It has only been a few days since the release of Pokemon Legends Z-A and players have been generally positive about the new gameplay and revamped Kalos music. But the visuals? Roasted worse than Tepig cooking its favorite berries.
The graphical aspect of Pokemon Legends Z-A has been described as "flat", "bland", or "cheap". But maybe we are missing the bigger picture because the truth is, Pokemon Legends Z-A's visual style is actually good.
Hear me out.
Is the Visual Style of Pokemon Legends Z-A Good?
I'm just going to say it. It actually is. Comparing this title to other graphically intense video games is an unfair angle to look at. This game's aim is not to compete in realism.
It aims to build a world that feels stylized, consistent, coherent, and more importantly, look like a Pokemon game. Pokemon Legends Z-A actually succeeds on that because each line, shadow, and color truly feels like Lumiose.
Pokemon Legends Z-A, like its older Switch siblings, has it own unique, visual identity. The Let's Go games went hard on its pastel, soft and rounded design while Pokemon Scarlet and Violet went for realism.
Meanwhile, Pokemon Legends Arceus focused its visuals on cultural and mythical feel with its stylized cell-shading that felt like playing inside a vintage Japanese painting. Pokemon Legends Z-A seems to have found its style in between of those styles and that's not really bad.
Even so, many fans still see it as "cheap" or "soulless" because of it's rough surfaces and low-details backdrops. But looking at it closely, in terms of identity and consistency, Pokemon Legends Z-A embraces a design language that feels very appropriate.
It doesn't aim to look extra-realistic and not too cartoon-ish. It aims to be consistent and coherent with its environment and overall urban feel. The neon lights truly gives a thrill of the night dynamism and its soft lighting gives that warm and dreamy city morning vibes.
And looking back, Pokemon has never been about realism. It's why the reception towards the Pokemon designs in the hyper-realistic Detective Pikachu movie were mixed, but mostly uncomfortable. This is also why the design language of Pokemon Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee are loved up to this day.
Pokemon Legends Z-A is closely following that experience. It gives us a stable experience where Pokemon and trainers interact seamlessly. When you see a kid standing next to a Larvitar, you don't think "that looks so unrealistic and lifeless", it is cohesive.
Another comparison being made is with Pokemon Legends Arceus' visuals. It heavily leaned in ancient aesthetics so a lot of the visuals was heavily stylized. Pokemon Legends Z-A, of course, is all about the fast-paced, electric, and fashionable feel of the modern world.
At night, the neon colors glaze a danger-in-the-night vibes to gameplay and at daytime, the warm and soft colors give a classy, vacation-like feels to the eyes. Not only that, this specific art direction is perfect for Legends Z-A's new combat system. With its real-time combat, visual fluidity is everything. Moves aren't restricted to realism and are given more opportunity to be flamboyant.
And to be fair, it isn't visually perfect. Many have complained, and justifiably so, about how building walls, windows, and background assets are just pictures pasted in 3D digital boxes. There are still minor pop-ins even on the Nintendo Switch 2.
These issues are indeed real and cannot be denied but with how minor they are, they really don't ruin the experience. Obviously, performance and stability was deemed priority especially knowing that this game was developed for the Switch 1 and not its more powerful sibling.
Compromises like these are sometimes necessary in creating massive, open-world games. It may not be a good excuse, but the Pokemon dev team isn't in the same room with developers of modern Final Fantasy games or the modern Zelda titles.
The focus of Game Freak is, of course, always going to be accessibility, visual identity, and scale while still playing well. What really grinds the gears of the fans is the pricing and that's a topic deserving an article of its own.
Of course, there's always room for improvement and maybe in the next few years or months, a Pokemon title will be released where we are all in agreement that it is just visually perfect.
Until then, we can only appreciate what Pokemon Legends Z-A tried gave us and tried to make us feel. A game that is, with all its flaws, very much Lumiose.
The visuals of Pokemon Legends Z-A is not perfect in general but feels perfect for a Pokemon game. It feels juvenile, fresh, bright, and very coherent. It's a visual style that knows what it wants to be and stays like that until the credits roll.
So take another look and maybe you might start to realize that the softer, kid-friendly graphics actually excels at making such a restrictive setting feel more magical and alive.