Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 4: Punch The Pokemon!

As we reach the next area, there is a demonstration protest by a group of martial artist looking guys. Their leader is a guy with long blonde hair called Ivor, who introduces himself as speaking on behalf of a group called the Fists of Justice. They appear to be a tamer version of Team Plasma... but a fair bit more unhinged. Ivor asks that if coexistence is the goal, why not get rid of Wild Zones and let the wild Pokemon run free? That is actually a good question, and one that was apparently successful in Ryme City in Detective Pikachu!

All of his arguments instantly become hilarious as he talks about why he would suggest this 'dangerous' thing. His solution? PUNCH DA POKEMONS. Yes. If it's dangerous for the Pokemon to be roaming the streets, he wants to make everyone in their ranks be strong enough to take on even Pokemon in hand-to-hand combat.

I think I laughed way longer than I should at this introduction. It's not even them trying to be good eco-activists or whatever. No, they just want to train everyone so they can be strong and be able to punch an attacking Rhyhorn or Gogoat in the face. To suplex the Cleffas and Hawluchas. To dropkick the Doublades and Budews. 

Ivor, you are insane. I have seen many insane NPCs in Pokemon, but not one that is more crazy than you. 

Taunie talks shit about Ivor, and she is overheard by Josée, one of Ivor's students and 'probably the fifth-strongest disciple'. There is a quick battle as she sends out her Machop and Meditite, but Ralts and Chikorita very quickly send Josée's team packing. Josée actually thinks that I am somewhere along rank H or G, which is very flattering. Ivor is impressed by the fight, and deduces that he 'can think of only one explanation'... that I have mastered having my Pokemon... learn... moves. 

...

Okay. I know it's just probably meant to be a tutorial for the four-move system, but I giggled even harder. We've gone through quite a bit more in the game that the concept of moves isn't even new, but Ivor is treating the fact that "you know that Pokemon can use moves!" as some groundbreaking, zen ability that most people aren't aware of. I think he might be my favourite crazy NPC in this game. I suppose his goal is a bit more noble than Zach's. 

Ivor then realizes he should not be revealing his tricks of the trade (the tricks that Pokemon use moves) because we might have to fight him in the Z-A Tournament. Out of respect for my strength, yes, my completely intimidating level 13 Chikorita, Ivor decides to leave me for today. Yes, be intimidated by my cute Pear! 

Ivor leaves, and Taunie rightfully calls him as someone off the rails. She lets me explore Wild Zone 3, which is a park divided into four quadrants. There are some brambles blocking parts of the area. The most intuitive thing is to use Fire on them, which I have access to thanks to Fletchling... but apparently any sufficiently powerful move like Chikorita's Razor Leaf can shred the brambles. I have a feeling that this might've been changed in development? This really felt like a Pokemon Ranger style barrier. 

In the center of the park are adorable little Flabebes flying around, and each quadrant has its own mostly Kalosian Pokemon. A group of Skiddos hang out on one end; very skittish Espurr on another corner; very aggressive Litleos on the third corner; and good ol' mascot Pikachu on the final one. The Litleos are super-duper aggressive and will chase you around, while Espurrs will teleport away immediately if you fail in sneaking up to them. Oh, and Pancham also appears sometimes. 

The moves thing actually does matter, because while Binacle has a super-effective Water Gun against Litleo, it's just one out of his two starting moves and Binacle can't actually spam damaging moves since Water Gun is on cooldown. Interesting! So Ivor does have a point. 

I reorder my party a bit to get rid of a lot of the early-route Pokemon and bring a bit more of the Galarian Pokemon, and then head off to meet Taunie in front of the Looker Bureau. Waiting for us is Mimi the Espurr! Hi Mimi, you are adorable, and I love the dead-fish eyes of Espurr and the :c expression but the absolutely adorable little nub-hands. I remembered being unimpressed with Espurr when I first saw leaked images of it online, but its animations in the game really endeared this thing to me. 

We enter the Looker Bureau and Emma seems to be deep in thought, eyes closed and arms in a steeple position. Taunie waxes some lyrical about Emma, noting that she is calm and collected all the time, a true detective. And then Emma goes... "zzz" to Taunie's surprise. She's sleeping! Power-napping! Don't judge her, Taunie! I love how Emma immediately goes straight into speaking and brushing off getting caught sleeping with absolutely zero guilt at all. That is how you should own your power naps!

