Before this week’s Pokemon Presents, I had speculated about what new games we might see alongside the obvious presence of Legends: Z-A. Some, like Conquest or Snap, were little more than my own personal fantasies. Others, like Black & White remakes, seemed more probable. In the end, there wasn’t really much at all. That’s disappointing, but also a good thing.
We did indeed get a lot more information on Pokemon Legends: Z-A, as well as updates on Pokemon Go, Pokemon Unite, Pokemon TCG Pocket, and Pokemon TCG Not Pocket. We were also introduced to Pokemon Champions, the multiplayer game that had been part of a leak a while ago. This would count as the ‘Something New’ square on my bingo card, but it doesn’t feel like a fresh game the way spin-offs like Detective Pikachu, Mystery Dungeon, or PokePark do.
Pokemon Has Been Getting Worse
Champions instead feels like Pokemon Stadium by way of mobile, meaning it will be smaller and possibly include a fair amount of gacha mechanics. My general thoughts on the normalisation of live-service monetisation spreading throughout gaming notwithstanding, I have no issues with any of this. I’d have loved a real Pokemon Stadium sequel – a prospect so rare I didn’t even think to speculate on it – but this mobile version might be better for Pokemon’s path forward.
Pokemon is a billion dollar franchise. It does not look like one. Its legacy as a handheld game first and foremost may be a factor, but it has been launching mainline titles on the Switch since 2019 (2018 if you include Let’s Go), and they should feel at home by now. Scarlet & Violet, the most recent Pokemon game, very pointedly did not. It ran terribly, looked dated, and while it did finally embrace an open world, it left it feeling empty.
Pokemon clearly does not have the graphics its world dominating status would suggest. You could argue, of course, that the inverse is true – its world dominating status suggests it does not need them. But there were foundational issues with Scarlet & Violet that were caused by Pokemon’s unforgiving schedule, and the potential of its recent mainline games have all been kneecapped by this.
While it’s true that many of the spin-offs are handled in part by other studios, Game Freak and The Pokemon Company have always been hands-on with these projects, so full focus on Z-A is a positive. Even if it means fewer shiny new toys, the ones we get will hopefully be shinier.
Pokemon Legends: Z-A Needs Breathing Room
Part of that shine will hopefully be seen in Legends: Z-A. The trailer didn’t seem like a major leap from the Pokemon we’ve seen before, in that it was pretty if cartoonish in some areas, and fairly cheap looking in others – grass continues to be the bane of Pokemon’s design team, it seems. I’m willing to wait until it launches (the true disappointment of the showcase was we still only had a window, not a date) before judging it, but Z-A is not the only pudding in which we might find proof.
As we don’t know the Switch 2 launch date yet, it may be that Pokemon does not want to be any more specific about its own timeline yet.
Because we don’t know what game is coming next, we obviously can’t evaluate it. But this in itself is a good thing. Pokemon has become a bit of a conveyor belt in recent years, and few of the games produced on that line have stood up to the best the series has produced. Pokemon has always been like this, but it is far more noticeable now as other studios have slowed down production due to the increased strain on development.
While other studios like RGG have managed to move with the times and rely on existing maps, smaller experiences, and consistent high quality to maintain a high level of output, Pokemon has not endured anywhere near as well. It’s a minor disappointment that we didn’t leave Pokemon Presents with Gen 10, mainline remakes, or a major triple-A Pokemon title alongside Legends: Z-A for the Switch 2’s launch, but it would have been a far bigger disappointment if those games were revealed and then eight months down the line, we find out they’re bad. Fewer, but better, is the rhythm Pokemon needed to adopt, even if that means we sometimes leave a Pokemon Presents with no surprises. It’s better than a bad surprise on launch day.
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo, The Pokemon Company