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pokémon legends: arceus

where do i start with pokémon legends: arceus? is the question that's wracked my brain for the better part of the last two weeks, as of writing. even as i was on vacation with my girlfriend, seeing the love of my life face to face for the first time, my brain never really left the game - every idle, unoccupied moment filled by my brain ruminating on this game. it makes sense, though - i've talked about pokémon and its design a lot here on thunderjolt, and even more in other places; it's almost a comfort subject, at this point. something i can easily put out analysis of because i already have such a body of my own thought to lean back on. legends is different, though. structurally, it bears little resemblance to the prior pokémon games, with the biggest thing tethering it to the mainline series being its battle system, something that's still heavily modified. it's all familiar, yet so different that i have a hard time even figuring out what angle i want to attack it from. i think i have an idea, though: in a somewhat similar manner to the BDSP post, i'll be going over several "key points" about the game. like in that post, i may not reach every single part worth analyzing, but i'll hopefully hit everything that's most important to me. but first, some...

context

no video game is released in a vacuum. they all have reasons for their creation, and the ideas that lead to them are evident in the other works of their creators. PLA is no exception, and i think establishing where parts of the game came from is helpful when it comes to better understanding it. perhaps most obviously is sword & shield's wild area, game freak's previous tango with the idea of "open pokémon gameplay." a sort of half-measure between a proper open area and the more traditional routes in pokémon tradition, these were contained areas between key towns/routes which showcased free-roaming pokémon in a comparably vast, explorable area with free camera control. i was a vocal critic of the wild areas at SwSh's release, my main criticisms being their lack of relevance to the rest of the game (they didn't enable breaking the set sequence in any way, and exploring them was not particularly rewarding), their locked off nature (powerful, high level pokémon that appeared in them were not allowed to be caught until your pokémon were at a comparable point, leaving little point to engaging with them), frustrating encounter mechanics tied to the real time clock, and the general feeling that they existed to excuse an otherwise very linear game from criticism for that issue. this little experiment seemed to bear fruit, though, as almost all of these issues are addressed somehow in PLA. going back further than SwSh, we have Ultra Sun & Moon, the director of which, Kazumasa Iwao, went on to direct PLA. looking at his two games, you see certain patterns that give us a look into what he values. for one, USUM was noted at the time for its high density of sidequests, far more than had been in any pokémon game to that point. PLA, as an open world game (or at least a game masquerading as one) naturally, has even more, and the clever usage of the world that was seen in them in USUM remains here. USUM was also quite the difficult game, relative to modern pokémon standards - many boss fights that weren't pushovers in SuMo to begin with became quite the challenges, with clever movesets and strategies to boot. i'd go as far as to say that with exp share disabled, it's perhaps the highest difficulty pokémon game out there. perhaps most notable was the final boss of the main story, ultra necrozma, a fight that gave many, even those taking every edge the game gave them, quite the headache. it's a fight that reminds me of a certain one we'll get to later... but speaking of fights, let's talk about

