Have you ever watched the Pokemon anime and thought to yourself, “Oh man, I really want a Pokemon game where I can battle just like the characters in the anime”? Well, look no further than Pokemon Legends: Z-A.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A is the latest installment of the Pokemon franchise, coming after the only other Legends game: 2022’s Pokemon Legends: Arceus. However, where Z-A shines is in battles. Unlike the turn-based battles of old, Legends: Z-A focuses on more of an RTS (Real Time Strategy) battle system, which requires you to think faster to avoid attacks and return fire.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A returns to and expands upon the ideas in Pokemon X and Pokemon Y, bringing us back to Kalos, a fictional location based on Paris, more specifically (and only) Lumiose City. This also brings back a fan favorite gimmick, Mega Evolution, which gives bad Pokemon a chance in the limelight,  giving them stronger abilities. This gimmick pushes Pokemon past their natural limits. This is usually only for final evolutions; however, there is one exception to this rule, but we will talk about that later in the article.

A quick summary: The game starts with you designing your character and picking your gender, which determines your “rival.” Your character is then shown on a train arriving in Kalos. Once we get off and leave the station, we step into the giant city of Lumiose and, more importantly, meet our rival: Taunie for the guys and Urbain for the girls. Then our rival asks us to help them film an ad for “Hotel Z” before being swiftly interrupted by an announcement from the president of Quasartico, Jett, who tells us about Pokemon.

After the announcement, the first main mission starts. Your bag has been stolen by a Pokemon, and it’s off to the races as you pick your starter, join Team MZ, and work with Quasartico to quell rogue Mega Pokemon and climb the ranks of the Z-A Royale to become the most powerful Mega Evolution trainer.

With the summary out of the way, here are some of my opinions on the game:

Firstly, the elephant in the room is the real-time battles, which are really fun. Some are difficult and some are easy. The battles can be a nice balance of challenge in the early game; however, towards the end of the game, most, if not all, of these battles can become trivial. Thankfully, this makes battles faster and less annoying. 

The main issue that I have with the game is the add-on costs. You MUST pay $20 dollars for a Nintendo Online Subscription to 100% the game, as the Pokedex requires trade evolutions to finish. Legends: Arceus also had trade evolutions but they handled it much more efficiently as you only had to give them a linking cord item and they evolved; no subscription required.

Let’s talk about the new Mega Evolutions–more specifically, the rule breaking Mega Evolution: Mega Floette (flow-ett). Floette is a second evolution in a three-stage evolution line, so within the rules set, it should not have a mega evolution. But this Floette is special, as it cannot evolve due to its “Eternal Flower,” which it got after being revived by the character “AZ” 3,000 years ago.

But the rest of the new mega’s are great, except for a few, like Starmie, who looks like Patrick Star in fishnet tights. But the rest are amazing, like Mega Emboar, who looks like a fire crested emperor, or Mega Chandelure, who looks like a haunted, jeweled, ballroom chandelier.

If you’re a fan of real-time strategy, I think Pokemon Legends: Z-A is worth $60.