My greatest fear for Pokemon Legends: Z-A was that it would repeat my experience of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. After more than 20 years as a Pokemon fan, I bounced off the Gen 9 games almost immediately thanks to their incessant hand-holding. That had been a problem in previous games, but Paldea's schoolhouse framing meant it was too much for me to even reach the first gym. Legends Z-A does offer a slight improvement, but it's confirmed my biggest gripe with the series: it's long-past time for Pokemon to let you skip its tutorials.
The over-abundance of tutorials in Pokemon games has been a major talking point for many years. Sun & Moon remain notorious within the community, but Legends: Arceus and Scarlet & Violet have all been in the firing line. By all accounts, Legends: Z-A's tutorials are on the short side, but it'll still take almost 90 minutes before you're free to explore Lumiose City unimpeded by hints from friendly NPCs.
The series' most ardent defenders tend to have a standard response to complaints: inexperience. The Pokemon series is for all ages, and because that means any game might be someone's first, it's entirely appropriate for each game to have its own tutorial. The issue, however, is that each game assumes it's everyone's first, and as a result mandates that every player must go through the same learning curve - even if you've been playing Pokemon since Red & Blue.
I've been the very best
After the best part of 25 years, I know my way around a Pokemon battle. I've got less experience with the open-world format of the Legends series, or with the parkour system that Z-A introduces, so I'm happy to have those ideas explained in mandatory tutorials. I'm even content to be guided through battles again this time around, because the real-time component is a significant shift compared to what I'm used to. But beyond that, I know the principles of catching wild Pokemon. I know that being spotted by an NPC or walking in the long grass is likely to result in a fight. Having played both X&Y and Alpha Sapphire, I even know how Mega Evolution works, and at this point I would trade in my starter Pokemon for the ability to skip the tutorials that explain these things for the 18th time.
Part of what makes this hand-holding so frustrating is that I remember a time when it wasn't there. The idea that hyper-tutorialization is necessary because Pokemon is a children's series doesn't ring true, because the guidance handed out through early generations - when these ideas remained in their relative infancy - rarely amounted to more than a single NPC interaction. And this is when the games were far harder than they are now, an era of single-use TMs, labyrinthine dungeons shrouded in darkness, no always-on EXP share, and rivals who were both unpleasant to you and picked the starter that countered yours. I beat the old games multiple times as a child, and now that my frontal lobe is fully developed and the new games are dramatically easier, the tutorials feel patronizing.
Perhaps, however, I'd be willing to accept these tutorials – if they actually felt comprehensive. Pokemon is not a difficult series, but it is a complex one for those players who want to invest in its systems. Yet EVs, natures, and abilities are never explained, despite many of them having substantial impact on gameplay. There's not even a dedicated explanation of type matchups, and that's to say nothing of how much of the series is built around a competitive format that most players will never even touch.The extent of its tutorials is indicative of the way that Game Freak is cultivating its experiences to an audience of children. Its hand-holding is baked so firmly into the Pokemon formula now that every central aspect of the game, from combat to narrative, is shaped by it. But it seems to have forgotten that the children it originally catered to – who played far harder games, stumbling through Mount Moon in the dark or learning Braille to unlock the endgame – are now in their 30s, and are crying out for age-appropriate experiences.
Nintendo staunchly refuses to include even a Nuzlocke mode, but meanwhile its most hardcore fans are cooking up wild challenge runs or creating ROMs so difficult that they can take thousands of attempts to complete. With the Gen 10 games almost certain to take us back to the traditional turn-based formula that will have defined the series for three decades, I don't imagine that Game Freak will be set to make a change as sweeping as optional modes or even adjustable difficulty. But I do hope that somewhere at the beginning of the game is an NPC who asks me whether I actually need them to walk me through what a Pokeball is or not.
You might not really need them either, but here's our list of Pokemon Legends: Z-A tips.
