Reviewbrah2

Finally a good remake. They actually managed to get almost everything right, never expected this game to be as good as it is.

Pinnacle of the franchise hands down. I expected a game half that size. World and story are amazing, combat even better than DS3 and Difficulty spicy as always. The PC port is a **** but even then the game is incredibly enjoyable.

I was very jaded when it comes to the Pokemon franchise, simply because GameFreak fed us with sub-par/overpriced games for the last 5-6 years that also contained design choices that were simply put baffling. The continous targeting of a younger and younger audience made the games feel like shallow, not fleshed-out "mash A" adventures. This is why I had so much trouble accepting this but here I am: Legends Arceus is a very decent game. Story: Right of the bat you have a story that is more akin to Gen5, one where people talk about actually dying. Not to mention that you get send down to earth by god himself. The stakes often seem high throughout the story, like at the point when the 3 bandit sisters snag Growlithe and you have to rescue it. The characters themselves are mostly fleshed-out, sometimes (like in the case of the male/female counterpart of the player) they could have done more but all in all the individual characters motivations and behavior make sense. Dfficulty: Not too difficult, not too easy. In my opinion they could habe bumped up the difficulty of the game quite a bit more but it is a decent level of difficulty where you can't just mash A until the credits pop up, which makes it far more enjoyable. Especially when you go out of your way to fight higher level alphas it becomes a lot more challenging (e.g. I caught a 61 alpha Ninetales when my mons were around level 40). Gameplay: This game is hands down the biggest departure from the usual formula and it does what it does pretty good. The new fighting style is different and refreshing, the fact that you can just run around during fights and even get hit by both the enemies AND your own attacks is a very nice touch. The crafting is a fun side activity that gives you enough oi an incentive to collect most of the stuff along your way, which makes for a more coherent experience. I love that you can just run into higher level areas and even fight the mons there, it felt extremely threatening to run into that alpha Snorlax at level 42 right at the start of the game. Graphics: Yeah, they are **** The Pokemon themselves look clean if I'm honest, the attack animations also look decent and oftentimes even straight up amazing (like Hyper Beam, Hydro Pump or Blizzard) but the terrain looks like some intern did it in a blender. The grass looks worse than Mario 64 and the cliff walls look like they even glitch out from time to time. Yeah, Graphics are not the most important thing in the world but I would have expected more than PS2 graphics. Rest: The sidequests are fun and diverse. Yeah at the core they are often similar and some of them are boring as well but the games usually sells them to you like they arent, which makes them feel less repetitive (you even have one where you catch a guaranteed shiny which you even get to keep). You can put all of your Pokemon out of their balls in Jubilife and they even interact with one another. Such nuances never made it into the game or they were implement in a lazy way but it just makes it feel so much more realistic that way. All in all: Legends Arceus is a good game and worth the money. You will get a very breath of the wild like feeling where you oftentimes just run around doing anything but the main story quest.