Topic: Pokémon Legends Z-A

@Hapless Ah my bad based on your previous comment thought you did not have it, fair enough your are entitled to that opinion.

Imo I think the game looks great, the gameplay loop is addictive, brand new overhauled battle system I don't see a lack of effort here at all.

You do know that Nintendo owns 50% of The Pokemon Company right? So Nintendo themselves are 50% to blame for Gamefreak's murdering development schedule, time and low budget constraints.

This game is also massively held back by the Switch 1, since this game was developed for the Switch 1. So the Switch 2 version just gets higher resolution and framerates and thats it.

The core of the issue here is, is that top Management in The Pokemon Company only cares about profits (and Nintendo too these days) and the vast majority of profits come from the Trading card game and physical merchandise.
The games by Gamefreak and the TV Anime are just there to support their main bussiness, which again, is the Trading card game and Merchandise, which brings in Billions a year, instead of millions what the games make them.

That is just the sad reality of it all. Nintendo might be a video game company and console manufacturer, but The Pokemon Company isn't an ironically Nintendo management themselves don't seem to think it either, seeing how ridiculously little budget Gamefreak has to work with and deliver on.

@Hapless I am sure that kinda take goes crazy on Twitter, but I think this is the wrong audience for low hanging fruit "no effort" takes. Sorry.

@Bats1234 Yeah I think early on my Mons were just so fragile, I felt like I was being rushed and going into panic mode. The rooftops and the alphas generally have Pokemon on them up to about the max level of the Pokemon you can control (not sure if this is by design, or I am just lucky), so filling out my roster with those Pokemon helped a lot. In all the obvious ways, but also just in that having a larger health pool and being able to take more hits, just gives me more time to slow the battle down in my head and make more informed choices.

I still dunno if positioning outside of boss battles really matters, like reviews keep telling me it does but it just kinda feels spammy to me I dunno. I also haven't yet had that Xenoblade moment where I am weaving my moves between my party for one big seamless teamwide combo... thing, but paying attention to attack timings and working out how to weave abilities around one another, can make some Pokemon just feel like these overwhelming forces which is really satisfying. That kind of feeling you are breaking the game even though deep down you know you aren't.

I do think this combat system has also breathed a lot of new life into stuff I largely ignored, buff and debuff moves, area denial moves, Pokemon switching blocking moves, all feel like they offer real advantage I never really felt in other games. I know this stuff is vital for like PVP tournament play, but I never felt like you needed this stuff in the regular games, and maybe you don't NEED it here either, but it is the first Pokemon game where I am actually sometimes picking like a debuff or whatever over just a straight damage move.

There is clearly a ton of effort put into this game. People tend to throw around accusations without understanding. The game has shortcomings, but its not due to lack of effort.

The underwhelming buildings are a result of the dated 3DS era engine combined with being an open world NSW1 game they didnt want to have framerate issues in like past entries. So they simplified the model as much as possible lighten CPU load.

The lack of VA is noticeable, but thats a decision from the director, not the team. A creative choice, no doubt, but one I fundamentally disagree with and do hope they include voice acting in the future.

But the buildings look fine when youre just playing normally, since its a monster catcher and not a window watching simulator. If you look for things to nitpick you'll find them, but if you look for things improved you'll also find them. Like trees and shrubs. I remember the "N64 trees" complaints in past games. Nobody's said anything about them in this game. Because they're much better. Foliage is better. Framerate is better. Resolution is better. Character models are less jagged. Animations are more modern and fluid.

As for my thoughts on the game, Im not a diehard Pokemon fan so purists may feel differently, but I really love this battle system. It makes the game engaging in a way no prior Pokemon has managed to be for me. The structured missions and rewards for completing mini objectives creates a loop that's constantly keeping me wanting to play more.

I like how the city feels so maze-like, with secret paths and routes you can find (or unlock by destroying things with various Pokemon moves, like rock smash or fire).

I regret the fact theres no longer gyro aiming for throwing the Pokeballs like in Arceus, but at least the lock on eliminates the reliance on archaic right analog aiming.

All in all, I'm having fun. I still prefer Arceus environments more, but the city is cool in its own right and I definitely prefer this new battle system. This might be the first Pokemon I play to completion.

@Jeronan
Pokemon is owned by 33% Nintendo, 33% Gamefreak and 33% The Pokemon Company.

Nintendo is a minority shareholder and the devs at Gamefreak largely operate autonomously without interference from Nintendo.

I think the point is, while your criticisms are not invalid and you should feel however you want to feel, it benefits nobody, nor the conversation in general, to only speak about what each Pokemon game isn't. That doesn't mean you have to like the game, but I could find a reason to dislike every game ever made if I only talked about what it didn't do, rather than engaging with what actually does and what does and does not work.

I can appreciate you wanting to make your voice heard, so GameFreak make changes moving forwards, but its clear they don't care. Voting with your wallet is the only thing a consumer can really do in these scenarios.

Yes but the The Pokemon Company (which resides over the entire IP and everything Pokemon) was created by Nintendo and Creature Inc.(Game freak).
So I thought The Pokemon Company itself is 50/50 co-owner ship between Creature Inc. and Nintendo.

