Pokémon Legends: Z-A General Discussion

[Yung Dramps]

I think Zarude currently has it worse. Its one and only anime appearance was in its own movie, which had zero to do with Galar besides the odd Gen 8 mon/form, and in the games, it was just a mystery gift distribution.

I can still mentally reconcile Zeraora as an Alola Pokemon even if it didn't do anything and was very much made for its movie first. There's enough ambiguity about its preferred environment and shared visual DNA with guys like Lycanroc and Tapu Koko. I cannot for the life of me picture Zarude ever living in Galar

 

[QuentinQuonce]

low-effort but it's been that sorta day



also where the fuck is Volcanion

 

[Esserise]

I cannot for the life of me picture Zarude ever living in Galar

Evidently, Zarude itself feels the same way. There is, in fact, a scientist NPC at the Armor Station who, if you show her a Zarude, says, “It’s a Pokémon you can’t find even in the entire Galar region, let alone on the Isle of Armor.”

Zeraora at least never got hardline ruled out of Alola like that even if only because USUM had literally nothing to say about at all it beyond its Dex entries

 

[QuentinQuonce]

Evidently, Zarude itself feels the same way. There is, in fact, a scientist NPC at the Armor Station who, if you show her a Zarude, says, “It’s a Pokémon you can’t find even in the entire Galar region, let alone on the Isle of Armor.”

Zeraora at least never got hardline ruled out of Alola like that even if only because USUM had literally nothing to say about at all it beyond its Dex entries

I mean literally what is the point of it being Galar's mythical at that point. Even if it's not found there now, did it maybe once live there many decades or centuries ago? Was Galar just the first place it was seen?

Mind you, it's also the mythical whose non-specialness is played up most explicitly in its dex entries too, all the other mythicals are unique or at the very least fabulously rare and Zarude just lives in massive groups of others of its kind.

Mew: so rare, so mysterious, you can count the number of people who've seen it on half a hand

Celebi: the master of time, an elusive and powerful creature spoken of in forest myths

Jirachi: only appears once a millenium, imbued with the power of a shooting star, can grant wishes

Zarude: ayo well this thing's a big angry monkey and there's hundreds of them

 

[bdt2002]

The decision to make this a Kalos Game was made long before we had talks of DLC thanks to the Tera leak. We know what this project was before Kalos and they only had concept art and story pitches but nothing in development in terms of gameplay. The decision to have any DLC was made once most of the base game was finalized and that's when they started brainstorming in full for DLC.


The Tera Leak is like a gift because we have a firm idea of how Game Freak plots out and develops these games.

(For the most part) I’ve been avoiding talking about the Teraleak recently unless the discussion specifically calls for it, but as luck would have it there are two things here that I do think are somewhat relevant to the Zeraora discussion:

• If the reports that this was originally going to be a Johto game based around Ho-Oh and Lugia (in 2024, for Gen 2’s 25th anniversary), there’s a non-zero chance Zeraora was going to show up in this game anyway even if the region of choice was not changed. Lugia was a notable figure in Zeraora’s movie, after all.
• The end credits for Legends Z-A’s base game do something unique with the game’s directors that we don’t see very often. Most mainline installments have one lead director, as you would expect, but if I’m not mistaken Legends Z-A is the first game since… I think Crystal? to have both a lead director and a designated Executive Director, now referred to as “Senior Director” (Shigeru Ohmori). The Crystal example is notable here because that game was also Junichi Masuda’s technically first directorial role before his first original installments in Ruby & Sapphire.

The second bullet point admittedly doesn’t have anything to do with Zeraora itself, but it’s possible that, should Johto have been the original plan and still contained Zeraora anyway (the idea to give Zeraora a Mega would only have come after the region swap to Kalos), the plans for what this game was supposed to be changed drastically alongside the delays for the Switch 2. Long story made very, very short, what this ultimately leads to is a 2025 Kalos game instead of a 2024 Johto game, with Mega Dimension being worked on after the completion of the Kalos base game and Mega Zeraora taking the place of what would have been a Zeraora cameo (without the Mega) in the original plans. Hopefully all of that made sense, I apologize for how long of a paragraph this was.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the reason they may have need two directors instead of one would be because they would have had less time to work on the Kalos “version” than the full 3-4 years to work on a Johto version.

