Agile And Strong Style Could Be Pokemon Legends: Arceus' Biggest Innovation
Battling has never been Pokemon’s strongest suit. It’s the underlying mechanic of the entire game, and it’s through battling that you ultimately achieve victory, but you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who plays purely for the battle system. Even on the competitive scene, where duking it out is the be all and end all, the vast majority of players were pulled into Pokemon by its other elements, then just stuck around. Strong Style and Agile Style, introduced by Legends: Arceus, make the combat finally worth paying attention to.
Pokemon’s turn-based system is well off the pace of other turn-based games, as our own Eric Switzer has already written about. The types, along with the EV and IV numbers under the hood, make for more interesting gameplay, but it’s still very sedentary. Worse, battles take an age with so much text to go with every move, and with the game telling you which moves are super effective, effective, or not very effective, even the types barely matter. Or at least, knowledge of them does not.
Related: Forget Pokemon, Who Plays Any Game For The Graphics?
Legends: Arceus does not fix all of these issues. In fact, because you’ll frequently find yourself battling two or three wild Pokemon at once, they take even longer than they normally should. Typing and effectiveness, meanwhile, is still signposted. But Pokemon has always made changes to the formula inch by inch, and Legends: Arceus represents the biggest leap forward the formula has ever taken - it just needed them to look to the past.
Agile Style and Strong Style was one of the earliest features revealed for the game, and it allows you to change your moves in two select ways. Agile Style makes them quicker, meaning they will disrupt the battle order in
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