Topic: Pokemon Legends Arceus

@Pizzamorg As someone who gets branded as "too negative" often, I feel your pain honestly.

And again - no one should feel they can't be negative or say how they feel in any regard. I think at times this forum can be a little too quick to shutdown an opinion that isn't within the grain of the consensus here. However, it's one thing to say 'Hey, I'm not feeling this because of x reasons' and another to make some kind of negative comment every single time the thread is posted in, often unprompted and not within the context of the wider conversation. Especially for a game that hasn't even come out yet.

@Pizzamorg I hold back TBH, I have a pretty negative outlook on things, I have been trying to be, well, less of that LOL.

I don't think any of you guys are negative, just honest.

@Pizzamorg I feel you as well. I was hoping for a movie discussion, but people did not take it well on another platform.

I need to fire up Pokemon Brilliant Diamond at least once to feel a little bit better about picking up Arceus on release. I'm excited for the game. They had me invested with the new evolutions and Hisuian forms. The further focus upon open designs that the series began to take with the Wild Area, Isle of Armor and Crown Tundra is going to be fun to get into and explore this coming weekend.

I think Famitsu has given the much fabled perfect score to BW too.

In any case Pokemon isn’t traditionally GOTY winning material. It would be like COD, Assassins Creed or any other heavily sequelized game being considered GOTY, they are made to appeal to their fan bases rather than pushing AAA games to be the most AAA game ever.

I love pokemon, but I’ve never considered any of the games GOTY material. Even the peak of the series isn’t really GOTY material.

I don't think Pokemon has ever been considered GOTY, except maybe during the Pokemania peak of the late 90s. The series has been predominantly handheld, and handheld games often don't get the same treatment as console games. Plus GOTY candidates aren't necessarily just good games - they're games that push boundaries, which (as much as Pokemon is my favourite game series) just isn't Pokemon's strong point.

@VoidofLight If this game is open world, then so is Mario 64.

20 years ago you could've made the argument that Ocarina of Time was open world, though by today's standards it wouldn't be considered as such anymore.

I don't think anyone calls Monster Hunter open world, do they? I don't know. But BOTW isn't any different from Skyrim in that regard.

I usually call some of those games open world-like. Like, mini-open world or something...

Apparently this game will be open world-like, some of these games are okay to me...it's usually a hit or miss kind of deal. Because Monster Hunter World...yeah I didn't like it much, but Rise I'm okay with....I also liked the original Xenoblade. I guess the Monster Hunter Stories games could count as these types of games as well, er, until you're able to fly anyways. lol

Does it being a full blown open world game, or more of a hub based World like say Stories 2, really matter though, in the end? My understanding is the main problem with the Wild Areas were around their atrocious technical performance - especially when playing online - more than necessarily their scale. If they have managed to stabilise the game and sort out the insane pop in/draw distance problems, then great. But even if they had, would it being non hub based suddenly make the game better than it's otherwise going to be? (if that is even how it'll work, we don't know yet).

Has anyone seen the...

new Sneasel evolution giving rides to the avatar? That's pretty cool.

@Octane Xenoblade is called open world, and the world’s structure here is extremely similar, aside from having spots where each area connects by loading zone.

@Pizzamorg The wild area was god awful in Sword and Shield, and I’m glad this won’t be a repeat. The area was really small, and each zone was awful because the weather changed drastically. Pokemon sprouted up from the ground when you were a few inches away, and the online frame rate wasn’t good either.

I already feel like Legends fixed this in some part, given that they have an actual technique to display pokemon from pretty far away, so you don’t run into them whilst riding. When further away, they’re displayed as 2D images instead of 3D models, until you get up closer.

As for the areas themselves, I hope it runs smooth enough given the render distance of the game itself.

Anyone noticed the start of the Pokemon Arceus field theme has strong similarities to the Ocarina of Time title screen music? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yep7lq-riV0

I haven't watched the footage of the game but noticed in Tetris 99 as this music is used in the Pokemon Arceus theme. Immediately noticed it.

Any news on reviews, yet? The game is less than a week away, people are literally playing the game on Twitch lol... surely they have to be dropping reviews soon?

Looking at some of the changes to the existing moves I think Pokemon Showdown is gonna be really weird if they tried to incorporate them into the game. lol

I've seen a few leakers who have completed the game say that it is actually challenging and the last big battle is hard as fudge, fantastic news!

@jump I'm still trying to ignore spoilers since I haven't decided if I'll get the game at launch or not but the last part about how some leakers say it actually has challenging aspects makes me hopeful after how easy I found SWSH. Same with the improvements over how the wild area performed in SWSH compared to the levels in Arceus. How Pokemon just popup out of nowhere in SWSH was one of my biggest complaints in the wild area since it made it feel even more empty than what it actually is (and was annoying specially when using the bike).

Although I'm scared to look for stuff like more possible QoL improvements, how the levels are or general feel of the game due to spoilers. Someone here knows when reviews will appear? I'm curious.

@jowe_gw The embargo seems to the Wednesday from speculation since that is when the last Poke-games embargo was lifted.

@jump Thanks.

I have to admit that after being... Annoyed with every mainline Pokemon game since probably USUM, right now I'm actually interested about Arceus. Which is something I didn't expect to feel from a "mainline"(?) Pokemon game.
Really interested to see reviews and general opinions this week. Hoping the game ends up being something that I could enjoy.