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The Verge
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Verge
For Legends: Z-A's battle system, I rewired the Pokémon part of my brain
Even if you've never played a Pokémon game before, you can probably figure out how the type chart works. Fire types are weak to water types, water is weak to grass, and grass is weak to fire. Type matchups are foundational to Pokémon battles, far before you get into the weeds of stats and strats. I've had the Pokémon type chart memorized for around 25 years. That still didn't stop me from making a rookie error in Pokémon Legends: Z-A. I panicked and sent out my Weedle against an NPC's Pidgeotto, which it is very much weak to. It got one-shotted, obviously. It's not that I forgot how type matchups worked. But the battle system in Legends: Z-A is very, very different from what I'm used to, at least with Pokémon. It's the second entry in the Legends spinoff series, which began with 2022's Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and while the Legends games are still RPGs like the main Pokémon games, they mechanically and structurally diverge a bit from the typical Pokémon formula. And Z-A takes it further than Arceus did: it's the first Pokémon RPG to feature real-time battles instead of turn-based ones. In the main series, you choose your actions turn by turn, taking time to think through the options — the right attack to use, whether to switch out for another pokémon, what the opponent might be planning — before locking something in and seeing how it plays out. In Legends: Z-A, on the other hand, you're facing your opponent more directly. There's no waiting for both opponents to lock in their actions for the turn; you just pick your pokémon's move using one of the face buttons, and the move goes out. It's a big departure from nearly 30 years of Pokémon games. I'm used to thinking about Pokémon like a chess match, slowly and several steps ahead; in Z-A, I had to think about the same type matchups and stats and everything else, but quickly and on my feet. It took me some time to adjust. The demo, which I played ahead of the 2025 Pokémon World Championships in Anaheim, California, was split into two parts lasting around 10 minutes each, both seemingly early in the game and heavily focused on the new battle system. In the first part, I tried my hand at the Z-A Royale, which had me battling NPC trainers around Lumiose City at night. In the second, I battled a Rogue Mega Absol, which felt like the Pokémon version of a classic 3D Zelda boss. In the second part of the demo, I started to get the hang of this style of battling, and what was at first a little overwhelming quickly became an alluring kind of challenge: rewiring the Pokémon part of my brain. The first big change I had to contend with: since battle in Z-A is in real time, moves are on cooldown timers. You can't just spam the one super-effective move you have over and over; you have to figure out what else you can do while you wait to use that attack again. Even against very low-level opponents, I found myself relying on status moves like Growl, which lowers the opposing pokémon's attack stat, as a buffer while my other moves were on cooldown. This had the added bonus of allowing my pokémon to take more hits, buying me some time both for the cooldown and to think. Using status moves like this isn't unusual when playing the core Pokémon games at a high level, but it is very unusual against a run-of-the-mill Bellsprout early in the game. I didn't have enough time in the demo to really play around with it, but I can see myself carefully selecting each pokémon's moves to account for the cooldown, like ensuring I have Protect on more of my pokémon to block incoming attacks. In other Pokémon games, I'd absolutely teach my pokémon Protect if I was building a competitive team, but I would almost never do it just to play the main story. It's not that battles in Legends: Z-A are unforgiving. (I did get smoked by the Pidgeotto, but in my defense, it was also at least 10 levels higher than the pokémon on my team.) But after years and years of approaching every mainline Pokémon game the same way, operating at least a little bit on autopilot and muscle memory in the early game, it's kind of an exciting challenge to have to look at Pokémon differently. The battle against Rogue Mega Absol — a wild, rampaging Absol that can Mega Evolve on its own — was similar to the NPC battles in that way, but far more hands-on. Unlike in battles against other trainers, wild pokémon can damage both your pokémon and your character, so you have to physically dodge and move around the arena while selecting your pokémon's moves, keeping an eye on everyone's health, and juggling cooldowns. (Using items like Potions is also on a cooldown.) Landing hits on the Rogue Mega causes it to drop orbs of 'Mega Energy,' which you have to run and pick up in order to charge up a gauge to Mega Evolve your own pokémon and deal more damage. It's even more to balance, but I didn't find it overwhelming, somehow. In this case, I had a Lucario at my disposal, and it had super-effective moves while also resisting Absol's attacks, which helped. Lucario already knew Protect, too, so I got to take advantage of the strategy I had just developed in the Z-A Royale. And it's also a familiar style of boss battle in games more generally, even if it's different for Pokémon. It was more involved and felt more dangerous than the trainer battles, but I felt competent at it relatively quickly (especially compared to the Pidgeotto incident). Maybe it's just a typical learning curve, and I'll very quickly develop an updated kind of autopilot for the easier parts of Z-A. But I really did like having to think actively about Pokémon in a way I usually save for competitive play. I hope the game can sustain that for longer than a demo, and that I'll get to build on the Pokémon knowledge I've been amassing for years, rather than just passively flexing it. Pokémon Legends: Z-A will be released for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on October 16th. Posts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All by Kallie Plagge Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Entertainment Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Gaming Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Hands-on Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. See All Pokemon Posts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. 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Digital Trends
