Read the full Pokémon Legends: Arceus review

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is the best it’s ever felt to catch and collect Pokémon, but that level of ambition and brilliance deserved a better house to live in. While I'm thrilled by this new gameplay direction, I wish the same care and attention was put into every aspect of the adventure. But while Legends: Arceus is the closest Pokémon has ever been to reflecting the monster catching and battling as I always imagined them in my head as a child, its otherwise exciting attempt at a genre-shift is set in a disappointingly empty, ugly, and at times tedious world. It sheds both stale battle mechanics and an outdated progression system that sorely needed a shake-up, and the new replacements are incredibly fun even after hours of repetition. On the one hand, its revamped systems are utterly revolutionary to the franchise. I am left feeling torn about Pokémon Legends: Arceus. So even though I want to celebrate how this generation reinvents and reinvigorates the world of Pokémon, I can’t without putting a great big warning label on it. And yet, a finger on the cursed Mankey’s paw has curled anyway – Scarlet and Violet’s wonderfully innovative design is dramatically undermined by the numerous ways in which they feel deeply unfinished, with issues ranging from an incomplete world to massive and ubiquitous technical problems.

But from the moment I left the hallowed halls of Uva Academy, that promise has been wonderfully fulfilled, with open-world, open-ended gameplay serving as a shining beacon for the future of this beloved franchise. It is still unbelievable to me that after 26 years of linear, straightforward RPGs, developer Game Freak really looked Pokémon players dead in the eye and said, “It’s fine, go wherever you want.” In the lead-up to the launch of Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, I thought this claim would end up being a marketing gimmick, a little joke, something we’d all be mad about later.

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