Pokémon Legends: Arceus

[Moonface]

The Pokémon Legends: Arceus game honors past Pokémon games’ core gameplay while infusing new action and RPG elements. You’ll need to catch, survey, and research wild Pokémon in a long-gone era of the Sinnoh region to create and complete the region’s first Pokédex.


To catch Pokémon in the Pokémon Legends: Arceus game, you can observe them to learn their behavior, then carefully sneak up, aim your Poké Ball™, and let fly! You can also have your ally Pokémon battle wild Pokémon that you hope to catch. Just throw the Poké Ball holding your ally Pokémon near a wild Pokémon, and you’ll seamlessly enter battle and command your Pokémon by choosing from moves it knows.


You’ll be brought to the Sinnoh region, the setting for the Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl games. But this story unfolds in a long-gone era, before ideas such as being a Pokémon Trainer or having a Pokémon League even existed. All around, you’ll find Pokémon living wild in harsh environments that make for a Sinnoh unlike the region you may remember from the days of the Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Pearl games.

As you start off on your adventure to create the region’s first Pokédex, you’ll be able to choose Rowlet, Cyndaquil, or Oshawott as a partner. These three Pokémon arrived with a Pokémon Professor, who encountered them on research excursions to various regions.

I guess everyone who wanted a Breath of the Wild style open world game but with Pokemon are getting what they asked for.
I'm interested in how this game turns out, since it's going for something very different to typical Pokemon games. I hope the world isn't just traversable by walking and surfing and that there is some element of verticality involved. I think it might get boring if you can mostly get everywhere by walking on flat surfaces.

[Maniakkid25]

*dull boredom* Oh, look; it's another open-world adventure game. We haven't had many of those before. This game will be fresh and interesting and will keep me playing for all of the hours.

...I'm sorry, I'm just getting tired of open-world. There's too many of them, and they don't stop coming! Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and now Pokemon? *sigh* I'll be passing on this unless I can get it for free. My interest in pokemon had been dwindling to begin with; this just about crushed it.

[Moonface]

I'm just wondering what will drive the game forward for this. Trainers aren't a thing which means there shouldn't be battles and gyms, so the only goal right now is just catching everything. I guess you could have a rival who wants to do it first, or someone researching Pokemon for nefarious purposes but that doesn't sound very exciting or even interesting.

I think it might just go for a more traditional approach of having one large goal like BotW does but you're guided by smaller quests that build up to the main one.

[Karo]

Out of the Pokemon announcement this one actually does have my interest and I've been meaning to get around to writing out my thoughts on this. On one hand I think graphically it looks like it'll be a very pretty Pokemon game, but I can already see some stiff animations and low frame rates and this really has been a problem for them ever since they went 3D and I appreciate them for trying, but I don't think they have the team to really bring this idea to full fruition.

I also am a bit worried that maybe we won't have as much things to do as we would in other games? Will this world be kinda like an expanded open field like in Pokemon Sword & Shield? I do hope this time they'll let us see our friends over some random strangers that are connected at the same time.

PS: Why reuse the D/P/Pt trainer designs, but put them in a new outfit?

[Moonface]

I feel like the trainers looking similar to the D/P games is an attempt to show the connection this game has to Sinnoh. Someone who doesn't know much about the game could see the main characters and if they recognize them, be able to get a quick idea of where the game may be set.

[Karo]

Possibly, but I mean they still gave the R/B/G remakes fresh new character designs each time they did it so I just found that a bit weird.

[Moonface]

Possibly, but I mean they still gave the R/B/G remakes fresh new character designs each time they did it so I just found that a bit weird.

They did? From the looks of it Red just gets a slightly altered design that doesn't seem drastically different to the alterations the characters for this game have received from their D/P counterparts.

[Karo]

I feel like their designs seem different enough for example the r/b and fr/lg are different in the first game but both designs are red.

For this it really just feel like Dawn and Lucas with ninja gear on it.

[Mr EliteL]

Not sure what to think of this, OK another open world Pokémon but probably more so than Sword/Shield due to no gyms and...actually there might be forms of travel separating areas, but possibly not? Environment looks more natural than SwSh though, although I know it's due to being set in the past. I wonder if the main objective really is to catch them all this time though...oh probably is from the absence of a Pokémon league. We'll see I hope.
Perhaps Arceus will do something seeing the human characters capturing Pokémon. What did it do in D/P anyway? Was it just another Pokémon to catch or did it have a bit of story in the game?

[Karo]

I'm assuming there probably will be a story to figure out or something to keep our interest. Catching Pokemon is fun, but I don't think you can build a game out of the Pokemon Safari. :unsure;

[Dragon Lord]

I have to say, I finally got around to watching the trailer for Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and despite the early footage looking like utter garbage, the game is going to have so much potential. I just hope they can actually nail it, because if they screw it up, it's going to be a huge disappointment.

I haven't been interested in a Pokemon game since the Ruby/Sapphire remakes, but this one has my attention for now.

[Moonface]

I decided to watch the trailer again since I haven't seen it since it was first released, and they really need to iron out that frame rate. Almost every scene looks like it's struggling to hit even 30fps, and I'm wondering if the art style should've been simpler like Let's Go since that game had roaming Pokemon and ran and looked better than this currently does. The only real difference that would happen visually is in the environments, but I'd rather have something with simpler textures that nails the art style than something striving for realism that ends up being the tree joke from Sw/Sh but on steroids.

[ShiraNoMai]

Hoping we get to see more from this game soon. I really want to know what kinds of things you'll be getting up to in this game. More RPG-like elements would be highly desired, with things like side-quests, crafting, and less of a traditional focus on catching and battling exclusively.

[Moonface]

Hoping we get to see more from this game soon. I really want to know what kinds of things you'll be getting up to in this game. More RPG-like elements would be highly desired, with things like side-quests, crafting, and less of a traditional focus on catching and battling exclusively.

Taking a page from what I said about this game to you the other night?
But yeah, without gyms and such, I'd love for there to be a focus on quest lines like perhaps someone needs help fending off a Pokemon that is targeting their flock of Wooloo, or someone lost a Pokemon and need help finding it. It would also make sense to need to find items to make potions and such, since this is a more primitive time and I'd expect a lot of stuff to be done by living off the land rather than just stopping at a Pokemon Center or a store and getting everything you need.

[Moonface]

Pokémon Legends: Arceus Release Date & Box Art Revealed
Nintendo has announced that Pokémon Legends: Arceus will release on January 22, 2022 and revealed the games official box art: