• Check out the relaunch of our general collection, with classic designs and new ones by our very own Pissog!

Pokémon Legends: Z-A General Discussion

I was surprised at the resolution to Taunie’s little sidestory. Just seemed kinda meh… and a generic motivation? Idk what I was expecting but it felt like a letdown. And it seemed to pretty much definitely say her mother died, once hearing that it was due to her mother I automatically expected her mother to become a factor in the DLC (perhaps as a faller?)

IIRC Taunie/Urbain said outright during the main story that their mother “passed,” well before the post-game scene.

As for the resolution itself, I feel like it works for what it’s trying to be, which is a little epilogue designed to write Urbaunie out so you can take AZ’s Floette off their hands while also reiterating the game’s theme about the little chance encounters that life throws at you.

but even then it doesn't explain where the hell the Floettite came from. Maybe they just did it like Zygarde and took a pebble off the street after reuniting lmao, but who knows now.

To be fair, it’s been implied since at least ORAS (if not XY itself) that Mega Stones seem to just form when certain rocks are doused in potent energies. Whether that’s energy from the ultimate weapon or the natural energy that permeates Hoenn, even an average, ordinary meteorite seemingly has the potential to become a Mega Stone, like the one that Rayquaza ends up munching on in the Delta Episode.

What’s never been particularly clear is how/why these random rocks happen to turn into items that correspond to very specific kinds of lifeforms… just Poké magic shit I guess. I’ll spare you all my Pokémon morphic field theory.
 
Is there any in lore explaination for Mega Skarmory being 10 kg lighter than standard Skarmory (50.5 kg/111.3 lbs for standard and 40.4 kg/89.1lbs for Mega)?
 
Can't say I care for these "large pokemon" quests and after the buizel stuff I was hoping they'd stop. Magikarp was a gimmie since there was a guaranteed alpha, but this Large Gogoat one's pretty jerkish. There's only 2 spots where they show up: the 2-3 Skiddo at Area 3 and the (singular, as far as I can tell?) Gogoat in Sector12. Every time things refresh I scope it out to see if larger ones (or alphas; i have their areas crowned) spawn, but that's not very many to check every refresh.

Not looking forward to the pumpkaboo quest for this, can't even use alphas there.




Also, having fought Corbeau
It's funny he had a Gyarados. I can understand why, it's a counter to ground types, but I figured he would have a steel type. Since it's Team Rust and all. But I guess that's exclusively handled by Phillipe. (do kind of wonder if maybe Mega Scolipede will get steelworker or steely spirit as an ability....)

Also guess a Lysandre reference. Honestly a character like this was really needed for Lysandre in XY.
There's a guaranteed Alpha Gogoat in Wild Zone 20.
Gold is probably lighter than whatever material standard Skarmory's feathers are made of
Nope, gold 2.5× heavier than iron.
 
I did some extremely light research and the metal that seemingly makes the most sense for normal Skarmory is tungsten if we go off of density. (Tungsten is commonly used for gold forgeries, funnily enough.) Tungsten carbide in particular is very durable but still less dense than gold, which is super dense. Maybe some alloys or other compounds I don't know about could be more dense? Unless Mega Skarmory is covered in a lightweight alloy that contains gold or just looks like it idk.

Alternatively, someone at Game Freak suffered a research failure and assumed gold was lightweight. (To be fair so did I before reading the previous posts.)
 
Last edited:
Is there any in lore explaination for Mega Skarmory being 10 kg lighter than standard Skarmory (50.5 kg/111.3 lbs for standard and 40.4 kg/89.1lbs for Mega)?

From Ruby Dex Entry

“Skarmory is entirely encased in hard, protective armor.“

Presumably it sheds this hard armor (which is likely quite heavy) when it Mega Evolves, which causes its speed to increase, defense to lower, and weight to decrease.
 
Been doing various hunting.
Fennekin I had to save scum a bit because it location is SO close to the ladder and it's real skiddish if you dont slow down enough (and dont clear out the altaria/noivern).
Froakie kept leaping away even when i was moving slowly and trying to move when it faced away, but thankfully it respawns fairly quickly. So I was able to just park in a near by bush, point at where it spawns and then just throw quick balls twice. Which...I mean I didn't have a stop watch out but it felt a lot sooner than 3 minutes, which is what I felt I heard before?

The hardest thing about Drampa was realizing I needed to look at the gazebo. I spent so many instances running around the area from all the aggrieved Kangaskhan & Furfrou because I thought maybe it would replace the Kangaskhan, when I could have just poked my head in & dipped lol.

