Pokémon Legends Arceus (Sinnoh-pen World Pokémon)

New Pokémon :

Crumpy Andy wrote:

It does look like a turd

Get new eyes, nerd.

Yeah Andy being silly, it looks fine, sure far away Pokemon might be 5fps (MonHan Rise does same) till you get close but really in your immediate area game does it's job.

Will watch video later

Buskalilly wrote:

neil wrote:

It’s the village music that bothers me

Haha, one of my friends in my chat called it "all time" village music

There's no accounting for taste eh

Sorry for not posting over the weekend lads, I was too busy playing Pokémon Legends Arceus. The Lady got it on launch too, we cracked it open together, and we had a grand old time. What's more, it's a perfect Balla discussion game: a big game that you think is good, that I think is good, and yet that has so many niggles that are not good that people like, ooh I 'unno, GJones will read it my comments and presume I don't like it. Or indeed videogames in general.

I'm currently just about to enter the fourth area, with a rotating squad of eight new Pokémon and Hisuian forms.

Spoilers for Pokémon up to the Cobalt Coast:

I should start by saying that I'm having a grand old time, and there are certain aspects where I just don't see how the franchise can go backwards after this. Pokémon battles happening organically in the wild: small change, big difference. Likewise every monster being visible in the overworld, and having the option to catch Pokémon by stealth. I swear the writing's slightly better than previous games, I haven't found the graphics bad at all apart from the odd moment where the grass flickers, and while I've mostly found the music ignorable the Diamond/Pearl callbacks are better than those games' entire soundtrack was. The flute! (The village music is fine I think, but I don't care for the music in HQ much.)

Then there's the multiple of quibbles of varying sizes, much like sodding Buizels - and buoy does that bastard-awful quest throw into stark relief how slow you move in the early days, and how annoying it is that the game locks in the sizes when you start off. The tiny inventory feels more of an annoyance than a mechanic, and I'm not sold on the point of the crafting either. It makes thematic sense for this game but I hope it never comes back. I don't really feel like there's enough stuff to discover in the open world, no Korok seed equivalent in half the blind alleys. (The other half have wisps and that's fine.) I swear I've got five more or so, but all I can think of is ending this post so I can get back to playing the game.

I'll leave on a question: what do people think about the battle system? They've obviously introduced the Styles, but stripped out a lot of other mechanics. I swear there are only two status changes now, Occasionally Doesn't Move and Gets Hurt When Attacks.

Balladeer wrote:

I swear the writing's slightly better than previous games

I’m with you 100%, and it makes such a difference

I've played a lot of hours but my progress has been slow because I love exploring and doing little things here and there. I won't get too into niggles and stuff until I'm done with the game, but there's nothing here that's enough to actually bother me, even if I can see where others might be coming from.

The Heavy Balls Man wrote:

I swear there are only two status changes now, Occasionally Doesn't Move and Gets Hurt When Attacks.

This is true, but that just means they've removed the most frustrating ones. I don't think Pokemon being put to sleep or frozen entirely were particularly fun game elements, and noboy liked confusion.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Balladeer's spoiler-tagged post:

Spoiler:

I picked this up with that solid £35 deal from Curry's. I went for Cyndaquil after the slander of that poor lad on the previous page and also because I've already used Oshawott and Rowlet in their respective games.

So far, pretty impressed! It feels very fresh for a Pokemon game and is clearly a much needed change to the formula. Like Balla was saying, a lot of these changes need to continue for future titles as it'll feel dated as hell to go back to the older style of games after getting to try this. It's not a pretty game, but it does the job well enough and I can ignore a slightly ugly visual style if it's supplemented by an interesting game.

I've only beaten the first Kricketune boss, so still very early doors, but this is shaping up nicely!

I finished it yesterday, I just need to catch all the 'mon now but I don't know if I can really be arsed with that. My thoughts:
- Hisuan Decideueye is the worst invention ever, weak to everything, bad
- There isn't a big enough Buizel in the world
- This game is good

The biggest Buizel I've found is 2 feet 6 - is there a place later in the game with bigger Buizel or is it just pure chance?

Just luck babaayyyyy, haven't even found an Alpha Buizel, I've got about 5 that are 2 foot 7 if anyone wants them.

I didn't realise the Buizel sidequest was such a pain in the arse until I saw a Kotaku article about it! I was lucky enough to already have one, somehow - the second one I showed him was enough.

I've got a team I'm happy to stick with now, I think:

Team chat:

Spheal is in my top three Pokémon ever.  Walrein is... not.

More team chat:

I'm done with the last region now, just clearing up some requests before I presumably enter the endgame!

Also: since nobody else took me up on it, here is my comprehensive list of changes to the battle system and how much I like them, in descending order.

Spoiler:

Also also: Bagin can do one.  For $3k I should just be able to get a bigger bag.  For $30k it should be able to fly.

Have had a blast with this game and got the main ending the other night. It's a nice surprise because I was very unimpressed with this game when it was first shown off - an absolutely awful frame rate given the simple graphics, and combat that looked worryingly simple. Thankfully though, the game at least runs pretty nice, and the combat is, well, a lot like the mainline games: just simplified a bit with a cool new agile/strong turn-order gimmick.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, but the simple and solid art direction helps. It's not as offensive to my eyes like No More Heroes III was in places. Faces noticeably get pixelated sometimes, but the game overall is never blurry, which is something that bothered me about Xenoblade Definitive Edition (a great-looking game, but the relatively low res turns details to mush). It even looks fairly sharp in handheld mode. I'm not bothered by people calling the graphics shit, because they're entitled to their own opinion and I can see why they'd think that, but my assessment is: it's okay, overall.

