Hands-On: Pokémon Legends Z-A proves Legends is still Pokemon’s most exciting series

After the success of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, fans were hopeful that the Legends series would stick around, offering more adventures across the Pokémon world outside of the normal games.

Few, however, expected the next entry to head back to Kalos, the setting of Pokémon‘s 3DS debut Pokémon X and Y.

While Legends Z-A will take place exclusively within the confines of Lumiose City, a new battle system and the reintroduction of Mega Evolved Pokémon makes Z-A far more than a re-skinned Legends: Arceus.

This week at the Pokémon World Championships in Anaheim, California, we got the chance to take part in the very first hands-on demo for the game.

This demo will be available to play at the Pokémon World Championships this weekend, and again at Gamescom next week.

The first portion of our demo saw us taking on the Z-A Royale. The Z-A Royale is a ranking system of trainers in Lumiose City, with each successful battle contributing to an increase in your Z-A rank.

In the section we played, which was from early in the game, we took on a series of battles using the game’s real-time combat system.

Turn-based combat is gone in Legends Z-A, instead replaced with an active system which sees you running around alongside your Pokémon, giving them instructions via the face buttons, and locking on to your opponent’s Pokémon with the trigger.

To dodge attacks, you can order your Pokémon to physically move out of the way. You can get an advantage in battle by sneaking up behind an enemy trainer. It’s the biggest gameplay departure for the series ever.

Levels, typing, and move-sets are all still major factors, but the added dimension of both player and Pokémon movement makes for much more interesting encounters.

Taking on a much higher-level Pokémon is a different prospect with those new techniques at your disposal. However, as we saw when we encountered a Pigeotto ten levels higher than we were, raw power still counts for a lot.

The second portion of our demo saw us taking on a Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon. We were led to this battle by Zygarde 10% form, a Pokémon which will seemingly take a large focus in the story. This will hopefully make up for Zygarde’s muted debut back in 2013.

This battle, this time against a Mega Absol, is another huge departure. While somewhat similar to the raids of the recent main series games, the thing that sets this Rogue Mega battle apart is the speed of the Mega Pokémon and the damage it can dish out.

As the battle began, we were joined by a Lucario, as players are required to have a Pokémon on their team that’s equipped to Mega Evolve to take part.

As Lucario did damage to the Mega Absol, balls of Mega energy were emitted from the Pokémon. The trainer then has to run over to the energy balls and collect them, which will in turn charge Lucario’s Mega meter. Once full, Lucario can Mega Evolve and do serious damage.

The challenge here is that both the player and the player’s Pokémon can take damage, and the Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon deal a lot of it. The player character has a few movement options like a roll to evade, but if you’re not on top of what both you and your Pokémon are doing, it’s easy to imagine repeated failure.

After the battle, Absol joined our team, and our demo ended. As with Legends: Arceus, our excitement around Z-A comes from how much potential it has to see the series take massive risks.

Arceus was a game that brought back so many fans, specifically because it departed from the main series formula, and Z-A is an even bigger departure.

It will take much more time with the new battle system to get to grips with the new way of taking down Trainers, but we’re thoroughly sold on Rogue Mega Pokémon battles already.