Feature: Pokémon Legends: Arceus Has Made Pokémon Downright Disturbing Again

I dunno if terrifying is the right word but seeing the same old Pokemon artstyle for the monsters/trainers and throwing them in to a semi realistic world is kinda offputting.

I don't think any pokemon game has used the word killed, die, and died so much, if at all.

But I agree with @Savage_Joe not only has the pokedex shown pokemon to do odd things, but the games actually tell you not to go into tall grass without a pokemon, because you could get attacked.

@Fizza What the duck?

I'm still having nightmares about alpha eevee! 😨

Part of me wishes that this game was rated E10+ so it could be darker and scarier, but it’s downright impressive how dark and tense it can be within the restrictions of an E rating. The wild atmosphere of the game is palpable.

This is how Sword and Shield should've been, let alone Pearl and... Diamond was it?

I love how a side quest evolving Drifloon is basically what its Dex page details, its pretty dark really haha.

I disagree, Pokémon have never felt less threatening or more vulnerable due to be ing able to sneak up on them, and nobles being the easiest fights in the franchise.

Enjoying this one a lot especially because they actually feel like animals. Surely PETA can’t complain now!

IMO the biggest thing PLA does right is restore the sense of adventure to the series. I finally have the itch to explore in a Pokemon game again. Recent games have felt like inoffensive tours of safe, milquetoast worlds, but yeah, some environments in this game feel downright oppressive in terms of how quickly these wild Pokemon are attacking me.

Integrate this gameplay and level design into mainline and I'll fall in love with this series again.

@MH4 maybe a sequel of Pokémon Legend showing the pokémon war of gen 6 could be the franchise first E+10 rated game.

@Screen I don’t agree that the nobles are the easiest fights. A couple of the later ones killed me many times, and I don’t generally think of myself as bad with video games.

First time I got caught in a space rift in this game was a trip, absolute chaos and was genuinely alarming trying to escape attacks from all sides from high level Pokemon while trying to figure out what the hell was going on

@Ralizah I’d be happy of the next big game had more open exploration of it’s region and pokemon that are actually aggressive.

I caught an Alpha Hisuian Sligoo and evolved it..he's a very big boy.

I don't even fight the Alpha's, one great ball or ultra ball does the trick and my pokemon level up so quick, I had level 30-40 pokemon just from the first map, and the noble bosses are easy as you just dodge and don't have to fight them at all, so overall I'm finding the game quite easy (on fourth map now) and find the sneaking to start to get a bit tedious after 40 hours of gameplay so now I'm just fighting everything. Also anyone else having a hard time trying to catch pokemon in the water?

And some of the requirements needed to evolve some pokemon and make certain Pokémon appear such as manaphy are crazy, especially for those trying to do it without internet searching.

I think this is definitely the formula for future Pokémon games but they need to make some improvements such as reduce the xp from catching pokemon and make alpha's harder to catch unless you fight them. Also reduce the amount of ghost pokemon that appear at night and add some more variations. Maybe add some voice acting to future games as well as its just so odd watching the characters mouths move but no sound and finally introduce more different pokemon in each of the maps, once you go to a new map it has half the pokemon from the previous map.

I mean, it's Pokemon, let's not get over our skis on this.

Pokémon attacking you just makes sense seeing as they are meant to be wild animals. Legends Arceus is more believable than any previous game. Unfortunately my gut tells me that Legends Arceus is a one off special and we will be back to the old style where Pokémon are nice soon enough. If Game Freak doesn't make Gen 9 all overworld encounters then I am quitting Pokémon altogether.

I reckon we'll see more of this series. Pokemon Legends: Zygarde anyone?

@Fizza Eh, the issue with Sword and Shield and Sun and Moon are that the regions are just linear hallways that stem from point A to point B. Sun and Moon makes it worse, because the game refuses to actually let you breath, making you have a character encounter every three steps or so. Sword and Shield is less annoying, since the encounters are brief, and you can at least skip the tutorials.

