Bienvenue! Game Freak invites you to pack your bags and head to Lumiose City, where Quasartico Inc. has launched an urban redevelopment plan to transform the Kalos region’s largest city into a place where humans and Pokémon can live happily alongside each other.
After spending far too long fretting over my Trainer’s appearance – debating everything from angled or droopy eyes to sharp or voluminous lashes, and even whether freckles suited them or not – I hesitantly hit “Ready!”, knowing full well that when they showed up in the game’s first cutscene, I’d be staring at them thinking, “Oh no. I’ve made a mistake I must now live with for 70 hours.” Luckily for me, I didn’t this time around.
As your train pulls into Gare de Lumiose, you exit the station to witness Lumiose City’s bustling streets, where your first interaction is with Taunie (or Urbain), who’s looking for a fresh-faced tourist like you to help record a promotional video for Hotel Z with Chikorita, Tepig and Totodile. Interrupted mid-shoot by a welcome message from Quasartico CEO Jett, a troublesome Pancham uses the distraction to snag your travel bag, and so your first mission is to chase after the knee-height Playful Pokémon to get it back.
Challenged to beat Pancham’s Trainer to recover your travel bag, you choose your Starter Pokémon, are hastily taken through the game’s real-time battle mechanics, and are soon commanding your pocket monster companion to unleash moves in their direction. It’s a whistle-stop introduction to the adventure that awaits you in Pokémon Legends Z-A Nintendo Switch 2 Edition, but it’s hard not to feel like there’s a punchier confidence here that we haven’t seen from them for some time.
From Pokémon Sword and Pokémon Shield to Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, Game Freak’s struggles with technical shortcomings and their own overambition regrettably undermined the gameplay experiences that they delivered for the pocket monster faithful on Nintendo Switch. The return to the playful experimentation that the Pokémon Legends subseries allows has not only let the team focus on filling a single location with things to do, but also to see how the fanbase reacts to some unexpected changes before they potentially hit the mainline series. The Nintendo Switch 2‘s extra oomph helps to make the visuals shine and stabilises the game’s performance, but that’d all be for nothing if Pokémon Legends Z-A Nintendo Switch 2 Edition’s gameplay loop wasn’t entertaining. There’s room for improvement, but Game Freak has taken a Roto-Glide in the right direction.
“People and Pokémon meet when fate dictates it should be so.” It’s hard not to agree with such wise words from the three-thousand-year-old AZ, as your destiny rapidly unravels after you check in as Hotel Z’s latest guest. Quasartico soon invites you to participate in the Z-A Royale, a battle tournament that determines the greatest Pokémon Trainers in Lumiose City. Those who achieve the tournament’s highest rank (Rank A) will be rewarded with their wish being granted, as long as it is within the company’s power to fulfil. With their own aspirations, Taunie (or Urbain) asks you to join Team MZ – a name that combines Mega Evolution + Hotel Z – and work alongside them, dance school student Lida and aspiring fashion designer Naveen to win the Z-A Royale.
With Lumiose City kitted out with its patented neon-coloured holo-tech barriers, earning the lucrative top prize from Quasartico will require you to earn enough Ticket Points to compete in successive promotion matches to advance up the Z-A Royale’s ranks. By day, you are encouraged to explore green‑tinted Wild Zones to catch new Pokémon, work to level up your existing team, complete tasks for the Pokémon Research Lab’s acting director Mable, or help locals with their conundrums. Each night, a red-illuminated Battle Zone will appear somewhere in Lumiose City, where, once you have stepped inside, anyone can challenge you to a battle on the spot. This is how you accumulate Ticket Points to receive a Challenger’s Ticket to unlock in your next promotion match, with your battles against other Trainers helping to strengthen your Pokémon and building up the Pokémon Dollars stuffed in your pockets.
You need only open the map of Lumiose City to see that it is densely littered with icons to distract you from the game’s main missions. Wild Zones. Pokémon Centers. Cafés. Shops. Boutiques. Salons. Restaurants. Side Missions. There’s much to explore, discover and interact with, and, to no one’s surprise, more is sprinkled in as you make steady progress through the game’s main quest. I wish there was the chance to directly help Emma at the Looker Bureau more – perhaps hunting down unidentified pocket monster culprits behind minor culprits, Detective Pikachu-style – which seemed like a missed opportunity, but I was never short on choosing something to do next.
Instead, Emma has little involvement with the Side Missions that she tasks you with completing. Seeing you help serve the people of Lumiose City, these range from helping a well-known movie director film his next project to attending a yearly Starmie cult meeting and finding Spewpa hiding in Lumiose Museum to luring Trubbish away from bothering a restaurant with some Tasty Trash. The quirkier the better, as is always the case.
Lumiose City’s five districts sound like they have fanciful names (Rouge, Jaune, Vert, Bleu and Magenta), but even those with a lifelong aversion to GCSE French, like me, will realise that these names are simply all colours. I adored exploring the city’s expansive layout, wandering into seemingly forgotten courtyards, spotting a Panpour hidden in a tree while running down Autumnal Avenue, or Fletchling quietly perched on lampposts. Lumiose City often feels alive, but I wish that its citizens weren’t as static as they are – characters stuck in place waiting to quip the same line as you pass by them – and that there was more differentiation between each of the five districts. Aside from coloured banners sporadically fixed to buildings, there isn’t much character that makes them stand apart, meaning that everything blurs into one.
