Pokemon Legends: Z-A Review - Maintaining Rank - Game Informer

"Rather than having you venture out into the wilderness like in Legends: Arceus, Legends Z-A confines you to Lumiose City, the biggest metropolis in Pokémon X and Y's Kalos Region. Though I prefer the more open exploration of Legends: Arceus, Lumiose played a strong host throughout my more than 30 hours of gameplay. The denser city offers more opportunities to find hidden items, side missions, and Pokémon Centers, and with ample fast-travel locations, I was happy to bounce around quickly when I became mission-oriented."

"Thanks to the new real-time battle system, which has you commanding your Pokémon to attack via the face buttons, this feels closer to being a trainer in the Pokémon world than ever before. Firing off commands and watching them play out with consideration to timing and positioning, in addition to type matchups, made me feel like I was in an episode of the anime."

"With 2022's Pokémon Legends: Arceus, players were treated to a sprawling adventure in the wide-open Hisui region, tasked with filling in the area's first Pokédex. Outside of doubling down on exploration, Pokémon Legends: Z-A has little to do with its predecessor, instead establishing the Legends spin-offs as places for Game Freak to experiment with the core Pokémon formula while still delivering an experience that is, at times, a little too familiar."

Pokémon Legends: Z-A relocates the player experience from open wilderness exploration to the urban environment of Lumiose City, offering dense streets, hidden items, side missions, and numerous Pokémon Centers with fast-travel convenience. The core loop centers on entering the Z-A Royale to battle waves of trainers in nightly Battle Zones. A new real-time battle system requires button-commanded attacks, timing, and positioning, and introduces cooldowns and upfront charge times that alter move selection and loadouts. The game keeps familiar moves, but retools their use through new mechanics, encouraging experimentation and varied strategies within a somewhat familiar Pokémon framework.

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