The Pumpkaboo quest was very funny. I accepted it, benched to night and go in and immediately see two alpha pumpkaboos like c'mon. There was an alpha banette & alpha haunter too. It was a total mess clearing this all out. But thankfully by the time THAT was all done (& the Alpha Gourgeist!) a regular Jumbo pumpkaboo showed up. nice and easy if you ignore me running around firing flamethrowers and ultra balls while trying to not die.


Still not seen any Chespin, though. Just like the Gible I see this one will just need more frequent checks.
 
B Rank promotion stuff
Grisham blaming everything on AZ building the weapon to shove aside Lysandre's share of the blame (& thus team flare) is so funny. Really captures the sort of...well, issues with stanning someone.

The Lab sequence itself ws pretty neat. not a very complex dungeon, but pretty cute. Even caught one of the beldum! The Aegislash defense at the end was nice; you know kind of feels like Lysandre should have had one of those huh?
I liked that it bother to explain how Lysandre survived not because of the device but because of Zygarde. It was an interesting decision to have it intervene to actually save anything from the blast

Gotta say, with the vague themes of forgiveness and nto to hold grudges, I do wonder how much we're meant to sympathize with Grisham's whole "we too became pariahs in the eyes of society" spiel. Like you guys both tried to genocide large swaths of the population unless they could pay up the millions of pokedollars by firing a giant nuke that also leveled a town on its re-emergence.(A town no one seems to care to mention beyond the stone, by the way). I think as far as those things go this was wide scale with very harsh consequences if it worked, extremely public and very purposeful you're probably lucky you can run a food truck. Like just going down a list here:
-Gen 1 Team Rocket are basically just thugs with some minor terrorism that everyone just ignores. Like base level criminal treatment most likely. Gen 2 did have more forward acts of terrorism but it's still pretty softball stuff.
-Magma & Aqua were mostly the public going ???? at some environmentalists and their incredibly dumb attempts didn't garner much coverage and the BIG thing that went awry wasn't meant to end the world and also wasn't very public since everyone either wasnt underground, wasnt in the spooky cave and just saw the weather changing.
-BW1 Plasma's true intentions weren't on Public record and was mostly just N prostelitzing. There's push back but it's easy to see most Plasmas able to just return to normalcy if they didn't follow Brud.
-BW2 Plasma was more public (freezing chunks of Unova and all) but I feel "take over the region" is vague enough that it's hard to take seriously. The New Plasma leftovers are listless, but can probably discard their masks. Dose help they're all in facemasks.
-Skipping ahead nothing about Lusamine's madness was public, the majority of Aether is on the up & up and team skull aren't respected enough to be considered threats.
-Rose's stuff is more focused on him and clearly didn't do anything to his million companies. Oleana & her squad of like...what 10 people are doing labor.
-Team Star are just deliquents and the Professor's goals are kept heavily under wraps and also just their Own.

Anyway meanwhile here's Lysandre and his Team Flare getting on the holocaster to the entire region to say hey i'm going to nuke everyone because there's too many people, they're selfish and this is the only way to fix this. Hope you had 5 million dollars. I've tied up a bunch of Pokemon to stones to fuel the flower nuke that will scare the hell out of everyone when I fire it. Everyone's lucky to not have PTSD.

Meanwhile I do like Naveen being very blunt about how accountability matters to AZ.

Backing up a bit: I like that the PC can comment on both the stone in the back and the machinery next to it. You sure know a lot about how the stones work and can make a pithy comment on what kind of expensive machines Flare can use but know nothing about Lumiose proper, you dweeb.
By the way did you guys take a look at the whiteboards? I thought the menu sprites from gen 1 were a cute reference (& that's a cute helioptile)

20251026222121-01-K8-HP0-FHGJ7-R00-HVD9-WWMPRFM.jpg
 
B Rank promotion stuff
Grisham blaming everything on AZ building the weapon to shove aside Lysandre's share of the blame (& thus team flare) is so funny. Really captures the sort of...well, issues with stanning someone.

For what it’s worth, once she learns from you that Lysandre is down in the lab, Griselle does start to talk about how he is the one responsible for their situation. Grisham changes the subject to calm her down, but I think it’s good that the game itself isn’t saying that it was all AZ’s fault. I felt like it was generally pretty good about spreading the blame around. AZ is, after all, the guy who murdered millions in a fit of grief and created not one but two incredibly dangerous life-and-death machines, so I think Grisham is at least right to point out his part in all of it (especially since there’s not really anyone left to hold him personally accountable for 3,000 years ago — and for anyone playing this game without first having played XY, it works as a way to reveal the bad side of AZ to them), Mable is basically under house arrest, and Team Flare Nouveau are taking the brunt of the public’s ire for what happened 5 years ago, and like you said, are probably lucky to be running a couple of barely-above-water food trucks.

