Mary is incredibly skeptical about whether she will like the new Pokémon game. But after trying it out at gamescom 2025, she is now feeling hopeful.
Like many of you, I grew up with Pokémon. I played the Blue Edition before I could read (much to the chagrin of my mother, who had to read all the NPC dialogues to me), and to this day I like almost all Pokémon editions and generations.
Even the heavily criticized Crimson and Violet have something to offer, thanks to their exciting ideas. But I never warmed up to Pokémon Legends: Arceus. For me, the overall concept and the idea of catching umpteen identical Pokémon just didn’t work. Accordingly, I’ve been extremely skeptical since the announcement of the next Pokémon Legends installment. The fact that Pokémon is now moving away from its (and my beloved) turn-based combat system and introducing real-time battles didn’t sit well with me at first either.
So you can imagine that I went into my 45-minute demo session at gamescom with mixed feelings. But hey – I love Pokémon and wanted to give it a chance. And what can I say? It was worth it.
If it’s been a while since you last played a Pokémon game, let me quickly explain what you’ve been missing out on: The Legends series, now in its second installment with Z-A, differs significantly from the other games in terms of its story.
Instead of defeating gym leaders, in Archeus we had to advance research, and in Z-A we had to battle many other trainers to climb the ranks from the lowest (Z) to the highest (A).
All in all, the battles against the forest and meadow trainers I faced in the first part of the demo are a little more varied. However, the true strength of the real-time battles only becomes apparent in the duel with Mega Evolution Pokémon.
A little bit of Dark Souls
Mega Evolutions are not new. You’ve known them for several generations now, as they were introduced in Pokémon X and Y. Then as now, they are simply bigger, stronger, and tougher versions of normal Pokémon. However, while Mega Evolution battles used to mean longer and not particularly more exciting battles, that is now changing with Z-A.
Thanks to the real-time battle system, you now have to really pay attention to where you position yourself, when you use protective abilities, and which attacks the Mega Pokémon uses, so that you don’t suddenly get hit by some charged attack. Incidentally, this applies not only to your Pokémon, but also to you as a trainer.
Unlike in the Pokémon anime or games for a long time, Pokémon now attack you directly in battle, so you have to dodge various attacks by diving and rolling.
This means that the challenging Mega Evolution battles will occasionally make you break a sweat, because you have to multitask a lot between dodging, positioning, fighting, and collecting Mega Energy.
Since we don’t have any of our own material yet, we’ve included a video from our colleagues at IGN:
Collecting Mega Energy is important for evolving your Pokémon into its Mega Evolution form. When you attack your opponent, they will sometimes drop this energy in the form of orbs, which you must collect.
Once you have collected enough energy, you can temporarily evolve your Pokémon.
From then on, the energy bar will slowly run out until it reverts back. You can slow down this process by collecting more orbs.
All these actions and things you have to consider really add momentum to the battle, challenging even experienced Pokémon veterans.
What about the technology?
I know many of you want to know how well Pokémon Z-A ran and whether there was another performance disaster like Crimson and Purple. Unfortunately, I don’t have a final answer for you yet, because I only played in two very limited areas: a mini part of the city and a Mega Evolution battle.
What I can say, however, is that I didn’t experience any frame rate drops, clipping errors, or other technical issues in these areas. Everything ran smoothly on the developers’ Switch 2. The city of Lumiose also looks really pretty when you look into the distance. But if you look at the facades of the houses up close, they appear flat and lifeless.
In short: performance-wise, everything was fine, but graphically, you shouldn’t expect miracles or an infinitely detailed and realistic game world. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it will look like in the final version, which will be released on October 16. However, if all areas run as smoothly as the demo areas, the Crimson and Purple drama will not be repeated.
Editor’s conclusion
Unfortunately, I still don’t know whether Legends Z-A will force me to fill my boxes with the same Pokémon again, as the demo version focused on the battles. However, based solely on the revamped battle system, I’m really optimistic that Z-A will finally reconcile many fans.
The Mega Evolution battle was particularly enjoyable, and the removal of the AP system and the cooldown on abilities encourage me to fight using my entire repertoire rather than just spamming one attack.
What I found missing in the demo was a health bar for my trainer or some indication of whether I share HP with my Pokémon. This wasn’t apparent in the heat of battle. All in all, however, I’m much more positive after playing than I was before. But that’s also because the graphics, or rather the level of visual detail, play a minor role for me.