💭 It's not the BEST Pokemon game, but...it is?
It was my birthday recently, and as you know, I have a rule that I'm not allowed to buy any new games. But... if someone gives me a game, that's allowed. For my birthday, my brother got me Pokémon Legends Z-A. I don't know about you, but when I get a new game, I can't just let it sit on the shelf...I have to start it up immediately. So the moment I got back home from my trip, I booted up Legends Z-A. And I'm really enjoying it.
There's just something about Pokémon... I really like the idea of Pokémon, while also feeling like a lot of it doesn't respect my time enough. Especially the older games. They can feel too slow, too grindy. I like all the quality-of-life changes they've made over the years, things like Experience Share between the Pokémon in your party, because I just don't have the patience anymore to train up every single one. I love the UI of the recent games like Legends Z-A, Scarlet and Violet, and Legends Arceus too. They've made some really nice changes, making it easy to find information you need on your Pokémon. And Legends Z-A genuinely feels like, "oh, this is a cool game" while I'm playing it. Like the UI feels "grown up." Sometimes the game also reminds me a bit of Xenoblade 3 (another game I'm halfway through and really should finish 🫣), with all the sparkles on the floor that you just run over and pick up, and the real-time combat feels a little Xenoblade-y as well. I really like the way the combat works. It's making me play the game in a whole different way, considering status moves that I never really used before. I know this is all stuff you've probably read in reviews, and this post isn't really meant to be a review.
What I really like about Pokémon in general, especially with all the quality-of-life features, is that it lends itself so well to those short little moments. My brother and I talk about this all the time. We like having a cup of coffee, catching some Pokémon or battling some trainers, and that's it. You don't need to play for hours and hours. You can jump in, catch a few, train some up, battle a trainer, rank up, and it feels really nice. And I really like that as a busy mom. As someone who finds it very hard to find uninterrupted time, unless it's late at night when everyone's gone to bed, it's really nice to have something I can dip in and out of so easily, without feeling like I'm in the middle of a huge story beat.
I think that's actually what I'm looking for in games now: how easy is it for me to dip in and out without losing context. Without losing the story. Without forgetting how to play. You know when you put a game down for a while and come back to it, and you've completely forgotten the controls? It takes a little while before everything comes back. That happened to me with Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. I started playing when it first came out, and it wasn't until Tears of the Kingdom was announced that I actually went back to finish it. By then I'd completely forgotten the controls! I ended up starting a new save on a different profile just to play through the tutorial again, and once I'd done that, I went back to my main save file. I know I always bring it back to Dragon Quest XI, but one of my favorite features was that every time you loaded your save, it gave you a little summary of where you were in the story. Such a simple thing, but it meant I could leave the game for a week, or even longer, and come back without feeling lost.
Now, I know this isn't fully the game's fault. It's also a me problem. I jump between games more than I probably should. But maybe that's exactly why I'm starting to appreciate games that make coming back easy (and probably why I still haven't gone back to Hollow Knight even though I really really want to). Games that don't punish me for having a busy week. Games that don't expect me to remember everything. Maybe that's why Pokémon Legends Z-A is clicking with me right now. Not because it's the best Pokémon game. But because it fits the way I actually play games now.
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