Imagine being so conflicted about Pokémon Legends ZA that you make a thread for it

[bdt2002]

Hey there, everyone. Pokémon Legends ZA is coming out in three weeks from today, and if you’ve been following my posting activity for the past year and a half you’ll know I’ve had quite the back-and-forth opinions on this game. I still remember the Pokémon Presents when the game was announced and feeling genuine whiplash when we all realized we were getting a Kalos game instead of a Johto or Unova game like most people may have been expecting, myself included. Johto and Unova are two of my favorite regions from the core series games so at the time I was largely disappointed by the announcement. That was all we knew about the game for basically all of 2024, though, and with 2025 being as… interesting of a year as it’s been for Nintendo and the video game industry at large, I can pretty safely say this is the most conflicted I’ve ever felt about a Pokémon game to date, going as far at times as saying I wanted this game to be a commercial failure.

There’s a non-zero chance I’m going to have an opportunity to finally get myself a console upgrade within the next month or two, but here’s the problem- I’ve been undecided for a long, long time on what I actually want to purchase if anything. I have some form of justification to want to buy any of a Nintendo Switch 2, a PlayStation 5, an Xbox Series S or X, or a lower-end PC, and the reason I specify that is because I’ve already gone on record saying I will only play this game if I’m playing on the Switch 2. I refuse to play this unoptimized mess on the old Switch. Of course, there’s also the option to not buy anything which is just as valid in my opinion because these freaking console prices are becoming ridiculous very quickly.

I know this seems like such a “Not a big deal” thing to make an entire thread for, but I don’t know what other choice I have given the circumstances. Let me provide some context of the situation: I’ve known for a while now I’m on the spectrum and have other issues with depression and late-diagnosed ADHD, and while none of that is strictly connected to what I’m about to say, I do think my neurodiversity has played a major role in why decision making has always been something I absolutely hate. I’ve already been reminded that this is, in fact, no that big of a deal, but I continue to worry about this because I know the majority of my friends are waiting and expecting me to make a decision soon, and each of these people that wants me to play video games with them has given me different recommendations that benefit them the most- for example, one group might try and ask me about a PlayStation 5 while another might want me to get a PC.

With the volatility of the gaming market and my almost complete lack of interest in the majority of games save for the ones I specifically grew up with, this is where Pokemon Legends ZA and me investing my own money that I worked for as a young adult with a job may have a lasting impact on some of the closest friendships I’ve ever made. I don’t want something this petty and non-important to push these beyond the breaking point. I’ve had a very stressful year, and I’m already at the point where I actively avoid hanging out with people because I’ve been told by my family to not let others take advantage of me or dictate my decisions, among other things. This whole time I’ve been saying this like it’s a do-or-die decision, and while I am absolutely aware I don’t have to buy the game on Day 1, some friends more than others I would not be surprised if they’re secretly starting to get impatient with me.

I apologize that this isn’t my usual type of content especially here for OI. Feel free to do whatever you’d like with this thread. I just needed to get this off my chest. I feel a bit better now that I’ve come clean and typed all of this out. It’s not healthy for me to keep my emotions all bottled up, after all. All I know for certain is that I’ve been a massive Pokémon fan for almost 15 out of the 23 years of my life now and I don’t want this game, my conflicts of interest, or these horrible multi-billion dollar gaming companies (referring to both the game developers and the console developers) to be what ends up ruining any of these friendships I’ve made in large part because of Pokémon bringing us together. I just don’t know what to do anymore, really.

 

[R_N]

I mean a lot of this seems to be you feeling like you are obligated to get a new console to play games you don't care about or lack interest in, so it seems to me that you probably shouldn't bother.

I, uh, cannot comment too much on your personal life friends somehow being so invested in your having a console that this will ruin friendships? Other than it probably shouldn't be that big of a deal as is made out to be, i guess.

 

[bdt2002]

I, uh, cannot comment too much on your personal life friends somehow being so invested in your having a console that this will ruin friendships? Other than it probably shouldn't be that big of a deal as is made out to be, i guess.

I don’t want to get this thread off track more than I feel like I already did in the OP, but I’ll say this- I know a lot of people who play video games at night after work, which is great but I don’t have the time and energy for it anymore. The problem is less about them or about these games, I feel, and more about question of my own maturity and willingness to stand up for myself when people want me to do something. I have a nasty, nasty habit of trying to force myself to do things other people want, especially if they don’t seem to have that many other people that enjoy their company. I’ve always said if I had to pick I would rather other people be happy than me, and I get that this isn’t always wise but my decision paralysis and fear of disappointing others has gotten so irrational that my mental health has directly worsened because of it.

