@liljmoore “But gameplay wise like Arceus this is some of the most fun I’ve had with the series since HG/SS remakes.
The characters are some of the best in the series.”
Therein lies the rub: “… with/in the series …” Not sure why Pokemon gets a free pass compared to most/all other franchises out there, as most of them most stand up to other videogames, not just to their predecessors.
By industry standards, in about every way conceiveable Z-A looks to be at least 20 years behind the times. The visual and the lack of VA just being the most kind of in-your-face shortcomings. Personally, I feel like comparing something like Arkham City from 15 years ago with Lumiose City would lead one to the conclusiob that Batman is the bigger franchise by quite a colossal margin (given the obvious investment). The facts are the opposite though.
Hundreds of comparisons like this could and should be drawn, but most don’t, well, because “it is Pokemon and for Pokemon standarts this is quite good”.
I agree on Arceus though, that was a decent game, held back by it’s technical limitations (even comparetd to other Switch 1 games) and it’s lacklustre combat as well as it utter and complete lack of challenge as far as combat went, certainly with any “fight” involved with the story. In fact, theat part stood out to me because I felt the game expected to actually die at some point, given the whole online system and charms and such. But unless this was your first videogame, the chances of actually running into a failure state were beyond slim. Anyways, I liked the exploration, the way catching worked, it was a decent gameplay loop with a high level of internal consistency (like wild Pokemon ganging up on you in the turn-based combat, being able to run away from a fight by … running actually away in the gameworld, even within that fight, the balls have a ballistic curve and different attributes like weight and so on and so forth.)
Arceus was not so much a great Pokemon game, as it was an allaround good videogame on the Switch 1 with it severly limited hardware.
From what I can tell, they took steps back in about every conceiveable category from Arceus to Z-A. I find that truly astonishing to be honest. Maybe the combat is an improvement? From what I’ve seen though it was a half-measure at best.
In other words: Arceus as a videogame in the 2020s set low but existing bars for the franchise and afaik Z-A didn’t cross any of them. That is just inaccepatble to me for a $70 sequel years later.
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