battle stuff

PLA comes sporting a newly revamped battle system, and while not quite a radical departure from previous games, there's certainly a lot to talk about. (i mean, come on; i'm the one who wrote 400 words about just the pokétch in my bdsp post.) let's start with the "background" changes - starting with the things furthest in the background, IV and EV mechanics. while natures remain unchanged, IVs and EVs have seen quite the overhaul. for starters, IVs no longer have an impact on stats - they now only determine smaller factors. this is a fantastic change, and one i hope makes it to the mainline games. IVs have been a thorn in the side of competitive players for a long time, a mostly invisible mechanic that forces players to spend hours breeding just to get a single battle-ready pokémon. while there's some depth in getting specific IVs like HP and speed to manipulate certain things, i don't think it's worth how much of a pain it makes everything. meanwhile, EVs, the much less annoying cousin of IVs, have seen a makeover as well, one i'm more mixed on. PLA replaces EVs with effort levels, a far more forward-facing mechanic signified by a number next to each stat on a pokémon's status screen. with certain items, ELs can be raised one at a time up to a maximum of 10. let's go pikachu and eevee had a system somewhat similar to this, known as AVs, but that was far more powerful, allowing pokémon to add 200 points to every stat. in comparison, ELs only allow pokémon to add 25 to each stat - in practice, this is similar to if you had 100 EVs in each stat in a standard game. this isn't a possible spread normally, as there's an EV limit of 508, but it'd be hard to call it broken, especially as balanced spreads such as that are practically unheard of in competitive singles. while i like the idea of bringing this mechanic out of the dark, i wouldn't like this exact implementation to come to mainline. the EV limit breeds creativity and is much more interesting in my opinion. if they made a modified system with some sort of limit and a higher cap to how many stat points you can add, i'd be all in. then, there's the fact that abilities and held items are gone. i'm sort of conflicted on this change - on one hand, game freak never really used those design spaces very well, if at all - the vast majority of both regular trainers and bosses never had held items, and abilities, while certainly a factor, never seemed like they were thoughtfully put to use. both of these mechanics, on the AI end, were "just there" most of the time, and as there are many held items and abilities with functions directly tied to the traditional turn system, i can understand trimming the fat. on the other hand, why not just adjust the few edge case abilities and cut problem items? it's not like these are really major balance issues. overall, kind of a wash. what else... sleep and freeze have been replaced with new statuses, drowsy and frostbite. drowsy gives a chance of being unable to act like paralysis while also causing the afflicted pokémon to take more damage. frostbite, meanwhile, acts as a special version of burn, dealing passive damage each turn while halving the afflicted pokémon's special attack. both of the statuses these replace have histories of being quite problematic in competitive play, and i think these new ones are both strong and interesting, and i'd love to see them make it into mainline. good change. also, every trainer battle is now equivalent to battle style set from previous games. while i think i ultimately would rather the option be there for players who want it, this is much better than the alternative of battle style shift, especially if you're someone like me who has been playing on set for years now. now onto the big stuff, the core mechanics change - the Action Order.

PLA makes a bold move by taking the linear one-after-the-other battle structure of the rest of the series and replacing it with a new system known as the action order. shown on the right side of the screen, pokémon take turns based on speed as usual, but unlike in previous games, pokémon can also take multiple turns in a row. this is partially facilitated by move styles, another new mechanic whereby the player can use a move in one of two additional styles - agile style, which decreases the power (or duration, for status moves) of the move but shifts the user up in the action order, and strong style, which increases the power and accuracy of the move but brings the user down in the action order. move styles, along with move effects like speed boosts/drops, priority like quick attack (which simply moves you up in the action order in this game) and status like paralysis, lead to a turn order that's constantly shifting and changing, leading to AI encounters that are more interesting, dynamic, and unpredictable than previous games. the potential to take 2 or even 3 turns in a row constantly exists, and that potential exists for your opponent as well, so you're on your toes constantly. it makes battles that would be totally uninteresting in previous games exciting, and for that alone i think it's a massive win, and a change that, all taken, i'm very happy with. i'm not sure if i'd like it to make it into mainline - it's not balanced or designed for multiplayer, and i think it'd honestly be a mess there. but then again, i'm not so against single and multiplayer being different mechanically. ultimately, that's besides the point, though - we're talking about this game. and unfortunately, this change doesn't exist in a vacuum. by biggest problem with the action order is that despite how fun it makes battles, there are very few traditional boss fights in PLA - for a lot of the game, every trainer battle is against someone with only one pokémon, which, while making sense story-wise, isn't really conducive to interesting gameplay. once you're past that point, the game is nearly over. as someone whose love of pokémon partially comes from its one-of-a-kind battle system, this really disappointed me. boss fights are the backbone of any RPG, and the replacement here is, well...

noble fights

i'll say it up front. the noble fights in pokémon legends arceus are by far my biggest problem with the game. let's set the stage: as we'll discuss later, PLA introduces new real-time gameplay mechanics to the series. key to this section are the dodge roll, acting in much the same way as monster hunter, and ball/object throwing, in which you toss poké balls as well as things like bait and balls of mud that can stun pokémon in the overworld. by and large, these work great in the overworld. you may not have to dodge roll that often, but it works well with the attack patterns that aggressive overworld pokémon have, and the throwing, when limited resources, staying out of a pokémon's sight, and general aiming skill are kept in mind, works to the game's benefit. when recontextualized inside of the noble fights, however, these mechanics don't feel quite as good. let's do a quick rundown of these fights, to get you up to speed: at a few points in the game, you'll be met with a powerful, story-relevant pokémon known as a noble pokémon. all of the nobles in the region have become enraged, see, and it's your job to calm them down. how, you may ask? by throwing sacks of food they like at them, of course! this action comes in the form of real-time boss fights where you're provided an infinite supply of the sacks (called balms) and tasked to dodge simple patterns reminiscent of a monster hunter or dark souls encounter. at the top of the screen lies a health bar, which decreases as you hit the enraged pokémon with balms, of which you have an infinite supply. at certain points of the bar, the noble will be stunned, giving you an opportunity to send out a pokémon against it - doing so enters a traditional pokémon battle, whereupon knocking out the noble, you take down a large chunk of its health bar. this isn't necessary, however, and in fact often doesn't amount to much more than just raw sack-throwing during the stun.

