Pokemon Legends Z-A Review: An Enjoyable Identity Crisis

"We talked about how, in the '90s, Game Freak probably wasn't designing the world of its monster-taming RPGs to be interrogated, or expecting the core concept of capturing magical monsters in balls to become the source of a heated moral quandary. Established norms like dumping your unused Pokémon in a PC box were probably not meant to make a kid think about the existential dread their seventh-favorite monster might experience in captivity, where they had to put it because they could only hold six Poké Balls on their belt at a time."

"The writers, however, extrapolated this rote procedure into a scene in which its legally distinct "Collectabuddies" are going mad from being stranded in storage for so long. It's a dark, disturbing fate that hasn't explored, and in the decades since and , the dissonance between 's need to maintain an upbeat depiction of its world's monster-catching status quo and its exploration of a world in which Pokémon and humanity co-exist peacefully as equals has only become louder and harder to ignore, especially as stories like Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Detective Pikachu have put these dynamics under a microscope."

The franchise's original monster-capture mechanics and norms, such as storing unused Pokmon in PC boxes and limiting parties to six, create potential moral and existential questions about captured creatures. Satirical works have amplified those implications by depicting stored monsters going mad from prolonged confinement. Recent games and films have highlighted the tension between an upbeat monster-catching status quo and narratives that treat Pokmon as equal cohabitants with humans. A new sequel set in Lumiose City focuses on urban redevelopment and designated Wild Zones where humans and wild Pokmon coexist, blending exploration, battle, and capture within an evolving social landscape.

Read at Kotaku