Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an ambitious new spin on the series, taking inspiration from Breath of the Wild but replacing breakable weapons with expendable Pokémon instead. The game transports a modern-day Pokémon trainer to the region of Sinnoh in an era when the region was still called Hisui, different tribes worshipped the fourth-generation legendaries as ’the almighty Sinnoh’ and PokéBalls were made of fruit and stone, and tasks the player with researching Pokémon and recording them in a paper Pokédex. You work your way through the different regions to collect materials, craft PokéBalls, sneak up on wild Pokémon to catch them and complete specific research tasks to climb the ranks of the Survey Corps of the Galaxy Expedition Team. It’s a refreshing new take on the Pokémon formula while offering a first-hand look at what the world of Pokémon was like in earlier days.
Once you settle into the rhythm of exploring, crafting, catching, and ticking off tasks while filling out your Pokédex, Pokémon Legends: Arceus’s core gameplay loop can be far more addictive than the traditional grind of wading through patches of grass and battle for experience points. Where the game fell flat for me, in addition to the widely discussed graphical fidelity, was its combat system in general, but in particular its introduction of the battle speed mechanic, a system I never fully understood throughout my journey in Hisui, leading me to brute-force the otherwise wonderfully challenging final battle using Grit items. Legends: Arceus is worth trying for every Pokémon fan, either for experiencing this experiment or for appreciating the classic systems in traditional mainline games. As someone who returned to the series with Pearl and will always cherish the fourth generation, I welcome Pokémon Legends: Arceus as the shake-up the series needed to renew my excitement for future mainline entries.