Quick Look: Pokémon Legends: Arceus

Are people excited for this? This game looks incredibly busted to me.

@gravity_proof: this is anecdotal since I've played pokemon since I was a kid, but this game is legit so enjoyable to me- I haven't played a more fun pokemon game since maybe 2016 with Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. It's definitely far from perfect, but it does a great job of actually making the pokemon feel like unique and living creatures. I don't know how much appeal it would hold for people out of that fandom, but if you can get over the looks it's a great time and I hope they take a lot of inspiration from this for the future.

2006 era graphics aside, looks pretty neat.

At the very least it's nice to see them do something different with Pokemon.

Jess's Pokemon cry could legit be in the anime.

@gravity_proof Honestly it looks a little janky but a lot of the impressions I've seen from the game seem really positive and swayed me to buy it yesterday. I'm excited to try it.

Mind you before release I expected the worst but it sounds interesting to me!

The last Pokemon game I played to completion was Emerald.... I am LOVING this game!! Once you get past the 720p jank (and you do), It's a joy! I'm about 20 hours in, and will 100% finish this Pokedex. I hope this is a sign of things to come from GameFreak/Pokemon.

Thanks y'all!

I hate to be a bummer, but the setting for this game really does not sit well with me. A major video game franchise co-opting Ainu legend and culture for a multi-million dollar project just seems....

It seems icky?

Especially when the Ainu are still a highly discriminated ethnic group in Japan.

@zombiepie: Pokemon: Horizon Arceus.
Are there similar comparisons with Final Fantasy X? Or is that abstracted enough to avoid it? I vaguely remember some other big Japanese game that steps in to the Ainu territory.

That aside, I'm kinda eager to pick this game after all the positive reviews. This is the Youtube influencer phenomenon working on me: watching a bunch of Vtubers play and have fun with this game has me thinking I should pick it up sooner rather than later.

Its astonishing how terrible this looks visually. Gameplay changes seem interesting but my god.

Every so often I get a Pokémon itch, but after playing Sun/Moon and Sword/Shield this doesn't look different enough to grab me. I mean, it's kinda open world-y I guess but... so what?

This was an enjoyable quick look. I'm happy that Jan is having a good time with this one, after Pokemon BDSM being a disappointment.

@zombiepie: This hit me pretty much immediately once the Diamond and Pearl clans were introduced. The whole story feels like a kid version of a white savior type thing out of the Victorian era. Like you are playing the propaganda story of how Hiusi was "settled". I am not liking the story and it is legit creepy how pro-colonial it is.

All that said, the gameplay is everything I wished Sword/Shield was. The best of Let's Go catching gameplay and the Wild Area exploration all dialed up, with a bunch of new Hiusi forms to discover. Even the battle system is a cool iteration I would love to see them expand on (though the speed values and turn ordering needs more transparency). I am missing the exclusion of abilities and held items from the mainline games, but not too much.

Loved S&S but I think I am done with Pokemon. What the actual fuck are these new pokemon and their typings. Just another reason to sell my switch in these hard times!

Jan, you are right, it's pronounced "Arsius" and not "Arkius". In katakana, it is written アルセウス, which is pronounced "a-ru-se-u-su".

I bounced off Shield after getting a few badges, but I’m at least intrigued by this. It’s a shame it couldn’t pull a Monster Hunter Rise and come to Steam eventually, because it looks a liiiittle rough graphically. Still, I’m happy they’re actually trying something different for a change.

So... this kinda looks like just half a pokemon game... all the side quests stuff with no real main mission. Plus no gyms etc, while I get they've handwaved that away with "set before pokemon league" but cmon..

@gravity_proof: Completely agree. Its ridiculous they released this so half baked and still want $60 for it.

The graphics on this are an absolute travesty for 2022.

This game looks cool, Pokemon games have been kinda meh for me for a long time. It also hurt, when Jan mentioned Jimmy G's performance :(

Despite the jank this looks like a pretty neat game to me. Not sure if I'll pick this one up, but if they continue on the same route maybe the next game of the series will be really good.

I feel like this game is missing a hook? Like, the exploration doesn't seem that fun, there's not many new Pokemon, it doesn't seem like there's much of a story?

Man does it look bad. It's not like it's some indie developers making this, either.

@zombiepie: I definitely got some weird vibes of imperialism in the name of science from the first few hours of playing this. Learning that the local tribes are based on a real people is certainly...something. Wow.

@zinkn: And, truthfully, you look at stylish stuff like Ooblets and Bugsnax and plenty of other indie examples and those are similar and still look way better and are made by tiny teams. More cohesive. I think the character models and the Pokémon actually look alright, but the backgrounds and textures and world are crazy bad. Like PS1? It’s almost distracting, even though I think the combat looks kinda fun.

Bought it purely on the hope that they keep iterating on this. There’s an outline of something more interesting here than the mainline games. Pokémon Company management are fucking assholes though for continuing to needlessly restrain the budgets and team sizes for these games.

Yeah, unfortunately this type of cultural appropriation from the indigenous people their ancestors basically wiped out is rampant in Japanese society. To the point where, since there are very few if any pure Ainu people left and since they were almost completely forcibly assimilated into Japanese society, there isn't really anyone to push back and say "this is wrong".

As Americans, it's not like we're unfamiliar with the concept. They're set to announce the new name for the "Washington Football Team" tomorrow... we all know what their mascot was until mid-2020.

I hate to say it, but I don't think they even considered that re-enacting the whole "colonial savior" thing would be offensive because their society basically didn't leave anyone left to be offended by it.

I want to be clear that I can separate fiction and an aesthetic setting from reality--I love this game generally. But I have to be honest, the "colonial savior" narrative is definitely rubbing me the wrong way. At the end of the day, I'm here to catch Pokemon... it didn't have to happen in a setting and context that so heavily and clearly borrows from that colonialist narrative.

Shit, yesterday when I was playing they literally had a scene in the game where more "Team Galaxy" people show up on a boat and they're literally like, "don't worry, there's plenty of space for all of you here!" Woof.

It's the season again! It was pretty funny listening to Jan and Jess and their voices.

I'm not a real Pokemon player, but the game visually looks stylish to me. I do wish the frame rate was higher though.

@wineblood said:

There isn't one "right" in this case. It depends on what you place more importance on. The Pokémon Company has localized Arceus to use a hard c like"Arkius".

I held off on watching this until I finally got around to playing it. I miss Jess being on the site. :(