Pok\u00e9mon turns 30 this year. To celebrate, developer Game Freak should merge the many piecemeal changes from the Switch era into the ultimate monster-battling game.<\/b>
\nFor a franchise that unleashed such childhood freedom and imagination, Pok\u00e9mon games are notoriously conservative in their design. I’m a big series fan, but even I regularly skip entire Pok\u00e9mon generations because playing the titles in quick succession reveals just how similarly they play. After all, the Pok\u00e9mon game I played in college wasn’t that different from the Pok\u00e9mon game I played in elementary school. However, in the Nintendo Switch era, as the series leapt from handheld devices onto a full-fledged handheld-console hybrid, something funny happened to the beloved monster-catching RPG: Pok\u00e9mon evolved at last.
Don’t start cheering yet; this evolution is still incomplete. The Pok\u00e9mon games released over the past few years contain some of the franchise\u2019s most ambitious highs and its most baffling lows. But over these modern entries, beleaguered developer Game Freak has shown that it at least knows what individual innovations are required to make the epic and immersive Pok\u00e9mon game I\u2019ve always dreamed of. The latest attempt, Pok\u00e9mon Legends: Z-A, even managed to sneak its way onto my top 10 games of the year list, flaws and all. With the tenth generation presumably coming to Nintendo Switch 2, no doubt to celebrate Pok\u00e9mon’s 30th anniversary in 2026, the time has come to finally bring all those innovations together.The First Glimpse of a Bigger World
Ironically, the first Pok\u00e9mon game on Switch was also its most modest. Pok\u00e9mon: Let\u2019s Go Pikachu and Eevee were pleasant enough remakes of the original Kanto-era Pok\u00e9mon titles that had already been remade before, now with added connection to the wildly popular Pok\u00e9mon Go. In retrospect, their small scope allowed for some of the most polished visuals in a Pok\u00e9mon game. They were fun, but they didn\u2019t exactly promise a bold future.
But in 2019, that future started to peek through with Pok\u00e9mon Sword and Shield. Again, the bulk of the gameplay was very familiar, this time building off the style of the previous generation Pok\u00e9mon Sun and Moon. However, one of its biggest changes (besides the Pok\u00e9mon themselves growing to kaiju size) provided a tantalizing tease of how these games could level up. Between gym battles, Sword and Shield let you explore the Wild Area, a little open world full of creatures both cute and dangerous for you to freely encounter. Although the game was still rooted in handheld design, here was a Pok\u00e9mon experience that truly belonged on a console. For the first time, you could even move the camera.
Unfortunately, the Wild Area was riddled with issues. It felt like the game was only tepidly committed to this experimental proof of concept. The performance was bad, with pop-in and primitive textures. It seemed empty, unfinished, and cheap. But I still got excited realizing that Game Freak saw the vision for what Pok\u00e9mon needed to become, even if this attempt was underbaked. It was a crude version of the ultimate Pok\u00e9mon fantasy: just you as a trainer out in the untamed wilderness, dealing with monsters however you choose. The game\u2019s DLC doubled down on this even further, introducing new campaigns that took place entirely within new Wild Areas, and I remember them far more fondly than the straightforward main game.
With this promise, it finally seemed like the dream of a blockbuster, uncompromised open-world Pok\u00e9mon title would finally come true. We just had to be patient. However, while we have gotten closer, we still aren\u2019t there, and my patience is wearing thin.The Open World That Buckled Under Its Own Weight
On paper, Pok\u00e9mon Scarlet and Violet were this bold leap into the future. Released in 2022, the next mainline Pok\u00e9mon titles didn\u2019t inch toward freedom but embraced it wholeheartedly as true expansive open-world games. You could go anywhere, catch any Pok\u00e9mon, and complete challenges in any order you liked. Although battles themselves were still rigid, turn-based affairs, now they happened right in front of you, like you actually existed in the Pok\u00e9mon world. It sounded like the dream.
Then we faced reality. Although the Nintendo Switch isn\u2019t the most powerful system in the world, Scarlet and Violet\u2019s dated visuals and uneven technical performance did not stack up against other open-world titles on the system, like The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Even when a free Switch 2 upgrade significantly boosted stability, for me there was still something unappealing about the art style in this vaguely Spain-inspired Paldea region. As for the gameplay, the open-world format was a novel way to approach familiar Pok\u00e9mon tasks, such as tackling gym leaders, battling evil teams, and hunting legendary beasts. But the map itself was bland and generic, just like countless other examples of the genre. Millions of players still found tons of fun in Paldea despite these issues. Even I admired the ambition; it got us closer to the dream. However, we still weren\u2019t there.
