Media Essays: Pokémon Legends ZA vs. Pokémon Legends Arceus

This was inevitable. Go on, admit it, you all knew this post was coming. XD

With two Legends games in the Pokémon franchise, it's inevitable that they're going to be compared to one another. Pokémon: Legends Arceus really defied all expectations for a Pokémon game and proved to be GameFreak's most experimental title to date. The game was met with critical acclaim from fans and critics alike and is considered possibly THE best Pokémon game of the Switch era. Legends Z-A by comparison is more mixed. While critics enjoy it, the fandom is split where they either love it or despise it (and often for stupid reasons) and thus Legends Z-A doesn't have the same beloved reputation that Arceus got.

So now the inevitable battle between them begins. Which Legends game is superior? I'm sure every one of you is immediately saying "Legends Arceus obviously! Why is this even a post worth making?" I say "Not so fast dear reader, it's not as one-sided as you think it's going to be". Trust me, this will be a much fairer fight and it's not as clear cut as you may believe.

Without further ado, let's begin. Legends: Arceus vs. Legends Z-A. Time to battle...

Best Story

I don't think anyone will be surprised who the winner of this part will be.

Legends Arceus sees the protagonist character plucked out of their timeline and brought to the past by Arceus itself in order to help create the original Pokédex and to quell the threat of the time distortions that threaten the Hisui region. Legends Z-A sees the protagonist character visit Lumiose City and get caught up in events that seems them battling their way through the Z-A Royale while also investigating a cause behind Rogue Mega Evolutions that threatens the city and everyone living in it.

Comparing the two stories is like comparing apples and oranges, they're just so different in terms of tone and execution that you get two very different experiences when playing them. Legends Arceus is arguably the darkest story ever told in a Pokémon game given we're in the past and thrust into a world where unfriendly Pokémon will try to kill you and the people you meet are either friendly from the get go, suspicious of you or hostile towards you. The story sees the player character have to join the Survey Corps in order to earn their bed and food, help fill the Pokédex and also quell the rampaging frenzy Pokémon that threaten the lives of people and Pokémon with their rampages. This to me arguably makes us, the player, feel the most like the main character in a Pokémon story. The story feels like it revolves around the player, makes them feel constantly involved in the plot and we're put through challenges that we wouldn't normally get in a Pokémon game. Case in point, the fact we have to earn the trust of everybody in Jubilife Village. Since we've fallen from a time distortion, we're treated with curiosity at best and suspicion at worst. After we do good work for everybody, it seems things are going well for the player. But then things get worse and we're seen as the culprits, so Kamado exiles us from the village and we have to once again prove our worth to everybody and become the hero. That is nuts and not the kind of story-telling we expect from Pokémon!

Legends Arceus is such a standout from the series because the story feels so un-Pokémon that it's much stronger as a result! The protagonist feels like the actual protagonist of the story for once rather than just a participant in the game, the world-building introduces a nastier side of the Pokémon world that makes the story more intense than what you'd usually expect, we have to work a lot harder to get the other characters to like us and at one point we actually fail and have to try again and it all builds to a satisfying climax where we put a stop to everything and prove our worth to the people of Jubilife and the people of Hisui as a whole. Then we later go on to stop Volo, who is a big twist villain, and Giratina in a climactic battle that truly puts our Pokémon skills to the test. It's quite an epic climax, let me tell you.

As for the world of Legends Arceus, setting this story in the distant past was a genius idea as it allowed us to see a whole new side of the Sinnoh region and get more world-building, lore and history revealed to us. The fact Sinnoh had a different name back in the day is already interesting history, and then we get to see how different a past-Sinnoh is to the Sinnoh we know and love from Diamond and Pearl. I also loved how we had two different clans that worship a god known as "Sinnoh". It's a good little tongue-in-cheek reference to the Diamond and Pearl games while also adding some interesting lore behind the region. Dialga and Palkia were once considered a single deity after all, and it's reflected here with Adaman and Irida believing in Sinnoh but have different ideas on what Sinnoh represents. It also suggests why the region would go on to be called Sinnoh rather than Hisui, probably in honour of Dialga and Palkia.

