2025 Preview: Could Pokémon Legends Z-A be Nintendo Switch 2’s first major system seller?
Can Game Freak’s Pokémon Legends follow-up be the second coming of Arceus?
Pokémon Legends: Arceus was a major departure for the world-renowned franchise. The 2022 Nintendo Switch title shed the static gym challenge formula to focus on more meaningful interaction with the Pokémon world. It was a daring move that made the fastest-selling Pokémon title on the platform.
So what made it so special? And can Game Freak improve on the already grandiose shift from the series’ roots? Does it even need to? Almost a year after its announcement, we know virtually nothing about the sequel in Pokémon Legends Z-A. Now due in 2025, there’s room to speculate based on what the Legends moniker presumably means.
In Legends: Arceus, gone was the linear adventure where you’d fill a team, beat gyms, and challenge the region’s best trainers. Instead, it kept you close to home, joining a research team in a long-passed era of Sinnoh back when Jubilife City was just a small hamlet.
It brought the series’ legendary Gotta Catch Em’ All motto back into the core gameplay loop, added a greater degree of freedom likened to modern open-world adventure games, and brought a new element of strategy to battles that made for some tough decisions.
While radically different, it retained the franchise’s fundamental tales of exploration, friendship, and growth. You were sent to observe the creatures in their natural habitat while entwining yourself in rivalries and ancient mysteries, your actions playing a small part in forging the modern harmony between people and Pokémon we see in the main series titles.
With the promise of shining the spotlight on the past of a region already steeped in ancient history – including the grand introduction of time, space, and the universe itself – with Legends Arceus, you came for the story and stayed for the refreshing take on the established formula that brought the catching cornerstone of the early games back into the mix.
So far, it’s hard to imagine how Legends Z-A will play out. The reveal trailer showed nothing but the concept of improving the technologically impressive Lumiose City featured in Kalos from Pokémon X & Y. Gameplay was non-existant, which left us with more questions than it answered.
Reportedly set to occur entirely within said city, it’s a vast departure from the open plains of Pokémon Legends Arceus. And given we’ve never been known to catch wild creatures in an urban environment like that, the entire hook of the Pokemon Legends Z-A is, once again, the tales it could tell.
Our introduction to Kalos in Pokémon X & Y brought the revelation of an honest-to-god Pokemon war 3000 years ago that had humans conscript the creatures into a bloody campaign.
With the King’s beloved Pokémon Floette becoming collateral damage, he created a machine to bring it back to life, then used it again to end the fighting. Now a dishevelled, solemn, immortal giant struggling to atone for his sins, the players helped the man, known as AZ, find peace.
“Given we’ve never been known to catch wild creatures in an urban environment, the entire hook of the Pokemon Legends Z-A is, once again, the tales it could tell”
There’s hope that Legends Z-A will do for Kalos what Legends Arceus did for Sinnoh and Hisui, and even though there’s no confirmation AZ will appear at all, you’ve got to admit the reversed name in the game’s title hints as such.
The core is more likely to be the continuation of the Zygarde story cut short when the assumed third version, Pokémon Z, failed to materialise, but we hope there’s room for both.
We’re not expecting to fight in the ancient war. That would be crazy. But in playing a part in the region’s rejuvenation, there’s a genuine reason to believe the consoled apparent ancient king could return to share his story in full. After all, Legends Arceus was no stranger to introducing descendants of people we met in the present-day titles.
With Pokémon Day 2025 the most likely time it’ll resurface, could Z-A be the Nintendo Switch successor’s first major system seller? Roll on February 27, where we’ll hopefully find out.
