Everything we’ve seen from Pokemon Legends: Z-A looks great from a gameplay point of view. The more active battles look like a tremendous upgrade from older titles, giving us another big evolution for this series. However, something has to be said for the visuals, which try to mix up realism with anime characters, resulting in a messy hodgepodge of graphics.
If I'm being honest, the visuals of this series may have peaked with Pokemon Sword and Shield. While these games aren’t the most ambitious or unique, their graphics still look pretty good and are arguably nicer than what we’ve seen since. Maybe the game’s more linear nature allowed it to look better, but we kind of miss its visual style.
Style Over Substance
For the record, Pokemon Sword and Shield are solid games in their own right. The London-based setting is nice, and we got some pretty great music out of this game. Its gameplay is a bit basic when it comes to mainline Pokemon games, but that’s fine for the series’ debut on a new system.
Because the gameplay was basic, Game Freak was allowed to make the game look pretty darn good. Others have accused this title of looking like a 3DS game with a slight visual upgrade, but as someone who emulates those titles regularly, that couldn’t be further from the truth. This is easily the best-looking Pokemon game on Switch, though an argument for the Let’s Go games can be made, and we hope they can go back to this style in the future.
A Visual Sacrifice?
I’ve gone on and on about how Pokemon Scarlet and Violet are good games, even without the Switch 2 upgrade. Poor performance and visuals aside, the gameplay loop is good enough to keep me going. The same thing can be said for Legends: Arceus, which also came with an odd graphics style but had a really addictive gameplay loop.
click to enlargePokemon Sword and Shield look better than those titles, but is that the cost of more ambitious gameplay? Granted, all of these games are made with the original Switch in mind, even the upcoming Legends: Z-A, so the visual sacrifice might just be a mandatory step to success. It is a shame that none of these games look better than Sword and Shield, but they are more fun in their own way.
Will This Change with the Switch 2?
Now that the Switch 2 is out, it does make us wonder what the future of this franchise will look like. The ideal scenario seems to be an open world similar to Scarlet and Violet, with a prettier version of Sword and Shield’s visuals. Some of us would also like to see the series experiment with Square Enix’s 2D-HD style, though they might want to save them for remakes.
Hopefully, after the release of Legends: Z-A, we’ll see more games that look like Pokemon Sword and Shield in the future. It’s funny how fans complained about the visuals of these games when they came out, and now they yearn for this style to come back. Life is a circle, and we just keep going around it.
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