Overall, Legends Arceus went in a bold new direction new Pokémon game has gone before and gave us something truly remarkable as a result. It goes to show that this franchise is at its best when its story-telling isn't so formulaic and reliant on it. Why else do you think Pokémon Horizons was considered such a breath of fresh air after the Ash-era was over?

Legends Z-A by comparison just felt like a very typical Pokémon story. It's just the usual "beat the competition and save the world" formula that we get in pretty much every game. It's not a bad story by any means, it just feels so bare bones compared to Legends Arceus' story. The only real interesting thing Legends Z-A's story has is that it has the interesting theme of redemption and atoning for past sins that helps to make the characters more engaging and make their motivations all the stronger. That and it DOES make a lot of improvements to the plot and characters of X and Y, helped by how this is a sequel to X and Y. And while I say Legends Arceus had an epic climax, Legends Z-A had an even more epic climax with a final showdown between Ange and Zygarde that managed to look and feel cinematic at times. It was awesome stuff and made the story at least worth playing through. It's just that in order to get to that climax, you're stuck with a story that doesn't really begin to get engaging until after you hit Rank F.

Speaking of, I will say Legends Z-A does get pretty crazy with its story in how one plot-point is literally about Team MZ owing money to the Rust Syndicate, the equivalent of owing money to the Mafia. That was probably the biggest surprise of the story for me. That and AZ dying after the credits, that was a big gut punch moment. As is, Legends Z-A only has a few surprises to its story and takes a while to get engaging while Legends Arceus is engaging from the start and has much bigger surprises that make the story even more interesting to play through.

I will also note how the stories of both games contain little mini-arcs for many of the characters we get in them, which does help expand the cast and make the world feel more alive as a result. I'll cover that in the character's section. The most I'll say here is that I feel the characters of Arceus had stronger narratives and arcs to them than the cast of Z-A did, which further made the story of Arceus feel stronger to me.

Like I say, it's so obvious Legends Arceus had this one won. Legends Z-A's weak story that only really got interesting near the end just can't compete with it. So the game with the FAR superior story...is Legends Arceus.

Legends Arceus: 1

Legends Z-A: 0

Best Characters

This one will be a tough one since both games have a great cast of memorable characters who make our adventures all the more enjoyable, but I'll try to pick a winner here.

Legends Arceus has quite a sizable cast of characters we meet and get to know throughout the game. Those include Professor Laventon, either Akari or Rei depending which gender we pick for our character, Captain Cyllene, Commander Kamado, the Diamond and Pearl clans led by Adaman and Irida respectively, Volo and Mistress Cogita.

Legends Z-A also has a sizable cast too with either Urbain or Taunie depending which gender we pick for our character, Lida, Naveen, AZ, Emma, Professor Mable, Lysandre and many Z-A Royale opponents such as Canari, Corbeau, Ivor, Jacinthe and Grisham, plus their supporting members like Tarragon, Philippe, Gwynn, Lebanne and Griselle.

I find it interesting how both games have a cast of old and new characters to work with in their respective stories. Even Legends Arceus gives us Ingo from the Black & White games, though I honestly don't really understand why he's here instead of just creating another member for the Pearl clan. Ingo just kinda felt like he was there for fan-service and not much else. Compare that to Legends Z-A where their returning characters from previous games were put to better use. Yeah, Emma and Mable did kinda feel wasted, but even Emma gets to contribute to the story in some way and her being there helps to emphasize the fact Legends Z-A is a sequel to X and Y. AZ and Lysandre do the same thing, but we also get to see how their stories continue and what new developments await them. AZ is still atoning for his past sins and is doing what he can to fix his past mistakes one last time while he still has life left in him while Lysandre is a changed man who's perspective on the world has shifted thanks to his near-death experience and having his life saved by Zygarde. AZ and Lysandre have become much stronger and more memorable characters thanks to this game's story and how they were handled in comparison to X and Y, Mable is also more memorable and ties in well with the game's theme of redemption and atoning for past sins and Emma being older and the city's new detective is wonderful fan-service for those who played the X and Y games' post-game story. Compare that to Legends Arceus where the only returning character is Ingo and he's honestly pretty superfluous. He does give us some decent post-game boss battles at least.