The 30, 30, 30 split is just the IP and profits split I think, but when it comes to decision making, I thought it was a 50/50 between Nintendo and Creature Inc, who sit on the board of The Pokemon Company.

But either way..... in the end it doesn't matter and doesn't change the problems I described. They remain the same and moving development from Gamefreak to Nintendo will have little to no effect, with same budget and time constraints set by The Pokemon Company.

Yes exactly. But from their Management perspective, when The Trading Card game and physical merchandise earn them billions a year, while the games only bring in a fraction of those same profits.... it's going to be tough sell to change the mind of those sitting at the top, to give more money and longer development time to Gamefreak.

The current Management at The Pokemon Company clearly refuse to see the true potential of the games and the time it really takes to truly deliver a great game. Made even harder, when millions of blind Pokemon fans keep buying their games anyway, no matter the state they are in.

Just look at Scarlet/Violet launch on Switch 1. It was absolutely a disgrace the state those games were in when they released and despite Nintendo's apology and promise to address the performance problems, they never got fixed. So even Nintendo just lied straight up to our faces and can no longer be trusted either!

Instead the Switch 2 update for Scarlet/Violet turned these games in the state they should have been released in the first place.
Yet.... and here is my example again of blind Pokemon fanboism (and we are part of it too, as I ashamely admit buying the game on Switch 1 too), it still sold several million copies on Switch 1.

So in the end, we are part of the problem too. If everyone took the terrible reviews to heart and boycotted Scarlet/Violet on Switch 1 and these games actually sold really bad, then it would have actual sent a clear message to the Management at TPC. A message they understand.

The discussion comes up every Pokemon game. In this game in particular I feel like lack of voice acting hits harder because it is weird for things like the sudden tv announcements to be silent. Also, something about the super modern urban environment just feels like it should have voices.

That said, I also mostly listen to other things while gaming. And it's not a huge issue either way, just kind of odd feeling.

@FishyS I think the other thing that exaggerated this is it feels like the cutscenes have lipsync or at least movement on the lips to imitate a sync, which I feel makes it more obvious the VA is "missing" (I don't remember anything that detailed before on the mouths.)

Similar to Kirby, Nintendo could micromanage a lot if they wanted to, but in practice I think they are involved in the big-picture decisions but not all the details unless help is requested. They certainly would have been heavily involved in the 'should this idea called Pokemon Z-A happen' discussion (as well as release dates, existence of Switch 2 version etc) but fine details (which is mostly what people are arguing about here) were likely left to the directors.

Excellent point. I wasn't quite consciously thinking about that but now that you point it out, that is a huge factor.

@Pizzamorg Violet does this as well. Many cutscenes even have unskippable dialogue that waits for the «lip sync» to be completed.

@OmnitronVariant Oh did it? I completely forgot. Forgive me, I am old and a game that came out three years ago may be a 100 years for me 😂

@Pizzamorg Haha don't sweat it; I only remember because I played the update for Switch 2 from the start for a while, which refreshed my memory

Half of the violet cut scenes on Switch 1 (the school ones especially) are like 7 frames per second so there wasn't the same feeling that there should be voices.

Apologies if this is the wrong place for this! My son has been playing this game after looking forward to its release for ages.
He’s completed Emma’s quest line, but when he talks to Emma, it says to go on the map and look for the exclamation marks. There are none visible. Is this a temporary glitch, or is he missing something?

Many thanks 🙏🏻
Nick

@FishyS Haha! Maybe that is why I don't remember. I played all of that on Switch 1, so in my head all I remember is a Motion Comic 😂

@Snorkylax Can you screenshot what your map looks like, please? The exclamation marks are a very pale green (I think? I am super colour blind 😂). So they aren't necessarily the most obvious things.

@Pizzamorg Thank you for your kind reply. I’m doing this on my phone and have taken photos but can’t add them. I’m a bit clueless tech-wise 🤦🏻‍♂️

There are deffo no exclamation marks tho, and it said they’d been completed after each one. Emma still says he needs to do the quests tho? She’s hard work! 🤣

@Snorkylax Emma really slave driving in your copy! 😂 Sounds like it may be bugged then? Sorry I can't offer more help, hopefully someone else in here knows.

Related to what @Pizzamorg said a couple messages above, what were they thinking about some of the colors in this game?

Some of the text is barely readable - who thought white text on a half white background was a good idea for some of the interactions?

Even the text headers in the character design section were hard to read.

It's problematic enough I thought there would be a 'readable text' setting somewhere but if there is I haven't found it. Probably not an issue with handheld but I'm playing docked.

@Snorkylax I think the side quests can also be seen in the mission list which you can access from the map screen by pressing X and then moving over to side quest tab with R. Double check that all three have been done. They should involve the following Pokémon in some capacity: Bunnelby, Pikachu and Sableye. If they are all cleared, I don't know what to tell you. As far as I remember, you do return back to Emma. The main quest text probably says so too.

If you want to add photos in messages, you need to first upload them somewhere (I've used ImgBB). Once you have a link to your photo, you add it in this manner: (img)link_to_the_photo(/img). You need to replace brackets () with square brackets [] though. If you are still unsure how to do it, you can search for a forum post with an image and press quote. The message is then copied onto your reply field where you can see how the image was embedded.