Pokémon Legends: Z-A General Discussion

[bdt2002]

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen you post anything but negatives about Pokemon games. Even about ones that you haven’t played, and before their release. Its tiring.

Edit: I’m using this as a reply to all of your posts, not just this one here.

You know what? You guys are right. I’m going to try and catch myself before I make some of the dumb mistakes I feel like I’ve made the past few times stuff like this has come up. I’m saying this all so I can learn from when I’ve started pretty arguments and posted stupid takes online.

Situations like these could also be a problem with my sources in-person and where I get my information from, too. I will say, in my defense, the literal first thing I saw when I woke up this morning was someone complaining about the update and I think I allowed things to just kind of spiral from there. Unfortunately that kind of things tends to happen when our community here and my other friends each start saying different things- I never know who to believe, and that sends my brain into a temporary panic mode.

I will own my mistakes and my posting maturity (or there lack of when it comes to this game) but I would like to think, on average, it’s gotten better than it was earlier in 2025. I apologize to all of you for derailing your conversations.

 

[Esserise]

bdt2002 To be fair, some shaky premises in your post aside… this DLC is pretty bad.

Like, I didn’t exactly have high hopes for Hyperspace Lumiose, and in all fairness I haven’t finished the DLC yet, but unless something radical changes, I feel I can say that I at least expected it to be a full-sized map and not just… a handful of small pockets of reused color-washed assets. Compared to the Isle of Armor + Crown Tundra and Kitakami + the Terarium, this is just sad.

 

[R_N]

bdt2002 To be fair, some shaky premises in your post aside… this DLC is pretty bad.

Like, I didn’t exactly have high hopes for Hyperspace Lumiose, and in all fairness I haven’t finished the DLC yet, but unless something radical changes, I feel I can say that I at least expected it to be a full-sized map and not just… a handful of small pockets of reused color-washed assets. Compared to the Isle of Armor + Crown Tundra and Kitakami + the Terarium, this is just sad.

There's definitely criticisms to levvy at the DLC, especially for its price.
Personally I enjoy it but it's impossible to not compare it to the DLC offerings before, in terms of presentation if nothing else.


But a lot of those complaints were definitely just bitch eating crackers tier stuff.

 

[bdt2002]

bdt2002 To be fair, some shaky premises in your post aside… this DLC is pretty bad.

Like, I didn’t exactly have high hopes for Hyperspace Lumiose, and in all fairness I haven’t finished the DLC yet, but unless something radical changes, I feel I can say that I at least expected it to be a full-sized map and not just… a handful of small pockets of reused color-washed assets. Compared to the Isle of Armor + Crown Tundra and Kitakami + the Terarium, this is just sad.

There are still some things I like about the DLC, I should mention. For what I was expecting, I actually think it looks a bit better than I gave it credit for just earlier this morning. Now that I’ve had time to wake up a little bit and clear things up for myself, I’m in a better mood now and I think the quality of life additions we did get (plus any that I haven’t seen yet by means of me wanting to avoid spoilers) are really nice to see.

I was completely wrong about something I said with the 1,000 battle request in my original post, and I think what happened there was that I completely misunderstood what someone told me on Discord. For context, what I thought my Discord friend was saying was that something involving the number of battles had changed, when what actually happens in-game seems to be that the DLC has some extra Mable requests that can help go towards the original tally of points towards the Level 50 requirement for the Shiny Charm. Getting things clarified with them helps a lot because I was under the impression this was a $30 scam, which I wouldn’t put past Nintendo after the recent Metroid Prime 4 amiibo situation.

All in all, I feel like this update can help… ah, what’s the phrase… “hold people over” until 2026 when I would imagine we’ll get a ton more Pokémon news for the 30th anniversary. I do think overall there is more content here than we got in Legends Arceus’s Daybreak update, though I do still wish Hyperspace Lumiose looked better from a visual standpoint. I get the aesthetic they were going for, but it does kind of looked rushed by default unfortunately.

But a lot of those complaints were definitely just bitch eating crackers tier stuff.

Yeah, that’s fair. Can’t argue against that even if I wanted to argue.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

Jesus you’re not paying 30 quid to get the shiny charm, you’re paying 30 quid for a DLC that happens to make it easier to get the charm. Also the only thing they’ve supposedly patched out is the spawn overload method, which was obviously an exploit and not intended in the first place.

What's this spawn overload?

 

[Valoo]

What's this spawn overload?

You could basically get six alpha spawns under the tower in zone 20 rather than two, so you could shiny hunt faster. Not fully sure how it is/was done though.

 

[leafsaber47]

This game is really popular even two months in. Jesus Christ, no wonder I've played a lot of Legends Z-A OU matches so far.

Corbeau, Canari, Jacinthe, Lebanne, Taunie, Urbain... are there any other popular characters who don't have Pokémon Showdown avatars yet that I'm missing?

 

[Coronis]

Hmm. Finding the Rouge battles annoying with a time limit.

Edit: nvm found the cheat code….

 

[R_N]

I think all the DLC sidequest people are some how bigger freaks than the base game ones.

