As a longtime fan of the Pokémon franchise, 2022’s Legends Arceus brought to life what I’d always thought living in that world would be like. Players got the full experience of traversing the lands of the ancient Sinnoh region, complete with making connections with the series’ mysterious wild creatures over land & sea, with the occasional need to run when they decide to not take kindly to capture or direction.

The first Legends entry made that universe feel alive in a way the mainline series, till Scarlet & Violet, couldn’t, which more likely than not added its own influence to the latest main entry, and will continue to for the franchise’s games still to come. In Legends Z-A, the concept first laid out in Arceus is taken into modern day while also making the most use out of reintroducing audiences to one of Pokémon X & Y’s main locations.

The game starts off as a vacation gone awry as we are pulled into a full-blown fight for the city of Lumiose, the Paris-inspired location from X & Y, as well as the center for many of that game generation’s story events. After being recruited by a group calling themselves Team MZ, players are whisked into assisting with the issues of wild Pokémon taking to living in Lumiose by day and competing in an area-wide tournament by night, all in hopes of being granted a single wish by the Quasartico organization.

While it took a good while to finish what felt like a lengthy tutorial section of the early game, the moment the restraints came off, players are able to explore the massively expanded city to their heart’s content. There were spans of time I specifically dedicated to finding every alleyway and entrance to the rooftops that were unlocked, some of which were not accessible before certain story missions or other movement mechanics were introduced. Eventually, movement around the city allows players to traverse whole areas just by going roof to roof, parkouring all along the way to find hidden items and rare Pokemon.

After some exploring, the various parts the city’s scenery do tend to run together, but as “Wild Zones” are slowly introduced around the metropolis, where players will find and catch a certain number of their partner creatures, eventually that becomes less apparent. Small fields bordered off by barriers allow certain types to roam in their elements, like Ghost-types in a graveyard, or Ice Pokémon to feel at home in two blocks worth of a constant arctic environment. There are also cafes to stop at along with certain picture-isc parks and river-view settings to take in, and if you are persistent enough, finding the highest rooftops to overlook the cityscape with adds to the feeling of being one with the locals in the game.

Speaking of, getting to know the citizens of the city through a series of side missions made Lumiose feel a little bit more alive. While many of the character models are otherwise color palette swaps of others, getting to interact with a wealth of them individually would eventually tell the greater story of the city’s relationship with its new creature residents. Much like with the Yakuza/Like A Dragon franchise, the mini-episodes use their time to change the game’s tone. Whether connecting Lumiose’s resident construction company more closely with the steel Pokémon they’d been feuding with, or showcasing the multitude of Mega Evolutions, a game mechanic freshly reintroduced in Legends Z-A, for a budding fashion designer, the side stories add depth to what could alternatively be a bland populous.

Of my 50-hour runtime in the game pre-completion, it is the exploration and side missions that added most to my experience, and not the somewhat lacking mainline quest missions. While Legends Z-A does do a great job of tying together loose story threads from the X & Y generation, it does to in the Z-A Royale tournament at the center of the game, which tends to go a little fast and easy. In this entry, Legends Z-A does away mostly with the franchise RPG gameplay for a more action-styled hybrid.

This did a few things. Battles are drastically shortened by how quickly each side can get a move off, mainly consisting of attacks and buffs/debuffs, and depending on how your team is built, that could range from an instant to longer bouts of healing/reviving till the desired outcome is achieved. There is still a leveling element to raising your team of Pokemon, and depending on how you play, it is easy to be overpowered in facing each opponent over much of the game. Often, it didn’t matter which creature types I was pit against, because I could just steamroll over my opponents and carry on.

Progressing through the nightly tournaments meant taking out other trainers in order to gain points, resulting in a Challenger Ticket that allows an opportunity to be placed in the next rank up, from Z to A. This exercise often felt relatively simple, making this portion of the game just feel like a momentary chore in order to get to the more fun parts of the overall experience. It isn’t till much later in the game where the more challenging fights start to appear, which renewed my interest in crafting my teams with the normal meta strategy of Pokemon battles in mind.

Much like the Lord Pokemon of Legends Arceus, Z-A has its own big action-adventure spectacle battles, replacing the former with Rouge Mega Evolutions happening all over the city. In the transition from X & Y’s Mega Pokemon to the new title, players get to face off directly with giant enemies flaunting familiar and brand-new evolutions, from Clefable’s transformation into an almost literal fairy tale creature to Starmie’s newly meme-d set of legs. The bouts are big and often dangerous, leaving my character KO-ed on more than a few occasions. Beyond the normal battles, it was these gameplay scenarios that I had hoped Z-A would expand upon, and Gamefreak did not disappoint.

Where Legends Arceus presented players with a prototype of what the Pokemon franchise could be if given more license to expand the regions it presents players with in each entry, Z-A takes that vision and sprints with it. While the landscape itself is restricted to the city’s limits, Z-A gives players every reason to invest in Lumiose’s confines, from people thriving within it to the creatures that are attempting to make new homes in it.

The post-game so far gives players more than enough reason to continue exploring and interacting beyond completing their Pokedex listings, and with more DLC story on the way as of December 2025, I’ll be sure to stick around to see where the mysteries of Kalo’s big city lead.

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If you end up getting the game and enjoying it, get ready for the “Mega Dimensions” DLC, slated to come out on December 10, 2025.

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