---

Regardless of what they were planning on doing with Zeraora from the beginning, I ultimately think the Mega Dimension DLC is ending up as a victim of circumstance. It’s almost unanimously agreed upon at this point that Mega Dimension was going to be released in 2025 no matter what, but due to the delays to the base game and the awkward way this DLC was announced, given the delay of the base game and the region change, (the) Mega Dimension DLC almost had to be smaller in scale compared to previous DLCs should Game Freak not want this to interfere with their plans for 2026 and what will almost certainly be the 30th anniversary games (Gen 10).

 

[AquaticPanic]

Zeraora has always kinda looked like a Sonic character to me so its pretty funny that the Mega just becomes shadow the hedgehog

 

[Yung Dramps]

(For the most part) I’ve been avoiding talking about the Teraleak recently unless the discussion specifically calls for it, but as luck would have it there are two things here that I do think are somewhat relevant to the Zeraora discussion:

• If the reports that this was originally going to be a Johto game based around Ho-Oh and Lugia (in 2024, for Gen 2’s 25th anniversary), there’s a non-zero chance Zeraora was going to show up in this game anyway even if the region of choice was not changed. Lugia was a notable figure in Zeraora’s movie, after all.
• The end credits for Legends Z-A’s base game do something unique with the game’s directors that we don’t see very often. Most mainline installments have one lead director, as you would expect, but if I’m not mistaken Legends Z-A is the first game since… I think Crystal? to have both a lead director and a designated Executive Director, now referred to as “Senior Director” (Shigeru Ohmori). The Crystal example is notable here because that game was also Junichi Masuda’s technically first directorial role before his first original installments in Ruby & Sapphire.

The second bullet point admittedly doesn’t have anything to do with Zeraora itself, but it’s possible that, should Johto have been the original plan and still contained Zeraora anyway (the idea to give Zeraora a Mega would only have come after the region swap to Kalos), the plans for what this game was supposed to be changed drastically alongside the delays for the Switch 2. Long story made very, very short, what this ultimately leads to is a 2025 Kalos game instead of a 2024 Johto game, with Mega Dimension being worked on after the completion of the Kalos base game and Mega Zeraora taking the place of what would have been a Zeraora cameo (without the Mega) in the original plans. Hopefully all of that made sense, I apologize for how long of a paragraph this was.

Edit: I forgot to mention that the reason they may have need two directors instead of one would be because they would have had less time to work on the Kalos “version” than the full 3-4 years to work on a Johto version.

---

Regardless of what they were planning on doing with Zeraora from the beginning, I ultimately think the Mega Dimension DLC is ending up as a victim of circumstance. It’s almost unanimously agreed upon at this point that Mega Dimension was going to be released in 2025 no matter what, but due to the delays to the base game and the awkward way this DLC was announced, given the delay of the base game and the region change, (the) Mega Dimension DLC almost had to be smaller in scale compared to previous DLCs should Game Freak not want this to interfere with their plans for 2026 and what will almost certainly be the 30th anniversary games (Gen 10).

Making Legends 2 a Johto game was almost certainly a conceptual stage spitball that never made it beyond that. I do not recall any evidence of any material work like prototyping being done, don't even think there was concept art. Point being I doubt it had any notable effect on Z-A's development timeline

 

[Esserise]

I mean literally what is the point of it being Galar's mythical at that point. Even if it's not found there now, did it maybe once live there many decades or centuries ago? Was Galar just the first place it was seen?

Doubly funny is that it is registerable in the Isle of Armor Dex regardless.

The thing is, the very next generation actually showed quite clearly that you can design a Mythical or Legendary as not being native to that specific region while still fitting into its history. The Ruinous quartet are all from Poké-China but are used to gesture at the Paldean monarchy’s checkered history, while Ogerpon, the Loyal Three, and Pecharunt are all from totally unknown regions but formed a legend because they all happened to converge on Kitakami around the same time.

In comparison, Zarude really is a blatant case of “Galar just happened to be the incumbent region when we designed this Pokémon for the purpose of special distribution.”

