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News Pokémon Legends Z-A announced for Nintendo Switch, releasing in 2025

I saw someone suggest that Zygarde would be your ride Pokémon in this game, and thought that would be cool. I'm assuming cell collection is going to be this game's replacement for wisps, so gathering them over the course of the campaign to upgrade your Zygarde and unlock new traversal abilities would be fun. Just give it new 25% and 75% forms for swimming and flying (and whatever else they need), and we're golden
 
Lord Azrael said:
I saw someone suggest that Zygarde would be your ride Pokémon in this game, and thought that would be cool. I'm assuming cell collection is going to be this game's replacement for wisps, so gathering them over the course of the campaign to upgrade your Zygarde and unlock new traversal abilities would be fun. Just give it new 25% and 75% forms for swimming and flying (and whatever else they need), and we're golden
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I was thinking about this the other day

Zygarde 10% gets retyped to Dragon/Normal, finds item on the ground, and can attack Pokemon without engaging in battle like Let's Go mode from SV
Zygarde 25% is a Dragon/Fire Lion and is your land ride
Zygarde 35% is a Dragon/Water Manta Ray and is your water ride
Zygarde 50% keeps the Dragon/Ground typing, works like 10% but in addition can make tunnels that take you to the underground
Zygarde 75% is a Dragon/Flying Wyvern, and is your aerial ride
Zygarde Complete keeps the Dragon/Ground typing and can be controlled as a mech that towers over the city for the climax of the game

Also, I think these should be unlocked through cores that you get advancing on the story, while cells are the Spiritomb hunt and maybe could enable Zygarde to learn new moves
 
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Dunno if anyone thought about this already but since Megas were put under a bad light in gen 7 they could be a concept that goes against harmony between humans and pokemon so I wonder why we would end up using them, maybe they are used by the villainous team first?
 
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I hate to say it, but unless we see something really cool in upcoming trailers, I’m not too excited about this as it stands. Maybe it’s just because it’s over a year away, but it feels less exciting than previous entries to me.

I’ve lost all faith and hope in Game Freak and I won’t believe they’ve improved until I’m actively playing a product that I think is leagues ahead of what they’ve been producing. Everyone’s excited that they’re waiting til 2025 for this, and I was too, but I realized that if they started working on this right after PLA, that’s still only potentially a ~3 year dev time. That won’t be enough for a product this ambitious to reach its potential, and Game Freak’s track record makes me even less confident. I firmly think this will launch in H1 2025; if it was intended to be a holiday release for 2025, they wouldn’t have revealed it now. It would have been revealed next year at Pokemon Day 2025.

Plus honestly I’m just not psyched about it all taking place in one city. That might change when we see more footage, but right now, it’s just not very exciting… especially if we can’t go in most doors and most shops end up copy and pasted. An all-city game with no wilderness to explore just doesn’t appeal to me quite as much personally. At least GTA has areas to explore on the outskirts of the city which I think is great. If we’re totally confined to a futuristic city in this one, I don’t know if that sounds very exciting.

Ah well. I’m happy that Legends is coming back but this feels VERY different from Legends Arceus so far, right down to the title no longer featuring the name of a certain Pokémon. I will die on the hill that “Z-A” is a terrible name and it bothers me to no end, but that’s the nitpick to end all nitpicks lmao.
 
switchum said:
I hate to say it, but unless we see something really cool in upcoming trailers, I’m not too excited about this as it stands. Maybe it’s just because it’s over a year away, but it feels less exciting than previous entries to me.

I’ve lost all faith and hope in Game Freak and I won’t believe they’ve improved until I’m actively playing a product that I think is leagues ahead of what they’ve been producing. Everyone’s excited that they’re waiting til 2025 for this, and I was too, but I realized that if they started working on this right after PLA, that’s still only potentially a ~3 year dev time. That won’t be enough for a product this ambitious to reach its potential, and Game Freak’s track record makes me even less confident. I firmly think this will launch in H1 2025; if it was intended to be a holiday release for 2025, they wouldn’t have revealed it now. It would have been revealed next year at Pokemon Day 2025.

Plus honestly I’m just not psyched about it all taking place in one city. That might change when we see more footage, but right now, it’s just not very exciting… especially if we can’t go in most doors and most shops end up copy and pasted. An all-city game with no wilderness to explore just doesn’t appeal to me quite as much personally. At least GTA has areas to explore on the outskirts of the city which I think is great. If we’re totally confined to a futuristic city in this one, I don’t know if that sounds very exciting.

