Pokémon Brilliant Diamond/Shining Pearl & Legends: Arceus

[KHCast]

Here’s another look at Legends and the gameplay. Still feel like there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this game, but at least they’re showing off some fairly meaty gameplay bits. Still not super convinced, not gonna lie, but it still has my attention, so that’s gotta mean something.

Spoiler

My god tho, those boss battles look fucking tedious

 

[FlameStream]

It's doing a lot of things I've wanted Pokemon games to do. For people like me and my circle of friends that are tired of Pokemon games, this one looks like a purchase for us.

[Blue Blood]

4 hours ago, KHCast said:

Here’s another look at Legends and the gameplay. Still feel like there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this game, but at least they’re showing off some fairly meaty gameplay bits. Still not super convinced, not gonna lie, but it still has my attention, so that’s gotta mean something.

  Hide contents

My god tho, those boss battles look fucking tedious

 

Now that we've finally had a look at how the mechanics of simply walking around, encountering, battling and/or catching Pokémon all work, I'm feeling quite a bit more satisfied in how it will play. It looks like there's going to be some real variety in how you can and how you have to approach things.

It's not without its problems though. As you said, those boss battles look awful. And the fact that they chose Starley to highlight skittish behaviour was not a good call. It's a bird and it doesn't like like to be approached by humans. So what does it do to get away? With its wings firmly folded down, it makes small hops. The whole flock should fly away. Seeing a bunch of birds not even attempt to use their wings as they try to escape really takes you out of it. It once again seems like they're taking too many shortcuts in Pokémon behaviour. Beyond the list basic forms of fight or flight (without wings), there's not much character to them. 

[KoDaiko]

9 hours ago, KHCast said:

Here’s another look at Legends and the gameplay. Still feel like there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this game, but at least they’re showing off some fairly meaty gameplay bits. Still not super convinced, not gonna lie, but it still has my attention, so that’s gotta mean something.

  Reveal hidden contents

My god tho, those boss battles look fucking tedious

 

Nnnnn it's a meh for me unfortunately. Maybe if there was a demo I'd try it out but...

I was expecting the Pokemon animation and battle to get a bit more upgrade.

[Sonicka]

15 hours ago, KHCast said:

Here’s another look at Legends and the gameplay. Still feel like there’s a lot of mystery surrounding this game, but at least they’re showing off some fairly meaty gameplay bits. Still not super convinced, not gonna lie, but it still has my attention, so that’s gotta mean something.

  Reveal hidden contents

My god tho, those boss battles look fucking tedious

 

I really don’t like how this game is still tugging at me to give it a chance, as I’m still not sure it’s worth it.

That that being said - some of the gameplay elements shown off here do look a lot of involved now… to a degree anyway. 

I’ve said it previously - but although I commend that they are trying something different, I just wish the production value didn’t feel so cheap as they did it. I’ve seen some commenters praise how it’s now night and day on the graphics between the first trailer and this one (ha!) - but I’d mostly argue that the subdued graphical style and colours sort of harm the look of this game. I understand they were going for a kind of feudal Japan appearance, but the washed out pastel colours is very unappealing in a Pokémon title, which IMO should always be vibrant - something even Sw/Sh got right.  

But this aside - from what they have shown off so far - if the Pokémon actually reacted or felt like they belonged in the world itself then it wouldn’t be so much of an eyesore to take you out of the experience. Presently appears to me that the majority of this is just going to be a slightly enhanced version of the wild areas from Sw/Sh - which for their first attempt at openness was barely acceptable anyway.

 

[Sonictrainer]

As if it was a surprise to anyone, the PLA has started to be leaked.

Please use this topic to discuss any Spoilers until the game has been out for a week.

[Blue Blood]

The official Pokémon channel on YouTube has just uploaded a new trailer detailing something that I consider to be a huge spoiler. 

Spoiler

Final starter evolutions, Hisuian forms. 

Can we not post that in this thread? Or at the very least use spoiler tags to discuss it? I want to be surprised.

Why launch this trailer says before the game comes out? I've not watched the trailer and will do my best to avoid it. But the info is out there officially now. So frustrating. 

[Sonictrainer]

Funnily enough, although they themselves have confirmed "something"

they don't actually show anything in the trailer

I guess they wanted to hype up people before the game comes out?

Anyway, we have a bigger pic of the final art shown before the game releases

[Blue Blood]

11 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Funnily enough, although they themselves have confirmed SPOILER

they don't actually show SPOILER in the trailer

I guess they wanted to hype up people before the game comes out?