 

[bdt2002]

Making Legends 2 a Johto game was almost certainly a conceptual stage spitball that never made it beyond that. I do not recall any evidence of any material work like prototyping being done, don't even think there was concept art. Point being I doubt it had any notable effect on Z-A's development timeline

I found the source for the information I had found, but I’m not going to share that simply off of the fact that I’m not going to share website links here. Unfortunately you’ll just have to trust me that this is all a real thing courtesy of the Teraleak’s second go-around. What I can share is that the “main” person who is directing Legends Z-A, Haruka Tochigi, their last work before this was on the Scarlet & Violet and its own DLC as “3D Visual Section Director”. By tracking what people worked on and when they worked on it, you can usually get a pretty good idea of when their games entered production- take some of Sakurai’s games like Smash and Kid Icarus Uprising for example. Incidentally, this pattern holds true for Tochigi’s work on Let’s Go and Legends Arceus as well- not once is Tochigi’s name listed in the credits for Sword & Shield or for Scarlet & Violet. (Source: Bulbapedia)

Seeing as Shigeru Ohmori is usually the lead director for the original installments (Gens 7-present), seeing him as a “Senior Director” alongside this new fella, to me that supports the idea that the directorial shift would have happened around the time the region of choice was changed. This is just my theory based off of my sources, but I think what happened was that there were plans for a 2024 game following the completion of Legends Arceus in late 2021/early 2022 but at some point in, I would estimate 2023, the Johto plans had been scrapped in favor of a 2025 Kalos game and DLC. But because this would have cut the development time down from three years to two years, a lot of stuff was lost in the transition which may explain why they needed two directors and why they only gave us Lumiose and not a significantly higher “percentage” of Kalos to explore.

All of what I’ve said in my last two posts could be completely wrong, of course. This could all just be massive copium from me as a Johto fan. But you’ve got to admit, there’s something to all of this. If anyone’s interested in my research I have done on the side, feel free to message me separately.

 

[R_N]

Doubly funny is that it is registerable in the Isle of Armor Dex regardless.

The thing is, the very next generation actually showed quite clearly that you can design a Mythical or Legendary as not being native to that specific region while still fitting into its history. The Ruinous quartet are all from Poké-China but are used to gesture at the Paldean monarchy’s checkered history, while Ogerpon, the Loyal Three, and Pecharunt are all from totally unknown regions but formed a legend because they all happened to converge on Kitakami around the same time.

In comparison, Zarude really is a blatant case of “Galar just happened to be the incumbent region when we designed this Pokémon for the purpose of special distribution.”

I mean heck, SWSH itself showed that
Zacian & Zamazenta are just wandering warriors from somewhere else
Eternatus is literally an alien life form
Kubfu is from poke-asia a far away land.

Really a lot of legends & mythics and so on aren't from their respective regions or are explicitly wanderers so who can say if eg Articuno is "really" Kantonian

 

[Cuddly]

Like I did before here are my predictions for Mega Zeraora’s stats.
Ability: Electric Surge
HP: 88
Atk: 142 (+30)
Def: 85 (+10)
SpA: 112 (+10)
SpD: 100 (+20)
Spe: 173 (+30)
This spread is the most probable spread. A little bit everywhere and is modest in every department besides Speed, which makes Zeraora extremely fast. Having more speed than even unboosted Ninjask and lets Zeraora speed tie Scarf Genesect. Any faster and I might be too fast being able to outspeed 100s at +1. Electric Surge feels fitting for Zeraora since its been compared to Tapu Koko in the past. With Electric Surge, Zeraora gets a big boost to its Electric STAB, on top of powering up Rising Voltage for itself with its decent SpA.

And honestly I can't really think any other stat spread for Zeraora besides being slower for more offenses. What ever stats Zeraora gets, it will be similar to what I presented. Its ability could be several options. Electric Surge is what I think fits Zeraora the most, but it could be several different new abilities. Potentially new abilities related to Doubles such as making its electric attacks become spread moves. It is stated that it can take on multiple foes with its unrestrained power, but that could be alluding to ZA gameplay only.

 

[Esserise]

Kubfu is from poke-asia a far away land.

Really a lot of legends & mythics and so on aren't from their respective regions or are explicitly wanderers so who can say if eg Articuno is "really" Kantonian

Kubfu is an odd little guy because the official site says this:

“Wild Kubfu live in mountainous areas far away from the Galar region today, but it was once a species that called Galar its home. It’s noted in historical texts that this species used to head to uncharted lands with people as they set out to trade or explore. Records suggest that the Kubfu living in faraway mountains today may have descended from Kubfu that became naturalized to the distant lands they visited in their journeys.”

So they aren’t native to Galar nowadays, but it does seem that they were originally.

But to your broader point, you’re right. I mean, especially with them all being incredibly ancient, there’s no real way to know where many of them may have truly originated from. Still, you generally want them to feel like they have a connection to somewhere tangible.

 

[Yung Dramps]

Kubfu is an odd little guy because the official site says this:

“Wild Kubfu live in mountainous areas far away from the Galar region today, but it was once a species that called Galar its home. It’s noted in historical texts that this species used to head to uncharted lands with people as they set out to trade or explore. Records suggest that the Kubfu living in faraway mountains today may have descended from Kubfu that became naturalized to the distant lands they visited in their journeys.”

