Pokemon Legends: Arceus

 My extremely hot take on the current latest Pokemon game.

👆 That was sarcastic. This game has been out for 8 months. I've been playing it off and on for those 8 months. It's fun. It scratches my completionist itch. It's infuriating. It takes up A LOT of time. It's honestly my favorite Pokemon game. And of course, because I'm an introvert loner with no friends who also play Pokemon games, I have no one to talk about this game with. I'm also... wary of message boards and chat rooms for actual discussion... so I'm just gonna use this post to talk about the game.

So first, a little of my gaming history. I had a Game Boy Color that I had to share with both my sisters. We somehow got ahold of Pokemon Gold. I was hooked. Cut to several years later and I acquired a Game Boy Advance SP and Pokemon Fire Red and then Pokemon Ruby. I was gifted a PlayStation and a copy of Final Fantasy VII by a friend. Still haven't beaten Sephiroth at the end, but as I no longer have either PlayStation or Final Fantasy VII... Yeah... not happening. My first purchase out of High School was a Nintendo DS Lite and Pokemon Pearl. There were a few Wii games here and there that I got really into, but I can't remember most of them at this point in time. I did complete both Lego Harry Potter games and a good portion of Lego Star Wars. I know I attempted to play Pokemon Soul Silver at come point, but I'm pretty sure I stalled right before the Elite Four. Next came Pokemon Sun and Ultra Moon, Pokemon Go, and Pokemon Shield. I have yet to actually finish a Pokedex without the help of cheat codes, which I only used on Pearl. Oh, and my boyfriend bought my Lego DC Supervillains and Lego Star Wars: The Force Awakens or whatever that latest one before they shoved everything together was. Anyway, I am bound and determined to actually finish the Pokemon Legends: Arceus Pokedex... which is way harder than the others, let me just tell you...

So, for those of you who may not know, the Pokedex in Pokemon Legends: Arceus is not, as in previous iterations, just a list of your collected Pokemon and a little blurb about them. Oh no, for this one, you must complete tasks in order to finish your research. So. Many. Repetitive. Tasks. Evolve the Pokemon a certain number of times. Use this move a certain number of times. Give this Pokemon food a certain number of times. Catch this many of this Pokemon. On, and on. Now mind you, it's not the same tasks for every Pokemon and not even the same number, but it's still a lot. Completing this Pokedex scratches the completionist itch in my brain, and, ya know, serotonin happens. Gotta love that.

The story-line in Arceus is... well... I really just skipped through 99% of the dialogue so I'm not actually sure what the entire story-line is... which is typical for me, really. It's why I also enjoy Lego games so much. You can just skip the story bits and do the stuff! That's what I'm here for. Except, now that I'm done with the story-line, I have this last thing I have to do before ACTUALLY completing it... and the little guiding marker WILL NOT LET ME TURN IT OFF. Not really an issue most of the time, but it annoys me. Because of course, before the game will let you go catch Arceus, you have to complete the Pokedex. Like, complete it, complete it. Which takes time... and so many trips back to Jublife Village to reset the Pokemon in a particular region...

That's really my main issue with this Pokemon game. You have the ability to reset Pokemon encounters by returning to Jublife Village and then setting out again. That's great, except when you're working on the Tangrowth Pokedex page and you have to keep returning to Jublife Village in order to defeat the thing 10 times. I haven't found anywhere else Tangrowth shows up. There's only one of them in the wild in the game. It's an Alpha, so it doesn't re-spawn. So I go fight it, return to Jublife Village, go fight it again... over and over. And yes, there's other stuff I could do in the same area, but I don't want to forget what I'm actually working on so... annoying resets. Not that I don't also do things in the area, but that's not always the case so... It's also annoying that you can't travel from one area to another without returning to Jublife Village. I just want to skip over the Village and go from one area to another. I don't need to go to the Village for any other reason! Just... ugh, it's annoying.

It is really nice to not necessarily have to get into battle with every Pokemon you meet. You can just run past them if you're fast enough or on one of the mounts. If you want to catch a Pokemon that might kill you, you can crouch in some grass and just throw the Pokeballs from afar until you either catch the Pokemon or it notices you and attempts to kill you. But largely, you can just gallop past them on your mount. It's so nice. I kind of hate waiting for the battle stuff to load just so I can catch a Pokemon, like in the regular Pokemon games. You do have to do that every now and again. Not every Pokemon is gonna let you catch it before it notices you. You have to be careful, though, because you will get ganged up on and, unlike previous games, there's no such thing as multi-Pokemon battles... at least not for you. You can be trying to catch a group of Spiritomb, for example, and basically have to run yourself away from the battle because they've all noticed you at the same time and you didn't notice until AFTER you'd thrown out your partner Pokemon and they're basically taking potshots at it while your poor Pokemon helplessly twists from one to the next... that was frustrating. I hate swarms of Pokemon with no cover around.

Yeah, I'm equal parts loving and hating Pokemon Legends: Arceus. I've decided to work through my Pokedex chronologically, which is fun. The newest addition to the game is the Massive Mass Outbreaks, which is making filling out my Pokedex a little easier, actually. These things are basically groups of Pokemon that appear in the wild, but, unlike regular Outbreaks, it's multiple groups in one area rather than just one. You have the ability to find out which Pokemon are where so you can choose where you want to go in the given time frame. It's a lot more fun than having to wait for re-spawns and resetting the encounters through Jublife Village.

But yeah, this has been my Pokemon Legends: Arceus uh... review, I guess? I definitely was not as coherent in this as in my other reviews, but... that's what stream-of-consciousness blogging will get you. Also past midnight blogging... this will not be posted immediately, but that's when I'm writing this. So I'm gonna go to bed now and just kind of trail off here.