Happy Pokemon Day! During today's presentation, Nintendo and Game Freak showed us more details about the upcoming Legends Z-A game. There's quite a bit of new information, while a lot of details still remain unknown. Like the release date, which so far is a nebulous "late 2025". But enough chit-chat, let's take a look at some of the upcoming features of the game.

Starters

Let's start with the starters. You'll begin your Pokemon adventure with one of Chikorita, Totodile, or Tepig. Keen eyes will notice that the first two options are from the same region, Johto, which is a departure from the first Legends game, where all 3 starters were from different regions. Guess this means that the starter rule for Legends games is simply that they weren't from the original region.


No offense to Chikorita, but having Turtwig here would've given us an all-T starter set

We don't know yet is if these 3 will get new final evolutions, like it was the case with Legends: Arceus. What's all but guaranteed is that all of them will get Mega Evolutions, which is returning for this game, as was expected. We'll just have to wait and see if Game Freak considers giving each of them both a new form and a Mega, and if that Mega will be of the new form or the original.

Combat

Legends Z-A continues the series trend of having a very distinct combat system from the main titles. In this case, you can finally pretend to be an anime protagonist and dodge incoming attacks from enemies. The combat overall seems to be more akin to action games rather than turn-based.


Vivillion used dodge. It's super effective.

Another new addition seems to be the ability to catch Pokemon that have fainted, or are about to. In the reveal trailer, the player seems to completely deplete the health of a Mareep before catching it. We'll have to wait for more details on how exactly this mechanic works, but this could be a very big departure from standard Pokemon gameplay.

World

The game takes place entirely inside Lumiose City in the Kalos region. Unlike Arceus, Z-A looks to be taking place in the future, advancing the story of the setting's original games (X and Y) and showing what the lives of some of the characters from those games are like now.


A Bunnelby's natural habbitat: the Mini Cooper

The city will have several Wild Zones for you to find and catch Pokemon in. This is justified in-universe by the city undergoing a redevelopment program. There's also hints that not everything is as it seems in the city, so we're bound to find out more as we explore Lumiose.

Are you excited for Pokemon Legends Z-A? What do you hope are some features that will be added to the game? Let us know in the comments below!