The very first time you run through Lumiose City, discover a corner cafe, and sit down for a Flamethrower Roast coffee with your favorite Pokémon, it feels amazing. Similarly, that first battle against a hulking Mega Evolved Absol is utterly thrilling. But by the fifteenth time you do those things, the novelty has worn off a bit.Pokémon Legends: Z-A is an inventive spinoff that diverges in a wild new direction, taking place in the single location of Lumiose City and shifting to a more action-focused timing-based combat system. Those two particular changes are smartly executed and help give Z-A a dynamically different feel from anything the series has done. And yet, some of the lingering problems that have faced modern Pokémon games still rear their ugly heads – including a sense of building monotony, a lack of polish, and some cut corners. It’s a game that simultaneously feels like it pushes Pokémon in a step toward the future, while also being unable to escape its past. What results is a strong follow-up that gets the important things right, but never quite realizes its full potential.Sleepless in LumioseZ-A often nails the vibe of what makes Pokémon so special, simply living in a world filled with cute little creatures that want to be your friends. | NintendoZ-A is the second game in the “Legends” sub-series, following the 2022 release of Pokémon Legends: Arceus. While that game took players to the ancient history of the Hisui region, Z-A opted for a completely different approach by blasting back to modern times and taking place entirely in Lumiose City, the Paris-inspired megalopolis of the Kalos Region from Pokémon X and Y.While Z-A has a similar structure to past Pokémon games, it’s more of a narrative-heavy battle gauntlet than the typical roaming journey of the mainline games. You move around Lumiose while taking on various main story and side missions, with a huge emphasis on battling. You still catch wild Pokémon, build your party, and juggle a wide array of items – but battling is clearly the emphasis here.For over a decade, I’ve wanted a Pokémon game that could focus on a single setting and really dig into the culture and society of how a “Pokémon City” actually works. That’s something that Z-A largely manages to nail, with a tight narrative focus that builds out Lumiose as a lived-in place and benefits from a phenomenal cast of characters.Your silent trainer arrives in Lumiose by train one day and immediately runs into another trainer named Urbain (or Taunie, depending on the body type you choose for your trainer). The young upstart gives you a place to stay at Hotel Z, and ends up recruiting you into their neighborhood-watch style Team MZ – which takes on various tasks to protect the peace of Lumiose. Soon, you get wrapped up in investigating why Pokémon across the city are suddenly Mega Evolving and becoming hostile.There’s a handful of eccentric characters that help Z-A’s story stay interesting. | NintendoFlocks of Pokémon have started moving into Lumiose, causing the city to open “Wild Zones” where the wild creatures can roam and live without disturbing the lives of humans. This has forced the people of the city to majorly shift how they live, and learn to coexist with Pokémon.Z-A feels far more narrative-focused than mainline entries like Scarlet or Violet, and that’s a good thing. Your character and Urbain are joined by two other young trainers named Lida and Naveen, along with the freakishly tall AZ from X and Y. This core cast of characters genuinely goes through some tremendous growth together, and gives an almost Persona-esque team feel to the story. There are so many little details packed into Z-A’s world, meant to illustrate that idea of coexistence, often through sidequests that simultaneously give you tangible rewards. You might help a fisherman try and clear a bunch of Binacle off his boat, only to realize they actually love the boat and he basically adopts them. Or you may find a devilish Froakie that loves clambering through construction scaffolding, and dares you to beat its record.Z-A features drastically better customization than past games, letting the trainer really become your own. | NintendoAbove all, Z-A’s biggest strength is that it has personality – there’s a whimsical edge to the writing and world. By and large, the more condensed world design really helps with this, by showing a location that grows and changes over time. The game absolutely revels in the genuine random encounters you have in a big city, whether it’s talking to someone on the street, wondering if water Pokémon use their bodily fluids for attacks, or deciding to get a nice coffee at the Charizard-themed food truck you just found. This also then applies to the game’s fantastic character customization and clothing options, which are genuinely a drastic step-up from anything the series has done.Still, even in the narrative, you can see Z-A’s key weakness start to rear its head – things feel spread too thin. The novelty of the setting wears out a bit when you’re running around the same locations after the thirtieth hour, and you’re forced into battling the same story-important trainer for the eighth time.Gotta Battle ‘Em AllZ-A’s battle system feels like a tremendous breath of fresh air, shaking up how you strategize and approach building your team. | NintendoRegardless of Z-A’s narrative strengths, the Pokémon series has always been more about systems and minute-to-minute gameplay. That’s the same idea here, but things are more tightly interwoven into the narrative experience – progressing the story goes hand-in-hand with experiencing Z-A’s systems.I said before that Z-A feels like a “battle gauntlet,” and that’s because it bucks the series' long-running formula of conquering a gym, training up, and doing it all again. Instead, your goal is to participate in the Z-A Royale, and progress from Rank Z to Rank A by beating other trainers. This means battling it out with trainers at night in free-for-all Battle Zones, which earns you Challenger Tickets that you can then use to take on a more powerful trainer that holds the title for the next rank.As a whole, Z-A’s combat nicely shakes things up by taking cues from the Xenoblade Chronicles games. Instead of turn-based combat, things now play out in real-time, with an emphasis on positioning and the area of effect for each skill. Each Pokémon still brings four moves into battle, and those moves are now on cooldown timers – meaning you need to strategically mix and match your skills. This makes stat-reducing moves like Tail Whip or Growl more important than ever, as you need quick moves to alter the flow of battle in between your big attacks.Rogue Mega Evolution battles are some of the game’s biggest highlights, and each one manages to feel fairly