Hello ladies, gentlemen and those of a non-binary nature. The Switch 2 is on the way, and so is the next Pokémon game, and so in preparation, I have spent most of January playing all the Switch games available to play on the Switch. This is for two reasons. Firstly, this gives you an idea of where we’ve come from when the next bit of information on Pokémon Legends Z-A releases. Secondly, despite the fact that I’m a huge Pokémon fan, I hadn’t played them all until now.

To give you some context on this game, this was the first game to launch on the Nintendo Switch. It was launched in 2018, and I’ll be honest- It was never off our TV in terms of adverts in the run-up to launch. At least, that’s how it felt here in the UK, but if that wasn’t the case for you, by all means let us know on our Facebook or Twitter.

Plot:

This game takes place simultaneously both in the modern world and in the time of the first game. You get a Pokémon from Professor Oak and are tasked with two missions: Collect all 153 Pokémon available, and beat the Gym challenge, aided by your rival. Seriously, considering how much of this game is just Pokémon Yellow reloaded, it’s confusing as heck to see Red, Blue and Green in this game. But what the heck, this game doesn’t do logic very well. Anyhow, there is some great stuff added in to the plot in terms of callbacks. Jessie, James and Meowth from the Pokémon anime make appearances for both comic relief and to act as one of the main antagonists. When I get to my criticisms, you’ll see a little bit more of these three before they inevitably blast off again.

Gameplay:

Oh boy, this is where things get wordy. *cracks knuckles*. You can play this game in multiple ways. Firstly, you can use both your Joy-Cons with the detachable controller, which helps some people (honestly, this is how I managed it). There’s options for single Joy-Con usage too, which helps if you’re not on a time-limit, and then there’s the beautiful Pokémon Pokeball Joy-Con which looks like this. Seriously, these things are freaking beautiful, and I wish I owned one. Thanks to the help of Carlos and one seriously long Skype, I can assure you these do work, and they work well. You can even store a Pokémon in these to take with you on the go, and if you do, they gain experience points.

In terms of how you play the game, this game relies heavily on catching Pokémon instead of battling them, which looking at how people saw it on reddit, was extremely controversial. Personally, I like this game mechanic as it takes a lot of the pressure off battling and allows for a more well-rounded gaming experience. Combine this with the ability to change your Pokémon line up on the way, and getting through the gym challenge is already easier than the original Kanto games and the Gen 3 remakes. Then, there’s the box Pokémon. Unlike most of the games in the Pokémon franchise, you get the Pokémon on the box at the start of the game and they follow you around. This becomes important when they can learn moves that they shouldn’t. These special moves all have crappy names, but they’re all moves that makes them brilliant for battling. I played Pikachu for this review, and honestly, I thought I was going to be boned for the first gym battle against Brock. However, you need to catch a Pokémon with a type advantage on Brock’s to even challenge Pewter City’s gym, so getting Pikachu to learn a water move really was redundant.

As for levelling up your Pokémon, your Pokémon share EXP points at every moment, so when you catch a Pokémon, they all gain experience points. This really makes the game quite easy- but only if you catch the same Pokémon each time and chain up a streak. If you don’t, this might get a little tricky.

One final note before the next section- Your Pokémon follow you around in the overworld, which is a nod to the 4^th generation of Pokémon games. This gets really handy when trying to get to remote locations such as the Power Plant near Cerulean City and Cinnabar Island. There’s a really nice nod here- When you ride Snorlax, Game Freak coded in a joke aimed at Studio Ghibli. We all know that Snorlax looks like Totoro, but you can literally ride him like Totoro here. Because Snorlax is an awesome neighbour and we love him.

Connectivity:

Well, this game really does innovate some gameplay mechanics. There’s sadly no safari zone in this game, as the game doesn’t require you to find the warden’s teeth and of course, Pokémon Home and Bank are used. Instead, there’s Go Park, where all the 1^st generation Pokémon you’ve caught on Pokémon Go can be transferred and caught for higher catch points and to help you complete your pokedex. It might be because this game is years old, but I found this task in my mission to complete the game 100% difficult. This is because this game doesn’t have 151, but 153 Pokémon to catch, and two of them can only be obtained in Pokémon Go.

These are Melmetal and Meltan. Meltan is a small steel Pokémon that is nigh-on useless in a battle setting, but when it evolves into Melmetal, the game gets really good. To get Melmetal, you’re going to need to catch 100 Meltan and then evolve one into Melmetal. Again Carlos, you’re an absolute legend in this part. To help me do this, Carlos used the trading facility. Instead of using codes to do this, Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee use 8 glyphs to match consoles to each other. It’s a nightmare to use on this situation, but I managed it with the aid of good Wi-Fi and using discord.

