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Pokemon Legends: Z-A was finally unveiled properly last month, and right on cue, it brought with it a new wave of discourse surrounding its visuals. Now, two former Nintendo marketing leads have weighed in, saying that the new RPG "doesn't look great," but at this point, it might be a case of what we see is what we get.
I, frankly, can't remember the last time a Pokemon game was released and someone didn't complain about what it looked like. Remember when some people thought Black and White's animated battle sprites looked bad? (They were so good, too.) Anyway, the tradition has returned with Legends: Z-A, and former Nintendo Minute hosts Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang (also Nintendo of America's former director of social media marketing and original content, and former senior manager of creator relations and original content, respectively) don't have high hopes about the RPG looking significantly better at launch.
In a new video on their YouTube channel, Ellis says he "was not really expecting a huge leap" in the visuals since the last installment, although he "obviously wanted it to run better than Scarlet and Violet," which were widely criticized for their performance issues. The two agree that they ultimately felt "very middle of the road" about the visuals – being neither blown away nor horribly disappointed, although both noted that the graphics ultimately weren't what they were focusing on when the new gameplay was first revealed.
Of course, we should keep in mind that the game isn't finished yet – it has a vague "late 2025" release window, and obviously the devs are going to remain hard at work on it until that day finally comes. Can we expect a huge visual overhaul, though? While Yang is "hopeful that maybe they can polish it a little more," Ellis isn't so optimistic, as he points out: "This is the company that has yet to fix Scarlet and Violet. So I think pretty much what we're seeing is mostly what we're going to get with maybe some small optimizations."
We know Pokemon Legends: Z-A is heading to the OG Switch, and at the time of writing, no word has been given on whether it could also be given a souped-up Switch 2 version of sorts. Speculating that developer Game Freak could be at the limits of what it can do without having "some complete overhaul of their of their engine or their tools or the foundation of how they make these games," Ellis adds: "With the Switch 2, one would hope they can go back to the drawing board and come up with something that's more detailed, [and] can better support more detailed types of games."
We'll just have to wait and see if that'll ever be the case – with Z-A specifically, Yang thinks it's "wishful thinking" to imagine a Switch 2 version of the game coming out. In fact, she thinks there'd only be "a very small chance" of the game being given a higher resolution on the Switch 2, speculating that it's something that "would not be at the top of [the devs'] list" to do.
In the meantime, be sure to check out our roundup of the best Pokemon games you can play right now.
