Pokémon Legends Z-A: Speculation and What We Know So Far

Announced for the end of 2025, Pokémon Legends Z-A is the next game in the monster franchise produced by Nintendo. Just like its predecessor (Pokémon Legends: Arceus), the game wants to bring innovative mechanics to bring more variation and interest, both for longtime fans of the franchise and new players. The game also follows Nintendo's tradition of being announced in parallel with its new console, the Switch 2, which has its international launch scheduled for June 5, 2025. With the little information we have announced or leaked, expectations are high, and the question is: will it be as surprising as the first game in the Legends lineage?

One of the most anticipated mechanics for the new game, Pokémon Legends Z-A will have real-time battles, where the player will use attack and dodge moves together with their Pokémon partner, which’ll be influenced by factors such as speed, impact area and terrain. This is a big bet: the main franchise as a whole has only used similar mechanics in Arceus, where boss fights mixed interactions of the protagonist in battle, which divided opinions. So, it could be a great success of innovation, or a big disappointment for lovers of turn-based combat.

Furthermore, among the proposals already made by the Pokémon Company, we’ve already had the Pokkén Tournament spin-off which, despite being well polished as a fighting game, presents a proposal more aligned with Tekken by Bandai. So, we can say that this is, in fact, the first time that there’ll be real battles in a Pokémon game, with the use of items, Pokémon trading, etc.

Some questions remain: what’ll the effectiveness between types be like, whether this’ll influence your team's agility, if heavy attacks will take longer in battle, what will cooldowns be like, among others. Not only that, but with the change of console to the new generation, will official competitive tournaments be updated to this new format? If so, the competitive Pokémon environment would change drastically! However, like its predecessor, it’s expected that games from the Legends series won’t enter the professional circuit.

Here, following Arceus’s choice, we have three starter Pokémon from different generations, which brings back a certain nostalgia for classics lovers: Totodile, especially, is beloved and a success among fans. Chikorita, on the other hand, is considered a more delicate and less popular figure, and attracts female audiences a lot. Tepig wasn’t as beloved as other fire starters, and its acceptance is moderate.

This presentation once again makes us think of another alignment with Legends Arceus: the Pokémon will be mixed, from several different generations in the game, just like it was in X and Y. However, in the previous region (Hisui) we had new forms, which brought new interest to old Pokémon, and now we’ll return to a region already introduced before, revitalized, and which’ll probably also bring innovations to the characters and Pokémon.

Another relevant point is the choice of the legendary Pokémon: Arceus’s always been a popular figure in players’ imagination, while Zygarde, despite being successful inside the Japanese community, isn’t acclaimed by Westerners. The legendary Z was released with an exhaustive mechanic of collecting its cells, which generated divided opinions, especially about its mysticism.

Pokémon X and Y was a great hit for the Pokémon Company: with an average score of 88 on Metacritic, on top of a score of 9/10 by IGN, the game brought innovative mechanics by using the console engineering of the time, such as 3D-compatible gameplay. Among the most famous were the introduction of the Fairy type, Mega Evolution, a new battle search system, among others.

The original game in the Kalos region features the large city of Lumiose City as its highlight, where the player has a range of activities to do in the location, both at the beginning of the game and towards the end. With two boulevards, countless avenues filled with shops, the player can visit cafés, battle, shop for items or new clothes for the protagonist, in addition to the centralized prism tower which is an electric gym. Finally, we also have Lysandre’s institutions, who’s also an iconic villain.

Now, the question is how the developers will take advantage of this already established city and make it current. So far, we only know about the introduction of Wild Zones, where Pokémon live in the urban area separate from the human walkways, and can be entered to capture or battle.

The city environment will also be influenced by the weather. At night, the Z-A Royale tournament takes place, where the player must climb from rank Z to A by taking part in battles within the urban environment against skilled trainers.

Mega Evolution are two words that, when put together, make players vibrate; their success is undeniable. Despite the alleged leak of some of the new forms, the excitement’s still the same and the developers have the opportunity to meet long-standing requests from the community, such as Mega Umbreon, Mega Milotic, among others.

Different forms such as Dynamax always have a big impact on the game's competitive format, and it’ll be interesting to see the return of a mechanic that’s had a drastic impact on this scenario (Hi there, Mega Gengar).

Pokémon Legends: Arceus was a huge innovative success and now its follow-up, in addition to bringing the same model, will pass through the already solidified region of Kalos. Precisely because of the union of previous successes, the developers will have the huge challenge of meeting fans’ expectations, especially in a franchise that has maintained a semi-fixed game model since its release. The news are a delight for Pokémon lovers, and if the proposal’s fulfilled, it can be a new benchmark for the franchise, as was Arceus.