Pokemon Legends: Z-A has an on-screen day night cycle timer and people are beating the game without ever knowing it's there

Pokemon Legends: Z-A has an on-screen day-night cycle indicator that a lot of players are only just now finding out about after spending hours with the game.

Without naming them specifically, I'll go ahead and throw one of my anonymous editors under the bus and share the fact that they've played this game for 45 hours without knowing there's an on-screen timer that shows you exactly when the game transitions from day to night, and vice versa. To be fair, I don't feel too guilty putting them on blast, because it seems like this subtle, but incredibly useful, UI feature has managed to fly under the radar for most people.

Numerous do-gooders in various Pokemon online communities have posted PSAs about this on-screen timer, and almost every response is a variation of "TIL," suggesting my esteemed editor is far from alone in just now finding out about this.

As shown in the post just above, there's a ring around the in-game map icon indicating how much time is left in a given day night cycle. When it's nighttime, the ring has a subtle red glow, and in the day, it's blue.

This might not seem like a big deal at first, but it is. It really is. Reason being, the transition into day and night interrupts your gameplay and can even despawn Pokemon that you're actively battling and trying to catch, so knowing exactly when that's going to happen is crucial to making sure that alpha you're fighting doesn't escape. Turns out, Game Freak knew this, but perhaps didn't make it as obvious to players as it should've.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A might have overhauled combat even more than I thought, with an entire set of strategies sacrificed on the real-time altar