Gotta say, with the vague themes of forgiveness and nto to hold grudges, I do wonder how much we're meant to sympathize with Grisham's whole "we too became pariahs in the eyes of society" spiel. Like you guys both tried to genocide large swaths of the population unless they could pay up the millions of pokedollars by firing a giant nuke that also leveled a town on its re-emergence.

From the way they spoke about it, I’m not sure that the Flare Nouveau bunch were necessarily all-in on the ultimate weapon plan. To me, it sounded like they were brought into Team Flare back when it was less “genocide cult” and more “rich people cosplaying as visionary philanthropists to feel good about themselves.” That’s the version that I felt like Grisham is nostalgic for, anyway. Plus, they seem like they were recruited when they were rather young.
 
"hey I remember every name I've ever seen, want me to show it to you?"
"ok sure"
"it's gonna take six minutes to recite it all, are you ready?"
"uh ok, wonder what it's about"

It's the fucking credits scene

And of course it's unskippable

These fucking cheeky ass devs, I swear to god

Gotta say, with the vague themes of forgiveness and nto to hold grudges, I do wonder how much we're meant to sympathize with Grisham's whole "we too became pariahs in the eyes of society" spiel. Like you guys both tried to genocide large swaths of the population unless they could pay up the millions of pokedollars by firing a giant nuke that also leveled a town on its re-emergence.(A town no one seems to care to mention beyond the stone, by the way). I think as far as those things go this was wide scale with very harsh consequences if it worked, extremely public and very purposeful you're probably lucky you can run a food truck. Like just going down a list here:

I mean, it's relatively easy to sympathize with him because as far as I get it, he was a child by then. Ok fine it was five years ago and he seems to be an adult now so he was probably a 15yo - a child still, being groomed to be the next generation of leaders but still with no say at Lysandre's machinations. It's less of a clean Wehrmacht meme and more of a child of a cult getting shat on for the leader's kool-aid drinking.
 
Last edited:
FWIW, you can get the Kalos starters by completing the early game quests associated with them. Otherwise, catching Froakie is annoying as crap.
Catching Froakie became less annoying when it was mentioned you can just camp out below the pillar. Just sit in a bush, aim where it is and just glance at the screen every minute or so, then throw quick ball.
I mean, it's relatively easy to sympathize with him because as far as I get it, he was a child by then. Ok fine it was five years ago and he seems to be an adult now so he was probably a 15yo - a child still, being groomed to be the next generation of leaders but still with no say at Lysandre's machinations. It's less of a clean Wehrmacht meme and more of a child of a cult getting shat on for the leader's kool-aid drinking.
also as a little capstone to this & esserie's contributions
As a soft consideration I would put forth that "okay I didn't want to do the nuke-genocide plan, i was 15 and indoctornated, so!
I'm going to make Team Flare 2 to be better for real this time" is

perhaps

a really hard sell in the best of situations. At least call yourselves something like Team Oasis or something. You know, to like offer solace to those going through it.
 
It might be in the same boat as Murkrow who is another similarly annoying mon to catch in Arceus.

O I see. That kinda isn't the same boat in terms of viability, murkrow I think had it's day in the sun with pranks. Delibird just does nothing. But yeah, some odd stuff is hard to catch to be true.
 
While the catch mechanics lean towards easier over all catches, Delibird's is 45. It's probably the worst Pokemon in this catch rate, but you'd be surprised.
 
The Climax

I'll be honest I kind of hate that Taunie sets up the whole battle to determine Floette's mega evolver and then goes "no but it should be me tho".
Like there's two of us and Zygarde bonded with us so I'm not surprised one went to her and we got Zygarde. but it's just really...rubs me the wrong way. I think a far better way to handle this would be Floette choosing Taunie anyway. She's the one who has to mega evolve anyway and it would follow after out spiel towards Girsham abotu all this. Floette's known Taunie the longest and would have the best opportunity to see Taunie's resolve. Have Taunie lose but Floette know who her trainer should be. Taunie can soften the blow by saying this might work out better since Zygarde chose us.

Anyway
I love that Mega Floette's entry into the tower is just to ram into it lmao. And seeing it turn into a plant monster was really cool. I wonder if any of this might have been partially inspired by the anime's zygarde going out of control and sending roots all over the city? Well, I guess it's not exactly unique imagery if you want something to be environmentally themed.

I love that canari immediately calls out how Zygarde should be coming to us lmao. Like yeah of course it's testing us (as Ivor puts it) but SAME girl. I also like her calling out Tarragon just making a final osbtacle course.

