Pokémon Legends: Z-A

Pokémon Legends: Z-A launched in autumn 2025, continuing the experimental line Game Freak began with Legends: Arceus. This time, though, the destination isn't the wilderness but a city. The entire game takes place in Lumiose City, the metropolis from the Kalos region, which is undergoing a massive redevelopment and gradually creating green zones where Pokémon live right among the buildings. The city serves as a single connected map that changes as the story progresses, opening new districts and filling up with more residents and wild species.

The key change is real-time combat. Instead of taking turns, the player moves around the arena, dodges attacks, keeps track of each ability's cooldown, and makes decisions based on distance and direction, turning the classic type system into a much more active affair. Catching happens directly in the world without switching to a separate screen, so it blends smoothly with exploration. At night, the city turns into the Z-A Royale competition, where the player fights their way up a ladder against other trainers, and Mega Evolution returns, functioning in battle as a time-limited trump card.

The game launched in a version for the original Switch as well as a Switch 2 edition, which brings higher resolution and smoother performance — a significant help for a densely built city full of characters. Visually it goes for a clean, mildly stylized take on Lumiose with striking night scenes and street lighting, and the music is calmer and urban, with jazz elements that suit the backdrop of cafés and boulevards. Reception was more mixed than for most entries in the series: the combat system's boldness was praised, while criticism targeted the base version's technical side and the decision to confine the whole game to a single city. Today it's an interesting detour for the series, worth attention especially for players who already found turn-based battles a bit too static. For the series, it's also an important experiment in figuring out where the main Pokémon line might head in the years ahead.