Feb 2, 2022 7:41 AM

Pokémon Legends: Arceus Isn’t Great. It Doesn’t Matter

Game Freak once again gets away with not nailing an open-world Pokémon game. And we are powerless to stop it happening again and again.

Screenshot of Pokemon Legends Arceus featuring character running through grassy mountain top

Barring some Jurassic Park-esque miracle, we will never share our world with Pokémon. So is it too much to ask for a truly open-world Pokémon game? There was that weird GameCube effort, Pokémon Colosseum, released back in 2003. At the time, one reviewer wrote that it was "certainly a step in the right direction to a good 3D Pokémon game." That was nineteen years ago.

Pokémon Go adopted the real world as its open world; and this was, as this tweet notes, the only time the real world knew true peace. Yet it was also objectively not a good game, and there is surely no need to expand on that. In 2019, we thought that salvation might lie in the sunlit uplands of Britain, or Galar, as Nintendo renamed it in Pokémon Sword and Shield. It gave us an intriguing insight into Britain's image abroad; alas, it did not give us a true open world.

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We know what we want. In the image above, taken from the original Game Boy Color games, a trainer stands before the blue right angles of a flat sea. His eye surveys the horizon. One observer juxtaposed this image to the Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, by German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich. It is only half a joke: Nintendo achieved this with Breath of the Wild.

We waited. We suffered. Then, in February 2021, a trailer. A vista mirroring that image. Perhaps, as the general badness of the world increased, our karmic debt had built up to such a level as to finally require the release of this game. So is this Pokémon open world? Sort of. Is it the game we had dreamed of? Not really.

Metaphorically enough, Pokémon Legends: Arceus opens with a light at the end of a tunnel. "Welcome to my realm, beyond both time and space," a voice intones. No, it's not the Game Freak offices; it's Arceus, the God Pokémon, who you know is a deity because they speak English in a Shakespearean argot, addressing the player as thou, and asking for "thine appearance.” After some consideration, it turns out my name is “Pokéboy,” one of Hisui’s generic blue-haired sons. As I plummet through nothingness toward my ignominious conception, Arceus has one last blessing to bestow: My smartphone case is cheap and plastic; I need a trendy gold “Arc phone,” which will let me track missions and survey the world map, and let Arceus issue his demands from the fourth dimension.

Pokéboy awakens surrounded by three Pokémon and the fetchingly dressed—purple bobble hat and striped ringmaster pants—Professor Laventon. Laventon quickly discerns that I have no memory of who I am or where I come from; all I possess is a deep understanding of Pokémon. (Naturally, for a person named Pokéboy.) I wave my new phone at the professor and tell him that God has sent me on a mission to catch every Pokémon on this green earth. "Then whoever and from wherever you may be, I welcome you with open arms," he replies, gleefully.

Courtesy of Nintendo

As you return to Jubilife, a feudal idyll of neatly tiled homes and wooden water mills, the game's hook becomes clear: This is the Sinnoh region of Pokémon Diamond and Pearl, but many years in the past, when it was known as Hisui. This means that, other than facing mockery for my sloppy 21st-century shorts and tee, Poké Balls have only just been invented, and Pokémon are considered "terrifying creatures," regularly thunder-shocking people into the emergency room. Jubilife lives in fear, patrolled by the armed guards of the Survey Corps, who are led by the stern-eyed captain Cyllene.

It's into this world, explains the professor, that Pokéboy must venture in nought but his sandals. His task? Track down and capture every one of these giant and murderous beasts, his age, state of undress, and brain trauma be damned. In return, he will be given shelter, potato mochi, and sturdier, bread-crust-colored orthopedic shoes. Fail, explains Cyllene, and "you will be expelled from the village to meet your fate—and perhaps your death—in the wilds." Fair is fair; its frontier justice, Pokémon-style.

What is immediately great about Legends is the sheer number of changes Game Freak has introduced that take a step toward the kind of Pokémon game that fans have been waiting for. Catching is the biggest revelation: the fundamentals are now close to perfect. Catching a doughy-cheeked Bidoof, for instance, is as simple as hurling a poke ball. Other skittish Pokémon, like Starly, will flee, so you have to sneak, Snake Plissken-style, through the tall grass to bag them. As in old games, some Pokémon will require you to fight and lower their hit points; you can chuck berries into the water to lure in others, like Magikarp.

