Pokémon Legends: Arceus
Over the past 25 years, Pokémon's pop-culture dominance has grown astronomically, making it the highest-grossing media franchise of all time by a pretty significant margin. At the start of it all was a humble pair of monster-collecting RPGs that encouraged collaboration and competition between real-life friends, classmates, and coworkers. Now, over two decades later, we have received seven more "generations" of Pokémon games, each leaving that classic formula virtually untouched. Each of them saw massive success, showing just how strong the foundation is, but with repetition often comes boredom. Because the competitive side of Pokémon is so important, major adjustments can't really happen without running the risk of inadvertently damaging a huge draw to the franchise. However, with each successive release that avoids altering the formula, players' interest in retreading old ground fades a little more. Pokémon Legends: Arceus singlehandedly destroys that complaint, while also managing to do so much more for the franchise as a whole.
From the very start, Legends: Arceus feels both familiar and fresh. You're still a kid thrust into a grand region-spanning adventure, but this time you aren't some noob ten-year-old. It's heavily implied that you are already a rather accomplished trainer, and Arceus chose to bring you back in time to assist the Hisuian settlers because you have already proven yourself. I choose to believe that the player character here is actually the same player character from Brilliant Diamond, now more mature and practiced since their time as Sinnoh champion, and I love that Game Freak crafted it that way. Using your already-impressive skills and knowledge, you find yourself tasked with creating the first Pokédex and helping the people of Hisui to get over their fear of Pokémon. The stakes escalate as you progress, and I found the story to be well-developed, even though it was a bit predictable at times. However, it's not the story that truly sets this game apart from the mainline titles.
After over two decades of separate screens for exploration and fighting, Legends: Arceus completely ditches the familiar battle transition, finally opening the door for truly immersive encounters and interactions with wild Pokémon. Battles are now initiated by actually sending out your Pokémon to fight, and they occur right where you initiate them, allowing you to walk around the combatants and even run away if the situation turns dire. You can still capture Pokémon in battles, just like you would in the mainline games, but I wouldn't say that it's the ideal approach. Instead, when outside of active combat, you can catch Pokémon by actually aiming and throwing the Poké Ball yourself. This was my favorite part of the game by far, and I spent dozens of hours in between story segments trying to fill up my Pokédex in this way. Using your environment (or a smoke bomb), you can sneak up on a Pokémon, use berries to distract or projectiles to stun, and then throw a ball to catch! If you're lucky, that's all you'll need to do, but if they manage to break out, then you'll need to lay low while they calm down, or run the risk of being the target of their next hydro pump or thunderbolt.
The possible interactions with Pokémon don't end there, and the new agile/strong battle system refreshes wild encounters and trainer battles while still keeping them familiar and approachable. While the game wasn't as open as I was hoping, everything else it did was incredible, and I ended up playing it for about three times longer than I did Brilliant Diamond. By the end of my playthrough, I was definitely getting a little sick of it, but I still walked away feeling great about the game, and it's incredibly exciting to consider how the mechanics introduced here will influence Scarlet and Violet. Ultimately, I think this is probably the best spinoff game in the franchise, and it has earned my recommendation without a doubt.
