Board 8 > I've really been having to force myself through Pokemon Legends Arceus

(+) Yeah! (+)

At first I was so excited by the new gameplay style, the open world, the ability to just freely explore the environment and see how the creatures act in their own habitat. For the first like 5 or so hours it was great

but then it just falls into such a dull, repetitive loop. The story itself is boring, the characters are boring, and the lively open world just makes the text-based, barely emotive cutscenes feel that much more dated. The side missions become pretty much identical past the first 5-10 of them, and even encountering alphas becomes something of a chore eventually.

It starts off so strong by breaking free from its series formula, and then proceeds to do nothing with it, all the while still lagging a solid like decade behind pretty much every other open-world game

Whats the actual objective in the game? Are you going to gyms?

How far into the game are you? If you aren't invested in the gameplay or story, it sounds like you should just drop the game. The gameplay doesn't really change much from start to finish. If you at least want to see the story to the end, it shouldn't take that long if you just do the story missions.

Anagram posted...

Whats the actual objective in the game? Are you going to gyms?

There are no gyms. Some special pokemon called Noble Pokemon are frenzied and it's the players job to do something about it. For most of the game you're just catching pokemon though.

Yeah I'm pretty close to the end of the game now, I'm off trying to deal with the big hole in the sky thing (which isn't a spoiler, it's kinda the whole premise)

And yeah, the objective is pretty much go to a new area, set up a camp, battle some person that only has three Pokemon (there aren't gyms or even other trainers so there's all of maybe 10 battles against other people in the game), then fight one of the 5 frenzied guys in a big boss battle that's kinda neat but then ends in them being one-shot but any super effective move you use

One of the neat things about it is that wild Pokemon attacking doesn't actually send you into a battle, they will actually just try to kill you. Which is cool and all until you're just trying to explore or sneak up on something and there's 80 of those blue electric dogs trying to pummel you at any moment

Also maybe it's just me growing a little jaded with the series but it seems like type effectiveness has kinda overwhelmed the battles now. It seems like basically every single fight is a one-hit kill one way or the other

The OHKO thing is a specific problem with this game's battle system more than any other

I never got bored of the catching, I found it really satisfying

The dated cutscenes/animations are really bad though. One early one, where you get judo thrown and it like cuts to black and then comes back with you on the floor is so, so bad.

XIII_rocks posted...

The dated cutscenes/animations are really bad though. One early one, where you get judo thrown and it like cuts to black and then comes back with you on the floor is so, so bad.

The worst thing imo is wherever a character is "surprised" there mouth just turns into a circle like they're an emoji

It feels weird that someone would recommend just going for the story in this. The story's not really the highlight - running around catching Pokemon is the fun part.

Mac Arrowny posted...

It feels weird that someone would recommend just going for the story in this. The story's not really the highlight - running around catching Pokemon is the fun part.

Yeah that was definitely the highlight of it, but it just really needed a little more direction to stop it from getting repetitive fast

I really couldn't get into this but it may be that I was completely done or burnt out with Pokemon after Sword/Shield ended up being such a mediocre lazily put together experience. I may be in the same boat as TC as in the first few hours were intriguing but once the novelty wore off the gameplay loop didn't make me want to keep playing the game.

Another strange reason could be that Pokemon Scarlet/Violet got announced soon after and after playing this game for a couple of hours, I suddenly have renewed hope in a Pokemon game on console being done right and it felt like I was playing a beta for a game that is yet to come, which is also clearly a bigger deal than Legends Arceus.

I might come back to Legends Arceus if Scarlet/Violet ends up sucking like Sword/Shield for my Pokemon kick but otherwise I'm saving whatever energy of tolerance for the series I have for the mainline game.

I played for about 30 hours and got to the 3rd area, and about an hour into the third area I realized that the first hour of actual gameplay was going to be exactly the same as the entire rest of the game. It's repetition incanarte.

The narrative is also maybe the worst they've ever done, which is saying a lot for Pokmon. It's not just that the cutscenes are bad, they're actually painful. Every dialogue window is suffering.

It left a great first impression, but as the items start to bog down inventory and require more and more maintenance...just wasn't worth it, dropped it like a rock. And yes, I invested basically all my money into increasing inventory space.

This game was HUGE when it first came out but that's all but died, and even at it's height I never saw anyone talking about or showing clips/shots from the last couple areas of the game. I would love to see completion data, because I bet it's SUPER low, but sadly we'll never get something like that from a Nintendo game.

I love sauntering around, throwing Poke Balls and completing Dex goals.

What I don't like is having such limited box space for a game like this. I am just before the third area and have to organize all my boxes and release a bunch of Pokemon so I can actually go on a spree. And then there's the inventory management issues - really, the best thing to spend your money on is more slots, and that gets expensive.

This game has the "breath of fresh air" the series needed from a gameplay perspective, but there are some issues. I still really enjoy the game and it's the best Pokemon offering in a while, but I want it to be a starting point for something even greater. Something that combines past games with this one. Like more trainers and actual difficulty. I've destroyed every battle I've faced because my Pokemon are such a high level (despite me rotating ten and evolving others to get their dex data) and I'm already at seven or eight stars after two areas. Completionist syndrome is in full effect with this one.

Spending 30 hours on the first two areas is insane! I did the full game and the important parts of the post-game in 40 hours with ~80% Dex completion. Never had problems with pastures or item management either...

I know people crapped on Sw/Sh when it first came out, but Arc dropped the ball way bigger honestly. At least Sw/Sh had replay value and post-game going for it. Arc could barely manage doing a full game.

Johnbobb posted...

The worst thing imo is wherever a character is "surprised" there mouth just turns into a circle like they're an emoji

Yeah

I don't mind the MC doing it because the other Pokemon games so rarely have the MC showing any emotion. I appreciated that. But everyone else...no

I feel like if they were going for the slightly more mature Pokemon game, this kind of thing needed to grow up with the series, and it didn't at all

Great game apart from that though. Very very satisfying and exciting because I feel like there are so many ways it could improve too - a more populated world, more interesting side-missions, better graphics, better-animated cutscenes, etc. I'm not 100% convinced Game Freak will do any of this, but until they don't, the possibilities have me really looking forward to the next one...and really pre-emptively disappointed for when Scarlet/Violet go back to random battles where you get pulled into another dimension to do the fighting, and the catching is basically the same as it was in RBY. That is genuinely going to be a borderline-unforgivable sin. You can't clearly advance and improve on one of the series' most tedious aspects and then just bin that not even a year later. I was fine with it, because Pokemon is ultimately good stuff, but fuck that.

TomNook posted...

I know people crapped on Sw/Sh when it first came out, but Arc dropped the ball way bigger honestly. At least Sw/Sh had replay value and post-game going for it. Arc could barely manage doing a full game.

This is grotesquely, horrifyingly untrue btw. Arceus is a clear cut above.

I only personally know 3 people to have played this game, myself, my wife, and a friend of ours. The friend and my wife finished everything including the whole pokedex. I did everything other than finishing the whole pokedex.

I dunno, I had fun and liked it a lot.

Best Pokemon game

If you don't enjoy catching Pokemon you should probably just drop it tbh or beeline to the end if you're intent on finishing it

I loved it

it definitely doesn't have the longevity of traditional Pokmon games, though. There's no reason to build a great competitive team.