Current Events > Reviews are in for Pokemon Legends Arceus

(+) Yeah! (+)

85 on Metacritic
https://www.metacritic.com/game/switch/pokemon-legends-arceus?

Gamespot: 80
https://www.gamespot.com/reviews/pokemon-legends-arceus-review-what-pokemon-is-evolving/1900-6417818/

In a mainline Pokemon game, simply catching a Pokemon would fill out its Pokedex entry but that's not the case here. Since you're building the first Pokedex, and since the stealth-catch mechanic lends itself to quicker finds, completing a Pokedex entry involves completing a series of tasks. A Pokedex sheet will outline tasks--often with multiple tiers--like catching a certain number of a Pokemon, defeating a certain number, catching a number without being noticed, seeing it use a certain move, feeding them a number of times, and so on. Once you've completed a number of these tasks, you can turn in your findings and the Pokedex entry is considered complete.
It's a remarkably flexible system that lets you play Pokemon your own way. If you love to do Pokemon battles, you can make almost all of your progress just fighting wild monsters. (I'll be exploring battles in more detail shortly). If you'd rather focus on stealth and barely engage with battles at all, that option is available too. At first, I found myself obsessively checking my Pokedex tasks and steering myself toward min-maxing completion, flipping through Pokedex pages looking for the ones I needed. But after a while, I found it was much more enjoyable to just wander the world stealth-catching and battling as I felt like it, and then letting the chips fall where they may for Pokedex completion.
This also leads to a much different sense of party dynamics than a typical Pokemon game. Since you're catching Pokemon by the barrel-full and evolving Pokemon isn't necessarily needed to complete their Pokedex entries, there's less incentive to keep a core team of favorites on-hand and passively level them up throughout the game. I was hot-swapping my team in the field constantly by checking in at base camps, substituting any Pokemon that had been outclassed by a newer catch. But that means some of my old favorites, including my starter, have been sitting in cold storage for hours. I found myself missing that feeling of forming a special bond with my starter Rowlet and keeping him with me throughout the game.

Game Informer: 8.75
https://www.gameinformer.com/review/pokemon-legends-arceus/pokemon-legends-arceus-review-learning-some-new-moves

Whenever I wanted a break from the main story, I could quickly lose a couple of hours trying to further my Pokdex progress on side activities. A day/night cycle further enhances the rewards, as different monsters come out at night, giving you a reason to return when the sun sets. Hisui is full of rewarding activities that include stronger Alpha Pokmon to fight and catch, side-missions that involve collecting resources and specific creatures, and special limited-time events to help you further round out your Pokdex.

Polygon: unscored
https://www.polygon.com/reviews/22901385/pokemon-legends-arceus-review-diamond-pearl

Instead of a back-and-forth battle, Legends: Arceus is focused entirely on speed. If one Pokmon is faster than the other, it can potentially attack multiple times in a row. This couples with the new mastery system, wherein Pokmon can increase an attacks power at the cost of delaying their next move, or act twice in a row by speeding up an attack, causing it to deal less damage. Its a mechanic weve seen in several other recent turn-based RPGs like Octopath Traveler, Bravely Default 2, and Ruined King: A League of Legends Story.

These seemingly small changes add a new layer of strategy to the Pokmon series, and for the first time in years, I had to make meaningful decisions during non-Elite Four battles. But there were also battles that left me wanting to chuck my pro controller at one of my TVs. In a story-crucial battle toward the end of the game, an enemy trainers Pokmon attacked me three times before my fully evolved, over-leveled starter could move once. It knocked my Pokmon out before it even had a chance, and made me feel like Id wasted all the time Id spent leveling up before the battle.

Still, Pokmon Legends: Arceus made me care about battling, and I actually wish there were more trainer battles scattered throughout the world. But I missed some of the predictability found in the mainline series. Whenever Id go to swap out one Pokmon for another mid-battle, I held my breath, never knowing if Id have to take a hit from the enemy before I could attack. Hours in, I felt like the game didnt give me enough information to make some of the strategic decisions I wanted to. I love the direction in which the battles are going with Legends: Arceus, but a handful of what the hell moments killed some of my enthusiasm.

