UK Charts: Pokemon Legends: Arceus Still On Top Despite Release Of Dying Light 2

It’s always nice to see Nintendo doing well. Even if you’re not a fan I think they are encapsulate everything right about the games industry and prove that you don’t need some sort of ‘live service’ game to keep players engaged for years; you just need good ones.

@AlexOlney
At least it doesn't look like PS1 games. 😆

Who keeps buying GTA5?
Its been in the top 10 since launch.

@Xaessya and minecraft?

@RadioHedgeFund Nintendo is edging closer to live service as shown by New Horizons and Furukawa did say "As games with long lifespans like Animal Crossing become more accepted, we believe this will have a significant impact on future development."

https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/04/nintendos_president_discusses_animal_crossing_new_horizons_impact_on_future_game_development

Still baffles me how popular FIFA is. #3 on the list?

@negw atleast minecraft gets massive yearly updates that breaths fresh air into the entire game and it being a game with infinite replay value. Ther’s also good reasons to double dip minecraft across platforms.

@AlexOlney it kinda does tho

I know the "PS2 graphics" joke has been run into the ground about a million times over but the fact this game is selling so well only tells me that Game Freak simply won't put any effort into competent visuals as long as the games are making money. This is a multi-billion dollar franchise, we should not be settling for the bare minimum when we damn well know better could have and should have happened.

It doesn't make intuitive sense that "18+ horror game unable to undermine market position of children's adventure game" is noteworthy, yet this is how games and my Nintendo Switch friends list actually work.

Still NSMB.U Deluxe, really? What's wrong with this people? XD. Why don't they buy 3D World instead? It's a much better game!

@TheAwesomeBowser
Actually I could imagine that the try to make better graphics in the future. Something like "but the fact this game is selling so well only tells me that Game Freak simply won't put any effort into competent visuals as long as the games are making money" doesn't count anymore imo since they also had no reason to make a game like Legends Arceus in the first place by that logic considering how well games like Let's Go and especially SwSh sold

Almost 20 hours in and only at Firepit Island for the first time. This game is going to take me at least 40 hours and I am enjoying every single moment of it.

I think a large part of it comes down to a lot of my favourites being in the game and seeing them battle in 2.5D is pretty special. It also helps that they shook up the battle system including move effects and the move list of each one.

Catching whilst surfing is the first thing I've found to not enjoy though. Ugh

@Grumblevolcano Animal Crossing has always had this sort of gameplay though. If anything Nintendo deliberately launched it feature incomplete to both prevent cheating and to keep players coming back. City Folk has ongoing DLC updates.

For all its levels of customisation the core game I felt just wasn’t as good as New Leaf. The Amiibo update for that was a huge shot in the arm. That’s how you keep a game interesting over time.

My nephew got FIFA 22 Switch for Christmas, he’s put more than 60 hours in to it so far. I despise how they’re treating the Switch platform but it’s up to the buying public to send the message. My nephew loving it though 🤷‍♂️

@Ooyah
I have a feeling like BDSP wasn't meant to sell overly well and was supposed to be treated as a complementary product to Legends: Arceus.

@Xaessya It's sold approx 150m copies worldwide. There's more than 7bn people on the planet. Plenty of potential sales left. In terms of who's buying it, I'd guess the people who weren't old enough when it came out in 2013 but still want it despite the fact that it's not a brand new game (saw a kid in my local Game with his mum asking for a copy of it). Credit to Rockstar for keeping it relevant in a world of increasingly cheap and disposable entertainment. On a separate note and I'm aware this is something a lot of people have been asking for with no quick and easy solution, but we really need digital and physical chart data to be combined.

@AlexOlney A game can play well and still look ugly as is the case with Pokemon Legends.

@the_beaver You are SO right...3D World deserves HUGE sales...NSMBDU is good but nothing new...3D World is a masterpiece in my opinion!

Nice to see Pokémon holding strong. I was dubious so waited till the reviews came out but nice to see how positive they are, IGN aside. I actually don’t think the graphics are that bad and I’m playing docked on a 60” tv. It’s not much worse than BOTW and the performance is steady.. loading times are quick.. gameplay is fun.

@Grumblevolcano
Funny considering that Nintendo just ended support for the game.

this is great, I hope GF uses legends as the new base for the next pokemon games.

Perhaps Dying Light 2 would had been number 1 had it not screw Switch owners with a delay on a cloud port. They did it to themselves. Hopefully these cloud garbage stopped coming to Switch once Google Stadia died, let's face it cloud gaming sucks and will never be better than native releases.

The better Arceus does, the better its sequel will be. I do think both BDSP and Arceus were hurt by the parallel development. Disproportionately strong Arceus sales could give them the confidence to not rely on the old formula so much to maintain profits and go even further in this bold new direction. The graphics don't bother me at all but hopefully the next game will leverage the graphical skills in display in the new Pokémon Snap game. They just need time and focus and Arceus sales may buy them both.

People in the UK: Please stop buying GTA V!

I don't understand all the talk about Pokemon Legends having bad graphics. It's a beautiful looking game in my opinion.

@Axecon We can’t help it in the Uk. It’s a compulsion. I think I’m just going out to buy a pint of milk, but I come home with three copies of GTAV and a half-dozen Fifas.

On a side note, I had zero interest in Dying Light as a franchise, but the reviews for 2 have been so good, I’m considering the Switch port of the first game.

@RadioHedgeFund just that and NFTs. Right?

@TheAwesomeBowser Damn I guess the Dying Light devs must have REALLY put no effort in. Considering the UK is a weak territory for Nintendo.

Or perhaps the bar Legends Arceus actually did have effort behind it which is why a new multiplat game would have trouble topping it on its 2nd week. And both Dying Light and Legends Arceus had effort.