 

[RoyalDispenser]

What's this spawn overload?

in area 20 normally theres 2 alpha spawns.

the exploit is to pull them out as far as possible, save, repeat until they're at the gate and you can run 50ish meters from them outside, since when you save alpha's 'starting positions' get set to their new position, you can pull them far enough out of the center of the area 2 spawns that the game's spawners don't acknowledge them still existing and thus the spawners will generate a new one without despawning the old ones. Repeat this enough times and you can get 6 alphas from the 2 spawners in the middle and they'll reset every time you come back or use the bench since. This is 'overload' causes the game is spawning 3 pokemon per spawner (2 spawners so 6) instead of 1 per spawner and thus you reset 3 alphas at a time when bench resetting etc.

 

[R_N]

Occurs to me that all the normal post game stuff technically being available as you do the DLC must add a funny air to the whole thing.

Like yes, okay, we have been actively working together to stop the giant distortion above Prism Tower but i mean these challenger tickets are right there. Taunie's not going to resolve her weird mostly off screen family drama otherwise.
Walking in on Mable grumbling about the Mayor now wanting the wild zones to stick around for tourism while we're dealing with a hyperspace crisis.
Going under the Prism Tower to face off against Zygarde while the previously mentioned distortion is looming ominously above like hey bud. You want to maybe. Look into any of this? no? Alright.

 

[Coronis]

I think all the DLC sidequest people are some how bigger freaks than the base game ones.

Holy crap the tipster guy ticked me off.

*click*

 

[Vengeance417]

 

[Esserise]

Having the battle against Volcanion take place in a solid black void room was certainly a choice

 

[Pikachu315111]

"Okay we're going to add in a whole batch of TMs, how?"
"Well we can add in a whole batch of new tiers in Mable's research"
"Nah, if we did that then the players who grinded out 1k battles to get the Shiny Charm only to discover the DLC would make getting in a non-issue would feel like they haven't wasted their time. What else you got?"
"Well we do need something new for the Mega Shards exchange."
"Perfect! How should we implement it?"
"We can just place them in the Mega Shard exchange in Quasartico, I imagine most players would natural look there either after just starting the DLC or when they start getting a lot of Mega Shards from Hyperspace. They'll go to exchange for candy and, surprise, new TMs!"
"Alright then... a guy hidden in an alley somewhere around Wild Area 17 that we'll not alert them even exists it is!"
"... I'm sorry did I fall through a Hyperspace hole and miss a few minutes of this conversation?"

 

[Eriorguez]

People complaining about a QoL update because they already grinded to the point they don't need it is toxic.

 

[BlazingBarrager]

I still don't understand why I STILL can't buy berries in bunches considering that, you know, you need them for donuts.

 

[Pikachu315111]

People complaining about a QoL update because they already grinded to the point they don't need it is toxic.

I'm fine with them making getting the Lucky Charm easier... but they added 19,000+ more research points for a DLC you can't play without first completing the main story but added no more reward tiers.

 

[R_N]

I'm fine with them making getting the Lucky Charm easier... but they added 19,000+ more research points for a DLC you can't play without first completing the main story but added no more reward tiers.

Well if nothing else it means there's a lot of base game quests you can ignore, I guess.

It does feel weird there's no more Mabel rewards, though. Could've made an Alpha charm or something.

 

[Eriorguez]

The less forced bulk catching the better, even if this DLC has plenty of mindless catching going on for research.

 

[Lord Godwin]

Seems Mega Golurk is the perfect Zeraora counter as the cat uses:
Plasma Fists
Electroweb
Dynamic Punch
Wild Charge

And Reunerigus as back-up.

 

[Esserise]

Gotta say, their approach to Vivillon in this game, a Kalos game, is very odd…

Like, I get why they did it the way they did in SV, with the GO integration. GO also needed to figure out a system for Vivillon around that same time, so, sure. Bonus, you can work Gimmighoul into it as well. Hooray corporate synergy~

But I figured that in Z-A, which has no GO integration, we would surely just default to the original way of doing it, as that’s kind of the whole concept behind Vivillon’s patterns to begin with. However, the only repeatably obtainable pattern in the base game is Meadow (and the only other one is the gift Marine Pattern from a side mission). Which I guess makes some sense as Meadow corresponds to the pattern that France gets irl, but why do it this way instead of just making the patterns correspond to the system location as intended?

I thought maybe the DLC could offer some sort of solution, and I suppose it did… exclusively for Garden Pattern enjoyers, as you can now find those renewably in Hyperspace, but it doesn’t seem that any other Patterns can appear there.

But why only Garden? If you’re already choosing to break away from the original intent of having the patterns correspond to the player’s real-world location (whether through the game itself or through interaction with Go’s postcard system), why not go whole-hog and just let all of them appear? Maybe make it a Donut Power effect or something.

I swear if we don’t at least get a distribution for the Poké Ball Pattern at some point in Z-A’s life cycle (as that form was only ever distributed to regions other than Japan once, 11 years ago, and even Japan only ever had one other in-person distribution in 2016) I’m gonna flip my lid. There’s speculation that the Poké Ball and/or Fancy Pattern could be coming to GO soon with some new Scatterbug-themed Timed Research and then the Kalos Tour on the horizon, but the main series could really use another a shot at this thing again.

 

[Biaxact]

I have heard it's wayyyy easy to shiny hunt in this game! Is it true?

 

[Biaxact]

Also, do people prefer this game or arceus??

 

[Yung Dramps]

Having the battle against Volcanion take place in a solid black void room was certainly a choice

View attachment 779548View attachment 779549
“And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.”

This was supposed to be metaphorical.