Legends Arceus is the best Pokémon game ever created as of generation 9, change my mind.

[Poké Gamer Boy 17]

Use facts or opinions to try and change my mind, or you can support me if you agree. I'll be replying to most of the replies with my rebuttals.

 

[team_____grunt]

hmm. i have a hard time choosing between sword and arceus. try and convince me to one side.

 

[Rockapheller]

I was extremely hyped for the game, and I was looking forward to playing it. But it just did not meet the expectations, at the very least for me.

• The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is the content of the game. You are not really doing anything besides catching Pokémon and battling some of them. It gets old really quick. There is no battle gimmick to keep the player interested in the long run, either. You may consider the agile style and strong style as a gimmick, but it is very weak and stale if it is one.
• The characters are just not original. 90% of the people are just ancestors of already existing and established characters.
• The world is arguably big, but very empty. It makes sense in a way when you think that the world is wild and people are populated only in specific areas. But then again, the town that you go occasionally even has people only standing there, doing nothing. Just idling around. That's creepy and cheap at the same time. You feel like only you are running through a simulation of a world and being tested for every movement you are making.
• Open world where exactly? I am only allowed to go wherever map allows me upon unlocking specific areas.
• Exploration is excessively weak. The areas have certain places to walk through and go see. It gets even more boring once you walk through somewhere twice or thrice, and keep seeing the same Pokémon respawning each time. The areas where it does not allow you to walk through the stream, step on the grasses or basic movements just make it seem much weaker of a game.

Obviously there are things I do love about this game. The Pokémon models have been fixed on most cases, the battle animations are extremely good, Hisuian forms are an excellent involvement. However the gameplay feels like something is lacking a lot, and you desperately need something more. Although I love the team I built in that game, the story advances so boring that I have yet to finish my first playthrough.

 

[Poké Gamer Boy 17]

hmm. i have a hard time choosing between sword and arceus. try and convince me to one side.

Sword and Shield was not the best game. It was way too easy, and while some of the new Pokémon were quite good, most of the designs were really lazy. There were more Pokémon that looked like real animals in gen 8 than in any generation before it. Boltund literally just looks like a yellow dog. On top of that, the story didn't exactly hit it out of the park. In my opinion, generation 8 as a whole was kind of lazy, and they probably could've done better.

EDIT: SWSH and Legends: Arceus are 2 completely different games, so they're not really comparable. But there isn't really a need to because Legends: Arceus is just that good of a game. But if I were to try, I'd say that Sword and Shield are JRPG and Legends: Arceus is ARPG.

 

[Poké Gamer Boy 17]

I was extremely hyped for the game, and I was looking forward to playing it. But it just did not meet the expectations, at the very least for me.

• The biggest flaw, in my opinion, is the content of the game. You are not really doing anything besides catching Pokémon and battling some of them. It gets old really quick. There is no battle gimmick to keep the player interested in the long run, either. You may consider the agile style and strong style as a gimmick, but it is very weak and stale if it is one.
• The characters are just not original. 90% of the people are just ancestors of already existing and established characters.
• The world is arguably big, but very empty. It makes sense in a way when you think that the world is wild and people are populated only in specific areas. But then again, the town that you go occasionally even has people only standing there, doing nothing. Just idling around. That's creepy and cheap at the same time. You feel like only you are running through a simulation of a world and being tested for every movement you are making.
• Open world where exactly? I am only allowed to go wherever map allows me upon unlocking specific areas.
• Exploration is excessively weak. The areas have certain places to walk through and go see. It gets even more boring once you walk through somewhere twice or thrice, and keep seeing the same Pokémon respawning each time. The areas where it does not allow you to walk through the stream, step on the grasses or basic movements just make it seem much weaker of a game.

Obviously there are things I do love about this game. The Pokémon models have been fixed on most cases, the battle animations are extremely good, Hisuian forms are an excellent involvement. However the gameplay feels like something is lacking a lot, and you desperately need something more. Although I love the team I built in that game, the story advances so boring that I have yet to finish my first playthrough.

While I do agree that after beating the story of the game there's not much to do, but the exciting story and gameplay more than make up for the limited content.
The unoriginal characters weren't lazy. In my opinion, that only added to the excitement of the game. By adding characters that we knew, we were able to experience the game as it was meant to be: the ancestors of Sinnoh building their civilization.
How do you expect the developers to do so much with this already huge game? What do you want now, a fully animated, fully open world, Ultra HD + VR game? Not gonna happen any time soon. Not even for Gamefreak. And the world is very full of Pokémon; just full enough, in my opinion. They did a perfect job figuring out exactly how many Pokémon needed to spawn in the game so that we weren't annoyed by now many there were, but still not bored that there weren't enough.
Give the developers a break, it was their first open world game. Think about it logically: would you rather have a few open world sections or a 1-hour loading screen? It was a pretty good way to keep the players in check, in my opinion.
Your opinion on exploration I think is just straight up wrong. There are lots of different locations in the game that you can explore, by Wyrdeer, by Basculegion, or by Braviary. Wherever you go, there's always something new around the corner.
The gameplay is not as you think. The way we can battle the Pokémon ourselves is outstanding, and I love the twist of the player hiding in the grass instead of the Pokémon. The developers did a great job implementing the gameplay into the controls to make it as easy as possible to do what we want to do, but sill made the game hard enough to be a challenge.