i have a lot of problems with these fights, some of which may already be evident in my description alone. for starters, balms don't require aim, and unlike poké balls, there aren't different varieties that travel different distances that you have to account for. you'll always be in lock-on distance of the noble, removing the need for aim, and you will never have to think very hard about your attacks, as their effective range never changes. what's left, then, is a simple affair of dodge rolling attacks at the right time, either on reaction or after learning the patterns. it's... not very interesting. while in something like monster hunter, you'll have an expansive moveset and a variety of weapons that are trying to hit the monster in different places and different ways, fights here are extremely one-dimensional, almost more comparable to a shmup or rail shooter, but without the complex, fast patterns of bullets, high punishment for taking a hit, and scoring systems that make those games exciting. it's simon says. what's worst is that i think game freak knew this (or at least was extremely worried about players not used to action games), as checkpoints during these encounters are extremely generous, leaving you at nearly the exact point of the health bar you were at, provided you chose to continue rather than restarting the fight. and of course, these fights are completely self -contained; they don't reward skills obtained in the rest of the game, they don't confer skills that will be useful for the rest of the game, and the strength and composition of your pokémon party doesn't have to be tested at all. so, we're left with uninteresting fights that don't impact the rest of the game, aren't impacted by the rest of the game, and ultimately seem like they might as well not exist. and to top it off, they come in place of more traditional boss fights that might actually, y'know... feel like they matter. but hey, they needed to justify those new action mechanics. how are those in the rest of the game, anyways?

structure & the overworld

this was originally going to be two separate sections, but now it'll be a single extra long one because i think these two elements are pretty inextricably linked, and i found it hard to talk about one without talking about the other. first, a clarification: for the sake of simplicity, "the overworld" refers to each main area the player travels to, and not jubilife village, the hub area, or dungeon areas, like snowpoint temple. while PLA is not an open world game, it borrows a lot from open world game design, so despite each area technically being split up, it's easier to refer to it all as the overworld. got it? okay, let's go.

as mentioned in the explanation, PLA is structured like so: you begin the game in jubilife village, which serves as the main hub area filled with shops and npcs. upon reaching jubilife's gate, you're shown a world map and given a selection of areas that you've unlocked to choose from. areas are unlocked by progressing through the story and raising your survey rank, a core progression-gating mechanic. how that's raised is something we'll get into at some point during this next paragraph.

so, once you're in the overworld, what do you do?

the overworld in PLA plays out quite similarly to a game like breath of the wild, if on a smaller scale. you traverse, first on foot, then on a selection of pokémon mounts acquired over the course of the game, through plains, forests, mountains, beaches, tundras... you get the picture. while these locales are aesthetically varied, they are largely homogeneous in terms of gameplay; in a game like breath of the wild, you might slide on ice, walk slower in sand, need to take precautions for extreme temperatures - none of that's the case here, and i think that's a shame, as it makes traversal and exploration feel very... simple. there's no stamina system of any kind, so that's not an obstacle to you, different terrains and the elements don't impact your character, and the mounts, well, let's talk about those for a second. the first mount you receive is wyrdeer. it's a pretty simple horse-type thing for ground traversal. unlike many video game horses, it has no fear and will let you move on any uneven or treacherous terrain you wish. it can charge to go faster and it can also jump, which is useful, as you can't do that yourself. the charge and jump allow you to get to a lot of places you're probably not supposed to with enough elbow grease, which is a lot of fun. next, you get ursaluna. this is another ground mount, but strictly for finding hidden items instead of traversal. i almost never used it. then, basculegion - this allows you to cross water, with a similar overall moveset to wyrdeer, just aquatic. this is also the only mount you can throw poké balls on, as you kinda need to be able to if they expect you to catch things in the water. then, sneasler, which allows you to scale mountains. sneasler is extremely unfussy in terms of climbing, never getting tired and never losing its grip. finally, braviary, which combines the functions of botw's glider and it's infamously broken revali's gale ability. these mounts all come together for some traversal that's actually pretty satisfying, especially thanks to the smart move of using both context-based prompts and automatic switches to let you smoothly go from climbing to flying to running to swimming. that's kinda the thing though; it's a little too smooth. with your only fears in the wild being fall damage and wild pokémon, by the time you get braviary, nothing is a threat anymore. you can just call braviary to safely fly away from any aggressive pokémon you might encounter, and you can use it to completely negate falling damage, too. the complete lack of friction makes traversal pretty boring at a certain point, never asking you to make decisions or think very much while exploring the world. but ultimately, traversal is a means to an end - what kind of things can you expect to find while exploring?