Completion:

To complete this game 100% you need to catch every single Pokémon and evolve them as necessary. This isn’t a mammoth task at first, but as you get closer and closer to the 153, having the other game, or a friend with the other game becomes necessary. For example, Carlos traded me a Vulpix, because Vulpix is a Pokémon Let’s Go Eevee exclusive. There are also Pokémon that only spawn in certain areas, such as Farfetch’d, which rely on a fair amount of exploring to find. This proved tricky at first, but with the knowledge of the games that I have, wasn’t that hard.

The hard bit was the master trainers. Once you’ve completed the gym challenge, there are trainers dotted around that require a special task. Keep the same Pokémon they have in your party, and be prepared for the battle of your life, 153 times. Remember me telling you that Meltan isn’t a great Pokémon at first for battling? Well, there’s a master trainer with a Meltan that you’ll have to beat. Using Melmetal at him won’t work, and this can be a bit of a headache. The worst ones for this are the dragon trainers, and the Magikarp master trainer. For those who’ve never played a Pokémon game, Magikarp is absolutely useless until he evolves into Gyarados. I had to level up my Magikarp to level 92 to beat the master trainer.

There is however, a great reward for doing this. Catch all 153, beat all the gyms, the elite four and the master trainers, and you get a prize. Yes, you get the certificate for doing so, but you also get a charm which drastically increases your chance of finding shiny Pokémon. To the point where you only need to chain 32 consecutive identical Pokémon to find a shiny variant. I haven’t gone as far as completing a shiny Dex, as the folks on Discord and Carlos strongly suggested that I wouldn’t have the time, and they were right.

Graphics and Soundtrack:

Graphically, this game is wonderful in the reimagining of the Kanto world we all know and love, but there’s not much in terms of pushing the console. It’s average at best, but I’ll be fair, this is the first Pokémon game on the Nintendo Switch and it’s a great game at that. There’s plenty of bright colours, but the graphics skimp out on detail, with the exception of the Pokémon that follow you around. I’ve already gushed about Snorlax, but having a Charizard follow you around is great, albeit terrifying in terms of the size.

As for the soundtrack, this game punches well above its weight. All the original songs are given high-definition remakes to make the game more immersive than ever. From the lonely sounding theme for Mount Moon, to the haunting song used for Pokémon Tower, to my personal favourite, the majestic Gym Challenger theme, all sound wonderful on the Switch. Because you can dock your Switch and play it on the TV, it sounds even better when you play it this way. Unfortunately, they didn’t update most of the Pokémon cries, and I’ll get to that in a minute, but at least the Pikachu sounded like it had a soul.

Criticisms:

Firstly, the Pokémon cries. They used the same 8-bit cries we got treated to with previous generations, with the exceptions of the boxed Pokémon. This sucked, as when Team Rocket kept ambushing me, I was really hoping we’d hear Meowth with his New Jersey accent. I don’t know if that would have translated well over in Japan, so I guess this game gets a pass on that point.

Secondly, the Pokeball Plus controller is spectacular, but it doesn’t work on later games in the franchise, meaning that whilst it’s a beautiful peripheral, it’s effectively a £30 waste of money I know I will inevitably buy because I’m a man-child who loves nerdy stuff. But seriously, with the releases of multiple Pokémon games afterwards, I really had hoped this peripheral would work on them.

Thirdly, the time tenses make no sense. Why would Team Rocket try the same danged evil scheme with the same players and members of Team Rocket around 20 years after the events of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow? Really? I might be putting too much thought into it, but other Pokémon games at least make some linear sense. This game left the “plot makes sense” point back with Professor Oak back in Pallet Town.

Finally, this game is too easy until you get to the master trainers. Seriously, the main plot was a breeze that took me the best part of 5 hours without messing around. For a game that still retails at gaming shops for over £30 (without the peripheral), I’d expect something a bit meatier for my money.

Conclusion:

If you want an introduction into completion gaming, filled to the brim with nostalgia and a whole lot of fun along the way, get this game. Pokémon gamers of old, like myself, love it, and newer gamers do too. It’s a spectacular game with plenty of fun moments and a great amount of gameplay, even if the graphics seem basic and the plot makes not one lick of sense.

I give this game 3.7/5 Joysticks

For the Gamerhub, I’ve been Daibhi and you are all legends.

I wanna be the very best, like no-one ever was…