Pokemon Legends: Z-A thoughts?

not including the other stuff bc they're mobile games no one cares about

Edit: i forgot to put gameplay in the second poll option so put it there mentally ok thx bye

If you recently watched the Pokemon Presents then you'll know exactly what I'm talking about: a new Pokemon Legends game.

To start:

• Legends: Arceus was already a great step in the right direction, and it's really neat seeing how this subseries within the mainline games evolves with new ideas that keep the Pokemon formula fresh.
• Apparently this will take place entirely within a developing Lumiose City. I have never played X nor Y so I can't say exactly what this will entail, but for those who have played it, feel free to drop some speculation. Also, despite this setting being restrictive, I think that with its inherently restrictive nature it will open up the doors for some awesome use of its settings.
  
• AT LONG LAST POKEMON Z EXISTS!

With that, here are some things I'm excited to see about this game:

• New Kalos lore: Again, never played X and Y but I've heard they were severely lacking in lore and good storytelling. With the suffix being Z-A, this will obviously imply a strong relationship to Zygarde as it will probably be the main Pokemon featured throughout. Notably, this is also the name of a character within X & Y, AZ, reversed. However, one detail that I haven't seen being mentioned yet is the shape of the A in the logo.

Does this look a bit like a certain Greek letter? Perhaps... Delta? If that's completely intentional (which it likely is), then there could also be some extra Hoenn lore explored throughout this game as well, not just being the fabled Pokemon Z but also the fabled Pokemon Delta Emerald (lite, Zygarde will definitely be the main focus of this).​

• New Mega Evolutions: This was more or less teased at the end with that mega evo. symbol flare and is likely a given, but it will be neat seeing new Mega Evolutions for Pokemon that didn't get them (like Dragonite, having some extra elements of Dragonair has the potential to look badass and stunning imo).
• Teasers for Unova?: Everyone expected Unova remakes to be revealed, and if you didn't believe that they were coming, then you believed that the Let's Go Johto releases were coming. I think I can say with certainty that this absolutely took everyone aghast at the sudden jump to Kalos. However, I do think that Unova remakes will come out sometime in 2026, maybe 2027.
• Better quality than the recent switch releases: Let's face it, the graphics with the more recent switch releases starting with Sword and Shield haven't been great. The pop-in was horrendous and the story was bad and felt rushed. BDSP wasn't even made by Game Freak but instead by ILCA so I'll ignore that, but Legends Arceus, even with the great gameplay and story, definitely had its hindrances from its graphics. Scarlet and Violet had great elements, with good gameplay and a great story, but had way too many bugs and looked like a game somewhere in-between the Wii and Wii U era of Nintendo releases graphically. Now that 2024 will likely not have a mainline game, this likely means that there will probably be a higher standard of quality shown throughout this game, and hopefully Game Freak slows releases down a bit so they won't come out as bug fests.

Granted, because there wasn't even any gameplay shown, my expectations will likely not have been met perfectly, but that's fine. As long as the Pokemon Company takes its time with making this, then hopefully they will enter a new Golden Age.

 

As someone who played X and Y: Lumiose is a large (by Pokémon standards, cities rarely have a population of 100 people lol) city, and due to it being surrounded by a lake, rivers, plains, forests, and a desert, as long as the city contains the terrains around it, there should be a large variety of Pokémon to catch. While caves could be added where needed, I don't know how they would add the ice types from the rest of the region to the Lumiose area, if they want to include all of the Kalos pokedex. Still, I'm excited as I liked PLA and Gamefreak seems to finally be taking their time on this one, as there will be no major release in 2024, though a little more concept information would have been nice. I'm confused about when this game takes place, though. Does it take place in the distant past what AZ was king? Does it take place in the equivalent to the 19th century from the architecture and potential reconstruction of Paris reference? Does it take place in the future because Lumiose would be more explorable if it was larger, and the trailer is very futuristic and some of the Pokémon look like future paradox forms?

 

my speculations:

• gameplay wasn't shown because the game is made for the rumored switch 2 (as stupid as it sounds. but consider, the switch is 7 years old in a few days. the hardware needs an upgrade.)

• the "A" in the logo's shape is likely representative of Lumiose Gym (the central eiffel tower) and could also represent a new legendary pokemon

• the game will explore the origins of Mega Evolution. (in XY, it's stated that the first person to mega evolve a Pokemon was a trainer who "arrived in the region" with a Lucario)

• the starters will be Snivy, Torchic, and Piplup (snivy is based on a manga about france, torchic was obtainable in XY + the national bird of France is a chicken, piplup's final evolution Empoleon is based on Napoleon) and all three will have megas

• AZ's Floette will be obtainable

• Hoopa, Diancie, and Volcanion will be obtainable and will finally get some more love than just being event distribution pokemon

• Flygon will finally get the mega evolution it was intended to have in XY

• maybe some stuff about the Ultimate Weapon's potential relation to Area Zero from scarlet violet / the Darkest Day from sword and shield (a fun connection i just made with the AZ = Area Zero theory is that Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde are based on the Norse myth of Yggdrasil, a theory that the world is situated on a great tree, while Terapagos (the hidden treasure of Area Zero) is based on the Hindu story that the world is situated on the back of a giant turtle)

• the team working on redeveloping Lumiose City is an early version of Team Flare, similar to how the team you work with in Legends: Arceus is an early version of Team Galactic. It is said that Lysandre once dreamed of coexistence between people and pokemon, which is what the Lumiose redevelopment is all about, according to the teaser.

some things i wanna note:

• how are they gonna justify Xerneas and Yveltal being catchable in this game? it's said that Xerneas and Yveltal have to sleep for 1000 years when they expend too much energy or something, though the Ultimate Weapon from XY was fired 3000 years ago. it could be argued that this game will take place 1000 years prior to XY, though this doesn't really make sense, as the Lumiose City plans depicted in the teaser look too modern + the game seems to be based on the Redevelopment of Paris that happened in the 1800s, which would set it at around the same time period as Legends: Arceus. would also like to note that Xerneas and Yveltal are basically already confirmed to be catchable in this game by the fact that they are mysteriously absent from scarlet violet's Indigo Disk DLC while every other box art legendary (with the exception of Zacian and Zamazenta) are there, + Legends: Arceus focused more on Dialga and Palkia than on Arceus, which, though it may not remain the case in Z-A, is certainly something that could happen again.

• i'm kinda worried about the whole "this game takes place only in Lumiose City" thing. of course, it's going to be bigger than it was in XY, but what's the aesthetic gonna be? it can be assumed from the trailer that the game will function similarly to Arceus where there's a hub area and you can go out on "expeditions" to various biomes, and that Z-A will have 5 biomes occupying the slices of Lumiose City's circle. but since it's basically confirmed that Lumiose was already a city prior to this game, what are the areas going to be like? will they be open fields like in arceus? will they be big town areas? small villages?

lol dream on

 

I think the healthiest thing to expect from Game Freak at this point is to not expect anything groundbreaking until they finally face the facts and realize they need a AAA team to make AAA games

 

a bit new pokemon game for me, want to play a bit and make some conclusions