Pokémon Legends: Arceus (28th January 2022)

[Ronnie]

Could this beat Red/Blue sales I wonder? 

Glad to see it's doing well though, scrolling through messages boards people seem to really adore it. 

[MindFreak]

I have unlocked the final area but have spent some time gathering resources and doing side quests in the earlier regions now. Due to the randomness of some of the stuff, I'm unsure that I want to complete the dex. I do find it fun to roam the lands and catch Pokémon but the tedious nature of getting 10 research points for each species and finding specific Pokémon that spawn rarely and randomly is just not that fun. It's a shame that they still rely on randomness to extend the life of the game but at least it's a lot less random than the main series games.

I'm also finding it frustrating that I cannot gather certain materials while riding a Pokémon. Surely that must be an oversight in the game... Or they could make it such that the mount itself can destroy the orange, black, and blue stones or shake trees. 

Other than that, I find this game very satisfying and relaxing. Do I want a true sequel? Nah, I just want much of the stuff here to drift into the main series games.

[Hero-of-Time]

1 minute ago, MindFreak said:

I have unlocked the final area but have spent some time gathering resources and doing side quests in the earlier regions now. Due to the randomness of some of the stuff, I'm unsure that I want to complete the dex. I do find it fun to roam the lands and catch Pokémon but the tedious nature of getting 10 research points for each species and finding specific Pokémon that spawn rarely and randomly is just not that fun. It's a shame that they still rely on randomness to extend the life of the game but at least it's a lot less random than the main series games.

I'm also finding it frustrating that I cannot gather certain materials while riding a Pokémon. Surely that must be an oversight in the game... Or they could make it such that the mount itself can destroy the orange, black, and blue stones or shake trees. 

In terms of completing the Pokedex, you just have to see them. You don't have to get 10 research points for each one. 

As for the mount issue, yeah, it can be a little annoying but it would also mean no Pokemon would get exp for search the tree or rock. I suppose they could make it up to the player as to whether they want to make that sacrifice.

The biggest issue I have is the same one that persisted in Sword and Shield and that is there doesn't seem to be a way to automatically reorder Pokemon your your boxes. I tried keeping mine in order but eventually gave up due to how many I was catching.

[MindFreak]

22 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

The biggest issue I have is the same one that persisted in Sword and Shield and that is there doesn't seem to be a way to automatically reorder Pokemon your your boxes. I tried keeping mine in order but eventually gave up due to how many I was catching.

I saw in the beginning that there only were 8 pastures. I got really scared that I had to organize everything and find the best versions of the Pokémon, etc. Luckily, they gave me more pastures afterwards.

Cheers, only having to see the Pokémon makes the task much more doable.

[Glen-i]

49 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

I saw in the beginning that there only were 8 pastures. I got really scared that I had to organize everything and find the best versions of the Pokémon, etc. Luckily, they gave me more pastures afterwards.

Cheers, only having to see the Pokémon makes the task much more doable.

Yeah, that's been a thing for ages. As soon as you have at least 1 Pokémon in each box, you get given more.

The max this game allows is 29.

[BowserBasher]

So probably not as far as everyone else here, but I'm enjoying this.

Spoiler

So, Ive made it and defeated Kleavor, had to use a few revives in that battle as I probably don't have anywhere near the right kind of team. I'm just going along at a pace of mine and collecting Pokémon as I go (or defeating them). I've just got the second star rank and am just about to head on to the next main quest. I seem to be able to keep a good handful of Pokeballs in my pockets and I've not run out yet, I do seem to be hoarding stuff though, I seem to collect everything but don't craft as much as I should. I need to find wood to make that doll, but just don't know where I should be looking, I'm guessing just around trees.

So far I'm enjoying this and I'll be making slow progress as time goes on.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

49 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

 

The max this game allows is 29.

I'm currently on filling box 32.

[Glen-i]

20 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I'm currently on filling box 32.

Huh... Then it's arbitrarily blocked me from getting to 32 boxes for some reason.

Now. That is new. I don't like it.

[Hero-of-Time]

17 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Huh... Then it's arbitrarily blocked me from getting to 32 boxes for some reason.

Now. That is new. I don't like it.

Very strange. It never blocked me off at any point. I always had 2-3 empty boxes ahead of my last full one.

[MindFreak]

Perhaps you need to progress the story further to open up more boxes? 

[Glen-i]

20 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

Perhaps you need to progress the story further to open up more boxes? 

Possible. I tried maxing out my boxes with the ol' "1 Pokémon in every box trick" in the second area. If there's 1 added with each new area you go to, that would make 32 by the fifth.

[Ashley]

My favourite meta game is @Glen-i continuously refusing to accept Game Freak is doing something different

[Glen-i]

36 minutes ago, Ashley said:

My favourite meta game is @Glen-i continuously refusing to accept Game Freak is doing something different

Oh, they do different things all the time. Annoyingly so, because they tend to unceremoniously chuck cool ideas they had away just as easily.

