Let's Play Legends Arceus, Part 20: All Gods Must Be Captured

Last time we left off, we completed the main story and watched the credits of Legends:  Arceus, and I wake up to a brand-new day with a whole bunch of side-quests to complete… but also the post-game. It starts off with a pretty simple prompt to go to meet Akari, Laventon and Cyllene, who all talk about the typical ‘complete the pokedex’… and then Laventon bemoans the difficulty of knowing how much of the myths and legends of Pokemon in Hisui are real. They’re all real, Laventon. Accept that you’re in a fantasy setting right now. But in comes Volo, who does his typical shady businessman pitch of knowing all the legends and being able to lead us to where they are most relevant. Which… leads Cyllene to basically pawn me off on Volo and task us to learn about whatever information he can provide me about the legendary myths of Hisui and all the ruins over the region. 

It's interesting – Volo himself has been such a huge supporting character in the tail-end of the main story, but he realistically didn’t do all that much other than just tag along with us, show us the way to Cogita and drop some rather ominous lines here and there. So it is definitely appreciated for him to get a bit more spotlight in the narrative. 

After going around Jubilife City and getting like… eight or nine new sidequests, I head off to meet Volo in the Obsidian Fieldlands, where he brings my attention to a bunch of hieroglyphs depicting the story of the Ancient Hero and his ten Pokemon companions that went around Hisui to collect fragments of the creator deity. These has been recurring a bit all over Hisui, with some of the drawings being obviously a Sinnoh/Hisui legendary or one of the noble Pokemon, though not all of them are immediately obvious. Volo tells us of the legend of… Arceus.

Finally! Arceus!

(Except not really!)

Volo basically tells me to read the back of one of the elemental plates, which talks about ‘the Original One’ and point to the signs of a divine being that created the Pokemon world. So yeah, he wants to collect the remaining 8 or so elemental plates we haven’t gotten (depending on whether the Fairy Plate exists in this game) and try and figure out the truth of the world. Okay, Volo! We currently have the ten that we got from the ten nobles (fire, water, electric, grass, ice, poison, ground, flying, psychic, bug) so we're off to get the others!

Volo apparently has a lead on one of the plates, and he brings me to the north-east corner of the Fieldlands... which has an Alpha Vespiquen for me to beat? And the Alpha Vespiquen drops the... Rock-type plate? Excuse me, what in the name of the fuck?

Volo apparently got information on the presence of this plate, too, which raises even more questions. Sure, he explains that the Vespiquen probably picked up the Rock Plate from somewhere else, but... where? From who? Who snitched to Volo that hey, this random giant bee just happens to be carrying a fragment of the creator god? What is your information network and supply chain, Volo?

It is really bamboozling! Couldn't they literally have found any other more appropriate Rock-type Pokemon to be holding the plate? Like, oh, I don't know... Rhyperior? Golem? Or, shit, have the Noble Kleavor hold the Rock-type plate instead of the Bug-type plate, and give the Bug-type plate to the Vespiquen. It's bizarre!

Volo brings me to meet Mistress Cogita again, who is more than happy to help me, the 'lost one', out. And she starts talking about how the disappearance of the space-time rift has caused a whole bunch of Pokemon to appear out of where they are hiding. And Cogita gives a whole list of Pokemon for me to look into, which are basically all the Sinnoh legendaries. The Lake Guardians, Cresselia, Heatran and Regigigas. All the non-event-locked Generation IV legendaries, although there is that Manaphy quest I've been ignoring for a while, plus I think I get a Shaymin quest due to the Sword/Shield save file on my Switch. 

And... it is a bit annoying that we have to go through the Lake Guardians again, but it is a nice little way for us to go around exploring the legends of Hisui/Sinnoh. 

I do want to get the Lake Guardians out of the way first, so I first head off to Lake Acuity in the Alabaster Highlands to confront my dude Uxie. And.... there is no cutscene, no nothing. Uxie just kyouuns his way into a battle. He refuses my berries, he refuses to be distracted by smoke bombs, and it's just a banger theme against a level 70 lake gremlin. Pretty chill remix of the legendary theme that does sound fairy-like, and... I probably shouldn't have brought a funky party made up of level 40-odd wackos that I'm just trying to get levels on! But... Uxie gets caught under five ultra balls, and there's not even a cutscene to acknowledge it. So I guess it's just a rapid-fire catching exercise, then. 

...and that's basically what happened. I do it in reverse order now, so I go off to Azelf second in the Mirelands and Mesprit in the Fieldlands. Brought a bunch of legendaries to help me out this time around, but... yeah, other than me trying to get dex entries filled up, I don't really have much to say about the process. Mespirit has Recover, which makes him a bit more annoying than his two siblings, but otherwise... agile style moves does make chipping at a legendary's health a lot more convenient for sure.

I get the Draco Plate from the three Lake Guardians... which... yeah, I guess despite the large amount of legendaries in Sinnoh, the only dragon-types are Arceus's trinity of box covers, which are plot-relevant. Okay, sure. 

The Lake Guardians finally have a signature move, though. "Mystical Power", which I misread as the older move Mystical Fire initially. A basic damage-dealing move that has a chance to buff a stat, but... hey, it's something, right? It's nice to see these gremlins get something after so long as being barely more relevant than something like the Team Magma Base Key.

