Category: Pokémon

I think I’ve called a handful of games on my list controversial already. Though none of them hold a candle to this one.

• Release year: 2025
• Developer: Game Freak
• Platform: Switch, Switch 2

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is my favourite game in the franchise. It was a breath of fresh air in a series that was increasingly feeling like it was never really going to make any major changes. It was a huge game that focused on exploration and catching more than battling. And then the first teaser for Pokémon Legends: Z-A dropped, which made it look like it would all take place in one city? I wasn’t sure what to expect from such a scaled-down game, but I knew it wasn’t going to hit the same.

This game does, in fact, all take place within the walls of Lumiose City, the largest city in the Kalos region. You play as a no-name teenager who shows up in Lumiose for no real reason at all, immediately get robbed, and then swept up with a bunch of local weenies. You’re given lodgings at a hotel run by a very tall, very old man, in exchange for investigating what’s going on in the city that’s causing Pokémon to randomly mega evolve and (potentially) go nuts. Also there’s a battle tournament. Multiple battle tournaments.

While Z-A is in fact, a much smaller game than Arceus in every way, that did not at all take away from the fun that I had with it. Lumiose may not be a huge city, but it’s structured like a gigantic maze, and I spent tons of time just running around aimlessly. Well, maybe not completely aimlessly. There are items of various rarities scattered all about the place, and the more valuable ones often require you to navigate fun, little parkour courses and jump around from rooftop to rooftop. For me, the experience of simply moving around the game world means a lot, and Pokémon Legends: Z-A did not disappoint in that aspect.

Now the battling, on the other hand… is also super fun. Pokémon battling is now, for the first time ever, a real-time affair, where you’re running around the battlefield and issuing commands to your Pokémon without any breaks in the action. It’s wild and frantic, and sometimes quite difficult. It’s also even faster than the battling was in Arceus, which already seemed to move at lightspeed compared to the non-Legends games. The main battle tournament that takes place at nighttime, the Z-A Royale, is far too addicting, not only being the main source of battles in the game, but also constantly challenging you to push just a little harder for more rewards.

And then there are the new mega evolutions. I was very afraid of what Game Freak might do with the new megas, but I genuinely think they’re all fantastic. Well, almost all of them. Some are cool some are goofy, but most importantly, they all fit the Pokémon very well. For all the cost- and corner-cutting that Game Freak may do, they are top of class when it comes to creature design.

I played Pokémon Legends: Z-A for a little more than 40 hours before I finally finished the main story, and after that, I was flabbergasted by the number of little icons on the map denoting sidequests that I had left to do. And then there’s the post-game content. And then there’s the DLC expansion that just came out and I’m having extreme difficulty tearing myself away from. I’m having an absolute blast with the game, despite the fact that it’s not nearly as ambitious as its big brother.

I would have liked to do a live reaction to this one, but I was conducting an interview when it aired, and that’s not just something one can put off for later. So here’s a recap of the things I found the most interesting. But only the things I find interesting! No “I don’t care about this” notes this time around.

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Dragon Quest I & II HD Remake – Looks great! DQ1 is my very first RPG, so it has a soft spot in my heart. I’ll probably buy this out of nostalgia and forget to ever actually play it.

Metroid Prime 4: Beyond – I’m sure it’s “because Switch” but I like the more cartoony look! At least, slightly more cartoony than I’d expected. Gameplay looks bang-on with what I would expect from the series, so I’m obviously 100% on board. Very curious if it’s going to be a dual release on Switch and Switch 2.

Pokémon Legends Z-A – No joke, this is my most hype game of 2025, based mostly on the strength of Pokémon Legends Arceus (which is my fave Pokémon game). Last month’s overview trailer got me pretty pumped, and this one just added fuel to the fire. And there’s finally context for the weird subtitle now! Hooray!

Marvel Cosmic Invasion – Hmmmm… Looks like a 90’s arcade brawler… Made by the same team that did Shredder’s Revenge… Despite the fact that my interest in Marvel has atrophied greatly, I may have to play this.

Traditionally, I’ve written out my thoughts on this kind of thing, but it’s 2025 and we’re (finally) pivoting to video!

This weekend I finally completed the pokédex in PokéDoku. It took me 268 days of play to do so, and you could even shave 20-30 days off there since the dex feature wasn’t even added until I’d already been playing for a while. So that’s not too bad!

Of course, the question now is: what comes next?

Well, more PokéDoku, of course. A couple months back, shinies were added into the game. If you’re not a pokémaniac like me, shinies are pokémon that are a different colour than usual and have a 1/8192 chance of appearing. Or, that’s their odds in the real Pokémon games, anyway. In PokéDoku, there’s a 1% chance of a pokémon being shiny, which is way more likely. Still absurdly rare, but not mind-bogglingly so.

I’ve never really been a shiny hunter in any pokémon game. My very first natural shiny was a Sunkern in Pokémon Soul Silver, which was not terribly exciting. I did try to hunt another one in Pokémon Alpha Sapphire years later, but never found one. I participate in community days in Pokémon Go to take advantage of the boosted shiny odds for the pokémon highlighted on those days, but don’t really put much more effort into it than that.

Continue reading The Price of Mastery

Since sometime around Xmas last year, I’ve been playing a little online game (almost) every single day. That game is PokeDoku – something of a twist on sudoku, where you fill in a grid with pokémon instead of numbers. It’s also only a 3×3 grid instead of sudoku’s traditional 9×9. It’s perfect for poop breaks!

How it works is along the top and left sides are six conditions. You have to select a pokémon for each cell that matches the two conditions that intersect on that cell. For example, in the top-left corner of the screenshot below, you’d need to choose a pokémon that is ice-type and can learn the move earthquake. Avalugg was an easy choice there: it’s obviously ice-type and is a big behemoth so it was a pretty safe bet that it could learn earthquake. Galarian Mr. Mime in the top-right corner, on the other hand, was a lucky guess since I knew it’s an ice-type but wasn’t sure if it has a secondary typing (it is in fact ice/psychic).

The screenshot above is actually a perfect example because it uses one of almost every kind of condition; though there are also conditions for each region, as well as starters, mega evolutions, and gigantamax forms. Technically you could also say it doesn’t show “mythical” or “ultra beast” or “paradox” either, but let’s be honest: those are all just different ways of saying “legendary.”

Continue reading Have you played PokeDoku yet?