Ah well. I’m happy that Legends is coming back but this feels VERY different from Legends Arceus so far, right down to the title no longer featuring the name of a certain Pokémon. I will die on the hill that “Z-A” is a terrible name and it bothers me to no end, but that’s the nitpick to end all nitpicks lmao.
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GameFreak already having an engine and assets with Legends Arceus could mean that the development can be faster, right? If anything, all they'd need is time to optimize.
 
ziggyrivers said:
GameFreak already having an engine and assets with Legends Arceus could mean that the development can be faster, right? If anything, all they'd need is time to optimize.
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That's assuming the gameplay and visuals are similar to Legends Arceus. I wouldn't bet on that when even the logos seem to be in a completely different style.
 
Pokemon is the same, Legends is flattened out. but I wouldn't say you can draw any conclusions about gameplay from the logo design of all things.

pokemon-legends-z-a-releases-sim.jpg


Pok%C3%A9mon_Legends_Arceus_Logo.png
 
ILikeFeet said:
Pokemon is the same, Legends is flattened out. but I wouldn't say you can draw any conclusions about gameplay from the logo design of all things.

pokemon-legends-z-a-releases-sim.jpg


Pok%C3%A9mon_Legends_Arceus_Logo.png
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It's different! Different colors, which is unusual in itself. Normally the logo is yellow which is standard. In Legends Arceus the "Pokémon" is blue and "Legends" is arched and green. This represents the endless sky and green horizons that you can travel. Arceus is in that particular font because the land you are exploring is ancient Japan. Fits the game, yeah?

In Z-A not only is all text heavily muted and gray in color, but the arching that represented exploration is now straight and rigid. The game is in a city and confined.

That alone is enough to suggest that the game has much less focus on exploration and possibly even a different art style. Unless you think they just randomly changed the main logo of the franchise twice for no reason?
 
colors representing themes? sure, that's normal, though most of that is just interpretation (like the arching having a thematic meaning). but to go so far to say it's representative of gameplay, there's no basis for that other than making it fit a predetermined conclusion

believe what you want, but I ain't convinced
 
ILikeFeet said:
colors representing themes? sure, that's normal, though most of that is just interpretation (like the arching having a thematic meaning). but to go so far to say it's representative of gameplay, there's no basis for that other than making it fit a predetermined conclusion

believe what you want, but I ain't convinced
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's the first time a mainline game has changed the "Pokémon" logo period in over 20 years. And they did it twice! Pokémon is arguably the biggest brand they is, I don't think you can call it a coincidence.

The arching is significant because it was present in the first Legends but missing in the second, despite both being Legends games. The arching plus the green represents a horizon.
 
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While Pokémon titles do have the logo reflect the game's theming -- so this probably is a reference to the city setting in some manner, plus whatever that A has going on - the English logos for the mainline games have always dropped the little nods to gameplay that the Japanese logo has (in the situations where the JP logo did have gameplay connotations, anyway). Legends Arceus doesn't really have any nods to the gameplay in its logo as far as I can tell in any version, being purely reflective of the themes, so I'm not sure if we can interpret anything in that regard from the Legends Z-A logo. You can still have an explorable open-world city setting, after all.

I also doubt we can get a sense of the game's art style from it, considering that the series has seen art style changes regardless of what the logo looks like. Hell, every game since the series made the jump to the Switch has used a different art style outside New Pokémon Snap and Scarlet/Violet.
 
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OctoSplattack said:
While Pokémon titles do have the logo reflect the game's theming -- so this probably is a reference to the city setting in some manner - the English logos for the mainline games have always dropped the little nods to gameplay that the Japanese logo has (in the situations where the JP logo did have gameplay connotations, anyway). Legends Arceus doesn't really have any nods to the gameplay in its logo as far as I can tell in any version, being purely reflective of the themes, so I'm not sure if we can interpret anything in that regard from the Legends Z-A logo. You can still have an explorable open-world city setting, after all.

I also doubt we can get a sense of the game's art style from it, considering that the series has seen art style changes regardless of what the logo looks like. Hell, every game since the series made the jump to the Switch has used a different art style outside New Pokémon Snap and Scarlet/Violet.
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I'd argue Legends is an exception cause it even uses the international Logo in Japan.
And I like @Brock Reiher interpretation of the blue and green representing the Sky and and the planes you are exploring for most of the game.
The greys of Z-As Logo fit very well with urban theme.
So dunno why we should not read anything into the Logos when Leg ds is already breaking conventions with the Logo and they already reflect some aspects of their respective games.
 
AllEchse said:
I'd argue Legends is an exception cause it even uses the international Logo in Japan.
And I like @Brock Reiher interpretation of the blue and green representing the Sky and and the planes you are exploring for most of the game.
The greys of Z-As Logo fit very well with urban theme.
So dunno why we should not read anything into the Logos when Leg ds is already breaking conventions with the Logo and they already reflect some aspects of their respective games.
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If it does end up reflecting the actual gameplay in addition to the game's general thematic elements, then sure. Like, I agree that the logo represents the theming and story elements. Pokémon has been doing that consistently since Gen V, so the muted colors representing the city environment you'll presumably be spending most of your time in, while the Z-A are the Pokémon that will play a pivotal role in the plot? That makes sense.