@TheAwesomeBowser Still at least it will encourage more shake-up of the usual gameplay formula.

@TheAwesomeBowser I actually kind of think that ball is in Nintendo's court. Pokemon is a multi-billion dollar meta-series, but Game Freak, despite being the house that builds the foundation, is probably the smallest entity. Until relatively recently, they pretty much just churned out relatively basic portable kid-accessible RPGs.

People bash these games for graphics, and Arceus itself is compared unflatteringly to Breath of the Wild. And also to old gen PS2 games. Game Freak employs I believe around 150-160 people. Looking over at Playstation, Insomniac (Spiderman PS4) has over 400 employees and Guerilla (Horizon) is over 350. Nintendo EDP, the studio behind Breath of the Wild, is a huge merged studio with over 800 staff including veterans of some of the greatest games Nintendo has ever put out. CD Project Red (Witcher 3) is of similar size. Bethesda GS (Skyrim) is I think around 400.

My point is Game Freak is a very modest sized studio in comparison, which is why I cut them slack. Nintendo did move their office closer a couple years ago. I think if we want a prettier Pokemon game, we need Nintendo to commit to a joint project and to funnel more resources into it. Game Freak alone just isn't the size for what people are demanding, nor does it have a background in graphically complex or open world console games. Their prettiest console titles are probably the gen 1 and gen 4 remakes, because they embraced a simpler cutesy art style.

Given it was sold out at Currys/Argos/Amazon etc, this is no small feat.

@moodycat I really enjoyed Dying Light 1. It just played well, and they took a fairly decent but generic idea (zombie hordes) from Dead Island and elevated it with freedom of movement. It has very fun parkour, and you unlock a grapple line that more or less makes you feel like Spiderman lol. Nights are pretty hectic, like Dead Rising 3, with super zombies hunting you as you dash for a safe house.

That said, I've seen literally no marketing for DL 2? I'm literally on my Xbox right now and you'd think they'd splash an add at me considering how many hours I logged into part one. That may be part of the problem.

I'm just happy I can actually be excited for the success of a Pokemon game for once. I'm glad Legends: Arceus is doing well. It really needs to sell as well as or better than a typical mainline game.

Would have sold 3 times as much if it had raytraced lighting and run at 4k/60fps.

See - CoD

Who is buying GTA V? Surely by now everyone that wants it, has it?

@the_beaver 3D World is at #11.

@JohnnyC At first, I thought you meant that GTA as a franchise has sold 150 million copies, but it's really just GTA V?! That's insane numbers! Wow... I haven't played it, but I've no doubt it's a quality game. Rockstar are known for it!

What, did ya'll expect Dying Light 2 to beat out Pokemon? LOL

@Specter_of-the_OLED Dying Light 2 could never run natively on Switch and it not being day 1 on Switch with the cloud version would still see it at no 2, no game was going to take top spot when Legends is only a week old. Also majority of the sales for DL2 will be on the other consoles and PC and not a scaled down cloud version.

@AlexOlney The funny thing is, some people actually believe this. It's about as credible a statement as the Earth being flat.

They look at playthroughs on YouTube with 8K resolution, wide-screen and high Res texture packs that are not feasible even on a PS4, and they think that's what PS2 games looked like. Absolutely laughable.

@Slain It’s mainly people that keep expecting Pokémon to match current AAA standards which is 4K, AA, Ray Tracing, 120 FPS, etc.

If you don’t look/run like a modern high end PC game then you are a “PS2 game” lol

@Slain What I don't understand is people that think Breath of the Wild looks amazing but Pokémon Legends looks terrible. You can't have it both ways, they are not miles apart. I do prefer the art direction of BotW too, but on a technical level they are not night and day.

@Kisame83 if gamefreak want to be an indie studio then they should release their games with indie prices people can't use the excuse that they're a 'small studio' forever with the amount of money they've made over the years on Pokémon games they should be investing in making their studio bigger & hiring talented people that do have experience making graphically complex & open world games

@Troll_Decimator I highly disagree, sure they share the same type of art style but BotW is way more dense, has way more detail and has way more going on. Legends gets by on its great gameplay and it being PM and while sure the odd area looks good like the place Scyther roam around for the most part it looks one of those early access Unity games you see on Steam.

@WallyWest No it doesn't look like an Early Access Unity game at all, lmao. PLA has a coherent art style and it doesn't look like randomly thrown together assets. An absolutely laughable take. Also, good luck actually getting any of those games run on a Switch, regardless of how good they look. You saw how well it went with Genshin Impact.

Too busy being wholly delighted by PLA to listen to people complaining about graphics.

@Would_you_kindly I didn't say they were an indie studio. I think there's some wiggle room between "indie studio" and Breath of the Wild or * insert PS4 game people want a Switch title to look like *

That's kind of a weird take. If a studio doesn't employ 400+ and make games that match your personal expectations, they are "indie" and should only release games at budget pricing?

@WallyWest I assume since the article says this only tracks physical retail copies that it is taking in Dying Light 2 on Xbox and PlayStation.

@Troll_Decimator @Arawn93 I know right, it's a game set in a cartoony world, are people expecting it to look like the Witcher? Lol.

@Slain The Witcher on the Switch looks absolutely dreadful anyways. It's resolution is extremely low and it's blurry as sin. It's a miracle that it even runs and isn't a complete slideshow. I much prefer the crisp 1080p visuals of Pokémon Legends.

It's good for a studio to know what they can get away with on a platform. Even Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has awful framerate and resolution, especially in handheld, and people won't stop praising Monolith as some open world gurus. Guess what? Those better textures mean it goes as low as 540p to hold a steady framerate.

Horizon next week, should lose top spot but for how long?