Andrew Auclair ’29

by Andrew Auclair ’29 on October 23, 2025

Early Impressions

The Pokémon Company took the world by storm this past week with the highly anticipated release of their newest title: Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Reviews came pouring in the days leading up to its release, with many credible sources such as Screen Rant, The New York Times, and GamesRadar all showering the game with praise. The question now is: do these reviews suitably reflect the game as a whole?

Before I can properly give my own review of Pokémon Legends: Z-A, I have to mention the problems that persist with the Pokémon Company and big gaming industries as a whole. Recently, video game prices have been at an all-time high, with the standard for a brand new video game for any system being $70. This in itself isn’t a crime, as inflation is inevitable and the recent tariffs on Japanese imports absolutely play a part. The problem occurs when these video game companies prioritize fans purchasing their yearly releases over pleasing their audience. 

Circling back to Pokémon, the recent games have been widely criticized for their shoddy performance on the hardware they were built for. Pokémon Legends: Arceus was ugly and barren of detail, while Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet were messy and borderline unbearable, only able to run decently on the Nintendo Switch 2, years after the game’s initial release. The bottom line is that if fans are now being forced to pay $10 more for every video game they buy, then they expect the quality to at least match that of the recent installments.

So, after all of the controversy stirred up by the gaming scene recently, does Pokémon Legends: Z-A really live up to the hype? Within the 10 hours I have played this game so far, I can say with certainty that this is one of the most creative Pokémon installments in the franchise’s history. In Legends: Z-A, you find yourself traveling to Lumiose City, a futuristic urban society based on real-life Paris, France. In this game, battles take place in real time for the first time in Pokémon history. No more turn-based RPG-style gameplay—you’re now expected to dodge and manage your Pokémon’s move cooldowns during every battle encounter. This style of gameplay is very engaging and is certainly a breath of fresh air for Pokémon fans who may be getting tired of the same formula year after year. Although sometimes it can feel like mindless button mashing, some of the later-game battles ask more of the player and were personally pretty challenging. Pokémon Legends: Z-A also presents fans with the long-awaited return of Mega Evolutions, one of the most beloved gimmicks the series ever had. Furthermore, the game introduces over 25 new Mega Evolutions for Pokémon that had previously never had one—not even counting the new ones that are going to be in the DLC releasing this February.

In terms of how the game looks and runs, I have not noticed the game running any slower than a consistent 60 frames per second. It runs very smoothly and the loading times between zones are impressively fast. With all this being said, Lumiose City makes up the entirety of the game’s explorable area, thus not as many assets have to be loaded in at once, as compared to Scarlet and Violet, where the entire region of Paldea was condensed in one singular loading zone. Graphically, the game isn’t exactly perfect in any sense of the word. All of the models look pretty, and the characters are surprisingly well animated, but the landscapes and buildings lack the detail most modern video game titles offer. For example, the texturing on the side of almost every building is a completely flat, unexpressive PNG representing the would-be fancy windows and balconies of the advanced city.

In all honesty, don’t let the minor graphical issues keep you away from giving Pokémon Legends: Z-A a try. It is an exciting new take and is sure to be a fun time, even for someone who may not be familiar with the series at all. As a Pokémon fan myself, I think this game is an extremely entertaining  reimagining of the typical Pokémon formula with a brand new story and lots ofnew Mega Evolutions to discover. Ultimately, the early acclaim feels justified; Pokémon Legends: Z-A manages to rise above the franchise’s recent missteps and offers an experience worthy of the praise it’s received.