Back at the turn of the millenium, I had a dream. The Nintendo GameCube was about to release, and I was utterly Pokemon obsessed. Pokemon RBY and GSC remain some of my favorite games of all time – but I was also a Final Fantasy fan. I’d spent those same years being wowed by the scale and spectacle of the PS1’s Japanese RPG catalogue, and as a Pokemon fan I couldn’t help but wonder: what if Pokemon was like this? I’d play that GameCube tech demo over 56k internet over and over again and while the Zelda bit was my favourite, a brief glimpse of Pokemon dancing had set my mind racing. What if Pokemon was 3D, and as ambitious in scope as the other world-shaking console JRPGs?
That dream never really came true, of course. While I absolutely see the quality in later generations, I think it’s fair to say that Pokemon stagnated. It gently iterated on the formula of past games, and even when it was time to make the jump to 3D, it played it surprisingly safe. The last all-new entry, 2019’s Sword and Shield, took baby steps towards truly shaking things up. But now, 20 years later, the dream feels like it is reality in Pokemon Legends: Arceus.
Think of things you know about Pokemon. Series staples. There is every chance it is gone. Pokemon automatically changing forms when they hit certain requirements? Gone; it’s now an opt-in process, where you evolve Pokemon through the menu once you’re ready. Random encounters? Gone, replaced with Pokemon out on the overworld. Gym Battles? Gone; they don’t yet exist in this ancient version of the Poke-world. Learning moves via TMs and deleting old moves forever to make room for new ones? Gone, gone, gone. Even the very concept of a ‘Pokemon Trainer’ doesn’t exist in this game, as the world it’s set in is one before any of those systems and concepts of the Pokemon lore came to exist.
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