well, pokémon, obviously. in PLA, as i've been alluding to this whole time, pokémon are found roaming the overworld. they come in many varieties, some hostile, some friendly. some that get mad only if provoked, some that get mad just by seeing your ugly mug, and some that don't give a shit what you do. the highlight here is the real-time poké ball throwing. assisted by a targeting system and gyro aim (that isn't on by default for some reason), it's a lot of fun! things usually play out with you sneaking up behind a pokémon (something which confers a catch rate bonus if you go undetected), attempting to throw a ball at it, and if it works, great! you have yourself a new pokémon. if it doesn't, and the pokémon notices you, it will usually become angry, preventing any further reckless ball-throwing and often attacking. this forces you to then either use an item, like a rotten apricorn or ball of mud, to stun & pacify it, or send out a pokémon of your own to enter the traditional wild pokémon battle setup. there's more than just that, like different varieties of balls with different physics that require different skills to use effectively, but that's the gist. overall, i think everything about the catching in this game works really nicely. targeting exists, but tapers off at longer ranges, meaning that a good aim is still key to catching a lot of things, and general environmental awareness is also rewarded. i always find it hard to talk about things like this in writing, and end up just saying "it works" over and over, but it really does! it's the glue holding this game together. still, i do have some problems with it. for one, the bait system really doesn't work for me. i get what they were going for - different pokémon like different food, so they reward experimentation and add a lil depth by making you try out different baits on different pokémon. ultimately though, thanks to menuing that's just a little too slow and clunky, and the overall feeling that it wasn't worth wasting my resources, i never really interfaced with this mechanic. it was easier to just throw balls from a distance or enter battle than to try to figure out what bait every pokémon likes. i also found that later in the game, far too many pokémon aggro very easily, and the amount of docile monsters becomes very small, making doing just about anything without entering battle a real pain, and almost making the new catching mechanics feel pointless at times. still, with patience and care, it can be overcome, and overall i think the catching in PLA is an absolute win for the game.

then, there's materials - PLA is the first game in the series to feature a crafting system, and it's a fairly simple one, with resource gathering and crafting playing out quite similarly to monster hunter. trees, rocks, and other various and sundry things litter the overworld - sending out a pokémon in front of one will gather its resources for you, and also grant that pokémon a small amount of experience. it's important to gather resources, as money is very tight in the main campaign of PLA, and things like apricorns and berries are highly important for crafting poké balls and healing items. along the way, you'll start finding new and different resources, as well as regularly unlocking recipes for new items. be mindful of what you're picking up, however, as inventory space is tight, and despite materials stacking , you'll still often have to make choices on what you bring back to base and what you throw out in the field. ultimately, while i like the dynamic that's created by limited money and craftable items, i found that the inventory management required made me afraid to experiment - why use resources crafting new interesting items when they're taking up more inventory space that i'll need for materials? i'll need however many inventory slots to bring my staple resources like poké balls, revives, and potions with me, so taking a more niche use case item with me feels like a waste if it's gonna prevent me from getting the things i need to make more of the stuff i care about. i think forcing players to make decisions on what to take and what to leave is interesting, but this game does a poor job of it and ends up feeling stifling. i probably would've added a separate bag category for materials to mostly shore up this issue.

...and, that's about it. there's little else to find in the overworld outside of new landmarks, but that sort of undersells the joy of constantly finding new pokémon. despite gripes, i think PLA's overworld works plenty well. but how does it tie into everything else?

