I'M DONE WITH THE VIDEO HI YES POKEMON LEGENDS ARCEUS TIME I HAD A LOT OF ISSUES SCRIPTING AND EDITING SORRY FOR THE WAIT OKAY I'M GONNA GO BACK TO PLAYING IT BECAUSE IT'S ACTUALLY PRETTY FUN

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I have a complicated relationship when it comes to the pokemon franchise. On one hand these games, anime, and merchandise controlled a large portion of my life. I’ve sunk probably hundreds of dollars into games, plushies of characters (that I still buy btw), I still have this book that I technically stole from my local library because I forgot about it after three months. On the other hand, I hate how the potential of this franchise is squandered away to a yearly release cycle. We quite literally get the same exact game released twice almost every year and all we can do about it is cry.

It’s nearly undeniable at this point that all of Pokemon’s best aspects exist outside of the original start of the franchise, the games. Pokemon is a lot more fun to interact with as Art, Animation, or Merchandise instead of the games because the games are so limited for a franchise so large. Look at how cool this animation of pikachu is, how alive this 2d creature feels, and then you get in game and you get this . (go get footage of a pikachu using thunderbolt), and let’s not even talk about twinkle tackle, or what they did to typhlosion, or an animation of a legendary pokemon turning around on a home console release, i’m getting off topic.

So when Pokemon Legends Arceus was announced my expectations were as low as possible, and honest to god when that trailer came on, wow uhm. I don’t know how to describe the emotion I felt hearing that somber music play as an insanely terrible looking game was being shown to me, but, there was a lot laughter, and a lot of, “wow this looks like ”, but the one thing that actually excited me was the potential this game had. Through the terrible look, and the lag, and the awful animations, we were shown a really interesting concept and mechanics entirely new to the pokemon franchise. It was a breath of fresh air 15 years overdue.

While extremely hesitant about the game, especially with my thoughts on the remakes, I was excited for something new to take place in the pokemon franchise. Fast forward a few months and when the game initially came out I was on vacation and all I had to go off of reception wise was twitter saying this game was really good, and trusting twitter on any opinion is, reckless to say the least. So I got home, bought the game, and I can confidently confirm that this is the best Pokemon game ever made, and the bar is so fucking low it might as well be underground.

For years I’d never describe any pokemon games as “good” outside of the pretense of being a Pokemon game. You can rate all of these games in tier lists as much as you want but compare any pokemon game to other games in it’s genre and pokemon will come up short 9 times out of 10. It’s something that’s always baffled me, like you look at other Nintendo franchises, Mario had a contender for game of the year, Zelda had a literal game of the year, Pokemon during this time period gets a like, 5/10 pokemon game, and a 3/10 game if we’re being honest. I’ll talk about this in a future video but this is the first time that a pokemon game is genuinely just a good game outside of being a good pokemon game. Obviously it has flaws, which I’ll talk about, but I wanna give some praise first because gamefreak it took long enough.

The gameplay is the best part of the game, for years I’ve dreamed about a Pokemon game that is genuinely “open world” that allows me to genuinely interact with the mechanics of the franchise in a true 3D environment. We got just the TINIEST taste of that in Sword and Shield, but this game makes the Wild Area look like a tech test, or I guess feel like a tech test because they both kinda look bad. Regardless you know how youtubers usually like, finish games and then talk about them in a video, I haven’t finished this game, I don’t think I’m even really that far yet, I’ve just spent so much time running around catching pokemon in the wild. It’s genuinely the most fun I’ve had playing a pokemon game.

The style of gameplay in this game speeds up everything tenfold, one of the largest issues I have with what I’m now going to refer to as “traditional Pokemon” is that you progress by being interrupted constantly from interacting with the world. You move three squares, stop to either fight a trainer or runaway from a wild pokemon, and then begin moving again. It’s fun for the first 30 minutes but by the end of a playthrough you’re maxxed on repels just trying to steamroll trainers so you can finish the game.