 

[Esserise]

What part of this situation exactly are you asking for opinions on? Whether you should buy Z-A? Or how you should manage your friendships?

To be clear, I’m not saying this with any hostility or judgment toward you. Rather, I’m trying to cut to the core of the situation. Are you looking to the Internet to tell you what to do in order to offload the responsibility for your financial decisions? Because we can certainly do that, but you’re still the one who’s going to be dealing with the consequences of whatever choice we might nudge you into making, and I don’t know that such a position would be any better for you.

More importantly, it kinda seems to me like you already have a firm grasp the problem. People have already told you the basics about not letting people take advantage of you, and you’re cognizant of the fact that people-pleasing at your own expense is a bad habit. And at the risk of stating the perhaps-seemingly-unhelpfully obvious, communicating with these friends about boundaries, expectations, and limitations would probably help more than treating these relationships as a zero-sum game. I don’t know your friends, so I can’t really say for certain, but it’s also possible that you could be overthinking their responses to you not having the means (or even just the desire) to play a particular game.

I’m not a therapist, so I’m not really qualified to give you real, actionable mental health advice, so everything I’m saying here is all purely person to person. But personally, I think that if a friend doesn’t want to be your friend because you won’t pay $700+ for a game and gaming console to play with them, then well, you may indeed end up losing that friendship, but I wouldn’t say that a person like that was really a friend worth having. I know human emotions aren’t always entirely rational so you can’t necessarily prevent someone from feeling petty or slighted if they’re inclined to feel that way, but fundamentally, friends should always try to be mutually understanding of each others’ situations and should respect each others’ choices. If that’s not how the relationship is, then it’s not really a friendship, it’s a quid pro quo.

 

[bdt2002]

What part of this situation exactly are you asking for opinions on? Whether you should buy Z-A? Or how you should manage your friendships?

Yes.

…alright, alright. I’m conflicted about both of those things and I wanted more educated options from other Pokémon fans. I know I have a really, really weird way of doing it, but in my head I thought having more opinions about the game would be able to help me decide on what to do. I can always wait to buy Legends ZA, that’s not really my concern. Plus, waiting would give me an excuse to get the Mario Kart World bundle instead of this one even though my opinions on that game might be even more negative than this one. Legends ZA looks way more appealing to me right now than any of the other new first-party games besides maybe Donkey Kong Bananza which also looks good, so there’s that.

I do have questions about my friendships, yes, but I would imagine those aren’t questions for OI specifically. I would assume those are likely better saved for other subforums. My end goal is to grow closer to my friends after a busy and stressful 2025, and I would genuinely like to believe this game (and by extension Gen 10 when it happens) can make that happen. I almost skipped out on Scarlet & Violet until the literal last minute when I switched up and bought Violet digitally Day 1 and enjoyed it, so it’s definitely possible. That game specifically offered my favorite multiplayer since Gen 6, one of my favorite Pokémon in any recent games in the Finizen family, and I even got a handful of Shinies out of multiplayer sessions where we would hunt together. (Nothing says friendship like literally three-peating on Shiny Espeon in the span of 25 minutes. It was incredible.)

---

In an effort to help narrow down the part of my post about the consoles themselves: I would much rather get a Switch 2 right now than an Xbox, and I’ve also gone on record saying I don’t care for the PlayStation 5. If anyone’s curious, it’s the price and the controller I don’t like, as I prefer my PS4 Pro for both of those. A PC is likely not going to be the move either because our Internet and me not having anywhere to place or build it yet. In any case, I just don’t want overthink this stuff any more than I already am. My friends are good people, truly, they probably just want me to make a freaking decision already.

 

[Esserise]

Yes.

…alright, alright. I’m conflicted about both of those things and I wanted more educated options from other Pokémon fans. I know I have a really, really weird way of doing it, but in my head I thought having more opinions about the game would be able to help me decide on what to do. I can always wait to buy Legends ZA, that’s not really my concern. Plus, waiting would give me an excuse to get the Mario Kart World bundle instead of this one even though my opinions on that game might be even more negative than this one. Legends ZA looks way more appealing to me right now than any of the other new first-party games besides maybe Donkey Kong Bananza which also looks good, so there’s that.