PLA is structured unlike any previous pokémon game, with pokédex completion being more intertwined with and crucial to progression than ever before. here's the basic gist - there are two core means of progressing in PLA; nobles and star ranks. these two together split the duties of previous games' badges as progression markers. nobles, as previously established, are pretty simple. at certain points in the game, you fight a noble, calm it, and progress the story. star ranks are a little more complex. as you explore the world and capture pokémon, you'll notice specific objectives listed on each pokémon's dex entry. these are research tasks. they vary, being anything from catching a pokémon X number of times, seeing it perform a move, catching from behind, or knocking it out with an attack it's weak to. as you complete research tasks, you're given research points, which feed into your star rank, which starts at 0 but reaches as high as 10. each rank up to 5 (the minimum to complete the main story) will allow higher level pokémon to obey you, give you access to new crafting recipes, and most importantly, give you access to new key areas that are required to progress the story. this progression system... gets its job done. it's not especially bad - though it's certainly possible to have forced to grind for rank, you'll usually hit the barrier for each star rank as you progress through the main story just through normal play - but it also it locks the player down, still forcing a rigid order of progression. despite being the most open pokémon game to date, it doesn't feel very free. you can't even decide to put off most story events, as access to new areas is determined by both star rank and beating nobles. a very clear line is drawn - if you want to do more stuff, play their way, or don't play at all. and the story that this rigid structure is in service of is, well... let's talk about it.

under the cut, there will be spoilers for the main story and postgame content of pokémon legends: arceus. read at your own discretion.

story

PLA's story begins with sort of a meta-twist: contrary to the impression we got from the game's marketing, your character is from modern times, and is isekai'd into the past and the hisui region by arceus. this also gives an explanation for the arc phone, a device you have that serves as your tool for map and objective marking over the course of game. upon coming to, you're found on a beach by professor laventon, a pokémon researcher, who immediately puts you to work catching some pokémon he's accidentally gotten loose. it turns out you're better at catching pokémon than anyone else, and because you don't have anywhere else to go, he brings you on to work with the galaxy team, a group of settlers in hisui. i'd like to take a moment to mention that this setup is... slightly troubling. i am a very dumb, very white person. i don't have great knowledge of history or geopolitics or anything like that. just video games. but even i can see the issue with making the heroes of your game settler colonists, especially considering clear connections drawn between the native people of hisui and the ainu people of hokkaido, the region sinnoh (and therefore hisui) was based on, people whose land was colonized by japan. i won't spend too much time talking about it - i'm not especially well-informed, and this isn't really my wheelhouse - but it feels distasteful at best to use this as the backdrop and excuse for why much of the region is mostly empty, and i would be remiss not to mention it.

anyways, through the galaxy team, you're sent on a variety of missions, the main one being quelling the nobles - powerful, large pokémon revered as deities of a sort by the native people of hisui, the diamond and pearl clans, two clans debating the identity of a deity they call sinnoh, believed to rule over time by the diamond clan and space by the pearl clan, something that's lead to years of conflict for them. the nobles have all been mysteriously enraged, see, and no one knows why, only that it began when you showed up. naturally, this creates tension between the diamond and pearl clans as well as the galaxy team, all of whom are slightly suspicious of each other (and you) but willing to work together. over the course of the game, you meet numerous characters, most of which are very clearly intended as ancestors of characters that exist in modern pokémon. there are a lot of cute references and lore nods here, and as a pokémon nerd, many of them made me happy or just had me thinking hard about what their implications are. these characters themselves are hardly very distinct though, and i'd struggle to describe most of their personalities. pokémon games have never been known for deep character development, but it felt especially extreme here - no one you meet, even the characters you spend the entire game repeatedly visiting, is particularly interesting or well-defined. no real character arcs unfold. the standout character ends up being ingo, a minor character from pokémon black and white, who had fallen into hisui in a similar manner to you years prior and was taken in with no memory by the pearl clan (though he's subtly implied to be a faller, a concept established in the postgame of sun and moon.) the standout story moment of the game doesn't come from any of the major characters, but from a brief sequence spent with ingo, where he guides you through a dark cave and talks about the vague fragments of memories of the future world he once lived in, of the people and pokémon he knew. it's a poignant moment that's also a treat for longtime fans, and the game never reaches its heights again. that ingo has ended up as the breakout character of this game, with more fan works by far dedicated to him than any other character, at least in the circles that i run in, is unsurprising, and makes me feel vindicated. he's legitimately compelling.