Scarlet and Violet’s failings were especially frustrating because earlier that same year, Game Freak released a different Pok\u00e9mon game that arguably did even more to push us closer to the ideal experience. Pok\u00e9mon Legends: Arceus leveraged its status as a pseudo spin-off to reinvigorate the Pok\u00e9mon RPG, incorporating action mechanics and enhanced exploration. It wasn\u2019t a true open-world game. Building off of Sword and Shield\u2019s Wild Areas, Arceus\u2019s open zones were closer to arenas in a Monster Hunter game. But it was full of distinct large biomes ripe for adventure.
Meanwhile, Arceus made significant strides in reinventing Pok\u00e9mon gameplay systems for the better. To catch creatures, you sneak up on them, manually aim and toss your Pok\u00e9 Ball, and dodge out of the way before they attack you. This more hands-on, primal gameplay paired well with a story set in the ancient past, when people feared these strange, wild beasts. I loved the mechanics, and seeing them removed in Scarlet and Violet in exchange for more traditional systems also made those titles feel like a step back. Arceus\u2019 foundation was incredible; the only thing holding it back was a disappointing lack of content compared with a mainline release.So Close to Greatness It Hurts
Finally, that brings us to the latest title, Pok\u00e9mon Legends: Z-A, the best French-themed and bizarrely subtitled 2025 RPG since Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I agree with many points in our review. While the single, large, open-world city is a cool, almost Yakuza-esque idea, it\u2019s too visually repetitive. The game desperately needs some surrounding wilderness or bigger sewer systems to explore. The Nintendo Switch 2’s performance bump is nice, but it still has a low-budget feel, with stiff cutscenes and no voice acting. There\u2019s more to do than in Arceus, with a more robust story, but it doesn\u2019t feel like it got the full attention of a mainline game. We still aren\u2019t there yet.
But we\u2019re so close. Surrounding issues aside, Z-A\u2019s gameplay is the best Pok\u00e9mon has ever been, thanks to even more dramatic changes to the formula. It retains Arceus\u2019 excellent catching mechanics, making the hunt for new monsters tense and tactical. But it also ditches the slow, turn-based, abstract battle system for exhilarating real-time battles. Similar to a game like Xenoblade (or Palworld), you actively issue commands that operate on cooldowns, and consider your surroundings when making decisions. Now, factors like distance and timing matter as much as elemental effectiveness. Snipe your opponent with a flamethrower and fly into the sky to avoid their counterattack.
All these systems combined made my time with Legends Z-A the most \u201creal\u201d a Pok\u00e9mon game has ever felt to me, like I was actually a Pok\u00e9mon trainer doing these things straight out of the anime, not just playing a video game. Running on Paris rooftops, regrouping at my fancy yet welcoming hotel at night, and watching as the tournament overtook the city reminded me of my time at the Paris Olympics in 2024. Although Z-A isn\u2019t as exploratory as Arceus, it has Wild Zones in the form of city blocks that have been sectioned off as wild Pok\u00e9mon habitats, much to the chagrin of some inhabitants. It\u2019s a cool examination of the industrial and natural worlds colliding, almost like a Miyazaki movie. Despite itself, Pok\u00e9mon Legends: Z-A is one of my favorite games of the year. It just can, and should, be better.
„All these systems combined made my time with Legends: Z-A the most \u201creal\u201d a Pok\u00e9mon game has ever felt to me, like I was actually a Pok\u00e9mon trainer“The Pok\u00e9mon Game We\u2019ve Been Training For
Evolution is a fun thing to observe in video games. The recent Mortal Kombat: Legacy Kollection shows the humble origins of the eventual fighting game juggernaut. Playing Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted made it even stranger to realize that this mobile tower defense game eventually evolved into a class-based shooter. Even indie hit Ball x Pit updates classic Breakout gameplay with new-school roguelike mechanics. Hardware evolves, too. Valve\u2019s hardware failures led to the Steam Deck, which created a new handheld gaming PC category. We can all change for the better, including Pok\u00e9mon.
So what do I want exactly\u2014what is my dream Pok\u00e9mon game? I want an open-world action-RPG with Z-A\u2019s catching and battling mechanics, Arceus\u2019 sense of exploration, the full scope of a mainline game, and the presentation and graphical quality befitting a PS4-tier device like the Nintendo Switch 2. It\u2019s not too much to ask for a team that has already pulled off many of these ideas. I\u2019m not a competitive player, and many of them would probably balk at such a drastic change to the core formula, but the upcoming Pok\u00e9mon Champions should placate them. We can\u2019t let that concern, or other silly controversies like only several hundred monsters making the cut instead of the full thousand, hold us back from the dream.
Pok\u00e9mon is improving; its design is getting bigger and bolder within its breakneck production schedule. Pok\u00e9mon Legends: Z-A has my favorite Pok\u00e9mon gameplay to date. But I have to qualify that praise with so many asterisks, something I\u2019ve done for years with this series. Pok\u00e9mon is a huge financial success. It can be an unqualified critical success, too. If we can catch \u2018em all, Pok\u00e9mon can do it all.<\/p>\n