Finishing the Pokédex with new Pokémon in Legends: Arceus feels bad

From day one, the Pokémon franchise has centered around one mission: “Gotta catch ’em all!” The “’em” in that command meaning the adorable or frightening monsters that populate the world alongside humans. For trainers interested in adding to their collections, catching all the Pokémon takes drive and patience. There are now hundreds of Pokémon that can only be obtained by grinding through turn-based battles, trading, or finding special items for evolution. The latest entry in the game series, the Nintendo Switch’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus, changes the monster-catching formula dramatically, in ways that make catching Pokémon easier than ever in a mainline game. There’s just one drawback: I feel terrible doing it as I invade a once-peaceful landscape.

In previous mainline games, like Brilliant Diamond AndShining Pearl, players have to run through the grass (or other special environments) to initiate turn-based battles against wild Pokémon. To enter, you must be able to run through the grass (or other special environments) in order to initiate turn-based battles against wild Pokemon. Legends: Arceus, you can walk up to a Pokémon in the overworld and chuck a Poké Ball at them directly, as if playing a third-person shooter. If you want, you can still battle that Pokémon in a traditional turn-based battle, but it’s also possible to bypass the entire fight by surprising and catching a Pokémon on the spot.

Arceus makes the act of catching Pokémon incredibly quick and easy. The best part is that you can catch them all in one move. It’s a frictionless experience — if you’re focused, and the Pokémon are weak enough, you can catch dozens of them in an hour. Each time I throw one of the Poké Balls, my ears are rewarded with the satisfying crackle that signals a successful catch.

But as fun as it is to catch so many Pokémon so fast, it also feels bad to engage with the world in this way. Generally, my favorite parts of playing Pokémon involve bonding and nurturing my relationship with my Pokémon. I was very young when my first Pokemon were born. Arceus playthrough, I loved being able to take out my Pokémon and talk to them, but because I caught newer, stronger ones so quickly, I wound up cycling out my team at a rapid rate and not really developing a consistent party that I felt connected to as a player.

I’m the kind of player who gets attached to specific Pokémon easily and doesn’t ever bench my starter, because I get too sentimental. Now suddenly I’m creating the world’s first Pokédex, and I need to catch 25 Bidoof, which feels excessive. What’s more, each time I turn in my results to Professor Laventon, he pays me based on how many Pokémon I caught. These all add up and make monsters feel more like natural resources than ever. They are no different to the stones, leaves, or balls I catch.

In other games, wild battles are excused with the logic that wild Pokémon in the grass will jump up and attack you. There’s this idea that players are just defending ourselves as we walk from one town to the next — not that it fully justifies capturing these Pokémon and making them fight. However, in ArceusThe natural world is full of terrors, and humans are no different. At one point, I sneaked up to an adorable bunny Pokémon, a Buneary sitting on a grassy hill overlooking a river. I instinctually threw a ball and caught it, not even thinking about the fact that I’d caught three of them already, and maybe could afford to let this one enjoy its evening. The effort required to catch some Pokémon in Pokémon Legends: Arceus It is possible to do this without thinking.

I think this game is helping me better see the extractive elements that were in Pokémon all along. The good news is, with this game, you’re at least encouraged to release your Pokémon, since releasing them yields special rewards. So even if you farm Pokémon en masseIf you are able to verify the box with the child, it is possible for you to release the child into the wild. It is wrong for them to be taken from their home.