So they aren’t native to Galar nowadays, but it does seem that they were originally.

But to your broader point, you’re right. I mean, especially with them all being incredibly ancient, there’s no real way to know where many of them may have truly originated from. Still, you generally want them to feel like they have a connection to somewhere tangible.

Throwback to when I thought Urshifu was gonna appear in Legends Arceus and that its forms were allusions to or would even have some sort of special interaction with Strong/Agile Style

 

[Karxrida]

Zeraora was the 5th most popular Alola mon in the 2020 Pokemon of the Year poll, only Mimikyu, Rowlet, Decidueye and Lycanroc beat it

This is legitimately surprising to me because I never see fanart or memes or anything else of that sort of Zeraora. And its design blends in so much that I can barely remember it exists.

 

[Lontra Assassina]

I found the source for the information I had found, but I’m not going to share that simply off of the fact that I’m not going to share website links here. Unfortunately you’ll just have to trust me that this is all a real thing courtesy of the Teraleak’s second go-around. What I can share is that the “main” person who is directing Legends Z-A, Haruka Tochigi, their last work before this was on the Scarlet & Violet and its own DLC as “3D Visual Section Director”. By tracking what people worked on and when they worked on it, you can usually get a pretty good idea of when their games entered production- take some of Sakurai’s games like Smash and Kid Icarus Uprising for example. Incidentally, this pattern holds true for Tochigi’s work on Let’s Go and Legends Arceus as well- not once is Tochigi’s name listed in the credits for Sword & Shield or for Scarlet & Violet. (Source: Bulbapedia)

Seeing as Shigeru Ohmori is usually the lead director for the original installments (Gens 7-present), seeing him as a “Senior Director” alongside this new fella, to me that supports the idea that the directorial shift would have happened around the time the region of choice was changed. This is just my theory based off of my sources, but I think what happened was that there were plans for a 2024 game following the completion of Legends Arceus in late 2021/early 2022 but at some point in, I would estimate 2023, the Johto plans had been scrapped in favor of a 2025 Kalos game and DLC. But because this would have cut the development time down from three years to two years, a lot of stuff was lost in the transition which may explain why they needed two directors and why they only gave us Lumiose and not a significantly higher “percentage” of Kalos to explore.

All of what I’ve said in my last two posts could be completely wrong, of course. This could all just be massive copium from me as a Johto fan. But you’ve got to admit, there’s something to all of this. If anyone’s interested in my research I have done on the side, feel free to message me separately.

I don't think this is indicative of anything, as the staff at Game Freak generally hold multiple positions in different projects. Masuda, for exemple, was the producer for SwSh while he directed the Let's Go games. It would be more significant evidence if Tochigi held high ranking positions in different games.

 

[Coronis]

Electric types in general really got some of the most boring applications of Mega Evolution, huh?

Raichu X - Mono Electric, same as base
Raichu Y - Mono Electric, same as base
Ampharos - Adds Dragon, at least
Manectric - Mono Electric, same as base
Eelektross - Mono Electric, same as base
Zeraora - Mono Electric, same as base

Like I know type changes on Megas are actually relatively rare but come on

Lets see from XY megas..

6/30, notable that Mewtwo and Charizard only got them since they had 2 megas. (also on both the X megas)

ORAS - 4/18

ZA - 4/26

Mega Dimension - 1/5

Pretty on par for now.

 

[Coronis]

Website states that there’ll be a way to get Zeraora within the DLC eventually.

Also alludes to not being able to manually mega evolve it but rather having to wait until it’s ready? Or be in total sync.

I think thats likely to just be flavour tbh. iirc other Megas have had similarish weird ones as well.

Could be wrong tho.

 

[Eriorguez]

I think Zarude currently has it worse. Its one and only anime appearance was in its own movie, which had zero to do with Galar besides the odd Gen 8 mon/form, and in the games, it was just a mystery gift distribution.

Ah, Zarude, the baboon who suffered from COVID...

 

[tentaghost]

This is legitimately surprising to me because I never see fanart or memes or anything else of that sort of Zeraora. And its design blends in so much that I can barely remember it exists.

anytime someone says "no one makes art of x" i always say, they do you just havent looked hard enough.

 

[Karxrida]

anytime someone says "no one makes art of x" i always say, they do you just havent looked hard enough.