Game Freak evidently knows that the catching is the game's strongest aspect, because it has tied progression to it: Your whole team gains experience when you catch a new Pokémon. You won’t be catching them once either: Professor Laventon's demands are relentless; his thirst for knowledge insatiable. He wants 10 Bidoofs; he wants you to defeat 40 Drifloons. Fulfilling these tasks, along with simpler “requests” like bringing a guard a Wurmple in exchange for dazzling honey, gets you a cash reward and points that help you progress through the game and command higher levels of Pokémon. It sounds like a grind; it only feels like one at the real push toward completionism.

For those who have always thought of the idea of capturing every Pokémon as a kind of in-game taunt that no one really attempts, battling is a more mixed bag. Immediately battling wild Pokémon without a screen wipe is as simple as flicking between your team and chucking the relevant ball. It’s a joy, as is the introduction of the new agile and strong battle styles. Yet there are some steps backward: Pokémon abilities and held items are gone, and there are far fewer trainer battles than before, and no gyms. Later in the game you meet more Elite Four-ish foes, and red-eyed, high-leveled Alpha Pokémon roam the land to challenge you (a level 40 Rapidash fire blasted my entire team in the first hour). Battles with Noble Pokémon, however, where you must barrel roll around and chuck balms to “calm” these beasts, make up a large chunk of the game's boss fights. These felt weak: The combat in Pokémon has been honed over many generations; these parts felt akin to stopping a game of Halo to play whack-a-mole. Why does Pokémon need Dark Souls–like invincibility frames?

Courtesy of Nintendo

The game's main quest is relatively easy: By Pokémon’s standards, this makes it a harder entry in the series, as previous titles required players over the age of 7 to concoct their own harder rules; even the more difficult Red was completed by a Twitch hive mind. Yet the pace of the game is bogged down by the sheer amount of story. The premise is cheese-string-thin: I found myself bashing through reams of dialog with interchangeable anime characters sporting gravity-defying hair styles. Yes, Game Freak needs to add some context about why it's all right for us to capture wild animals inside of palm-sized balls; no, I don't think this context needs to be novel-length.

But the worst thing about Legends is the world itself. That it is not truly open, in that you have to access the areas via an overworld map, is not a crime. The crime is that expanses of it feel lifeless. When Pokéboy debouches to the top of Aspiration Hill, his mouth falls open, as Game Freak pats itself on the back. Yet take out the glorious sight of Pokémon roaming wild, and you're really looking at a stretch of textureless hills and low-res lakes (and, later, a obligatory snowy biome), an ugliness that cannot be explained by the Switch’s hardware.

The player doesn't so much inhabit the land as skate over it, a disconnect intensified by janky leaps off of hills when riding a Pokémon mount. The game tries to bridge this gap by tacking on a crafting system, so trees and rocks become something more than pixelated props. I’m not totally against collecting like this, but I don't want to turn acorns into Poké Balls, I've spent 20 years buying them at the Mart for 200 yen.

Legends is a step in the right direction, yet we are still not there yet. And, in the words of Professor Laveton (and Hamlet, Prince of Denmark), “there’s the rub.” Pokémon’s recent history has been defined by the knowledge that Game Freak could do better—that with a bit of time and effort, the stewards of the most valuable game franchise of all time could fulfill our childhood dreams. But Game Freak doesn’t—and it likely doesn’t because it knows we will lap up an average game anyway. Because I cannot not highly recommend Legends to Pokémon fans. I am incapable of reviewing the game fairly: As I write this, I am clock-watching so I can get back to finding a naive-natured Electivire.

The dream now is as strong as it was then, when you first realized that the world would be a better place with Pokémon in it. We still want to tell mom we're done with school, flip our cap backward on our heads, and hit the road with trusty Weedle. We want to be Pokémon Masters; or, at least, get rich enough to pay $1 million for a Charizard card.