Pour one out for Rotation Battles.

[Ashley]

53 minutes ago, Glen-i said:

Oh, they do different things all the time. Annoyingly so, because they tend to unceremoniously chuck cool ideas they had away just as easily.

Pour one out for Rotation Battles.

They truly are the Google of the gaming world. Except they release things outside of America. 

[Hero-of-Time]

I'm still contemplating going for a perfect Pokedex but I've been looking at some of the requirements for certain Pokemon and they really went overboard with it. One Pokemon I was looking at is exclusive to the rifts and you have to catch 15 of them and also defeat 15 of them. That means you have to find 30 rifts and hope it spawns in each of them. Absolutely nuts! 

[MindFreak]

Seems like I only actually need two more Pokémon from rifts - assuming that you can evolve another that is:

Spoiler

I've got a Porygon but not its evolutions. I assume that it is possible to actually evolve Porygon?

Other than that, I need Shieldon and Cranidos and their evolutions. I also need to catch a few more Eevee to get all the evolutions of that one but again I assume that's possible.

 

[Hero-of-Time]

4 minutes ago, MindFreak said:

Seems like I only actually need two more Pokémon from rifts - assuming that you can evolve another that is:

  Rift spawns (Hide contents)

I've got a Porygon but not its evolutions. I assume that it is possible to actually evolve Porygon?

Other than that, I need Shieldon and Cranidos and their evolutions. I also need to catch a few more Eevee to get all the evolutions of that one but again I assume that's possible.

 

 

Spoiler

Yeah, Polygon has two evolutions, both need an item (disc). You can find these in the rift or buy them with the points you get for picking up players backpacks.

The Eevee evolutions are pretty simple. For Glaceon and Leafeon there are giant stones (ice and moss) in frost area and the first area. If you stand next to them Eevee will evolve. Good to know if you don't have any normal stones to use.

 

[Glen-i]

3 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I'm still contemplating going for a perfect Pokedex but I've been looking at some of the requirements for certain Pokemon and they really went overboard with it. One Pokemon I was looking at is exclusive to the rifts and you have to catch 15 of them and also defeat 15 of them. That means you have to find 30 rifts and hope it spawns in each of them. Absolutely nuts! 

Not neccessarily.

Catching them doesn't actually mean "Catching" them. It means receiving them.

So, as an example. Say you need to catch 30 Pikachus. Well, you can get a friend to start a trade session where you both trade each other a Pikachu.
Every time you complete the Pika Trade, that counts as catching a Pikachu, even if the one you receive is the one you literally just traded away.

It doesn't completely mitigate it, as you still have to defeat wild Pikachus to get that task done, but you can cut the time spent looking in rifts by almost half.

Edited February 5, 2022 by Glen-i

[Hero-of-Time]

8 hours ago, Glen-i said:

Not neccessarily.

Catching them doesn't actually mean "Catching" them. It means receiving them.

So, as an example. Say you need to catch 30 Pikachus. Well, you can get a friend to start a trade session where you both trade each other a Pikachu.
Every time you complete the Pika Trade, that counts as catching a Pikachu, even if the one you receive is the one you literally just traded away.

It doesn't completely mitigate it, as you still have to defeat wild Pikachus to get that task done, but you can cut the time spent looking in rifts by almost half.

Nice tip. 

I actually managed to get 11 of them yesterday evening. The rifts spawned quite quickly and the Pokemon I was after kept spawning 3 times per rift. 

[Mr-Paul]

On 04/02/2022 at 7:23 AM, Mr-Paul said:

I've been looking to pick this up for my holiday and it's actually been sold out on Amazon, ShopTo and Simply Games. Shame as I had an Amazon voucher to use.

 

Think I'm going to pick it up from Argos today instead.

So I bought this and played the first three hours while I was on the plane yesterday. I am loving it. What a refreshing change to the standard Pokémon formula.

I just love having the Pokémon free roaming rather than random encounters in long grass. And while I'd quite often avoid the grass to speed things up and get to the next destination, having them out there in the wild to see actually makes me want to catch 'em all and go off the beaten track.

And I feel like there's a proper risk/reward to doing so - the Pokémon you encounter aren't complete pushovers, I feel at these early stages I'm having to use potions and revives more than ever. Only just realised you can teleport back to base camp to get healed though! The Pokédex requirements are a fantastic incentive to catch and battle more beyond raising the levels of your own team.

The last mainline Pokémon game I played was Sun and I don't think I ever finished it. I remember that start of that game being such a chore. This has me gripped from the get go.