@VoidofLight

Maybe it was a bit too much of a blanket statement, but the first 3 are almost impossible to lose to.

It’s just not as hard as it normally is.

@MH4 : I think it's stupid that this ever received an E rating while the likes of 1-2 Switch is rated E10+ (which is also the same rating given to BotW!).

I don't know whether TPCi makes any sort of decisions concerning the content of their games in order to secure specific (or perhaps mostly uniform) ratings across territories (the only exception being the removal of gambling content post Platinum), but Japan is pretty lenient when it comes to stylised violence so long as no weapons are being used.

It's finally an adventure again. Maybe even more so than ever before. I never thought I'd see them take a risk like this, but it's really paying off. I hope it continues to sell like mad.

Why in red and blue were we stopped by professor Oak from running out in the tall grass? Well because unless we have partner Pokémon with us then we’re defenseless to Pokémon attacks.

The threat was always there.

Perhaps that's exactly why they decided to go to the past here - exploration of the period when few Pokemon-human relationships were worked out the way we're used to seeing them, when almost everything outside your window was a Wild Area, when the "catchemalls" didn't mean as much as "catch as many as you can and live to see them studied". I daresay this is a big part of the game's appeal in the big picture - it puts the player in the shoes of [borderline] pioneers who walked (and sneaked) so others could eventually run, cycle, swim and fly.

And in all honesty, Pokemon was always disturbing - in a good way. The whole variety of eponymous life forms, including a good few not so necessarily carbon-based ones, has always put this universe firmly into the sci-fantasy turf - deceptively familiar and mundanely modern up front, eerily yet enticingly alien underneath.

Yes the alpha Pokémon bring fear to even a 21 year old me. Couldn’t imagine being half that age encountering the alphas and not being terrified. But it’s good, it adds a bit of thrill to the game.

Welcome to reality.
Despite of their cute looking, they can kick your butt.
Same situation also happened to other taming monster games.

This is just an accurate representation of the lore. Pokémon are predatory monsters and humans are NOT the apex in that world. Some of them have specifically evolved to kill children, other have Pokédex entries about how they constantly kill their trainers like it's no big deal, and like ... just so many of them have powers or attributes that would allow them to end all life on the planet (galaxies and universes for the legendary ones). Everyone SHOULD hate them.

Even worse, these people understand more then any other game that their GOD, the thing that created them, is a Pokémon.

Pokémon eat humans. Humans were created by a Pokémon. So ... yeah, this is just the first game with people who understand their place.

My first squad wise came at the hands of an alpha scyther. I expect the screen to turn white, but no the scyther turns to me, then you remember it doesn't have hands, and it seems to want to use them on my head.

The first alpha Rapidash I saw terrified me! I was almost asleep playing that first night and seeing it woke me right up.

"rolling scenery"

Laughs behind hand.

I’m not the biggest fan of Pokémon, but am glad I gave this game a chance. It’s been a lot of fun. As far as creepy Pokémon, rapidash stalking me with its fixated demon eyes has been the most excitement I’ve had in a game in sometime.

@Snatcher Red and Blue had Cubone's mother die by Team Rocket thus Ghost of Pokemon Tower Marowak. A little girl Said she saw it die trying to get away from them.

This game has been a literal game-changer for me, as it gives pokémon the appeal they always felt like they could have had for me since the beginning, but never truly clicked. Part of it is how the game flips the script, as discussed here, making YOU hide from THEM in tall grass, instead of the other way around. Another part is, indeed, the presence of Alpha pokémon and spacetime distortions, dangers that hide the promise of rewards within the threat of doom for you and your partners... rewards if you survive and major setbacks if you fail.

The very fact that it's up to YOU to hide, and deploy your pokémon allies and other tools, to survive, in real time, until combat begins, makes me feel important to the experience in ways the originals never could. From the first game, the spaces between towns have been littered with paved paths, and that thrice-damned social contract of meeting another trainer's eyes being challenge to a duel. I much prefer this way, where you have choices about where and when you engage your wild opponents in the field. Or... maybe they find you and take your choice away, but even so, now it feels more genuine when you stumble into the aggro range of a pokémon as opposed to crossing the path of a fellow human who challenges you to a duel you cannot refuse. It feels like you genuinely had a chance to change the outcome, your input in the game is more than walking in straight lines hoping you can find one that doesn't cross an engagement field.