Where the game shines of course is being able to explore wide open areas and catch pokemon milling about (animations/movements they really nailed), with actual throws you perform yourself and different strategies you can employ. The gameplay loop is so fun and fluid - I love being able to catch several pokemon at once, or several of my pokemon doing seperate tasks. And the seamless transition in and out of battles. I don't really mind the simplification of the combat because the emphasis isn't so much on the combat in this game. It fits the game's snappy pace. Also I love the wider move pools, and being able to quickly change movesets on the fly. About time the series did that.

That said, going back to the main games, I would like some of the combat mechanics restored for a more fulfilling experience in that area. Like others have said, it'd feel disappointing if future games abandoned the advancements this game made, but I would like the return of regular pokemon trainer battles, cities, gyms or at least gym-like challenges. A marrying of both styles of game. But as its own thing, Legend of Arceus is pretty good at what it focuses on.

Also

Didn't really mind the inventory limit. Hearkened back to the old gens which had that. Not a bad a feature - to be honest, in the new games, I was finding my bag a bit too endless searching for what I needed. Increasing the size of it did get more costly than I thought it would, but getting money is also pretty easy in this game and I was never too short of it. It's also simple enough to just warp to an outpost and dump stuff in the item box, or just discard something you don't need to make room.

I just caught a bunch of Buizel and one was big enough, piece of piss.

I played more of it last night and really enjoying it. Wife has played a lot more since she's off with covid.

Those who've got to the story ending, roughly how many hours did you spend?

This doesn't feel like a spin-off to me. But I suppose I would buy and enjoy another Sw/Sh-like game. Do you regard PLA as a mainline game and expect Gen 9 to have a bunch of the same features, or should it be the start of the Legends line, or what?

Took me 27hrs to get to the credits, then another 5ish hrs to do all the post game missions, which I spent awhile levelling my Mon up. Saw 180ish Monsters and got to Level 7 as well in that time, only thing would be the rest of the Monsters then I could see this being 50hrs plus.

It feels more mainline then another spinoff and seems to be selling well, so I wouldn't be shocked to see Legends 2, then again thought we would have had a Let's Go 2.

I'm sure a decision on Legends 2 has already been made, and I'm sure that'll start production soon (if it hasn't done so already). I'm not finished it yet, but for the fifteen-ish hours of gameplay I've logged Arceus has massively surpassed my expectations.

The changing move pool that Kriken mentions is something I'd underrated - I've only just started experimenting around with that, and I think it's a brilliant addition to the formula.

Was around the 29 hour mark when I got to the first credits, but I spent quite a lot of time just exploring. You can finish the game a lot quicker if you like, but it's more work to get the other endings. I was over levelled for pretty much all the game because I was exploring so much and only switching out team members a little bit.

So if it’s Legends 2, what does mainline Gen 9 look like? Fixed camera? Standard battle system?

We've got a thread for such talk
https://www.gnamer.com/t1418-switchemon-speculation-thread#145946

I played a good chunk of this yesterday and hardly made any progress on the main story as I was just having a grand time exploring the first two zones. Even though there's not as much to do in each zone as I'd have liked to have seen, there's still this Breath of the Wild quality of letting yourself get distracted and wandering off the beaten path.

My team's starting to come together too - here's what I'm rolling with just now:

The boys:

I do agree with a lot of what Balla said in regards to the battle system - it definitely feels odd compared to past games in the series, but the other quality of life improvements far outweigh any concerns I've got with the battling.

My main team got totally switched out, come the end as I was catching high level Mon and put a team together to fight the big bad over what I was using.

neil wrote:

Those who've got to the story ending, roughly how many hours did you spend?

Bear in mind that Mas' run-throughs often feel like a rush to the end from the position of external observer.  Then you have mine, borderline completionist - to the point where I got to the 'everything is going to hell in a handcart' moment before the final battle, and decided to take a couple of hours off to make some Eevees happy.  It's taken me closer to 40 hours.  

Kriken wrote:

That said, going back to the main games, I would like some of the combat mechanics restored for a more fulfilling experience in that area. Like others have said, it'd feel disappointing if future games abandoned the advancements this game made, but I would like the return of regular pokemon trainer battles, cities, gyms or at least gym-like challenges. A marrying of both styles of game. But as its own thing, Legend of Arceus is pretty good at what it focuses on.

I can't imagine they'll up and abandon everything that made the series' battle system so nuanced (polite word for 'complicated') when they go onto Gen. 9, not when they're bringing back PvP.  I think there's a distant chance that they up and abandon everything they've improved here, but more likely they'll just expand the Wild Area element.  But, as Mas notes:

masofdas wrote:

We've got a thread for such talk
https://www.gnamer.com/t1418-switchemon-speculation-thread#145946

...so I'll leave it there.

JayMoyles wrote:

Eevee - Umbreon awaits.

Of course he bloody does. Edgelord Moyles strikes again!


Anyway: I'm done with the main game, and the climax and ending (possibly the first ending?) is really abrupt and disappointing.  I'm now dividing my time between completing some of the more irritating Pokédex pages and starting the postgame material.  I've included a surprise last-minute non-Hisuian team member.

Spoiler:

Kriken is close to mine as well, so between the three of us about 35ish hours to the credits, depending if you want a bunch of happy Eevee.