In that case, then as you noted you can always wait, but that’d be true of any game. Both MKW and Z-A have Switch 2 bundles if I recall correctly, so I think it really does come down to whichever one you think you’ll have more fun with. That’s fundamentally what games are for, so I’d argue that after financial impact, that’s the most important thing to consider. There’s almost always a degree of risk when it comes to purchasing, so of course it’s possible that it could backfire and you’ll end up wishing you got the other one, but you’ve just gotta know yourself well enough and weigh the likelihood of that happening with one product versus the other.

At least from what you’ve been saying here, I think Z-A seems like the safer bet, especially considering this part of your post:

My end goal is to grow closer to my friends after a busy and stressful 2025, and I would genuinely like to believe this game (and by extension Gen 10 when it happens) can make that happen.

If your goal is to enrich your friendships and you feel like Pokémon games are more likely to encourage that to happen than other games, then that strikes me as a pretty compelling point in their favor. Again, you can only ever mitigate risk rather than eliminate it, as it’s possible it doesn’t quite work out in the end. But know yourself, and know your friends, and pick the choice that you think is best-suited to bridging the two.

In an effort to help narrow down the part of my post about the consoles themselves: I would much rather get a Switch 2 right now than an Xbox, and I’ve also gone on record saying I don’t care for the PlayStation 5. If anyone’s curious, it’s the price and the controller I don’t like, as I prefer my PS4 Pro for both of those. A PC is likely not going to be the move either because our Internet and me not having anywhere to place or build it yet.

For what it’s worth I definitely feel this dilemma myself. I’ve already got a Switch 2 (because for me, Pokémon is literally on a different plane of existence compared to other games and I absolutely will buy a whole-ass console just for Pokémon, and I’m just fortunate that I also happen to like a lot of other games in the Nintendo ecosystem), and I’m not much of an XBox guy, but in my case, Capcom recently announced a new Onimusha game for the first time in 20 years, and that’s a game series I have a very strong attachment to (not as strong as Pokémon, but still), but so far it doesn’t seem like it will be coming to the Switch 2, so since I tend to prefer console over PC, I’m currently stuck between “Do I save up for a PS5 just for this?” or “Do I try to make it work on my totally average PC?” Do I choose to take the hit on expense or on experience? I still haven’t decided on that, and probably won’t until sometime next year.

My friends are good people, truly, they probably just want me to make a freaking decision already.

That’s good to know then. I really wasn’t sure how to think of them based on the situation you’d described, but that’s one of the inherent limitations of me being a rando on the Internet — I don’t have that kind of personal insight into your life, so I can only sort of assess things very broadly.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

 

[Coronis]

I mean, I can’t really tell you whether or not to get the game at all.

What I will say, regarding this specifically..

I’ve already been reminded that this is, in fact, no that big of a deal, but I continue to worry about this because I know the majority of my friends are waiting and expecting me to make a decision soon, and each of these people that wants me to play video games with them has given me different recommendations that benefit them the most- for example, one group might try and ask me about a PlayStation 5 while another might want me to get a PC.

With the volatility of the gaming market and my almost complete lack of interest in the majority of games save for the ones I specifically grew up with, this is where Pokemon Legends ZA and me investing my own money that I worked for as a young adult with a job may have a lasting impact on some of the closest friendships I’ve ever made. I don’t want something this petty and non-important to push these beyond the breaking point. I’ve had a very stressful year, and I’m already at the point where I actively avoid hanging out with people because I’ve been told by my family to not let others take advantage of me or dictate my decisions, among other things. This whole time I’ve been saying this like it’s a do-or-die decision, and while I am absolutely aware I don’t have to buy the game on Day 1, some friends more than others I would not be surprised if they’re secretly starting to get impatient with me.

I don’t want this game, my conflicts of interest, or these horrible multi-billion dollar gaming companies (referring to both the game developers and the console developers) to be what ends up ruining any of these friendships I’ve made in large part because of Pokémon bringing us together. I just don’t know what to do anymore, really.

You say you’ve already been reminded this isn’t a big deal (I’m sure online and I would hope by irl friends too). It definitely shouldn’t be, and you shouldn’t feel any pressure to get a new console just because others encourage it. You’re very worried about friendships falling apart because the initial thing that brought you together may have been Pokemon, but in any close friendship you’ll have other things to talk about and relate with, you just may not be able to talk about a specific game. No true friend would ever leave a friendship based on someone not having a particular game console or game, and I doubt your friendships will break down, but I understand the fear behind that.

I really wish you good luck mate, whatever you do or do not do regarding the console/game, your own mental health and personal relationships come before that, and your friends should hopefully also understand that.

 

[DHR-107]

This is a lot above Smogons pay grade.

If you need to DM someone I'm always around.