Really the whole making it to Zygarde sequence was great, big sucker for everyone coming together. The frickin....human ladder... Pretty funny how obvious it was they did not want to anime specific edge cases for the different heights of Ivor, Tarragon & Lebanne fist bumps though. It really stands out when there's all the other unique-to-this-sequence animations here. Have to say though this sure would have been a great way to showcase Korrina (who should be here) and Clemont (WHO SHOULD BE HERE) with everyone else BUT ALAS. That's just craaaaazy talk! Running into wild megas was surprisingly intense, the music was great. It did all remind me how much I hate the targeting system in this game. It has never felt right. It always feels like the reticle is where I don't want it to be.

The zygarde transformation scene is really cool but also I dunno guys maybe you uh. Could have tried something to clean up some of those spot textures. Looking pretty blurry on these close ups.
The final battle was pretty neat and this feels like the biggest hurrah Zygarde itself had been waiting for since it was put in that cave with (Loved how we got to "control" Zygarde, too), though I wish the phases had just a bit more differentiation. Gardevoir rules the roost as usual. Zygarde's core enforcer has never looked so rad; it's a really common pose but honestly I couldnt stop thinking about Marshadow's z move.

There's a few things nagging at me, but I want to wait until finishing up the post game stuff first.

Pretty good game!





so hey clemont this was like your baby how do you feel about it turning into a plant monster and then into a nuke and then into a rusted out overgrown tower
 
Catching Froakie became less annoying when it was mentioned you can just camp out below the pillar. Just sit in a bush, aim where it is and just glance at the screen every minute or so, then throw quick ball.

also as a little capstone to this & esserie's contributions
As a soft consideration I would put forth that "okay I didn't want to do the nuke-genocide plan, i was 15 and indoctornated, so!
I'm going to make Team Flare 2 to be better for real this time" is

perhaps

a really hard sell in the best of situations. At least call yourselves something like Team Oasis or something. You know, to like offer solace to those going through it.
Absolutely, but I do not expect a 20yo cult child to know any better (at least he got the cooler Mega Charizard)

The Climax

I'll be honest I kind of hate that Taunie sets up the whole battle to determine Floette's mega evolver and then goes "no but it should be me tho".
Like there's two of us and Zygarde bonded with us so I'm not surprised one went to her and we got Zygarde. but it's just really...rubs me the wrong way. I think a far better way to handle this would be Floette choosing Taunie anyway. She's the one who has to mega evolve anyway and it would follow after out spiel towards Girsham abotu all this. Floette's known Taunie the longest and would have the best opportunity to see Taunie's resolve. Have Taunie lose but Floette know who her trainer should be. Taunie can soften the blow by saying this might work out better since Zygarde chose us.
I've had the same feeling, but couldn't quite put it in words. I guess Game Freak really just likes fumbling those special moments.

Anyway when does Mega Dimension drop, I want some more returning characters.
 
Catching Froakie became less annoying when it was mentioned you can just camp out below the pillar. Just sit in a bush, aim where it is and just glance at the screen every minute or so, then throw quick ball.

also as a little capstone to this & esserie's contributions
As a soft consideration I would put forth that "okay I didn't want to do the nuke-genocide plan, i was 15 and indoctornated, so!
I'm going to make Team Flare 2 to be better for real this time" is

perhaps

a really hard sell in the best of situations. At least call yourselves something like Team Oasis or something. You know, to like offer solace to those going through it.

Found moves such as Tbolt and Thunder very useful with Froakie. Ezpz.
 
Absolutely, but I do not expect a 20yo cult child to know any better (at least he got the cooler Mega Charizard)


I've had the same feeling, but couldn't quite put it in words. I guess Game Freak really just likes fumbling those special moments.

Anyway when does Mega Dimension drop, I want some more returning characters.

Feb 28th I believe.
 
I personally believe it'll be late November / December, usually I wouldn't suggest DLC would be out so close to the base game but I feel there's several things which kinda add up

- DLC was meant for September this year, so it's pretty much done and to keep them "on-track", they'd release it soon
- Capitalising on software and hardware sales for Q4/Holiday period
- There was a leak about Champions that got a few things correct that also said Jan 2026 is the release date, considering Worlds will mostly use Champions, this also lines up
- I imagine they'd want all of the new Megas out and ready to use in their big "Tera vs Megas" opening regulations, so if Jan 2026 is the release then Nov-Dec makes sense again

And this one I'm not so sure on, but Pokémon Day 2026 being a huge one that'll be used for Gen X launching means that they could want PLZA wrapped up entirely before then, but I also feel like they'd drip feed through some events for ZA going well into 2026 so who knows, but the rest I'm like.. 80% sure of.
 
Back
Top