I'm just not sure how you can interpret anything gameplay-wise, much less the game's artistic direction EDIT: Okay, I realized after I hit "post reply" that the "Arceus" in Pokémon Legends Arceus can also be reflective of the game's general inkbrush aesthetic and some of the UI choices, so scratch that bit from the record.
 
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OctoSplattack said:
If it does end up reflecting the actual gameplay in addition to the game's general thematic elements, then sure. Like, I agree that the logo represents the theming and story elements. Pokémon has been doing that consistently since Gen V, so the muted colors representing the city environment you'll presumably be spending most of your time in, while the Z-A are the Pokémon that will play a pivotal role in the plot? That makes sense.

I'm just not sure how you can interpret anything gameplay-wise, much less the game's artistic direction.
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That's understandable! I would say the main gameplay of Arceus is being able to explore and survey the world. I would call it Gamefreak's attempt at tackling Breath of the Wild. So if you are in a confined city that somewhat requires the main gameplay loop to be very different.
 
Brock Reiher said:
That's understandable! I would say the main gameplay of Arceus is being able to explore and survey the world. I would call it Gamefreak's attempt at tackling Breath of the Wild. So if you are in a confined city that somewhat requires the main gameplay loop to be very different.
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Guessing this could be GameFreak's Yakuza?
 
So Pokémon logos, huh? I do remember the "Legends" font. It originated in the Gen III international logos, but its usage in Legends Arceus always read to me as evoking the international logos of the Sinnoh games first and foremost:

Platinum-logo.png




Pok%C3%A9mon_Brilliant_Diamond_logo.png



Pok%C3%A9mon_Shining_Pearl_logo.png


Pok%C3%A9mon_Legends_Arceus_logo.png


Same font, same curve. There's tweaks, mind you, and these are the best points to support the argument of evoking the mood of Legends Arceus. But I'm sure it serves both as mood and as nostalgia. It communicates the connection to the games it is "premaking" and has synergy with the remakes that came out right before it.

But okay, let's focus just on Legends. So looking at Z-A...
1920px-Pok%C3%A9mon_Legends_Z-A_logo.png

Pok%C3%A9mon_Legends_Z-A_logo.png



It definitely evokes a different mood, but...it's still very much a logo in the vein of Legends Arceus. We gave the international Pokémon logo, the Legends text is below it in the same font as the previous game, and both the text and the logo are encased in white, the same hallmarks of the Legends Arceus logo across all regions. My partner, who does graphic design, noted that having a curved text next to the Z-A as this big logo setpiece wouldn't look as good, so the straightening of the font could be motivated by that. Even with that, though, this doesn't read as a completely different style. It reads as another Legends game. Distinct but connected within its subseries.

I think of how divergent the JP logos for Pokémon games can be in terms of changing up color, font, and style compared to the US games.

QxcoTBiJqqWQsIIDs4D9PEISM2F_eXjSX_SnMF9K0Dc.png

The tweaks to Legends feel in line with that tradition. It's different, but it's still a "Pokémon Legends" game. We'll just have to wait and see on what a "Pokémon Legends" means from the perspective of The Pokémon Company and Game Freak.
 
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Made this very rough approximation of Legends Z-A's scale, and I say very rough because both maps are very far from being 1:1, but I do think their size should be somewhat similar based on the number of buildings to the side of the street (hard to calculate on Z-A's case because they seem to come in different shapes and sizes, instead of the uniformity of the Smash Ultimate stage).

VFYmhaS.jpeg
 
Mega Mawile and Mega Medicham return but Z-A is like Arceus and doesn't have functional Abilities
 
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The metrics on that tweet are insane.

Legends ZA has been generating a ton of excitment and engagement since the reveal, it is quite impressive.
 
So, will they retcon all those Pokédex entries that label Mega evolution as being "super bad, actually"? Because those were clearly done to give something of an in-universe reason to justify dropping the mechanic, but now that they're bringing it back for PLZA, I wonder if that'll be addressed at all.
 
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The one-two punch of good Scarlet/Violet DLC into Pokemon ZA has the Pokemon community actually feel happy and optimistic for once! It hasn't felt this cheerful since like... Sun and Moon.
 
zumaddy said:
The one-two punch of good Scarlet/Violet DLC into Pokemon ZA has the Pokemon community actually feel happy and optimistic for once! It hasn't felt this cheerful since like... Sun and Moon.
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Just don't ruin it with a mid year announcement of a "faithful" Black and White remake for holiday 2024, and everything will be fine. 😅
 
Since Legends is an experimental sort of brand, I presumw there’s a possibility you don’t catch Pokemon in this game, but rather recruit, befriend or something along the lines
 
The game might handle the whole premise similar to how Pokemon XD handled it, in order to catch Pokémon you have to "purify" them
 
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