Thats just the Pokmon Legends: Arceus experience. Its filled with excellent ideas aimed at changing a series that has largely grown stale. But some of the execution breeds frustration. Exploring the open world is freeing, but also awkward, until I unlock more travel options later in the game. Legends: Arceus is graphically dreadful, with flat textures and pop-in rampant in every area, but the Pokmon animate wonderfully. Still, Ill gladly take an imperfect Pokmon game that takes a chance on something different, even if its not always successful.

Gamefreak obviously paid these reviewers to get high scores. How else can this game get high scores m i rite boyz

Not that surprising. All the hate for the game was purely based on the visuals. Reviewers are looking at a lot more than that.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

Unsurprisingly. No matter how much hardcore fans try to bring the hate train, people enjoy the Pokemon game as a casual, pleasant experience.

If it's good, then good.

Seems neat

80 and 85 for a pokemon game? Wow. Must suck.

s0nicfan posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

xy was the most offensively shit game i've ever played i fucking hate people

Why did Platinum have such a small drop? It is like the best performing 3rd game relative to the base games.

Emerald being a 7.6 is a big WTF?

I'm shocked that an industry game got 8+ review scores.

Not even saying anything bad about Arceus. Just that I'm shocked that happened!

s0nicfan posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

>Emerald 76

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/1/AANKsdAAC16X.jpg

s0nicfan posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

So the better version of the game get lower scores, that's dumb

spikethedevil posted...

Emerald being a 7.6 is a big WTF?

this lmfao

PowerOats posted...

So the better version of the game get lower scores, that's dumb

I assume people dont want to buy the game again is the reason for the lower score?

Sounds fun from those reviews. I'm looking forward to playing it.

s0nicfan posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

B2/W2 being so low and S/M being so high kills me inside

Turbam posted...

>Emerald 76

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/1/1/AANKsdAAC16X.jpg

Too much water

PowerOats posted...

So the better version of the game get lower scores, that's dumb

part of a reviewer's criteria is how novel / intriguing the game is. Redux pokemon games are 85% the same as their base versions, which makes them inherently less interesting than the original versions and is the reason why they always get lower average scores.

if you haven't played the original game then the remakes are generally unilaterally better games (which reviews usually point out) -- but they get lower scores bc it's boring to rerelease a game with only a bit of extra content.

s0nicfan posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

BW2 definitely deserves much higher than that.

Solar_Crimson posted...

BW2 definitely deserves much higher than that.

bw2 came out when people were beyond done with DS games. pokemon had already released DP, then platinum, then HGSS, then BW, AND a lot of DS pokemon spin off games, and then 3DS came out.

and THENNNNNNN, an entire year and a half later,
they released BW2.

i agree that it is better than the other reduxes, but i don't blame the reviewers for having grown slightly weary of these games. BW2 probably would have gotten great reviews if it had come out in 2007 instead of 2012.

I finally decided to get it.

Under 8.8? Must be garbage

The actual reviews and impressions are making me hype for this game

Sounds way more interesting than it could have ended up; they just should have put more effort into the presentation of it all

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/6/AAW8UqAAC2mW.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/7/AAW8UqAAC2mX.jpg

^That's really promising. I wonder if the whole "respects the player's time" thing was due to Monolith Soft's influence. Judging from the Xenoblade games (2 is an exception, it was in an awful state at launch) they do a decent job at respecting the player's time.

But I was told the game was going to suck because it doesn't have Skyrim graphics

s0nicfan posted...

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/5/4/4/AABJX0AAC2BI.png

LGP: 79
Sword: 80
BDSP: 73
PLA: 85

Nice.

Sounds like the game is fun and has a lot of good ideas which they can keep building on in the future. Nice.

reviews aside, going by the vids i've seen, this does look pretty fun!

this game might actually make me care for Pokmon again! lok

Nice. Gamefreak did good

The haters on the Arceus board are on a large amount of copium at the moment.

I'm happy to admit I was wrong. If they have done something decent for once, then that is a good thing.

whelp time to buy it

sounds like basically everything is new and fun, and the only real drawbacks are graphics and repetition after a point.

TheGoldenEel posted...

The actual reviews and impressions are making me hype for this game

Sounds way more interesting than it could have ended up; they just should have put more effort into the presentation of it all

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/6/AAW8UqAAC2mW.jpg
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/9/2/7/AAW8UqAAC2mX.jpg

inject this into my veins

i mean, sure the graphics could look better (specially if you compare to games like BotW or Super Mario Odyssey) but overall, i dont think they look that bad... lol

So much hype.

Seems about right