different. | NintendoThis combat system is one of the biggest changes the series has seen in years, and I cannot overstate how different it feels from your typical Pokémon fare. It’s a smart system that really stresses both pre-battle planning and split-second decisions, and positioning your trainer themselves in the battlefield – as they can be attacked by Pokémon too.Developer Game Freak has also made some smart systemic changes to help bolster this battle system, like Pokémon learning an entire set of moves that you can swap for the main four at any time – no more forgetting one move to learn another. Of course, Mega Evolution is also a tremendous part of this experience.Some of the best moments come from Mega Evolution battles, essentially the game’s major boss battles. These fights double down on having to manage your Pokémon and dodge enemy attacks, and each one adds fun little gimmicks or differences in how Pokémon fight – like Mega Staryu running around on two legs resembling some kind of freakish kaiju.Of course, a vital part of building your party is capturing wild Pokémon. That’s still done through finding them roaming around the city, whittling down their health, and timing a perfect Poké Ball throw. Z-A’s Pokedex has 230 creatures, a significantly lower number than the other mainline games. While I know that’s something that might disappoint many players, it's generally not a problem because of how much richer and complex the battle system feels, giving each Pokémon many different ways you can build their skills and use them. The Wild Zones feature is also a smart way to support the narrative structure of the game, letting you pop in and train or capture Pokémon whenever you feel like it.While all these disparate elements feel strong at first, again, the sole real issue is a lack of growth across the entire experience, and how everything eventually feels stale. That fantastic combat system is great to use for most of the game, but fails to evolve in some key ways that could have really made it outstanding. The constant stream of battle after battle can get particularly detrimental to the pacing.Wild Zones give you a chance to slow down and fill out your Pokedex, or grind some levels. | NintendoFor instance, at multiple points in the game, you have to track down three Mega Evolved Pokémon across the city and fight them. It’s a gimmick executed the exact same way a handful of times. While that’s fine on its own, later uses of the gimmick also make you fight characters that you just battled an hour ago in the story – reproducing the same battle, but with stronger Pokémon. These end up feeling like deliberate padding of the game’s runtime, needless battles that could have been cut to keep the story’s pacing tighter.These issues are then compounded by some of the game’s lackluster art design. Earlier, I explained how much I love the little narrative details and the way the city feels alive – but I can’t really say the same for how Lumiose is visually represented.It becomes abundantly clear that most of the cityscape is simply the same handful of buildings copied and pasted ad nauseam. While things look good from a distance, the closer you get, the greater lack of detail you see – like balconies on apartments being static images stuck on the side of a flat building, instead of actual architecture.The further you get into the game, the more it starts to feel like Z-A’s world, despite strong writing, is kind of duct-taped together. | NintendoThose first ten hours of exploring the city feel magical – finding little photo ops, dining at cafes as your Pikachu looks longingly at your snack, and seeing a group of Patrat scurry away from trash cans when you get near. But those magical little moments eventually get bogged down by a city that feels aesthetically bland the more time you spend in it. However, there are a few exceptions to this rule that help shake things up with more vibrant touristy spots – like the fascinating Lumiose Museum or the hilariously mafia-like headquarters of the Rust Syndicate.It’s honestly frustrating to see this lack of visual and aesthetic variety, as there’s so much love and care put into the core narrative, character designs, new Mega Evolutions, and more. But that’s really been the downfall of the series’ big recent games like Scarlet and Violet: Ambitious core ideas that are hurt by a lack of execution and polish.One Step ForwardLike the best Pokémon games, Z-A still makes bonding with your team a joy, getting to see your trainer grow alongside them. | NintendoThe best way to describe Z-A is a game of compromises, an experience that’s genuinely ambitious and inventive, but clearly suffers from still having to stick to some of Pokémon’s archaic design tropes. You have fantastically animated and choreographed cutscenes, combat that feels better than ever, and genuine character customization – but you still have to go through a three-step process in the menus even to heal your Pokémon. The world is filled with dynamic characters, from weirdo random NPCs with existential questions to a cutesy electric Pokémon Twitch streamer – but every other building you run by is a carbon copy of itself.Pokémon Legends: Z-A is a game that comes razor close to greatness, if it could only get out of its own way. That being said, this is still the most I’ve felt invested in a single Pokémon experience since all the way back to Black and White. The biggest contributor to that is a genuinely gripping core story and smart writing that makes Lumiose feel like a living city, even if some of the game’s mechanical elements can’t live up to that.Overall, it feels like Z-A has made a definitive statement about what the “Legends” games are able to aspire to – a way for Pokémon to get weird and experimental alongside the main games. Looking back, that’s the most compelling part about Z-A: the promise it holds for the series’ future and the steps it takes to do something different. So even if Z-A isn’t everything I wanted it to be, it’s a world I dearly enjoyed getting to live in.8/10Pokémon Legends: Z-A is available on Nintendo Switch 1 &2. Nintendo provided a Switch 2 copy for this review.INVERSE VIDEO GAME REVIEW ETHOS: Every Inverse video game review answers two questions: Is this game worth your time? Are you getting what you pay for? We have no tolerance for endless fetch quests, clunky mechanics, or bugs that dilute the experience. We care deeply about a game’s design, world-building, character arcs, and storytelling come together. Inverse will never punch down, but we aren’t afraid to punch up. We love magic and science-fiction in equal measure, and as much as we love experiencing rich stories and worlds through games, we won’t ignore the real-world context in which those games are made.