anyways, upon defeating the final noble, the crack in the timespace you fell from gets bigger and you're brought in by commander kamado, who now believes you're the culprit behind everything, frenzied nobles and all. you're exiled from jubilife village until you can prove your innocence. other characters try to protest but despite their efforts you're forced to leave. you visit many the characters you've met throughout the game, who are sympathetic but can do nothing, as any action from any side could turn the existing tension into an all-out conflict. enter volo, a character i've neglected to mention. clearly made out to be the ancestor of cynthia, sinnoh's future champion, volo is a humble merchant obsessed with myths and legends. as a neutral party of sorts, he agrees to help you when no one else can, and takes you to cogita, another character with whom his relationship is unclear, but who is also implied to be an ancestor of cynthia. she drops some exposition on you, revealing that the three lake guardians of hisui may be able to help you craft a red chain, an object that can help close the rift. you travel to each lake, your choice of either the diamond or pearl clan leader coming with you, do some trials, and head to the peak of mount coronet, where the rift is, but it's too late. kamado's already there, ready to attack a pokémon sighted coming through the rift. you do a series of boss fights, beat kamado, battle the pokémon (dialga or palkia, corresponding to which clan leader you picked earlier) and everything is resolved. even the diamond and pearl clans have stopped fighting, now that it's known that they were both worshipping two separate deities all along! except, you never did find out what caused that rift.

that's the synopsis, anyways. this story is... lacking. while the giant rift in the sky and dramatic music playing throughout the last act creates a foreboding atmosphere that's fairly cool, there's nothing to really chew on. i tried to pick out any strong themes or anything, but there's really nothing that i could find, anyways. it's just a story to a video game and a delivery mechanism for weird lore shit that people like me eat up. it's okay at that, but i think a lighter story in a form similar to a game like breath of the wild could've been even more effective at dispensing that cool lore without subjecting me to a bland, basic story full of uninteresting characters that feels like it's keeping the game from its full potential. i know criticizing a pokémon story for being basic is silly, but the series has, at worst, had stories that don't get in the way, and at best, shown a capacity for excellent storytelling in both black & white and sun & moon. i don't think this game is either, and that's really disappointing. anyways, now that we're done with the game, what's left to do?

postgame

the postgame of PLA begins when volo asks you to collect all the plates you haven't collected yet. i haven't mentioned plates til now - they're key items, stone plates corresponding to each type with text inscribed on them describing a creator and the beginning of the universe and whatnot. over the course of the game, you've received several through various means (primarily by helping the nobles) but now you've gotta finish the collection. this is done primarily catching a bunch of sinnoh's legendary pokémon - the aforementioned lake guardians, heatran, cresselia, regigigas. after obtaining what you're told is all of the plates, you travel with volo to spear pillar, and the truth is revealed - he was the one who created the time-space rift by seeking out the giratina, dialga and palkia's counterpart, banished to another world for violence, and set this game's plot into motion. he's read of arceus in legends and wants so desperately to meet it and make a new, better world that he's done everything he can, including manipulating you, to get him closer to his goal. he casts off his normal clothes and reveals his "true appearance," so to speak. hair styled like arceus and a white and gold shirt clearly styled after it. this twist is neat, but what follows after is the main reason i'm here talking about this at all. cue boss battle.

a sinister arrangement of cynthia's theme begins playing, as you're challenged by "pokémon wielder volo." in hisui, the term trainer doesn't yet exist, and even if it did, it wouldn't be accurate for volo. pokémon are tools for what he believes to be his divine purpose. what follows is what i believe to be the most difficult boss battle in any official pokémon game. volo's team is complete, with 6 pokémon. they're all strong, well type-balanced, have strong movesets, and he isn't afraid to switch occasionally. his pokémon will be usually be well above yours in level when you first face off against him - pretty much everyone i know needed to grind at least a little to make it competitive. all the while, the new battle system really feels like it's actually being put to the test. this battle is fun, challenging, engaging, and exciting. even brilliant diamond and shining pearl's cynthia falls short of it, if only because of how much closer your levels are. and while that fight was a showcase of just how much potential you can squeeze out of pokémon's existing mechanics, this one shows the full potential of these new mechanics, the potential boons of ditching design space like items and abilities that go largely underutilized by the single player stories. and then, once you beat him by the skin of your teeth - you see your pokémon gain their experience. volo seems in denial of what just happened, talks about how your meddling ruined everything for him. you feel confident that it's over. pokémon convention almost always has the big bad villains doing this when they lose. and then pokémon legends: arceus makes its final move away from convention - a dramatic close-up of volo's face. "can you feel it? the chill creeping through your veins - the eldritch presence icing your heart?"