One thing that I do have to keep out now is to swap in members of my party to fill up dex entries for fully-evolved Pokemon using certain moves or whatnot, which is something I should really get to doing! I have to start paying attention to whether a certain Pokemon needs to use agile/strong type moves, or certain wild Pokemon that needs to be defeated by certain types. Neat -- it really is something that's nice to do, playing in the background while I watch a TV show or something. 

A bunch of new evolutions that I also ended up doing are those that needed items... and mostly older evolutions that are overshadowed by new Hisuian forms. Metal Coats to turn my Scyther into Scizor, and Razor Claws (at night!) to turn regular Johtonian Sneasel into Weavile. 

(Also, it's nice to finally play the game without ominous apocalypse music in my ears.)

Other side-quests that I mucked around with… after rescuing Wanda for the umpteenth time, and having Zeke panic out, Zeke finally decides to go off and help to look for Wanda in the Alabaster Icelands. Except the plot twist is that this time, Wanda’s just in a room down the corridor. So this is the final twist of the Wanda/Zeke saga, it’s Zeke that’s lost this time. Pretty cute. He's fallen into a hole in the Alabaster Icelands, gets menaced by an Alpha Glalie, and the quest ends with us getting him and Wanda back where they proceed to kind of fool around a bit with whether or not Wanda's became self-sufficient. 

I helped some guy whose Spheal keeps rolling down the hill into a bunch of ravines filled with Gravelers and Golems. Plus some guy called Rye or whatever with a Lucario (Riley’s ancestor, I assume) is all about the warrior life and challenges me to a fight in Jubilife’s battle arena. Sorry, your kung fu hadoken fox isn’t going to stand up to the Dragon God of Time. There's a brief little sidequest with some guy that gave me the crafting for a Trick Room cake; a a short quest where a Team Galactic guy makes friends with an Alpha Onix in the Oreburgh Tunnels; helped an adorable Chimecho find its forever home; and aided a lady who wants our help to find a specific Blissey in the Icelands. That Onix quest probably explains the creation of Oreburgh Tunnel in modern-day Sinnoh. 

Speaking of battles, Zisu also brings me to fight Ress the guardsman, a.k.a. the guy that says 'stay safe out there, kid' all the time. He has level 60 versions of Starly, Bidoof and Shinx... yeah, uh, dude, you could maybe... I don't know, borrow one of the Onixes or Hippowdons I have in my ranch? You're kinda pathetic. 

Adaman also wants to battle me near the Azelf lake, and... he has a Vaporeon, a Leafeon and an Umbreon come at me all at once. I fight him with his god, Dialga of Time. I thought that would be something he'd appreciate. He gave me the Adamant Crystal, which allows me to transform Dialga into his Origin Forme Dialga state permanently (like Giratina). Yeaaaah, that's kind of a doofy-looking form, but I guess I'll stick with it for now. 

I don't particularly care for it, but I also visited the Pearl Clan Village to look for Irida. And... Irida gets a whole cutscene where she plays the Celestica Flute before she fights me with her Glaceon, Espeon and Flareon army. Just like the Adaman fight, Irida ends up giving me the Pearl Crystal, allowing Palkia to transform into his far more horse-like form. Yeah, the horse Palkia looks so much more... it's a lot more cohesive yet looks a lot more alien at the same time, I think?

Also on a tangent, that Palkia-V TCG art with it standing in the midst of a fucked-up city is so damn cool. 

I also activated a quest with Mai and Munchlax, where Munchlax's been apparently running around all agitated and stuff, and she's not sure why. The Arc Phone, a.k.a. the God iPhone, tells us to investigate Ramanas Island. I think I'll save that sidequest for later. It's nice to see that the important NPC's do have something to say even in the post-game. 

So, I guess I'll go through with the Shaymin side-quest. With how various remakes have slowly been making previously 'mythical' Pokemon into basically regular legendaries (Deoxys in OR/AS and probably a bunch of others I can't think of on the top of my head), it is interesting that Legends: Arceus basically turned Shaymin and Darkrai, apparently, into legendaries who will only appear if you have save data from one of the other games. I guess spending money on another Nintendo product is 'eventful' enough! I don't have BD/SP so no Darkrai for me, but the quest basically directs me to the Floaroma Fields, which Shaymin revitalizes when the NPC expresses her thankfulness. 

It's neat, I suppose, that we get this short blurb even if it's not anywhere quite as eventful as how the main story treated Dialga, Palkia and the three Lake Guardians. I've always thought that it was one of the huge losses when we went into the 3D era where all the event Pokemon are just given by lame-ass Wi-Fi events where some guy in the Pokemon Center gives you an Amazon packet with Magearna or whoever inside. 

Anyway, I don't think there's anything too special about catching Shaymin. I fight him, catch him and we already get the transformative item Gracidea at the beginning of the quest. I think they tweaked the legendary capture rates in this game, which is nice since there's like twelve or something of them running around! Shaymin isn't actually essential to the post-game story (and neither is Darkrai), but it's nice to check another Pokemon off the list.