Pokemon Legends Z-A review: Brilliant battles but not much else

Pokemon Legends Z-A is a confident shake-up for the series that looks great and moves at a relentless pace, but it lacks variety. It’s a fun, polished adventure that leans hard on its battle systems but leaves little room for exploration.

Players hoped for another open-world adventure with deeper exploration and freedom. Instead, Pokemon Legends Z-A narrows its focus to Lumiose City, trading natural environments for dense urban arenas where battling takes priority. The stunning setting and amazing battles highlight how far the series has come technically, but the joy of discovery has been lost in the process.

Z-A isn’t a disaster. It’s polished, fast, visually impressive, and clearly designed to showcase the new hardware and refined battle systems. But after the novelty of its new battle features fade, it does become repetitive and you’re left with a feeling that despite experimenting with a combat-heavy game set in one location, Game Freak could have delivered so much more.

Pokemon Legends Z-A screenshots

What is Pokemon Legends Z-A about?

Set entirely in Lumiose City, Pokemon Legends Z-A, Kalos’ main metropolis boasts a population obsessed with battling. The main story centers on the Z-A Royale, a ranked circuit where trainers climb through increasingly tough opponents while uncovering the forces threatening the city.

Mega Evolutions are a constant presence, and Rogue Mega Evolution boss encounters deliver major set pieces. Side content and Wild Zones take a back seat to this battle-first design, keeping the focus firmly on combat over traditional exploration.

Fans of Legends Arceus will be familiar with most of Z-A’s mechanics. Turn-based pauses are gone, replaced by a fluid system that lets players move freely, issue commands, and catch Pokemon without breaking pace. This all-new real-time battle system demands quick reactions and strategic team-building in the most dynamic combat the series has attempted.

Lumiose City: A hostile getaway with endless battles

Legends Z-A puts battling at the center of almost everything. The pacing is quick, and encounters encourage you to adapt on the fly with a carefully built team rather than taking long pauses to swap and plan. As you rank up, Alpha Pokemon hit harder, random trainers start using Mega Evolutions, and elites push you with tougher setups.

Rogue Mega Evolution boss fights are the standouts, demanding pattern recognition, well-timed dodges during openings, and decisive commands to finish the job. When Legends Z-A offers these challenges, it is exciting, it’s tense, but most importantly it’s fun.

The trade-off is saturation. Main missions stack fights back to back, sometimes with nothing more than a potion sound effect in between. To progress, you spend many nights in the Z-A Royale accumulating points. Most side quests are essentially educational battles that teach the same mechanics you are already practicing. For players who enjoy the constant pressure of combat, this is a dream. For everyone else, it’s a slog to get to the content waiting on the other side.

Sometimes what’s waiting for them is more battling. It’s a shame because in those rare moments when the story does have room to develop, it’s very good. We’re not allowed to give much away, but it features strong characters and moments of real emotion that are up there with the best of Pokemon. However, you have to work hard to get there as you’re forced to fight each character multiple times, sometimes just so they’ll talk to you. It all becomes a bit of a chore and was enough to make me want to depart from battling and dip into whatever else Pokemon Legends Z-A has to offer.

Wild Zones? More like petting zoos

Exploration is possible in Lumiose, but it naturally feels more claustrophobic than Scarlet & Violet’s sprawling Paldea region. Wild Zones offer breaks between bouts, but they are small, often the size of a town square or shady alley, and usually feature a limited set of around seven Pokemon. A couple of these zones lean on snow or sand for flavor, yet most lack the personality of the larger biomes seen in more traditional games, making most forgettable.

Because only a handful of Pokemon spawn at a time, seeing the different species can force you into clunky despawning routines. In Scarlet & Violet, you could run around an open field and see hundreds of Pokemon in a matter of minutes. In Legends Z-A, you venture into a Wild Zone to see maybe a dozen, then have to find a park bench to kill time or wait several minutes for the spawns to roll over.

There are over 100 side quests, including a few charming detours, but many funnel back to more battles. So many side quests mirror the same format, too. My Pokemon is acting weird? Please battle it. You don’t know how Poison works? Let’s battle. Compared to Legends Arceus’s variety, this is a step back.

Outperforming all other Pokemon on Switch

Thankfully, where Z-A shines (and it needed to after the disastrous state of Scarlet & violet at launch) is performance. Whether you’re walking through busy streets, battling bosses in arenas or getting stuck into big skirmishes, everything runs smoothly. From the models and textures to the animation, and the special effects, everything looks great. Load times are brief, too, with seamless gates into Wild Zones and only short transitions when entering buildings or fast traveling. Legends Z-A also nails how the Pokemon look, feel, and move.

Verdict

At its best Pokemon Legends Z-A is very good. Its real-time combat is fantastic, and the presentation is a clear leap forward for the franchise. However, as thrilling as the battles can be, the constant combat can become, well, a bit of a battle. It just needs more variety.

Unfortunately, exploration is confined to a handful of compact Wild Zones, most of which feel repetitive and lack the personality of past regions. Side quests try to fill the gap, but too many are tutorials in disguise. Once the excitement of mastering the new battle system fades, there isn’t much else to hold your attention.

Legends Z-A is solid, fun, and technically impressive, but it’s also safe. It delivers an enjoyable stay in Lumiose City, yet it never captures the joy of exploration that makes the best Pokemon adventures so unforgettable. For a series built on discovery, that’s a shame.