Bishaan!

a dramatic cutscene plays, a smug expression on volo's face. a dark portal opens behind him, and out comes giratina, your final challenge. volo issues a command - "giratina, strike [them] down!" giratina is strong defensively, and comes with shadow force, a powerful move that, in this game, increases its evasion as well. your pokémon are still battered from the fight with volo, and there's no way to heal them in between. a loss will require retrying the entire fight. you have to do it in one go or not at all. at this point, you'll probably need to strategically manage which pokémon you keep alive during the fight with volo so that you have good matchups going into giratina and don't have your remaining few wiped. eventually, once you break through giratina - a calm, giratina dissolving into darkness - followed by the music swelling up once more, giratina now in its more offensively powerful origin forme. your true final surprise. it gets a free hit in, in all likelihood knocking out whatever you have left, and it's back to planning throughout the whole fight, now taking the presence of 2 giratinas into account. eventually, you prevail. volo concedes, revealing one more thing he lied to you about - you don't have all the plates. he hands you the final plate, the ghost type spooky plate, and heads off. your celestica flute - the item you've been using to call your mounts this whole time - transforms into the azure flute in response to the plates. you are prompted to play the azure flute. it's time for arceus. and then, in all likelihood, you are given one message.

Seek out all Pokémon.

one last task before meeting the big guy. catch every pokémon in the hisui dex, as simple as that. or is it so simple? i've never been much of a dex completer. i'm a battler at heart. i never felt the reward was worth it, nor was the journey itself fun enough. but in this game... the promise of one last boss battle, with none other than arceus itself, the thing that us pokémon fans have been waiting to do battle with in some form for over 10 years, ever since the unreleased arceus event in diamond and pearl. and the catching here is fun! and i can obtain every single pokémon without trading! so i embarked on my journey to truly cap this game off. i'll spare you the specific details, but i found the process enjoyable! it was the first time i felt like doing dex stuff was a genuinely enjoyable time and not work, or some obligation. after a few days of doing it in my spare time, i'd completed the dex. now it was time to head to mt. coronet's peak and end this thing. i played the azure flute, travelled to the hall of origin, and...

the arceus fight was disappointing. realistically, i knew in my head that it'd be in the action style of the noble fights, but i just thought somewhere deep in my mind that it'd be different somehow. it's certainly the most difficult, but there's not much else there. the excitement i felt finally hearing arceus' theme in a real in-game boss fight without any action replay, though? it was unique, and special. and maybe that feeling, that closure to something i'd been wanting for so long, really was worth it.

closing thoughts

as of now, this is by far the longest thunderjolt post ever. i've been working on it for months, and while i certainly could've finished it quicker, i'm glad that i didn't shit something out that i wasn't happy with. pokémon legends arceus is a very interesting game. i liked it, even. it's somewhere in the middle of the pack for me as far as pokémon games go, but i respect it far more than its ranking may suggest, just for its willingness to take risks, make changes, and do interesting things. it's certainly my favorite generation 8 title by far. many people have called this game a blueprint for pokémon's future - all eyes are on scarlet & violet to see if they take the right lessons.

there are numerous things i wish i could've talked about in this post. it's hard to fit everything in, and it's hard to even remember what ground i've already covered when i've been working on this for so long. but the point i want to make clearest is that this game is cool. it has a million problems. it's structurally weak, the story is poor, the graphics, which i never even touched on, are awful, and the vast majority of the boss fights on offer are uninteresting and don't really test skills the player has been learning the rest of the game. and yet, i like it. because its peaks are very high, because it indulges that autistic pokémon nerd in me who has been obsessed with this series for as long as she can remember and thinks about it constantly. for every few mind-numbingly bland story cutscene, there's a shining light. a minor character from a decade-old game working struggling with amnesia, tying into a plot point from the postgame storyline of a 6 year old game but not its upgraded counterpart that many are now more likely to play. a truly challenging boss battle that makes use of all the battle mechanics and tests your endurance and strategic planning. just, freely catching pokémon in real time in the first place. those are the things that make this game special, things i didn't know the franchise could deliver me anymore.

who's to say if i'll ever write a post this long again, but i hope you enjoyed your time reading it. i want to extend thanks to every person who follows this humble little blog. it's those few likes, excited replies, people telling me they really enjoyed a post that keep me going, working on this weird little diary that sometimes puts out nearly novella-length game analysis.

i'll close things off with the team i spent my playthrough with, as is sort of a tradition for pokémon posts here. see you all later!

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