But while Legends Z-A's strengths were taking old characters and making them new again, Legends Arceus excels when it comes to developing its original characters. No joke, it feels like nearly every single new character we meet in this game has some kind of arc or development to them, like a mini-story being told within the game's greater narrative. This mainly applies to Adaman, Irida and several members of their clans. Adaman and Irida have strong personalities and a great foil to each other where one's all about time, the other's all about space and one's more laidback and cool while the other is more cold and serious. Over time, these two learn to get along with each other and Irida even becomes less serious and more friendly toward us and other characters in the game. Then we have Arezu learning not to do everything by herself, Palina and Iscan's forbidden romance, Calaba becoming more friendly after we help her quell an enraged Ursaluna, Cyllene becoming more trusting of the player as we continue the good work and especially Kamado's big arc where he has to learn not to let his paranoia get the best of him and cause him to make rash decisions. And that's not even getting into the characters who have some surprising twists to them like Beni being more than he seems or Volo being the game's actual antagonist. There's a lot of surprising depth to this cast and it shows how much GameFreak cared about developing them and making the Hisui region feel so alive as a result. They didn't have to put so much care into this large cast, but they did anyway.

That said, not all of the characters in Arceus are great or well-developed. You have some like the Miss Fortune Gang where they're completely irrelevant to the story and seem to exist only to give the game an excuse to throw a boss fight our way every now and then and some like Melli don't change at all (which sucks because Melli's an annoying, arrogant prick who really needed to learn his lesson). But hey, with a cast that big, you will have some duds here and there. The point is Legends Arceus really knew how to give us a big cast of characters and make them memorable or well developed, or in some cases both, and thus we had a cast that was as strong as the game's story was. One thing I especially applaud this game for is how unlike most Pokémon games, the player character feels like the main character of their own story. In most Pokémon games, it feels more like we're dragged into a plot that has nothing to do with us and we're just going along with it. Here, it's clear from the game's opening cutscene that this story really is ABOUT us for once and we're really getting the lion's share of the plot instead of just reacting to everything going on around us. Hell, the story challenges the player character in ways that no other Pokémon game has done! There's a plot point where Kamado exiles the player out of paranoia and we're out on our own having to do what we can in order to save the day! That was so unexpected and just not what we expect from the storytelling of these games! If any Pokémon game deserves a medal for the best writing for the player character, it's this game without question.

Legends Z-A by comparison forgoes characters with big arcs and deep characterizations and more goes for big personalities to make them memorable. This in turn gives us a cast of characters where I'd argue they're more memorable than Arceus' cast, but they're not as interesting or deep by comparison. The only ones who have any real depth to them are Corbeau, Grisham & Griselle. The rest are fairly surface level as far as their characters go. The members of Team MZ, while much stronger characters than the friends group from X and Y don't have arcs and all the interesting stuff about them is told to us rather than shown, Canari and Jacinthe don't have any developments whatsoever (which sucks in Jacinthe's case cause she really needed a change in her attitude) and Ivor is set up as a guy who wants to get rid of Wild Zones...only to drop all that and never bring it up again the next time he shows up, so he only feels half-explored. While Legends Arceus had the great twist with Volo that made him a more interesting character and tied well into the game's plot, Legends Z-A had a twist where Jett is the grandmother of Urbain/Taunie...and that's it. It's information we find out via the post-game and it adds nothing to the story itself, nor the characters of Urbain/Taunie or Jett. Oh and the player character? We're dragged along into the game's story like we are in any other game and the player doesn't get any of the strong story-telling that made us feel like an actual character in the story for a change. It's so funny how both these games have a pretty large cast, yet one feels like it put more effort into developing them than the other.

I love the cast of Legends Z-A, but I think we can agree that Legends Arceus wins this round. Their characters had more depth and more developed arcs to them compared to the characters of Legends Z-A. While Z-A was great at making old characters stronger than before, Arceus did better at developing its original cast, and also made the player character feel like the main character in their own story, when Z-A failed to do. So the game with the best characters...is Legends Arceus.