In short the game feels more threatening, and more fair, with the open fields and the flow of the game reversed for the first time in decades!

Oh yeah, and now that that's off my chest, let me remind you we have all the darkness and death hidden in the pokémon lore to begin with!

There's critters wearing the skulls of their parents (Cubone), ghosts trying to drag kids to die (Drifloon), ghosts that carry around their old living face (Yammask), dragons with fires on their tails they must protect with their lives or die (Charmander), literal GARBAGE (Garbodor) and TOXIC WASTE (Muk), and to top it all off... there's a giant bird in the world, and when it dies SO DOES LITERALLY EVERYTHING AND EVERY ONE ELSE (Yveltal). Hell, there's one pokémon who is the freakin' Andromeda Strain (Deoxys)!!!!

Space is a pokémon. Time is a pokémon. Truth and wishes are pokémon... FREAKING GOD IS A POKÉMON!!!! LOL

Pokemon Arceus has made clickbait video game articles popular again since Animal Crossing dropped two years ago.

"Thing I wished I had done..."
"Omg I can't believe we do this to our pokemon!!!"
[ENTER HORROR SATIRE OF POPULAR VIDEO GAME HERE]
"It's been a week since release. When are these lazy multi-billion selling developers going to release info on free dlc the lazy f***s."
"Twitch streamer PokiPerson says naked things about this!!!!"

etc for about 3 months until Monster Hunter drops. It's avideo game about fake things like cute slaves. Our desires laid bare. Get over it peeps.

All of the coverage of Arceus I'm seeing makes me want the game, but I'm taking the proverbial L to get Kirby at launch.

I hope they find a way to keep that sense of danger in new games. After all we have zoos and pets IRL but only idiots roll up on wild animals like nothing can happen.

I’m waiting on gamefreak to admit that humans are pokemon too. Or some strange spontaneous species that evolved over time from single cell organisms. Maybe humans are proto ditto?

@IronMan30 No jokes - I've played everyone fairly "hardcore" (lol) since OG Pearl and this is the first one in some time where I look forward to playing it. Like - I know it's time to take a break but I am having trouble taking a break kind of fun.

Those games maybe come out once a year or two if you are lucky. This is one of those.

This from one of the few who readily admit that Sw/Sh was a great game worthy of PokeAcclaim rather than the usual set of self-loathers.

• also looking forward to that Kirby game.

PKMN LA isn't that different as far as battling Pokemon. No one dies. You still just black out. The how is just different. And in my point of view makes more sense.
let me list some things and in no particular order (words in all caps I'm just emphasizing):
From the beginning you aren't allowed in the tall grass BECAUSE YOU MIGHT GET ATTACKED.
If you trained real animals to fight in battles why would YOU BLACK when the animals faint/die?

And on an unrelated not. I have heard of people complaining that they took Platinum and remade it but completely different than the original Platinum.

Well guess what? you still got BD/SP Where is when they did remakes of the first gen for the Switch those of us hoping for a true remake instead got LGP/LGE. What's so great about the Sinnoh region that it got 2 different remakes close to the same time anyway?

Let the trolling begin (since what I have to say usually gets a lot of hate, lol)

@Fizza I read Adventures up through the middle of G/S with my nephew.

R/G was pretty good, but Yellow represented the biggest shark jumping arc I've ever seen in a manga. I had to will myself through it, and then G/S is so lengthy and poorly paced that we pretty much lost interest in it.

@VoidofLight Yeah. If the next mainline Pokemon doesn't feature towns connected by large, explorable open areas, I'll be baffled. GF is obviously heavily invested in the development of open level design these past couple of games, and they've finally found a way to create large, explorable spaces that don't feel likw vast stretches of nothing like in Sword and Shield. The way Pokemon battling is handled in this feels like the natural evolution of what we had in previous games as well: turn-based, but totally integrated into the overworld.

