Pokémon Legends: Arceus makes Pokémon mysterious again

Could a Pokémon really hurt you? I mean, some might look scary, sure, but they’re usually just fun friends, right? They’re designed to be cute, cuddly, marketable furballs with magical powers. Imagine if Pikachu, the adorable pet that captivated your grandmother so much she fell asleep? You might also get a Snorlax on the back of your car. Pokémon have always been potentially dangerous creatures, and modern humans seem to have forgotten about that. But Pokémon Legends: Arceus works hard to insert some of the mystery back into Pokémon.

Legends: ArceusThis has happened hundreds of times before Pokémon Diamond PearlBack in the time when Sinnoh used to be called Hisui. The era’s buildings and fashion clearly draw inspiration from feudal Japan, and there aren’t any modern conveniences to aid trainers’ lives. (That Pokédex you’re working on is just ink and paper this time around.) Jubilife Village’s community must come together in defense of itself and the city from all dangers to ensure its survival.

When you first talk to people in the city of Jubilife, many of them are afraid of Pokémon — It’s an era before man and ‘Mon learned to live in harmony with each other. I was approached by a woman to search for Starlys. She seemed terrified of me getting too close and wanted to be my first side quest. The woman was afraid she might get too close to the bird when I returned it.

After years of playing Pokémon games set in a modern world, it’s easy to look at these ancient villagers and see them as naïve. Every playable Pokémon character is a literal child, and they control giant dragons and legendary monsters without so much as a scratch — ignoring, of course, all those times Ash got shocked in the TV show; or that one time he got turned to stone (and shocked again).

Just a few hours later, however. Pokémon Legends: ArceusIt was then that I understood the terror. Not only are a roving pack of Bidoofs coming into town to make trouble — an early problem I had to solve — but the Pokémon out in the wild are happy to attack you, even when you don’t have a Pokémon at the ready.

More to the point: Pokémon will beat the shit out of you in Legends: Arceus. It’s a capture-or-get-killed world out there.

Image: Game Freak/Nintendo, The Pokémon Company

It’s easy to avoid damage and capture a Pokémon if you sneak up from the bushes or let them chow down on some berries you’ve thrown for them, but things can get messy if they spot you. If a Pokémon sees that you’re invading its space, it will get pissed and start to chase you down. You have three options: fight it, stun the Pokemon with items or run.

If you appease a rampaging Pokémon and just let it follow you, it’ll send a volley of different attacks your way. Are you looking for Razor Leaf Scald? All those moves that used to target your ally Pokémon are coming right at your player character now. Each time you get hit, the borders of the screen start to darken, and if you get hit too many times, the Pokémon will knock your ass out. You’ll wake up back at the nearest base and lose some of the items you were carrying.

Pokémon Legends: ArceusThis does a fantastic job at making small GameBoy JPEGs more dangerous. It tells you that Pokémon are worth fearing, and then it shows you just how dangerous they can be. But it also shows how the villagers learned to live alongside Pokémon. Instead of the Pokémon Professor just giving you a speech about how humans and Pokémon work in harmony, Legends: ArceusIt is evident in their actions.

A large part of your job is in Legends: Arceus is to help teach people to work with Pokémon. Sometimes it’s bringing a local night patroller a Zubat so they can inspect it, or bringing a guard a Wurmple so they have a friend to talk to in the lonely, early morning hours. The rest of the game was spent watching the patroller go about his business at night, along with my Zubat friend, and then I saw the Wurmple grow with his new owner. An impulsive Mr. Mime, whom I chased down from the village helps to keep the gate closed with its invisible walls. You get to witness the people around you accept Pokémon into their lives because of your actions. So the next time we get a modern Pokémon game, watching a human and monster work together will be far more meaningful.

Pokémon can be scary in Legends: ArceusI fear them, which has led me to think about them as monsters. On its own, that’s an interesting change in perspective for a series as old as Pokémon. But it’s the way Legends: ArceusThat is how its storytellers are so distinctive: they take fear and change it into respect.