Legends Arceus: 2

Legends Z-A: 0

Best Gameplay

Now for the interesting part. Both games are notorious for playing unlike any Pokémon game released before and both have unique playstyles that make for a unique gaming experience. But which one did it better?

Legends Arceus and Legends Z-A both have a pattern to them where we're battling strong kinds of Pokémon (Noble Pokémon for Arceus, Rogue Mega Pokémon for Z-A) while exploring the world we're in and as we beat the bosses, we unlock more places to unlock and further the story in some way. Both games then lead up to a climactic battle with a powerful boss that sees us save the day and become heroes. While both these games have a similar pattern to them, they both play quite differently.

Legends Arceus puts more emphasis on exploration and filling in the Pokédex while only giving us a few actual trainer bottles here and there with the big boss battles being the Noble Pokémon, Dialga or Palkia and the big final battle with Volo and Giratina.

Legends Z-A by comparison puts WAY more emphasis on battling than exploring and gives us several trainer battles with the big boss battles being the Rogue Mega Evolutions, any high-ranking trainer in the Z-A Royale, Hyperrouge Mega Floette, Lysandre and Zygarde.

When playing the two games, Legends Z-A was way more fun and exciting for me because of how much more emphasis was placed on battling and how you get to face so many different opponents whereas Legends Arceus had way less opponents to face and thus felt a little samey at times and trying to fill up the Pokédex just isn't as fun as fighting as many different opponents as possible.

The big thing for me that also puts Z-A on top is the changes in battle mechanics. Legends Arceus feels like it wanted to go for real-time battles but couldn't quite commit to it and thus we had turn-based combat still but with the new addition of "Strong Style" and "Agile Style" that more or less determines how hard your attacks hit and how many turns you get. That just felt a little uninspired and didn't make the battles feel that much more fun or exciting to me. Legends Z-A on the other hand fully commits to the idea of real-time battles and it's so much better as a result. Pokémon battles feel more exciting than ever because we're battling in real-time instead of being turn-based, we have more tactics to rely on than just "spam the strongest move and win" and several Pokémon attacks are even improved because of this battle system and the removal of accuracy and PP on them. Status moves like Protect aren't a waste of a turn anymore, powerful moves like Thunder, Fire Blast, Blizzard, Focus Blast and more are more reliable now they're not going to miss as often and two-turn moves like Phantom Force, Bounce and Dig are more powerful because they can't be dodged or blocked. When the battle mechanics actually improve the battles of the games and make certain attacks better than before, I say that's the sign of true improvement and a true evolution that the games need to follow. Legends Arceus felt like a limp-wristed attempt to evolve the battles whereas Legends Z-A made more of the effort.

Both games also give you a lot to do with plenty of side-missions out there, some post-game stuff to do and plenty of Pokémon to catch. This I feel is where Legends Z-A also triumphs over Legends Arceus because once you've done everything in Arceus, there's not much replay value aside from getting to rematch the Noble Pokémon and maybe some of the bosses like Kamado and Ingo. There was that Daybreak update that did give some replay options, but that came much later when it should've been part of the game straight away and even then, it didn't feel like anything special. Legends Z-A has the infinite Z-A Royale which offers a lot more replay value with loads of trainers to fight, a different character to face every time you get a challenger's ticket, you can rematch all the Rogue Mega Evolutions (of which there are more options than with the Rogue Mega Evolutions) and then there's the fact Legends Z-A has DLC upcoming which will add even more replay value. Legends Arceus didn't get any DLC, and that in turn hurt the game's replay value for me.

The only real time Legends Arceus had better gameplay was with the travel features. Legends Z-A has no rideable Pokémon and the only travel option you have is a very poor Rotom Glide feature. Legends Arceus by comparison has Pokémon you can ride each with their own features like Wyrdeer running and jumping, Ursaluna sniffing out treasures, Braviary being able to fly and Sneasler climbing up mountains. That made travelling around Hisui way more fun than travelling around Lumiose in my eyes and I wish Legends Z-A could've had riding mons too. Annoyingly enough, they DID have that feature in the game's early builds but they removed it for whatever reason. But that's the only feature of the gameplay Arceus did better than Z-A in. I still say Z-A has the superior gameplay overall.

