For legends: ZA’s battle system, I have recashed the Pokémon part of my brain

Even if you have never played a Pokémon Before, you can probably understand how the type graphic works. The types of shots are low for water types, water is low for grass and grass is low for fire. Type matches are fundamental Pokémon Battles, far before entering the weeds of statistics and strats. I had the Pokémon Table for approximately 25 years.

That hasn’t still prevented me from making a recruit error in Pokémon Legends: ZA. I panicked and sent my weekend against the Pidgeotto of an NPC, to which it is very low. He became a single blow, of course.

It’s not that I forget How type matches worked. But the battle system in Legends: ZA is very, very different from what I am used to, at least with Pokémon. This is the second entry of Legends spin-off series, which started with 2022 Pokémon Legends: Arceusand while the Legends Games are always RPGs like the main Pokémon games, they diverge mechanically and structurally Pokémon formula. And For take further than Arceus done: this is the first Pokémon RPG to present real -time battles instead of those around.

In the main series, you choose your actions in turn, taking the time to think about the options – the right attack to use, whether for another Pokémon, which the opponent could plan – before locking something and seeing how it goes. In Legends: ZAOn the other hand, you face your opponent more directly. There is no expectation that the two opponents lock their actions for the Tour; You simply choose the movement of your Pokémon using one of the pimples of the face, and the movement comes out.

It is a big departure of almost 30 years of Pokémon games. I used to think of Pokémon Like a chess match, slowly and several stages in advance; In ForI had to think of the same matches and statistics of the type and everything else, but quickly and on my feet. It took me a while to adapt.

The demo, which I played before the Pokémon 2025 world championships in Anaheim, California, was divided into two parts lasting about 10 minutes each, both apparently at the start of the game and strongly focused on the new battle system. In the first part, I tried myself at the Royal ZA, which made me fight against the coaches of the NPC around Lumiose City at night. In the second, I fought against a mega-absolu thug, which looked like Pokémon Version of a classic 3D Zelda chief. In the second part of the demo, I began to understand this style of struggle, and what was first a little crushing has quickly become an attractive challenge: to reclaim the Pokémon Part of my brain.

The first big change I had to face: since the battle For is in real time, the movements are in the timer of recharging time. You cannot simply spam the only super effective movement that you have again and again; You must understand what you can do else while you are waiting to use this attack again. Even against opponents of very low level, I found myself counting on status movements like Growl, which reduces the attack statistics of opposing Pokémon, as a buffer while my other movements were in recharge. It had the additional bonus to allow my Pokémon to take more sure, to buy time both for the time of recharge and to think.

Use state movements like this is not unusual when you play the heart Pokémon games at a high level, but it is very Unusual against an ordinary Bellsprout at the start of the match. I did not have enough time in the demo to really play with it, but I can see myself by carefully selecting the movements of each Pokémon to take into account the recharge time, as I am protected that I protected more from my Pokémon to block the incoming attacks. In others Pokémon Games, I would absolutely teach my Pokémon Protect if I built a competitive team, but I would almost never do it just to play the main story.

It’s not just battles Legends: ZA are ruthless. (I was smoked by PIDGEOTTO, but for my defense, it was also at least 10 levels more than my team’s Pokémon.) But after years and years to approach each main line Pokémon Game in the same way, operating at least a little on automatic memory and muscle memory in the start of the game, it’s a kind of exciting challenge to have to look at Pokémon differently.

The battle against Rogue Mega Absolute – a wild and unleashed absolute that can evolve alone – was similar to the battles of the NPC in this way, but much more practical. Unlike the battles against other coaches, wild Pokémon can damage both your Pokémon and your character, you must therefore dodge physically and move to the arena while selecting the movements of your Pokémon, keeping an eye on the health of all and juggling with chronometers. (The use of articles like potions is also over a recharging time.) Landage successes on the Snape Mega drops orbs from “Mega Energy”, which you must execute and collect in order to recharge a gauge in Mega evolve your own Pokémon and do more damage.

It is even more to balance, but I did not find it overwhelming, in one way or another. In this case, I had a Lucario at my disposal, and he had super efficient movements while resisting Absal attacks, which helped. Lucario already knew that Protect too, so I was able to take advantage of the strategy I had just developed in the Royal ZA. And it is also a familiar style of Boss battle in games more generally, even if it is different for Pokémon. He was more involved and felt more dangerous than the battles of the coaches, but I felt competent relatively quickly (especially in relation to the Pidgeotto incident).

It may just be a typical learning curve, and I will quickly develop a type of automatic pilot updated for the easiest parts of For. But I really liked having to think actively Pokémon In a way that I usually save for a competitive game. I hope that the game can maintain it longer than a demo, and that I will rely on the Pokémon The knowledge that I had been having for years, rather than flexing it passively.

_{Pokémon Legends: ZA will be published for Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 on October 16.}