The Pokemon Company has had a rather unique 2025 so far. It’s already dealt with controversy via its TCG mobile game, but it also did some real good in the world by donating money to help those affected by the California wildfires. Then, on Pokemon Day, the company finally dropped a full trailer for Pokemon Legends Z-A. That alone should’ve been enough for celebration and to wonder what will happen within it. Instead, many people have wondered, “What’s going on with it?” You see, while some are more than happy with what they saw, outside of not having a release date, others have questioned the game’s looks, feel, and more.
The irony isn’t just that this happened, but the fact that some former Nintendo employees felt the same way. As noted on the latest episode of the Kit & Krysta podcast, the hosts dove into what they personally thought about the reveal trailer, and the two had some serious critiques and opinions on it.
“It doesn’t look great.” Kit started out with. “It’s not high-end, pushing the performance of the Switch, and people have pointed out we’re getting a game this month — Xenoblade Chronicles X — that looks incredible. And guess what? That’s actually a ten-year-old game that was on Wii U, so it makes the comparison even more jarring.”
Krysta added, “It looks pretty rough. Environments look pretty rough.”
While they did disagree about “how bad it was,” with one saying it looked like a PS2 game and the other biting back against it, they did agree there was plenty of room for improvement and that the Nintendo Switch has had titles that looked stunning on it when “the work was put in.” As Krysta pointed out, Game Freak could’ve asked for some advice:
“[Game Freak] is a highly capable studio that has a lot of resources and are very connected to Nintendo. Hey, call them up, ‘Can you help us?'”
Many would agree that Pokemon Legends Z-A is a key title for The Pokemon Company as a whole. The main reason for that is that while Gen 9, which was released in 2022, was a huge financial hit, it came at a serious cost. That cost is the “gamer’s faith” in the company’s titles. The phrase “broken yet beautiful ” perfectly encapsulates that generation of titles because the games had a lot to love, but it was a glitchy mess that fans constantly made fun of. Things could get messy if this new game doesn’t “stack up” to past entries.