That’s why I always sleep until morning when it’s night in game , the ghost Pokémon managed to make me jump a few times by teleporting

I'm really digging the shift in tone. People afraid to leave the village because Pokémon are monsters, beasts that generally attack whatever prey or intruder walks upon their territory. It also tackles a (comparatively) heavy tone of morality with respect to imprisoning and ordering Pokémon to battle, kind of calling back to the theme of Black and White, games that are often regarded, by myself included, as having the best story in the series. I'm having a real good time overall, almost feel like a kid playing Red for the first time again

@Fizza theres a reason why oak didn't want you going into the tall grass without a pokemon of your own.
hell, even the anime started off by showing how dangerous pokemon can be

something else to note is that humans in the pokemon world are a lot tougher than humans in our world.
rei/akari have been shown to have to take quite a beating just to be knocked out and drop from the height of a tree without any damage.
with enough training, any human in the pokemon world can match their strength with that of a pokemon.

@Ralizah Same. I'm just not expecting gen 9 to do it though, especially if the talk about it coming out this year is true.

@VoidofLight Jesus christ, they've already squished one Pokemon game into Q4 2021 and another into Q1 2022. How many Pokemon games do they plan on releasing in quick succession?

@Ralizah I have no idea, but I heard the anime that's currently ongoing is going to end it's series around September or so. I couldn't find anything on it, but a ton of people I've seen are claiming that it's true. If it is, then I'm scared that Gen 9 is going to be extremely rushed, as well as scared for the oversaturation of the series.

It's certainly a very nice change from all the other games. It makes sense that Pokemon will attack you, they are wild animals after all. And it's also a nice change of constantly having an ultra enthusiastic rival and random people waiting around corners like maniacs to battle you. It's really interesting how everyone is scared of Pokemon and it's not a common thing to have them around you. Thus the lack of trainers.

This game definitely gave me a new respect for the series. I mean, it's one thing for you to send out a level 3 Shinx to get wrecked by a Snorlax's hyperbeam, but it's quite another for the game to allow you yourself to get wrecked by that same Snorlax. It's like, the giant overworld Pokemon in SwSh were cute and all, but now, that Onix can attack me.

My first death though, was fall damage, I was sure that wouldn't be a thing while on a ride Poke, but nope, it is. But I also got wrecked by some Pokemon here and there.

Fighting Alphas in the night while it’s raining can be pretty creepy for sure. The thing I find scary is how hard they are to catch, even when their health is right down to nothing.

Hmmmm....after reading this article, and if blood splatter was added to the game, I'd actually consider getting this.

I do like the tone and atmosphere of Pokemon Legends Arceus a lot more than the previous games in the series. The Pokemon haven't felt so intimidating and mysterious since the very first game in the series, because we didn't know what it was about at the time.

I agree with most of this, and love the new direction the game has gone in. However, a lot of the tension was removed when they introduced fast-travel fairly early on. Now when my party is knocked out I can just warp back to camp instead of having to survive the wild encounters along the way.

This feature was a pleasure to read. Well done, author. More like this, please!

@Sonos sorry for the late reply, while I really do want this game but I'll hold off. It is absolutely a "this year" buy for me, though.

@Fizza
Pokemon Sword, the game that most of the community bought: Golduck swims gracefully.

Pokemon Shield, the game that the outlier of the community bought: Golduck drags those that defile it's river into the water.

@UltimateOtaku91 Well you're the Ultimate Otaku so of course everything is easy for you

@Paej13 I agree, it is a joy to be in this world. The game isn't designed to be super hard and the in game economy is really generous. It is like having fun at an amusement park with a few scary rides thrown in. Only wish the text chat dialog wasn't so stutter like. Click click click for each word it seems. Other games have done dialog much more easy on the brain. Like Fire Emblem or Octopath.