[Julius]

I'm approaching the 30 hour mark now, and I'm still having a blast. I unlocked the fifth area yesterday a bit after lunch, but have slowed down and not entered it yet to smell the roses a bit and catch up on a few requests that had been piling up, and also to access some parts in earlier areas which I couldn't get to before. 

For anyone curious about my current team:

Spoiler

I get the feeling the story is starting to ramp up towards its climax now, so I think I'm settling on this team moving forwards, unless I come anything I'd want to swap out (e.g. maybe a Lucario for Machamp if I come across one so they're all from Sinnoh/Hisui). 

Hisuian Typhlosion has certainly grown on me, but still not super keen on the design. She's a bit of a dope. 

There's also some really cool lore stuff out in the world, if you look close enough. For example, it's always been a fan favourite fact that Magikarp and Gyarados are based on a Chinese folktale about a fish swimming up a waterfall and becoming a dragon, and there's a waterfall with Magikarp at the bottom and Gyarados up top. There's also a desolate hill where Floarama town would roughly be, which is how it's referenced being in the past in Diamond & Pearl, and there's a smashed up statue of Giratina out there in the world too (dude basically had his records struck from the book). Love it. 

While I'm really enjoying the game, I do need to talk about Requests, the side quests in this game. Because despite some surprising quality of life stuff in this game, I'm still very confused about some of their decisions. 

So, firstly, the positives. I think the Requests and their dialogue are surprisingly really well written. Characters involved are often quirky and unique, and I've found myself chuckling a fair few times! There's so much character to some of these side stories, which just adds so much to the identity of Jubilife Village and Hisui as a whole, and despite still having a while to go before I put the game down, it is already one of my favourite main series Pokémon games with regards to some of its writing and it's characters off the beaten path. The characters are also so much more animated in their faces and gestures, that it really just compounds the feeling that, for once, Game Freak have finally, consistently translated some of the quality writing from the 2D main series games to a 3D game. There were definitely moments in Sword & Shield which showed they were heading the right way for me (the berry detective thing in one of those hotels), but so far in Legends: Arceus, I think they've more consistently nailed it. It adds a charm which I feel has been missing for so long in these games. 

@Glen-i mentioned unique text for handing in a larger than required blue spaghetti monster for a certain quest, and I experienced similar. Accidentally skipped the text, but it was very funny to see...

Spoiler

Completely by accident, I handed in an Alpha Petilil rather than a regular one, to which the old lady said "That might be a bit overboard...", and so this lady now has a Petilil the size of a human child 

But on the other side of this...there's a thin veil of quality of life stuff, such as pressing + after receiving a Request to make it active on your map and in objectives, that weakly hides the fact that the quality of life stuff in these quests are absolute garbage. This could get long. 

Let's say you accept a quest to gather berries for someone - you need to keep an eye on this yourself, the game won't tell you that you have these items ready to go, and so you won't know that you're ready to hand the quest in and claim your reward unless you check this yourself. Tap -, tap Y, tap R, tap Y again a few times to sort quests by completion, then find the quest that you think you have everything ready for. Now multiply that by five because you're bound to have multiple quests on the go, and the fact you have to dredge through so many menus becomes a bit of a pain. 

Then there's the fact that you can only set one quest as active at a time (which appears on your map and with a marker on the overworld - if applicable), and let me tell you, you get a quest early on which is a fetch quest of so many certain things across Hisui (which isn't a problem in and of itself) that you just won't ever have only one quest in the works at a given time. It's a mess. You should be able to have multiple quests active at a given time. 

And then there's also the fact that some quests don't mind you not having items or Pokémon to hand when turning them, as it'll let you pull them from storage to complete the quest, whereas some others do require you to have them to hand. Now, I haven't been playing close enough attention, so maybe this is the difference between quests you turn in within the walls of Jubilife and the outside areas, but it's undeniably a poor decision, because it can lead to you going to complete a Request thinking you can hand it in without a particular Pokémon or item to hand, finding out you can't, and so you have to sprint over to somewhere with access to your storage and then head back to them. 

Lastly, latest quest I tackled was RNG-heavy. It required going to a particular island to catch a Pokémon you can't see out in the open but rustles trees, so if you go out and there aren't any trees rustling, you need to return to Jubilife and then make your way back to reset this. Now, I got fortunate that I "only" needed to do this five times, but I looked it up and have read that others online have spent hours trying to get this Pokémon to spawn. There are a good four or five trees on the island capable of rustling, and from what I've seen its got to be one of the highest concentrations of those trees in the game I've come across so far, so I think it's pretty clear they knew it might be a problem. 

Thing is, there are easy QoL fixes to these which are basically standard these days, and if not some other suggestions which could help too, so I feel they need incorporating:

- allow multiple active quests. When you are out in Jubilife or any of the areas receiving a quest, they all appear on the map, so why can't every quest that you have to turn in/progress also show up? And then just highlight the ones ready to turn in/which you can progress, both in the quests menu and with markers. Congratulations, you now don't need to dig through menus like it's 2005. 