Game Freak has explored verticality, too. Whether that be the (somewhat awkward) platforming challenges posed by Racine Construction’s scaffolding-constructed obstacle courses that are scattered around Lumiose City, using a holovator to magically warp to a roof or using your Rotom Phone to Roto-Glide between rooftops, it’s a new way to traverse the Pokémon world but one that I have grown tired of after more than 70 hours playing the game. I realised that I spend far too long running around buildings in multiple directions trying to work out how to reach mission marks on top of them and wonder why this wasn’t made simpler, even as a post-complete reward.
This indirectly helps to familiarise you with the real-time battle mechanics, which is the most significant change that Game Freak has introduced. You simply lock on to the Pokémon you want to target (ZL Button), and then command your active Pokémon to use a move based on whichever button it has been assigned to (A, B, X or Y Buttons). I think the only tweak I would have appreciated is for time to slow down when you’re choosing what to do next, similar to the Tactical Mode in Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade. I guess it wouldn’t be needed for most battles, though, but I would have liked to had more headspace to consider how to counter trickier boss battles when my team are being knocked out one after another.
You will still need to consider all-important type matchups, but your battle strategies now broaden out to debating whether to unleash a move that takes a shorter time to charge and has a reduced cooldown time or one that takes longer to execute but has an area of effect meaning that it can deal damage to multiple Pokémon when it lands. The damage calculation still takes into account the Pokémon’s type and the move’s type, with symbols on your available moves clearly showing whether your pocket monster’s attacks will be Supereffective to Not Very Effective. Between battles, it’s incredibly straightforward to swap your Pokémon’s moves out for any they would normally learn or can gain access to through Technical Machines (TMs), which makes it easier to counter anything unexpected.
For those who are a Pokédex completionist like me, catching wild Pokémon works similarly to battling. You lock on to your target (ZL Button) and select your Poké Ball type (Directional Buttons) to then aim and throw it (ZR Button). The usual factors such as the pocket monster’s level, lowering their HP, whether your target is aware of you and your Poké Ball type will all impact your chances of success. Defeat the target in battle, and a brief catch window will start where you have a single chance to catch the Pokémon much more easily.
Your progression through the main missions will soon see Quasartico task Team MZ with helping them to investigate Rogue Mega Evolutions. Any Pokémon that undergoes Rogue Mega Evolution gains formidable strength and becomes hard to damage, whittling down their daunting HP bars, requiring you to dodge their wayward attacks and call upon your own Mega Evolved Pokémon. These are intense and stress-inducing, especially later in the game, but were rewarding to conquer and a regular highlight in my playthrough.
That’s perhaps helped by the fact that they become the encounters where you will see Game Freak’s new Mega Evolution designs for the first time. Everyone will have their own favourites and those that they shun, but the new Mega Evolution designs are hit and miss. Some have been too simplified, and others have become instant meme material. It was a wild ride for me to be excited to learn that Dragonite (my favourite Pokémon) would receive a Mega Evolution, only to be considerably underwhelmed when it was revealed.
Your Pokémon team aren’t only relied on for battle, either. Summoned from their Poké Balls to explore Lumiose City alongside you, there are instances where you will come to rely on their moves to clear obstacles in your path. These field actions can see your pocket monsters smashing rocks, burning gnarly brambles, washing away toxic sludge, or demolishing crystallised Mega Shards. These Mega Shards can be traded with Quasartico for new Mega Stones and other items.
Those looking for heightened competition can compete against up to three other Trainers in Link Battles online. Pitched as “a frenetic free-for-all battle,” these are certainly chaotic. You enter with a team of three Pokémon, and your goal is to simply be the Trainer who defeats the most of their opponents’ pocket monsters before the time limit ends. If one of your Pokémon faints, you’re sent back to your starting point, but the arenas are small enough that it won’t take long for you to get back into the action. There are items that can recover your Pokémon’s HP or grant temporary stat boosts, which can help to turn the tide in your favour. I either got trounced or did the trouncing, with no real middleground success in the battles I have participated in. You will earn points based on your battle prowess, which will help you to raise your rank from Z to A within that particular season.
It’s worth mentioning that Game Freak’s storytelling in Pokémon Legends Z-A Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is much improved, too. It’s nothing that we haven’t seen elsewhere in other games before, but, through characters such as the otherwise knuckleheaded Fist of Justice leader Ivor, we’re regularly asked to question whether wild Pokémon should or should not be confined to Wild Zones if Lumiose City’s citizens truly want to coexist with them. Your Team MZ teammates also champion each other to follow their dreams against the wishes of their family, and at multiple points in the game, we’re left to wonder whether croissant curry, Hotel Z’s “signature dish,” tastes as good as it looks.
I can’t speak about how the game runs on an original Nintendo Switch, but Pokémon Legends Z-A Nintendo Switch 2 Edition is a great benchmark for Game Freak to build on with the portable home console’s successor. Clearly keen to regain trust with its fanbase after Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet, the Pokémon world has never looked or run better than it does here, even if this game isn’t as strong a stress test as the mainline adventures. The jazz-infused soundtrack from the composers that the developer enlisted is worth a shoutout, which is a perfect match to the Parisian-inspired location.
Game Freak has regained its footing with Pokémon Legends Z-A Nintendo Switch 2 Edition. Lumiose City is the perfect playground for the developer’s playful experimentation as they chart a path forward, scoring success with real-time battle mechanics, meaningful character interactions, and heart-pounding Rogue Mega Evolution encounters. It makes me cautiously optimistic for whatever comes next. “Au revoir, my young friend.”
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Nintendo
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