More interestingly, Taunie tells me that she was in a rough spot back then, wandering the streets and keeling over until Emma found her and brought her to AZ. Interesting! A lot of mysteries are being built up, but we're not getting much answers. I am actually quite invested.

Mimi recruits me for her detective work. She frames it as also being helpful since I would familiarize myself to the Lumiose City map and citizens, but... but honestly, helping Mimi and doing missions is a lot more appealing for me personally to do than doing the Z-A battle royale! This unlocks side missions, which are the side-quests in Legends Arceus. 

At this point, I finally have free rein over Lumiose City! Hooray, I can wander around now! A lot of the Wild Zones are still not activated, I don't think, but I'm being a good boy and doing the three side-quests that are marked on my map. 

The first mission is with Moire, an old lady who lost her wedding ring in the Dormez Bien Cemetery. And somehow, they turned the cemetery into Wild Zone 4... which feels very irresponsible for the city to allow a cemetery to be turned into a Wild Zone! Even with the existence of Ghost-type Pokemon, it feels kind of disrespectful to the people interred there and their families! Makes for a really cool video game exploration area, though. 

Dormez Bien Cemetery is... well, a cemetery! I love how there are Spinaraks just casually chilling on the side of the crypts, including a building with like six of them clustering together. I feel like the game designers could've added some webbing to where they were at, though. Gastly also just roam the air around the cemetery, which is surprising that they're doing so in the day... but I suppose cemeteries are also creepy in the day? Eh.

Ekans also lurk around in the location, and I love how the game makes use of Ekans' slithering animation to have it move around. Love it! For most of the 3D games, Ekans just tends to be depicted coiled up since that's how the 3D sprite is. The games really don't make maximum usage of the walking animation yeah? 

At the end of the graveyard is the Sableye, who we challenge to get the ring back. The little goblin screeches, and I fight Sableye with my Chikorita. Chikorita knows Disarming Voice, which is a Fairy-type move, which... is interesting, and might be a clue to Mega Meganium? I remain unspoiled, still! I beat up Sableye, fail to catch it... but get the ring back. Moire thanks me, and is apparently surprised that the Sableye was carrying the ring around. This leads her to the morbid but kinda cute admission that she would like it that if she dies, she would like it if a Sableye would take her ring from her grave and appreciate it. I mean... sure, I guess. 

At this point I start running around and exploring around a bit. Tarragon and his crew left a lot of weird parkour scaffolding with neon arrows and stuff that let me climb up, and I just have some fun going around rooftops and talking to people. One of the NPCs lament the loss of the Gogoat Shuttle, which used to be around in XY. The Gogoat became way too skittish once Wild Zones started popping up all around the city. I manage to catch an Abra that's just floating in some roof, which is a bit news to me -- apparently wild Pokemon do also exist out of Wild Zones! Some Espurr are also hiding in little balconies, and walking around in the overworld lets me see that some trees have Kakuna in them. Again... this makes me love the game a lot more because the Wild Zones are nice, but having some Pokemon 'overflow' out into the overworld is quite cool. Some of the other Pokemon I found are blue-flower Flabebe, and some Pidgey that evaded my capture. There is also a big scary Pidgeotto, though it's a lot more manageable when you can sneak-ball it. 

One of the rooftops has a level 18 Swirlix floating around that wiped out half of my party, particularly since it has the high ground and floats around. Not cool, Swirlix! I also find like a little farmer's market selling berries and feathers, and among the shopkeepers is just a Spritzee that's just... floating there. I thought it was some trainer's Pokemon until I was clicking random buttons and the game locked in on Spritzee. 

The second side-quest is relatively simple, although it did distract me quite a bit. This takes place within a huge fashion district location, with a lot of customization options. At least, a lot compared to previous Pokemon games. I still maintain that one of the biggest travesties of Scarlet and Violet is to only give us four terrible-looking uniforms for almost the entirety of the game. There is a lady called Tracie there who has brought a Thunder Stone, and wants to look for a Pikachu to evolve it to.

