Pokemon Legends: Arceus Shows the Potential of a New Video Game Trend

gamerant.com:

As with any mode of entertainment, the video game industry often revolves around trends. While there will always be core, unique games, there are genres that have risen and fallen in the past. Recent examples include the battle royale genre and time-loop games. PUBG kicked off the trend and style of modern battle royale games before it was eventually eclipsed by its predecessors: Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone.

The latter is surprisingly getting a sequel, but for the most part, these three have dominated the BR genre. Other battle royale games tried to join the trend before it essentially locked itself down—Ubisoft’s shut down of Hyper Scape proves that. Meanwhile, 2021 saw a plethora of time-loop games such as Deathloop, Lemnis Gate, Returnal, The Forgotten City, and more; most of which were well-received by fans. Then, of course, there’s the continued popularity of roguelike games, including Hades, Sifu, and evenFar Cry 6’s DLC (as it embraces this trend).

Sifu Adding Difficulty Options, More Accessibility in Future Update

This is all to say mention how genres become trends in games, and they can be quite popular ones too. So, Pokemon Legends: Arceus is hopefully a trend for an increasingly popular genre: Isekai.

Isekai video games have been released before, just like how battle royales served as a genre before, time loop games have existed before, and roguelike games have been around for a long time. But, it deserves its own major impact on the current industry like these others. Isekai is a genre of portal fantasy, where a character is transported to another world—possibilities including a completely different fantasy world, a virtual world, a parallel universe, or into the future or past. It’s very