Review: Pokemon Legends: Arceus

destructoid.com:

The last time I left off with our Pokemon Legends review, I was both pleased and vexed by the advancements and lack of changes. Our relationship with Pokemon games is often like that, so join me as we parse out exactly what that means this time around.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Nintendo Switch)Developer: Game FreakPublisher: NintendoReleased: January 28, 2022MSRP: $59.99

I’ll spare you the suspense! I liked it overall. But it was a journey to get to that place.

So Pokemon Legends is very good at drawing you into its world, where research matters more than becoming the next champion. It’s such a low bar to ask the developers to meet over the course of several decades, but this tried-and-true formula of catching creatures has survived this long for a reason: it’s still charming, and at its core, pure, in multiple respects.

Actually doing the job of a professor is a nice change of pace. To progress, you’ll acquire “star ranks,” which aren’t your typical badges. Instead you’ll be able to choose from an open-ended array of activities, like catching Pokemon in specific ways, battling them, or “seeing their moves in action.” You can do the latter from any side of the battle, so often times just running around catching things or fighting them will unlock copious amounts of research points needed to rank up.

I adopted a system of my own choosing, where I’d enter an area, and just catch Pokemon. Then I’d go back to the same zone and just battle. It’s a tact the game never explicitly tells you to do, but something I came up with on my own, and felt a sense of accomplishment as a result. In fact, the game as a whole doesn’t over-tutorialize everything, to its strength.

In a typical Pokemon game, you’d have your hand held through