Hands on with Pokémon Legends Z-A, back to Lumiose City – Preview

Pokémon Legends Arceus gave the long-running series a breath of fresh air, so it’s of course great news that Pokémon Legends Z-A is not far away. Nintendo invited Vooks to the preview event, giving a peek at Lumiose City’s redevelopment project. Please be mindful that we only got to play small, somewhat contained instances of the game, but we still got a good look at what Legends has to offer.

To begin, we got to experience Lumiose City in the daytime, with humans and Pokémon co-existing within the large city. In the first area we started with there were gated Wild Areas, where Pokemon roam around for battling and catching.Straight away, the biggest change is that Pokémon battles now take place in real time – your trainer and Pokémon companion are able to move around the field as you battle. Moves are no longer restricted by the amount of PP, with cooldown timers limiting how often you can unleash each move. Understandably, more powerful moves mean longer waits to have them ready to go.

When you’re in a Wild Area, you can hold a shoulder button to aim at the Pokémon you’re targeting to either hit with a Pokémon move or to try your chances with catching them with a Poké Ball.

As with Arceus, your trainer is vulnerable to wild Pokémon attacks. In some of the tighter spaces around buildings, it may prove difficult to keep out of harm’s way. I did fall to a red-eyed Alpha Houndoom when I got caught up in an alley battle with multiple Houndours and the Alpha.

As a result of fainting in battle, when I woke up, I came across a nice feature. Nearby, I found a character that appears to return any Poké Balls that you might’ve accidentally thrown or just missed connecting a throw with the Pokémon.

Another interesting moment that came up more than once across the preview was when the in-game clock went from day to night and vice versa. Being caught mid-battle at either transition will stop the fight short. It seems it’ll pay to be mindful of where you are in the day/night cycle.

Then it was on to the nighttime battles, where other trainers fill the city streets ready for a battle. Part of this is earning points towards currently unknown rewards, which are earned through completing additional goals. There are cards around the town that give you objectives for these reward points. The main goal I saw was sneaking up on an opponent’s Pokémon and making the first attack with a specified element. From what I experienced, you can hold a few of these objectives and swap out if you come across a new card/objective you’d rather aim for.

These nighttime battles seemed to mean any other trainers who spot you will be challenging you for a battle, just like being spotted in the main games. However, you can also sneak around these if you’re not prepared, especially when you can see what their starting Pokémon will be as they’re out of the Poké Ball too.

Between the daytime and nighttime modes, it was nice to have a look around the city, seeing the different ways Lumiose City is integrating spaces for Pokémon to live in their habitat while also sharing the city space. There was also a verticality to the world that didn’t exist in Legends Arceus, with ways to get to the roofs of buildings and scaffolding just waiting to be navigated and climbed. Although with limited introduction, preset Pokémon or additional abilities, there were some ledges with items or progress I couldn’t access. I wasn’t the biggest fan of how there was no real ‘stickiness’ to keeping your trainer on a narrow beam, as I fell off a few ledges. It could also be less of an issue in the full game.

Then it was time to get a taste of the Ranked Matches, which seem to incorporate part of the game’s title Z-A. In this battle, it was against three Pokémon served up by a waiter named Rintaro, who’s chasing three stars for restaurant excellence while also being dished out a defeat by yours truly. The ranking starts at Z as you work your way up to A. Without much information about the ranking system, I have no idea if that only covers A to Z or further. The main difference in this section is that the battle felt like it was more focused within an arena, against a particular opponent and lineup. In this case, it was needing to be prepared to battle against different elemental types through a Pansage, Pansear, and Panpour. It’s purely speculation on my part, but it fills a similar function to Gym battles; regardless, it looks like it’ll help keep you busy in the city.

The last part of the preview was having the trainer pitted against a Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon. These events seem to be like boss battles. In this case, the battle was against a Rogue Mega Victreebel; this Mega form was recently revealed in the recent promotions for the game.

The Rogue Mega Victreebel battle came with a sizable HP bar to whittle down. This becomes much more manageable as you collect Mega Evolution energy in the arena and use it for your own Mega Evolutions. This allows your Pokémon to do more damage, especially as it upgrades some moves into Plus Moves. As long as you can keep collecting Mega energy, you can keep your Mega Pokémon in a more powerful state.

There was also a little bit of story before the battle. A CPU player also joined in the battle, although they appeared to do very little to damage or assist. While Mega Victreebel was filling the area with blobs of poison, it felt like I was on my own while trying to keep the trainer and the Pokémon from running through the blobs and taking extra damage. As you only control your trainer, I found it a little difficult to keep out of harm’s way and to steer my Pokémon from walking through those attacks too.

A cool feature that was available upon losing this big battle was to either start with the opponent at full health or to have your fully healed team against the Mega at approximately the health it was at when you were knocked out. I have no idea if there’s any consequence to this, but it’s good to know it’s there if you come across any particularly frustrating Rogue Megas.

The version I got to play was the Switch 2 Edition. It looked pretty nice and ran well. Once again, with seeing limited parts of the game, it’s hard to say much, but it seemed fine so far!

Pokémon Legends Z-A so far seems like it makes some positive steps to build on Legends Arceus’ success. I definitely look forward to spending much more time with the game soon and seeing if the move to the city works as well.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A is out on October 16th for both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2. The Nintendo Switch 2 console + Pokémon Legends Z-A bundle is also out on this date. Find the cheapest copy and best preorder bonus in our bargain roundup.