It's a close call, but I'm going to say Legends Z-A wins this one, and that's solely because of the new battle mechanics making this the most fun I've ever had playing a Pokémon game while Legends Arceus didn't really commit to giving us real time battles. Plus Legends Z-A has more replay value to it, which I find to be one of the most important part of a video-game's gameplay. So the game with the superior gameplay, is Legends Z-A.

Legends Arceus: 2

Legends Z-A: 1

Best Graphics

Now this is going to be very one-sided. It's no contest, Legends Z-A clears Legends Arceus in terms of visuals. All you have to do is LOOK at screenshots of the two and it's so obvious which one has the better looking graphics. If you somehow think Legends Arceus looks better, you're either trolling or you're lying as an excuse to bash Legends Z-A some more.

If I can be brutally honest, I think of all the Pokémon Switch games we've had so far, Legends Arceus is the worst looking of them all. Yep, I even think Sword and Shield and Scarlet and Violet look better (especially with the Switch 2 upgrade). Most Pokémon Switch games have pretty clean looking graphics (some textures not withstanding) and look pretty bright and colourful. Legends Arceus by comparison has a bit of a muted colour palette and some really rouge, ugly looking textures in the backgrounds that make the game look a little unfinished to me. And before anybody points this out, yes I'm aware that the game's graphics are supposed to evoke a more artistic, painterly style. But just because it's a style, doesn't mean it's good. The finished result still looks rather ugly to me. The graphics do well in other places like the character designs and animations, the Alpha Pokemon look appropriately menacing and unnerving with their huge size and red eyes, the cutscenes look pretty good and it manages to make a pretty looking night sky. But I still think it's the worst looking Pokémon game for the Switch we've had so far. It says a lot when putting the new mons from Arceus into Scarlet and Violet is a visual improvement for them.

Legends Z-A by comparison looks much cleaner and more polished. Yeah, I know the buildings have flat textures on them. And guess what? I STILL DON'T CARE! The rest of the visuals look fine, so why should I care about irrelevant things like that? The visuals really pop in this game thanks to the beautiful colour palette that makes the Pokémon and the city of Lumiose nice to look at, the textures look better than in Legends Arceus despite looking blurry when you get up close to them, there's a lot more detail everywhere you go, the animations are a little more expressive and full of character to me and the art-style is more pleasing on the eye to me. When comparing the two, Legends Z-A looks more finished to me and just has much cleaner looking graphics that are way nicer to look at. That and the game's cinematic cutscenes are some the most incredible visuals ever put in a Pokémon game to me. The final cutscene with us and Zygarde stopping Ange's final blast is especially gorgeous to watch and felt appropriately epic and cinematic. It's going to take a lot for any future Pokémon game to top it in my eyes.

Like I say, it's no contest. The game with the far superior graphics...is Legends Z-A

Legends Arceus: 2

Legends Z-A: 2

Overall

How about that? We have a tie. Legends Arceus and Legends Z-A are equally good games in that regard. Arceus has the superior story and characters while Legends Z-A has the superior gameplay and graphics. Overall, I love both Legends games, but if I had to choose between them, I'd go with Legends Z-A because of its better looking visuals and more enjoyable gameplay. But if I'm in the mood for a good story and developed characters, I'll go with Legends Arceus. In the end, I'm saying they're both enjoyable for different reasons. Which one is better? Neither, they're both great. But I guess it's down to you all in the end. Do you prefer games with a good story and good characters? If so, you'll prefer Legends Arceus. Do you prefer games with great gameplay and good visuals? Then you'll prefer Legends Z-A. Overall, I say play both of them, don't fight about which one is superior and just enjoy them for what they have to offer. Why pick one when you can have both I say...

And that's all I have for this post. I hope you all enjoyed it and I invite you all to share your thoughts down below. Which Pokémon Legends game do you think is best? Do tell me.

Next week I'm reviewing Disney's Frozen. See you then media fans!

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