The roster of new creatures inPokémon Legends: Z-Amay be bigger than you think, despite the inevitable comparison set with the previous entry of the type,Legends: Arceus. The next big installment in the series,Legends: Z-A, will be situated in an open-world version of Lumiose City in the Kalos region.Taking on a much more action-oriented approach, you will be able to control your Pokémon’s placement on the field during battles, which should remove the Evasiveness and Accuracy factors from play in what is one of the manychanges to battles inPokémon Legends: Z-A.
The game will also notably remove turns from battle, allowing players to continuously string attacks against opponent Pokémon based on the cooldowns of their active Pokémon’s moves.This will be a major change from the franchise’s formula, which has always been turn-based in the main series. Battles will sustain the most changes based on what we know so far, but there may even be achange to the world inPokémon Legends: Z-A. In addition to mechanics, the game will likely have new Pokémon, too, despite being set in a region we’ve already explored.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A Could Have Less Than 10 New Pokémon
Legends: Arceus Only Feature Seven New Species
While promotional material for the title has not yet revealed new Pokémon inLegends: Z-A, it’s hard to imagine a new core game without new additions. Even so,you should be a bit cautious so as not to put too much hope into a wide roster of new creatures. In total, there were sevennew species inPokémon Legends: Arceus, the previous installment of theLegendsseries. Two of these species had two forms each, taking the count up to nine, if you consider the alternative types.
A similar behavior could be adopted for the upcoming game, with not too many new creatures. One of the most notable features inLegends: Arceuswas a large number of regional variants. Comparatively, there are 17Hisuian forms inPokémon Legends: Arceus, something that could be replicated inLegends: Z-Awith Kalos or Lumiose forms for creatures that already exist. So far,promotional material for the game hasn’t teased regional variants, but they are likely to exist.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A Could Compensate For Few New Creatures With More Mega Evolutions & New Regional Forms
The Game Is Part Of Gen 9
In fact, in addition to new regional forms, I’m sure thatLegends: Z-Awill compensate for the speculated low number of new creatures (based on howLegends: Arceusbehaved) with more Mega Evolutions, too.Mega Evolutions will play a big part in the overall structure of the game, with them being core to the Kalos experience- the setting of the Gen 6 games, which originally introduced the mechanic. There have already been several confirmed returningMega Evolutions inPokémon Legends: Z-A.
This includes creatures like Mega Charizard, Mega Gardevoir, Mega Lucario, Mega Kangaskhan, and many others. While several Mega Evolutions are expected to make a comeback, there are also rumors about newMega Evolutions inPokémon Legends: Z-Athat haven’t been seen in the franchise yet, such as a potential Mega Dragalge, which has allegedly leaked. I’m sure that, even if there are only a few new Pokémon in the upcoming game, like there were inLegends: Arceus,this will be compensated for with an abundance of regional variants and Mega Evolutions that haven’t been introduced so far.
There is some speculation that there will even be hybrids that allow some regionalforms to Mega Evolve inPokémon Legends: Z-A.
The most likely scenario is that the next game will have very few new creatures like its predecessor, especially becauseit doesn’t represent an entirely new Generation of Pokémon, but is still part of Gen 9. As such, don’t expect the number of new creatures to go anywhere near the 114 new Pokémon inScarlet and Violet, for example.
Pokémon Legends: Z-A May Have More Than 10 New Pokémon Based On The Game’s Scale
Legends: Arceus Was An Experimental Title For Game Freak
While it’s very unlikely thatLegends: Z-Awill feature dozens of new creatures and will probably resort to new regional forms and Mega Evolutions to compensate for that, it is still quite possible that the game will have over seven new creatures, which was the case withLegends: Arceus.In many ways,Legends: Arceuswas a very experimental game within the classic franchise, offering the first glimpse into an open-world structure for exploration and approach to combat with wild Pokémon – though battles still remained turn-based.
The scale ofLegends: Z-Aseems to be much larger, and developer Game Freak seems to be taking bigger risks with the upcoming game, going so far as to modify the turn-based structure the series has been known for.Because of this, it wouldn’t surprise me if the game ended up being much larger thanLegends: Arceus, and in turn, having more new Pokémonfor Trainers to find while exploring Lumiose City.
Of course, for now, it’s hard to tell how many new Pokémon you can expect. Nintendo has been extremely secretive about its new creatures and even any new Mega Evolutions or regional forms, and this will likely be kept as a secret until the game’s official release, as the company’s main marketing focus is highlighting the return to Kalos and the new gameplay features. Even so, I’m holding onto hope that we’ll see a bit more new creatures inPokémon Legends: Z-Athan we did inLegends: Arceus.
