‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ on Switch 2 is the turbo-charged ‘Pokémon’ combat of my dreams

The Nintendo Switch 2 can be new on the stage and still wait for its first exclusive to essential RPG – but this wait could soon be over. It is because Pokémon Legends: ZA Launches on October 16.

Yes, the game arrives technically on Switch 2 and its predecessor. But on the basis of the hour I spent with a recent overview event, it could be the step forward with desperately needed. Long -term Pokémon The developer Game Freak has made admirable jumps in recent years, such as the Open World-Iification of Scarlet and VioletBut one thing remained stubbornly stuck in 1996: the fight.

The demo I played Legends: ZA Included more than simple fights, of course, but what was the most distinguished are the changes in the operation of the fighting. Like someone who begged the game game to speed up the pace yearschanges made to Legends: ZA are exciting. Crétons.

Pokémon Legends: ZA Practical overview: a seismic upheaval

There are many things that distinguish Pokémon Legends: ZA Other extremely popular franchise games. This is a spin-off, not the next big generational jump, which is likely to arrive next year. This gives Game Freak Room to experiment – and on the basis of my short time with him so far, it seems to have paid off.

Like his predecessor, Pokémon Legends: ArceusIt is an open world game where wild Pokémon attack not only your Pokémon, but they can also attack You. If you are not careful, they will withdraw you, causing a reappearance at a previous checkpoint. To sneak and find the right time to advantageously your Pokémon on the savages is a large part of the game, but it is not necessarily new here.

What East New, this is how the fights work. Combat Arceus It was always a vision of classic turn -by -turn fights that go back to the Game Boy. In ZAThe battles take place in real time. If you sit there and do nothing, you will lose because the opponent will unleash all of his movements while you are waiting. Rather than choosing movements from a menu, you will rather map four movements to the pimples, and they work on charging times, so you can use them as often as available.

Don’t do it …
Credit: Nintendo

This is a fundamental change that has immediate effects on how you play the game in relation to Pokémon securities. For example, movements such as protection or the double team that offer defensive or statistical advantages without causing damage is now significantly More useful than they would be in a system where the use of an entire turn. Protection is particularly interesting, because it acts essentially as a timed childcare movement; There were several fights where my opponent would use it well while I was unleashing a powerful movement, completely canceling my attack. It seemed badly, of course, but it also turned on my eyes with the awareness that I could also draw this kind of BS on my enemies.

The positioning also becomes essential in this new system. If you do not give him any order, your Pokémon will follow you during the fights, and it is actually super important to dodge enemy attacks. Many movements now have areas of effect, with a flame wheel that bursts in a straight line and a whirlwind leaving behind a destructive circle wherever you used it.

Ah, shit.
Credit: Nintendo

It is an obviously modified experience of something like Scarlet and Violet. The battles here take place incredibly quickly, so much so that it can be difficult to keep track of everything that is going on, but I suspect that it is part of the pleasure. There is a newspaper rolling of combat updates on the right side of the user interface (the older games would make you manually move an inskippable text box each time someone did something) which is really difficult to follow, but cool. As a person who aspires to a buyout Pokémon Experience for a very long time, I got what I wanted here.

The coolest example that I can give of all these systems working together in harmony was in a fight against the boss against Mega Victreebel, a new taking of gigantic and grove of one of the 151 original Pokémon. During this fight, Victreebel occasionally left circular poison pools that I should sail to avoid damage. One of the most fascinating pieces of tactical shade in this game is that, in situations like that, it is actually paying to remove your active Pokémon for a few seconds so that they are not injured. This fight also gave me the ability to evolve Mega to some of my guys, and although the mega meter decreases regularly during the mega evolution, you can in fact wedge this by defensively bringing your Pokémon in its ball and living to fight another day.

Sprint and dodging while juggling classic Pokémon mechanisms such as type advantages and statistical boosts are much to treat, and I have just started to understand at the end of my demo. We will see how the fight is going on with everything that happens Legends: ZA When the game is launched on October 16, but for the moment, all I can do is applaud the game to do something really new, even if it will make some players uncomfortable.