You didn't spoiler tag it... I know it's in the title of the video, but just if there are people trying to avoid spoilers, then just do a them solid and try to keep it hidden. 

I wish that they could just let these things remain totally under wraps officially. Just put them in the launch day trailer. And release the launch day on launch day instead of a week before. 

Anyway, the art is kind of nice. Still not a fan of the modern human designs Pokémon though.

[KoDaiko]

4 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

The official Pokémon channel on YouTube has just uploaded a new trailer detailing something that I consider to be a huge spoiler. 

  Reveal hidden contents

Final starter evolutions, Hisuian forms. 

Can we not post that in this thread? Or at the very least use spoiler tags to discuss it? I want to be surprised.

Why launch this trailer says before the game comes out? I've not watched the trailer and will do my best to avoid it. But the info is out there officially now. So frustrating. 

 

Spoiler

Doesn't Pokemon usually reveal final evo's and new forms like Mega evo for starters before the game releases (or am I getting mixed up with unofficial leaks)? I think the only exception is the gigantamax Galar starters who were implemented later as DLC.

That and I'm sure like 90% of people expected it (region variants + no other gimmick like mega/gigantamax + starters all being pre-existing), so maybe they thought there's no reason to hide.

[Sonictrainer]

1 hour ago, KoDaiko said:

 

  Hide contents

Doesn't Pokemon usually reveal final evo's and new forms like Mega evo for starters before the game releases (or am I getting mixed up with unofficial leaks)? I think the only exception is the gigantamax Galar starters who were implemented later as DLC.

That and I'm sure like 90% of people expected it (region variants + no other gimmick like mega/gigantamax + starters all being pre-existing), so maybe they thought there's no reason to hide.

I don't remember about Kalos, but Sun & Moon revealed a lot of information about Alola before the games came out.

Since then, they don't reveal certain information until sometime after the game has been released.

[Zaysho]

Pokémon marketing has stepped away from Sun and Moon/UltraSun and UltraMoon's "spoil literally everything" approach the last four or five years (and to my knowledge, those games specifically were the only ones that had that kind of campaign). Most of SwSh's Pokemon, including the starters' evolutions, were largely just teased but otherwise unknown until the game came out (though most were poorly kept secrets because every official reveal validated nearly every single leak).

[Salamander]

I personally very much preferred the SwSh school of marketing to the SuMo; there were very few Pokemon to discover in Alola which we had not already been shown.  With that said, I'm not convinced that they're really showing enough of Legends: Arceus; every trailer appears to just show the same things over and over again - have they revealed any new Pokemon since Hisuian Voltorb back in November?  There's a balance to be struck here.

[Blue Blood]

SwSh showed us a so little pre-release, and in fairness it turns out that Galar was tiny. But I really appreciated just how much they officially kept under wraps. It made getting into the games exciting, and meant that I wasn't dodging spoilers for literal months like I was with SM. 

[Kuzu]

This is always a case by case basis I've noticed; either people feel like they're marketing the game too much, or they're not marketing it enough. 

 

Best thing I can say is to just respect the people who want to go in completely blind, even if there are official spoilers.

[KoDaiko]

1 hour ago, Sonictrainer said:

I don't remember about Kalos, but Sun & Moon revealed a lot of information about Alola before the games came out.

Since then, they don't reveal certain information until sometime after the game has been released.

1 hour ago, Zaysho said:

Pokémon marketing has stepped away from Sun and Moon/UltraSun and UltraMoon's "spoil literally everything" approach the last four or five years (and to my knowledge, those games specifically were the only ones that had that kind of campaign). Most of SwSh's Pokemon, including the starters' evolutions, were largely just teased but otherwise unknown until the game came out (though most were poorly kept secrets because every official reveal validated nearly every single leak).

Ah ok. The who/what/when must've got muddled in my brain.

 

[Blue Blood]

With SM, they showed virtually everything. Almost all of the Alolam forms, all stages of the starters and even the appearance of Red and Blue in the bloody post-game. Its just so bothersome when games do that. I tend to feel like I've seen enough of a game pretty early on and like to buy games despite knowing nothing about them, so I get that I may be a bit extreme. They've definitely shown enough of PLA though. We've got lots of environments, several new Pokémon and forms, characters with rough ideas of what they do, gameplay features such as the new battle system and Noble Pokémon... I just don't know what else you could need to see in terms of content. 

