual experience is enriched by HDR and VRR support, which improve color rendering and overall fluidity. Although texture quality remains similar between the two versions, the overall rendering on Switch 2 is cleaner and more immersive.
From an economic point of view, the Switch 2 version costs over 10 euros more than the base one, but those who buy the Switch version can perform a digital upgrade to get the technical improvements on the new console. In summary, Pokémon Z-A is the same game on both platforms, but on Switch 2 it offers a significantly superior visual and performance experience, designed for those who want the most from the new Nintendo generation.

Conclusions – A Divisive Experiment

If this was an experiment to test what not to do, it was perfectly successful. Whether the new features (and gameplay) are to one's taste or not is subjective, of course, which is why these do not influence the final score in the slightest, although my judgment is that they greatly distort the game's formula and, in general, while it can entertain and appeal to brand lovers, the existing flaws cannot be ignored.