...Team Rocket from the anime could do that all along? Ha! 

This introduces us to trading, because she ends up trading her Heracross ('Bois') to us! Heracross is relevant because it's a potential Mega-Evolution. The lady evolves the Pikachu to Raichu, which is a bit neat considering how much out of focus Raichu has been throughout the franchise's history. I half-expected the Pikachu to pull off something similar to the anime and refuse to evolve. But no, the Pikachu evolves to Raichu, and the lady is happy... until she reads the pokedex and learns that Raichus shock their trainers all the time if they build up electricity. Er... good for you, I'll be off with Bois. 

My final side-quest involves an overly-excited backpacker called Trevelle, who keeps yelling his words. He has met a great, big... BUNNELBY! Twice as large as his own Bunnelby! It's got glowing eyes, and Trevelle actually points out what I observed moments ago... that there are wild Pokemon outside of the Wild Zones. Trevelle leads me to an alley where he saw the offending Bunnelby. It is... quite surreal, seeing a larger Bunnelby with glowing red eyes yelling "BUNNAAAAAAA!!!"

Trevelle finds it huge, terrifying and awesome, and leaves me to fight and take it down. It is still a Bunnelby, but a Bunnelby that knows Earth Power. The ground around me keeps exploding, and it feels so cool, again, to see this in a 3D game. I actually had to roll around to avoid Bunnelby's Earth Powers, that's not something I expected to write when I got up today. 

Trevelle tells us that this reminds him of something... something he read before. A long time ago, in a different region, people used to live in fear of giant ferocious Pokemon with glowing eyes called... Alpha Pokemon. Which is cool, it's a nice callback to the previous Legends game, Legends Arceus in Hisui. But Trevelle lampshades something important. How is it that these Alpha Pokemon have made their way into modern-day Lumiose? Why and how? 

I have an inkling that this might be the threat that AZ is assembling young fighters for, but we'll find out next time, I guess! I'm having a bit too much fun just running around Lumiose and exploring it now that I have full free rein over it.

Random Notes:

• A slight gag is that there seem to only be five people with Ivor, so if Josée is the fifth-strongest, she's the weakest of their little band!
• There is a random Nurse Joy that used to be a crepe seller, until she decided to convert her crepe cart into a portable Pokemon Center. Okay, Crepe Joy! 
  
• Really love that Mimi kind of randomly teleports from the floor to a little chair with a cushion as the Emma scene goes on. I don't think she even teleports on-screen, she just appears on the elevated chair as the scene goes on. Mimi's a Psychic-type, she can absolutely do that!
• We get to see pictures on Emma's office of Mimi playing with Looker, helping him to write on his book. Yay Looker! A bit more surprisingly is Mimi playing with Xerosic. Xerosic and Emma had a bit of a complex relationship in XY, so I think this implies that this might be after Xerosic did his time in jail, perhaps? He didn't have a change of heart until the end of the XY story missions with Emma, and Mimi wouldn't be friendly with Xerosic until then. 
• I love how Moire notes that Sableye is a Pokemon that's only weak to Fairy type.  Oh, there was once a time when Sableye's whole deal is that it's the only Pokemon without a weakness at all! How have times changed...
• 'Dormez Bien' means sleep well in French. 
• I can finally go to the Introversion Cafe and order some coffee or tea, but it seems to just be an excuse for me to sit on the chair with some food and drinks in front of me, and Chikorita chilling next to me. I mean, okay, it's cute. 
• I find a hidden back entrance to Wild Zone 1, and catch a lone Pichu hiding in a fenced-off area that would be inaccessible from the tutorial area. 
• I got a bunch of new TMs from Mable's research, including some of the elemental fangs, Mud Shot and Protect. Protect is particularly interesting because now you actually have to time to get the Protect shield up! Again, this sort of mechanic in a Pokemon game is just so surprising to me. 
  
• Perhaps this will get a bit more obvious as the articles come out, but I am hella busy in October and November, and I played Pokemon Legends Z-A in huge bursts of time, and also pre-write these articles essentially during those bursts of time, so there's definitely a lag between when I experience something in the game and when I write about it in the blog.