[Salamander]

Perhaps it could have been slightly more backloaded; I feel like revealing Hisuian Zorua/Zoroark this month would have been a better idea.  Perhaps also a dedicated trailer indicating, without necessarily spoiling, just how much there is in the way of plot and to what extent the stakes will rise?  That seems to be the thing people have been least clear on.  Overall, it just feels vaguely as though they did all their marketing months ago and then stopped; the release month's trailers should probably be showing something new rather than only recapitulating existing information.

[Soniman]

Review Roundup 

 

Now Pokémon games pretty much always score well but seeing a game divergent from the core formula get these good impressions as well bodes nicely 

 

[Salamander]

For all the positive scores then there's notable negativity in the impressions I've seen; Eurogamer's review is the only one I've read in full, but it's genuinely cynical, evisceratingly so, for a title that's "Recommended".  One almost gets the impression that the game is being praised largely for trying something new at all, regardless of whether or not it succeeds.  (Obligatory disclaimer that my impressions come from a perspective where I can see in real-time the series diverging from the things I liked about it.)

[Sonicka]

A couple more...


 

12 minutes ago, Salamander said:

For all the positive scores then there's notable negativity in the impressions I've seen; Eurogamer's review is the only one I've read in full, but it's genuinely cynical, evisceratingly so, for a title that's "Recommended".  One almost gets the impression that the game is being praised largely for trying something new at all, regardless of whether or not it succeeds.  (Obligatory disclaimer that my impressions come from a perspective where I can see in real-time the series diverging from the things I liked about it.)

Exactly my thoughts as well. Having viewed hours of leaked content over the week, I wasn't expecting this to achieve anything more than a 5 or 6... (or 7 at most because it's Pokemon).

It's entirely subjective of course, so each to their own (and the reviewers) - but I'm very VERY perplexed now. Maybe this is a game that's a lot more fun when you're physically playing it as opposed to watching someone play it? Because from what I've seen this was... really not looking that great, and I don't mean graphically - we know it looks and runs like a bit of a turd - but gameplay-wise the loop was intriguing but very lacking IMO (that's not to say it didn't have potential). 

On the positive - I said earlier or in the spoiler thread that if this game can start a new series of "Legends" titles or whatever they want to call it, or if they  incorporated this moreso into the regular "mainline" type games, then I'm all for this titles success if it leads to refinement and improvement.


 

[Salamander]

Yes, Legends: Arceus may not be a game I personally want, but there are some obvious improvements to take through to mainline, like near-seamless overworld battling and being able to catch without entering battle at all.  And based on the reception to this title, I'd say that another Legends is a lock for sometime in the future - and if the Legends games are going to be their new takes on old regions now that they've reached the games which don't really need remaking, Legends: Kyurem is the obvious way to go; Wild West Pokemon plus the original dragon would surely sell like hot cakes.  Nice for the people who want it, and who knows, if they manage to include more of a plot and a more interesting world, even I might want it.

The real question, for me, is: What will this mean for Gen 9?  Given the way Pokemon titles are typically produced, it should be well into production by now; it's not clear how much will have carried over, or rather which they will have anticipated carrying over.  We just have to cross our fingers and hope it's a 2023 game - and not coming out this year.

[Ricochet]

According to the PCMagazine review, game design wise is closer to Monter Hunter: World and Pokémon Snap than to a full fledged Open World such as BOTW. For instance, the research mechanics are quite similar to MHW, and the wild areas are also segregated by Hubs.

It seems that the crappy draw distance hampers the execution of sneaking around a Pokémon that will flee on sight such as Abra. Which is kind of a bummer. If there was something they should've got right is that.

However the idea of alternating attack patterns between quick or powerful blows seems compelling. Attacks now also affect turn order aswell.

[KHCast]

Everyone’s seeming to love the game, which is honestly great to hear. Good to know it was smart of me to wait and make this the Pokémon game I focus my attention on lol. My biggest concern was always that this was primarily gonna be a mostly empty feeling tech demo of concepts that a future game would flesh out, but doesn’t seem like that’s the case at all. The only sour point looks to still be some of the missions (mostly those god awful bosses), but aside from that, hearing a lot of solid things. Gonna probably pick it up for my birthday next month!

 

Spoiler

Also of course the game opens in a similar vein to BotW. Smh 

 

[Red Hot Jack]

IGN gave it a 7/10. It's a fair review and I get the criticisms, I just feel like it's weird that since it's the most ambitious Pokemon experiment and with more heart put into it, the review got a lower score than Let's go, the Sinnoh remakes and SwSh by IGN. It's kind of disappointing. In the same vein of their Sonic Unleashed review. I get it... they are different times and situations.

Anyway, I got the game today and I'm having a good time. Hopefully it doesn't feel empty and repetitive.