LogFAQs > #967740650

Pokemon Legends: Arceus (Switch)

For a long time I thought I wasn't going to bother with this game. But a few weeks ago I did buy it on a whim after feeling like playing a Pokemon game again and seeing it placed pretty highly on rankings for the Pokemon series.

What a pleasant surprise! I think this might be one of the most flawed games I got this addicted to. I can literally play for hours and hours and forget the time, which has been a long time since I've experienced that. I can't make up my mind why though. There are a lot of flaws in this one: it's a very repetitive gameplay loop, side quests are often generic (but the characters/pokemon in it are quite cute), the graphics are truly terrible both technically and aesthetically, sound design is all right but it tries to be very Breath of the Wild with it and does it worse, ride pokemon have a botched camera sometimes and let's just save this for last; the battle system is...a thing. Turn order is just unreliable and you basically need speed and few weaknesses in this game to do anything. Story is expectedly meh and far-fetched, but it's not too bad for a pokemon game and the characters are decent too within the context of the series.

It almost sounds like a bad to mediocre game, but what got me is just how chill it is to play and how easy it is to make progress with both quests and the pokedex. Pokemon in a game structure like this just works. I've had so much fun playing it, sneaking up on things to catch them, coming across pokemon in more hidden locations, running around and gathering stuff. It's a simple loop, but it's absorbing. I got a little burn out after about the 3rd area, but near the end and even past that I'm really into it again and want to finish the pokedex and go to the final encounter.

9/10
In terms of the pure quality of the game, it doesn't deserve this rating, but I just had/have so much fun with it that rating it lower wouldn't do justice to how I experienced it myself.