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
Pokémon's Switch 2 upgrade is a massive evolution
When Nintendo revealed that select Switch games would be getting improved Switch 2 Editions, I couldn't help but notice one glaring omission: Pokémon Scarlet and Violet. Of all the major Nintendo franchises released on the Switch, that was the one I was begging to see get a massive performance boost on the Switch 2. None of the Pokémon games on Switch ran fantastically, but the ninth generation was seriously hindered by technical woes. I wanted to love the game, but an abysmal framerate, bland textures, and even crashes were enough to push me away from the game until it was in a more complete state. We never got a comprehensive Switch patch, and instead of a full Switch 2 Edition, Nintendo only promised Scarlet and Violet would receive 'enhanced visuals and smoother gameplay.' Needless to say, my hopes weren't exactly high before trying it out for myself. After starting a new adventure on the Switch 2, it feels like Pokémon has finally reached its true potential and has reinvigorated my waning excitement for Pokémon Legends: Z-A. Recommended Videos The experience it was always meant to be I could always see a great Pokémon game fighting to shine through under the technical mess. Even I, someone who isn't overly sensitive to frame rates or able to count pixels at a glance, wasn't able to look past all the issues plaguing that game. It wasn't just that the frame rate was bad, but also inconsistent. This frequently caused me to feel almost queasy playing — an experience I never get outside of some VR games. That, combined with the flat textures and extreme pop-in, resulted in a game I simply couldn't enjoy, no matter how much I wanted to. And I did want to. I could see the joy and whimsy of this world and the academic setting, but the technical issues just prevented me from reaching it. On the Switch 2, Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's core design is finally able to shine. Why Nintendo was so vague about just how substantial the improvements would be is beyond me. That 'smoother gameplay' claim made me hesitate to even hope for a locked 30 FPS, yet here we are enjoying a buttery smooth 60 FPS experience. I'm relying on those with a more keen eye and the ability to measure frame rates to confirm that number, but it more than feels like 60 to me. Even in areas where the frame rate was notoriously poor, I felt little more than a minor hitch in the experience. That's a far cry from the base experience where I would be subjected to a slideshow. Visuals are another area I was pleasantly surprised by, though not to as big a degree. There's no getting around some of the textures here are still quite basic, but at least now I don't have to see the foliage spring into existence as I cross the map. Beyond the draw distance, the game can also populate the world with more Pokémon that I can spot from a greater distance away. Besides removing that eerie emptiness I sometimes felt wandering around, this also makes hunting Pokémon a much more engaging task. When taken as a whole, the world of Pokémon finally feels alive. There are several other small improvements worth mentioning, like reduced loading times and more responsive menus, but the frame rate, visuals, and general stability afforded by the Switch 2 feel like the way Pokémon Scarlet and Violet was envisioned to be played. If you had to put your Pokémon journey on hold due to the performance issues like I did, or even held off completely based on others' experience, this free Switch 2 update finally shows off the diamond hidden in the rough. If nothing else, it goes a long way towards calming my hesitation about Pokémon Legends: Z-A coming later this year — at least the Switch 2 version, anyway.
Gizmodo
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Gizmodo
The Pokémon Fossil Exhibition is Coming to the U.S. in 2026
Everybody loves Pokémon, whether that's playing with (and as) them, watching them, and collecting 'em all. Nintendo's never not ready to trot them out, and for those in the U.S., you'll be able to visit them at a museum next year. On May 22, 2026, Nintendo will bring its Pokémon Fossil Museum to the Chicago's Field Museum. The exhibit will feature fabricated 'fossils' of the monsters compared with 'ancient lifeforms found in real-world fossils. […] Trainers of all ages are invited to visit and discover the incredible world of fossils both in the Pokémon world and in our own real world,' reads the announcement. Two noted highlights are scientific casts of Field Museum dinos Sue the and the Chicago Archaeopteryx next to Tyrantrum and Archeops, respectively. The Pokémon Fossil exhibit started in Japan this past March and will wrap up its current run in Fukui before traveling to the Benex Dinosaur Museum in Nagasaki (June 7-September 11) and Tokushima's Prefectural Museum (October 4-December 28). Chicago will be its first venue in the U.S., and at time of writing, future cities and countries to follow haven't been revealed. The Field Museum also isn't selling tickets right now, but you can sign up to be alerted for when they do here. Meanwhile, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, the next big entry in the series, is due for the Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 in late 2025.
