By: Daniel Kendle

2 logs remain.

Oh…hello again. It’s me, *cough* M-Mr. Whatshisname. Surprised I made it through last night? No need to fret: even th-this French, uh, tundra has no match against this old d-dog.

But that’s enough about me. This is a review about ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A,’ remember? Not surprised if you didn’t: my tapes from the first part of this article were mixed with other tapes, ones centered around my plights with hypothermic bone cancer. Don’t worry, I fixed that whole mess. Today’s review will be much more “focused.” *cough*

With that aside, we’ve got 2 more sections to dive into. So without further ado, let’s dive in!

PART 3: GRAPHICS

As I can attest to as a resident of this icy, radiative hellscape, France is very pretty! The countryside is, at least; the jury’s still out on Paris itself. You see, the first line in this paragraph was a device called irony.

Jokes aside, Paris is – or at least used to be – a very pretty town. And since ‘Z-A’ decides to base its entire story in Lumiose City (a direct translation of Paris), that obviously gave the game’s developers, Gamefreak, a tricky situation. 3-D ‘Pokemon’ games on the Switch have never been lookers per say, but with this smaller, more restrictive environment, this could be the opportunity for polish that this team has been waiting for. So: did it deliver?

Uh…yeah. Kind of.

I played this game on the Switch 2, which supports 60 FPS and improved texture resolutions. Of course, this means that the game was also built for the Switch 1, which definitely hindered possible graphical fidelity here. Foliage, while populous in both versions, is still used sparingly in grassy areas, like parks. The same goes for models with high polygon counts, like humans: the Switch 1 can’t handle too many on screen at once, meaning the Switch 2 experience is hindered subsequently.

Thankfully, the game doesn’t look terrible overall. In fact, bare your teeth, but I think it looks pretty good! Sorry to all IGN reviewers out there, but the frostbite in my brain must’ve given me something you lack: a controversially-positive opinion! While nothing exceptional visuals-wise, this game is easily the best-looking mainline ‘Pokémon’ game on either console mentioned. You can definitely sense a strong level of polish here, likely a result of skipping a major game release in 2024.

The Pokémon themselves look nice, as do the humans. Gamefreak ditched the realistic textures of ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ and gave entities a more basic palette, which I wholeheartedly prefer. The choice comes across very intentionally, though, and complements the Pokémon’s natural rim-lighting.

Textures are also much more polished. Again: the Switch 1 version is likely worse in this regard, but going purely off of the sequel console’s specs, I’d call it a massive improvement over past titles.

Buildings are a misfire for me, though. They’re basically just big textured boxes, with little physical depth. Balconies are squashed and flat, being just a part of the mapped image of the building face itself. The same is true for most columns and parapets, and it brings their beauty down a bunch.

While ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ doesn’t turn the wheel on its head graphically, it does well in pushing the wheel forward. For the flack recent games have received for their visuals, it’s good to see a modern title be given some more polish and time in the oven – and its due flowers.

PART 4: MUSIC

1 log remains.

The fire, it’s…i-it’s…

…l-let’s talk about the music, yeah! *cough* This is another source of praise for me, like with most ‘Pokémon’ games. If there’s anything, anything consistent about this series at all, it’d be this area. So how’s about we rapid-fire through my thoughts on some in particular, like with the Mega Evolution section. That way, I can say more about the soundtrack other than, “it’s good.”

• To start a bit negative, the game only has 1 day and 1 night theme. Both of them are great, but after so many hours in the game, they gradually become repetitive to hear. The night them especially; the jazzy instrumentals, while nice at first, become grading over time.
• The trainer battle theme during the Z-A Royale is really cool in an almost psychedelic way. Even though you hear this pretty often too, it never succumbed to the repetition of the day and night tracks.
• Canari’s battle theme is peppy and upbeat, which is fun. Fits a Twitch streamer well, I suppose.
• Corbeau’s battle music is easily my favorite in the game. It’s sinister and dire, yet the modern synthesizers give it a slick energy that I really love. A highlight of the soundtrack overall.
• I’m not the biggest fan of electro swing, but even I quite like Jacinthe’s battle music. The overwhelming instrumentals at the beginning were befitting for her cheery, albeit psychopathic tendencies in the story.
• Finally, the battle music for Team Flare Nouveau is among the best of the remixes here. It carries the manic energy of the original forward strongly, and is also among the soundtrack’s highs.

To conclude, the soundtrack for ‘Pokémon Legends: Z-A’ is another slam dunk for the team overall. It’s funky, weird, and alluring in all the right ways. I can’t deny the mastery at work here with this albu-!

0 logs remain.

…w-what? But…I wasn’t ready! I still needed to conclude my article and give the game an 8/10! I needed to say that the game was far-and-away the best mainline ‘Pokémon’ game on the Switch!

Death befits the ignorant, not the ready.

No…no! I-I can’t give up now. My body, my mind…we still have so much life left to live! My saga can’t end here!

This is not your will.

…

This is not your choice.

…

This is not your life.