- specifically relating to quests which require the gathering of items: once you have the items ready in across your storage and/or satchel, just have it pop up that the Request is ready to hand in - "You've collected the berries for [XXX]. Press + if you would like to send them their way" to mirror how you can make a quest active, followed by "You sent the berries to [XXX]! Don't forget to collect your reward!", etc. 

- you should be able to pin quests and toggle through them in your HUD, with a way to expand them if required (e.g. if there's a photo to reference).

- yeah, just make it consistent so that from any quest hand-in location, you don't need the item or Pokémon required to hand, you can just pull them from storage. Again, it's not 2005. 

- regarding RNG spawning in quests, I think it's stupid. I think there's a simple solution: have something be dependent on RNG outside of quests (i.e. in typical gameplay), but once a quest is active, make it guaranteed. Trust me, nothing is gained by making a tree rustling for a quest depend on RNG, that isn't a positive memory for your players. Heck, you could then design rare encounters around this - I think someone mentioned here (think it was @Hero-of-Time?) that getting Cherrim or Cherubi was a pain due to it depending on the same RNG tree rustling mechanic, and I think one of the early quests is tied to getting one of those Pokémon. With my suggestion, you can make it so that players who want a rare Pokémon early on need to grind for it, which would feel rewarding, but once you have the quest active you have a way to 100% catch it, and heck after the quest is handed in, you could make it so that the spawn rates of the rare Pokémon in the quest improves. 

Regarding pinning quests, it's the exact same thing they need to do with research tasks for the Pokédex in fairness: you shouldn't even need to pin those, just pressing L or R to toggle through your Pokémon should bring them up, AND YOU SHOULD ALSO BE ABLE TO SEE THESE IN BATTLES! 

So yeah, those are my thoughts on quests: a step in the right direction in terms of content and characters, but it's like playing a mid-2000's RPG in terms of quality of life stuff, which other games and MMORPG's have been doing right for ages. 

To not end on a sour note, what they've done with the progression of music in Jubilife as you complete more of the game (similar to the Observatory in Super Mario Galaxy, or Tarrey Town in Breath of the Wild) is lovely. I've praised a few tracks in my posts so far, but I'll probably be saving that for once I complete the game at this point so that I can listen to the OST without being spoiled, but I really appreciate how much effort has been put into the soundtrack and how it remixes route and location themes from Sinnoh proper with some Hisuian flair.

It almost makes up for the botched soundtracks in Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl.

Almost. 

Oh, and though textures can be really messy, at times the game really does look wonderful...

Edited February 6, 2022 by Julius

[Glen-i]

1 hour ago, Julius said:

Lastly, latest quest I tackled was RNG-heavy. It required going to a particular island to catch a Pokémon you can't see out in the open but rustles trees, so if you go out and there aren't any trees rustling, you need to return to Jubilife and then make your way back to reset this. Now, I got fortunate that I "only" needed to do this five times, but I looked it up and have read that others online have spent hours trying to get this Pokémon to spawn. There are a good four or five trees on the island capable of rustling, and from what I've seen its got to be one of the highest concentrations of those trees in the game I've come across so far, so I think it's pretty clear they knew it might be a problem. 

Funny thing is, I thought it was tweaked to guarantee you get the Pokémon you're looking for during that quest, because I got it on my first attempt.

I guess it makes up for the 30+ Buizels I had to catch at the start.

Speaking of crazy luck, I got a shiny Cherubi from one of those trees! I know the much easier chance for shinies in this game (and the many ways you can make it even more likely) kinda devalues them a bit, but that one? Nah, that's proper jammy luck on my part!

Edited February 6, 2022 by Glen-i

[Mandalore]

I got to the end credits earlier. Overall it was alright, but in many regards it felt as stuck in the past as the main series games. Having to improve the star ranking to progress just felt like a grind and the item bag constantly filling up made the game feel like a chore.

It had its moments though. In places it looked really great, the new Pokémon were nice and they did a good job with the music.

[Hero-of-Time]

2 hours ago, Julius said:

Is anyone else seeing a beard on this kid?

[EEVILMURRAY]

What's peoples' practices when doing the dex? Currently (just settled 2nd frenzied mon, 3 star) and trying to move away from the loyal members staying in my squad, rotating out to get missions done (Quilava exception) 

I'm trying to get multiple missions done simultaneously, for example my last shafting was using my Barboach to use Mud ball (or something) on Shinx's to take them out, do so with a ground move and using that move a number of times. But the thing that's dampening my flow is that I'm standing by the pastures, seeing in the den what move I'd like to use multiple times, then going into the pastures menu and seeing if that 'mon has that move, rinse and repeat.

(Currently pimpsmacking Drifloons with Gastly's Astonish)