Topic: Pokémon Legends Z-A

@Bolt_Strike I feel like their Legends sub series is for experimenting. Even if most things aren't too new, the realtime combat mechanics with dodging etc might be something they wouldn't have wanted to test in a primary game.

Tfw I meanwhile gotten more hype after trailer yesterday since it means it's continuing more of the PLA stuff (side quests...!!) and that it's confirmed there'll be Alpha Pokemon, and then the whole fighting wild Mega Pokemon is also VERY cool thing.

The new characters and returning characters also looks awesome! And the fashion looks like back to form with all the varieties and I just can't wait hopefully I can go with snazzy suit while still using the female character.

@FishyS And that's fine, and I even like that they're experimenting with real time combat. But if they want a new, $60 game to experiment with this, it should have $60 worth of content. As is it looks like it has even less content than their $35 DLC and they have the gall to slap a full $60 price tag on it. That's the issue here.

Sadly $70 for the Switch 2 version. I assume the Switch 1 version will have some performance issues as well as looking less nice.

@FishyS Well that too, but it doesn't even clear the lower bar of the $60 Switch 1 version. The value proposition for this game is looking to be just plain awful.

@Bolt_Strike You have to remember how minimal the marketing was for Legends Arceus as well. They're deliberately not showing most of the content of the game here. The setting also doesn't really need to be as massive as SV's main game map for the game to have tons of content or things to do within it. If anything, a smaller map means more densely packed areas and more of a focus on things like side quests and the like.

As for the areas, we know there's going to be a couple of dungeons they haven't actually shown in any trailer footage. There has to be an ice area to catch ice type pokemon, given that most of the city doesn't actually seem like the right environment for them. There's a power plant on the map as well, for electric type pokemon to exist within. There's a good few story important areas dotted around that'll probably have interiors or significance.

I wouldn't write the game off yet. It'll at least be as packed as PLA in terms of content.

They showed off most of the content and gameplay loop for LA though. We knew about the catching system, Noble Pokemon, research tasks, and ride Pokemon. We also knew a lot more Pokemon than we do. We heard about Wyrdeer, Basculegion, Hisuian Growlithe, Hisuian Braviary, Kleavor, Hisuian Zorua and Hisuian Zoroark by this point in LA's marketing cycle.

The exploration of the map is part of the content. Getting the lay of the land, finding out what's just around the corner, finding hidden areas and secrets, that's part of the content. And if the map is smaller, that means that there's going to be a lot less of that.

Game Freak doesn't really do a lot of interior areas in the console era. For the most part, what you see is what you get. And the problem is what we see shows it's no bigger than the Terrarium, we can tell this based on the distance from the boulevards to Prism Tower in screenshots. To really be comparable to a full game, that distance should be at least twice what it is.

Ehh, even LA was bigger than this. Even one of LA's areas seems to be approximately 1/3-1/2 the area of Lumiose.

@Bolt_Strike We have a ton of shots of interior areas in the trailer, so there's a good bit of them in this game. On top of that, having a massive map is what makes Open World games dull. It leaves a lot of empty space that doesn't exactly serve any true purpose. Paldea was full of vapid empty space that could've been cut out of the game without anything being lost.

Lumiose is more focused- and with the map being smaller, it means that there's more they're able to focus on and pack into the game as a whole. They can pay attention to more densely packed locations as opposed to more smaller-scale ones.

Most of the game's content is going to be through the side-quests, which seem to be far more expansive than they were in PLA. Not only that, but the city changes heavily depending on the day and night cycle- with the night tournaments focusing on more story content.

"Gamefreak doesn't do interior areas for the most part," They didn't in Scarlet and Violet, sure- but that game had issues. PLA had interior areas for every building in the village- as well as a good few outside of the village. I'm not saying every building is going to have an interior, but there's a good few that were shown on the map that 100% will have them. The mall, the lab, the corporation's tower, the syndicate base, AZ's hotel, the Looker's Bureau, and the Salon will all get interiors. The Art Museum on the main map, Prism tower, and the power plant will also most likely get interiors- given they're shown with prominence. The Power Plant is highly likely given that there has to be a remix of the song in the game somewhere.