 

[Silktree]

Telling people what to think about a game they've already played, doesn't work.

PLA is an interesting game and it is not hard to see why it would be your favorite, but it didn't really make up for removed content (breeding, online, abilities, movepool depth). After SV did more with exploration (not without faults), any future Legends game should raise the bar in terms of the sense of danger and historical discovery.

 

[team_____grunt]

yeah, in pokemon arceus, i was disapointed by the fact that there was no online play.

 

[RileyXY1]

yeah, in pokemon arceus, i was disapointed by the fact that there was no online play.

Of course, it was understandable considering the deemphasization of battling in this game, and that the technology in the main series that facilitates online play wasn't invented yet.

 

[Defiant]

It's certainly a strong entry, but HGSS is still the unbeaten one for me, just so much more to do. 2 regions, all 493 Pokemon at the time. Legends doesn't have a lot of mons that are available in DPPT dex. Milotic for example.

I used to have Platinum 2nd, but I think it's overtaken that one.

 

[team_____grunt]

Of course, it was understandable considering the deemphasization of battling in this game, and that the technology in the main series that facilitates online play wasn't invented yet.

yeah, i mean that's a good in world answer, but it doesn't give them an excuse for some intern at Nintendo saying, "oh, we shouldn't add online play to Arceus."

 

[R1ke]

Hm I enjoyed it but I’d probs place BW2 and maybe HGSS over it. The gameplay loop is amazing between catching, exploring and training and I love the new battle system/qol changes they included. But stuff like story, music, side quests, visuals in particular are pretty weak to me. The game did feel pretty repetitive at times, with a limited variety of things to do outside battling/catching. It’s a shame there were no new postgame areas either. I’m also not keen on them removing abilities for some reason

 

[team_____grunt]

yeah it was annoying that i had to get stars to proceed to the next area.

 

[SushiBurrito]

Its the best Pokemon we've had in years but I wouldn't say the best. My top 5 would be

1. HeartGold/Soul Silver

2. Black and White

3. X and Y

4. Legend of Arceus

5. Original Gold and Silver

Granted I never played the Sinnoh games or Black and White 2.

 

[Poke Dragon]

I really liked Legends Arceus, but some parts could've been better. For example, how some Research Tasks could've been handled differently. I'm playing it as I type this and there shouldn't be a task to defeat Zoroark 10 times with Dark-type moves, it's just ridiculous because it's a rare spawn.

Aside from that, great game and I definitely want to see one set in Unova.

 

[caprisungod]

It's really hard for me to pick a Pokemon game as the best one, but I agree that Legends Arceus was amazing. I've had so much fun with it. And I appreciate it even more now, because having played PLA, Violet is such a chore on many levels, since it lacks so many awesome things PLA had. The gameplay of PLA should be the new mainline standard to me.

But as much as I enjoyed PLA, I thought it also looked a little ugly while I was playing it back in January. After playing Violet though, I regret I ever called it that, ScVi's got the crown now for the ugliest looking one lool

 

[Indecision]

Not wrong. Scarlet and Violet could've easily been a new peak for the series if they gave it more time to make sure it functioned properly, but they didn't.

 

[RileyXY1]

Not wrong. Scarlet and Violet could've easily been a new peak for the series if they gave it more time to make sure it functioned properly, but they didn't.

And they made a lot of changes to the detriment of the games, such as the lack of interior environments, the lack of level scaling, and the full on removal of the Set option.

 

[Indecision]

And they made a lot of changes to the detriment of the games, such as the lack of interior environments, the lack of level scaling, and the full on removal of the Set option.

There never was level scaling. It's just not something you tended to notice since the games were hitherto completely linear. As for the set option, you don't need it—it may take an extra button press, but you can always just not switch after a KO.

 

[RileyXY1]

There never was level scaling. It's just not something you tended to notice since the games were hitherto completely linear. As for the set option, you don't need it—you can it maybe an extra button press, but you can always just not switch after a KO.

I was saying that the lack of it is a problem because it rendered the entire open world aesthetic moot because there is still a set order of when you need to complete the challenges.

 

[Indecision]

I was saying that the lack of it is a problem because it rendered the entire open world aesthetic moot because there is still a set order of when you need to complete the challenges.

You said it was a change, so I assumed that's exactly what you meant. In any case, they could've also made it easier to gain levels so they could have one continuous open world give you a similar setup to Legends.