I mean I'm not going to deny it exists or is say it's not being made, but I also don't go looking for fanart of other mons and stumble across it anyway. The same can't be said for Zeraora.

 

[Mad Ram]

Are we still trying to make Zeraora a thing? I have been ambivalent to this thing since Gen 7 and its continued presence as the equivalent of an Industry Plant has only embittered me to it more over time.

It has been part of one movie and has featured in only one event that wasn't a tie in to that movie. This is the first thing they've done with it aside from that. I know Industry Plant is just another term like Slop where people use it for things they don't like, but it doesn't really fit. I can hardly find a mythical less of an "industry plant" aside from Volcanion. Maybe that's because those two, along with Zarude, are mythicals I forget exist half the time.

Seriously. This sounds like a "bitch be eating crackers" level complaint. It's the first time it's been relevant in 5 years and already people are acting like it's Charizard 2 (even though that isn't an 'industry plant' either, it's just naturally popular).

Edit: So apparently it was also released in Pokémon Unite and had an appearance in New Pokémon Snap. My mistake. This is actually the first time it's been relevant in 4 years. Not 5. As I said, sometimes I forgets it even exists.

 

[Pikachu315111]

This is legitimately surprising to me because I never see fanart or memes or anything else of that sort of Zeraora. And its design blends in so much that I can barely remember it exists.

You're not looking around the right (or wrong, depending on your take) circles... Last I checked: 4206 (if you know, you know) jumps to 10401 on the fur-based one.

also where the fuck is Volcanion

Three possible ideas (well, four, but the fourth is they don't include it for some reason):

1. Like Diancie it'll be a special DLC Side Mission at a later date (probably to keep some interest in the game after Mega Dimensions to finish the intended run of Ranked Battles seasons. They'll likely keep them going (along with Tera Raids in SV) until it's time to start drumming up excitement for Gen X)

2. It'll be like Xerneas & Yveltal and will just be in Mega Dimensions as a special encounter (& forced capture). They need to keep some surprises and if they don't have any major plans for Volcanion this would probably be the best use for it so Mega Dimensions doesn't feel it's only offering Hoopa (and now Zeraora) in terms of rare Pokemon.

3. And finally the most unlikely: it'll have its own expansion. I bring this up for one reason: to me its a HUGE missed opportunity they didn't include an underground catacombs area. Since Hoopa is the starring Legendary for Mega Dimensions which takes place in an holographic alternate dimension "Hyperspace Lumiose" (fitting location for Hoopa), if they were to do the catacombs they'd need a Legendary which you could see living deep underground (and possibly it's power even being used to generate enough energy to run a city, perhaps?).

 

[Karxrida]

You're not looking around the right (or wrong, depending on your take) circles... Last I checked: 4206 (if you know, you know) jumps to 10401 on the fur-based one.

I didn't ask for this.

Also why do you know this.

 

[Pikachu315111]

Also why do you know this.

A popular (and demented) game many streamers were playing awhile ago has forever reminded (and scarred) me of the levels of depravity the internet will go down with fictional characters (though it was funny when VTubers played it and they showed up as an option. As for the fur-based one, while I faintly remember it from some Youtube video which dives into the topic of that community, its name also was brought up once or twice from people playing the aforementioned game (and, well, between the two which one do you think the actual Pokemon creatures would show up more on?)

BTW, if you decide to play the game, when a Pokemon shows up just pick it. NO, not even if the opponent is a popular anime character. Always. Pick. The Pokemon. *Shudders*

NOTE: Considering the "content" I'm dancing around, if anyone still don't know what we're talking about and are curious then I think it's best we move such discussions to DMs. Though, it is NSFW material, so for legal reasons you have to be 18 or older (not that I don't think we have members that young here?).

 

[doipy hooves]

https://plza-news.pokemon-home.com/en/page/6.html

Season 3 ruleset announced:
- Zygarde is in. No word on Mewtwo yet but they could potentially amend the rules like they did Diancie.
- The season spans past the DLC release, but "Mega-Evolved Pokémon introduced in the Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension DLC are not allowed."
- Safari Balls are the exclusive top rank reward balls.
- Greninjite at Rank Y, Delphoxite at Rank V, Chesnaughtite at Rank S.

https://plza-news.pokemon-home.com/en/page/13.html
https://plza-news.pokemon-home.com/ja/page/13.html
There's also apparently an issue with megastone rewards. The Japanese page specifies a 1.0.3 patch will be released before the start of Season 3.