On top of this, again- we have no known area where you'll be able to capture ice types. The map has no wild zone covered in snow or ice, which makes me believe that there'll be some sort of cold storage location similar to the ones found within Driftveil City. Then you have a school which I doubt we'll be able to actually enter, but given the water type motif around it- it could be a possibility.

I do get expecting less, given that it's easy to end up disappointed with modern Pokemon- but the map is going to be more densely packed and expansive than it actually looks. I did an analysis on the thing a while back. If anything, the map being focused primarily on one city will make that lack of interiors that modern games have feel less problematic. Especially given that the unique buildings that'll outright have interiors or possibly have them are around the number of buildings you'd get interiors for in modern pokemon anyways.

Yeah, I thought the trailer was just good vibes. Doing side content, hanging with your pals and catching pokemon during the day and climbing ranks during the night, giving you a clear game loop. Seems fun to me. Intrigued by the new combat system too, since the real time elements in Arceus were pretty half arsed. This seems way better.

@VoidofLight I mean I hope you're right, but I'm not holding my breath. The emptiness of the areas isn't an open world problem, it's a 3D graphics problem, they seem to love making graphically appealing areas that serve little to no function. See: the Power Plants in XY (which no, I don't think are in the game given that they're outside the city limits, that remix may just be used somewhere else), the Couriway Train Station, the Rhyhorn Racing track on Kalos Rt. 22, the waterfalls in Brooklet Hill being just background, the golf course in Hano Grand Resort being inaccessible, half of Turffield being background scenery, and the Wyndon ferris wheel being inaccessible. I wouldn't be surprised if many of these areas are all fluff and no substance, that's been Game Freak's MO to some degree in the 3D area.

@Bolt_Strike There's a power plant inside the city on the map. A building with power-lines surrounding it. It's smaller than the Lumiose badlands ones, but it's still a power plant.

The golfcourse in Hano Grand Resort was actually originally meant to be in Sun and Moon but got cut because of time constraints- which is why the Flying Z-Crystal is in a random cave instead of being a trial, and why the person who was meant to helm the Golf-Course ended up being apart of the Elite 4.

Another thing to consider is that most of these fluff areas existed in games with multiple towns, and with Gamefreak spreading themselves thin by trying to design massive regions. This game is probably not going to feel as noticeable given that the setting will make these places more condensed in space and feel as if they fit together. It'll basically be like all the large cities of Scarlet and Violet combined into a singular city- with multiple interiors dotted through-out.

In case no one's mentioned it in this thread, there's gonna be a playable demo of Z-A at Gamescom. I guess from that we'll get a good idea if anyone's unsure about the game so far will like the gameplay or not.

@VoidofLight I don't think the distinction of this being in one city matters. It still has multiple environments that have different assets from other areas of the city, and that's what's taking up their dev time. And condensing the city is not a benefit if there's still nothing to do in them, and from the looks of things there still isn't (so far it's just regular old catching and battling filling the city like every Pokemon game ever has), so you're losing quantity just by virtue of having a smaller area to explore.

Massive regions are pretty much the norm for adventure games so if they're spreading themselves thin, it's their own fault for not having sufficient resources.

@Bolt_Strike I don't really get the "nothing to do" argument, given again- there are tons of side-quests in this game through the Looker's Detective Agency.

I hope there will be some minigames to do xD that will be fun. Like pokelympics on one side, contests on another... But if those are coming back I feel like GF will have announced it by now

Mega Victreebel has been revealed in a new trailer! The trailer in question:

Mega Malamar has been revealed! It looks pretty wild.

https://www.pokemon.com/us/pokemon-news/meet-mega-malamar-a-n...

Also, Mega Hawlucha was revealed a while back as well.

The Kalos starters have Mega Evolutions, y'all!

Also, paid dlc and Mega Raichu are coming. Any thoughts?

Edit: is it just me or have I basically become the owner of this thread with how much I share the news about this game here?

@ShieldHero I think a lot of excitement for the game deflated on this site. Most of the consensus I see around right now is in the "ragebaiting" phase of the hype-cycle. I feel like when the game actually releases it won't be as negative.

Heads up: according to the Pokémon Company, any Pokémon that you transfer from previous games into Z-A cannot be transferred back. Something to keep in mind.