Let's Play Pokemon Legends Z-A, Part 7: Mega Plot Developments!

Okay, after a bunch of side-quests, I finally decide to get along with the story. Previously, Naveen had some focus, so this time it's Lida. She's dancing with her Staryu in some random courtyard. I return her things to her. Her backstory isn't quite as engaging as Naveen, to be honest. She is following a dancer that she idolizes to Lumiose City. But the friend that she was rooming in had to move, leaving her essentially homeless since she is self-funded with a scholarship. And as she's wandering around, Taunie and AZ kind of took her into the hotel. It does feel a bit more 'real', but I don't really feel the emotional urgency that Taunie or Naveen's story has. 

Lida then battles me, just as an exercise to get all warmed-up. They do let Lida's trainer have a fair bit of dancing in the background, and her Pokemon is a bit more eclectic. Clauncher, Vanillite, and Staryu? Neither of those three are really pokemon I would immediately associate with dancing. But maybe that's the point. 

With Lida's story out of the way, I get signed up for another promotional match, this time for Rank W to V. Whereas the previous trainers have had names that started with the letters, I'm not fighting someone whose name starts with W... but a chef in Restaurant Le Nah called Rintaro. Okay?

Again, not going to belabour the point about the Battle Zone. The Pokemon is a bit more varied, and that's cute. I did take this opportunity to get some evolutions on the way. My Venipede evolves into Whirlipede, and Froakie evolves into Frogadier. Really love just how fun Whirlipede plays out in this game, with it rolling and bouncing around. Rollout is especially neat with it,  just charging in a line bowling over the enemies before coming back. Frogadier gains access to Smokescreen and Double Team. Smokescreen creates a fog bomb (similar to Legends Arceus!) that obscures me to get a stealth strike on the enemy. Double Team has Frogadier side-step really fast in order to dodge an attack, but I also have to time it similar to Protect. 

Rintaro challenges me inside his restaurant, and he doesn't really have anything interesting to say. He just wants to make his restaurant a bit more famous. Okie-dokie. He has a team of relatively high-leveled Simisage, Simisear and Simipour. Damn monkeys! The Simipour is laughable to my team, but the Simisear surprisingly swept aside a chunk of my team. Turns out that the current team is quite weak to Fire, and because Frogadier was already injured from the grass monkey, I ended up having to rely on numbers. But Rintaro is defeated, and I am now rank V. 

As I get Rank V, Emma calls me to tell me that she has a tip on the mysterious black, four-legged Pokemon. Oh, yes, I caught a Houndour, but the Alpha Houndoom -- no,  not those? As this conversation is going on, Zygarde 10%, the dog form, shows up. Of course this is what Emma is looking for. I've never really appreciated Zygarde 10%, I think, never quite watching the XY season in the anime. I really haven't appreciated how weird the dog face looks with the four white eyes, and how... abnormally thin the legs are. Dog-like it might be, but 10% is still a being made up of a bunch of hexagonal cells, and the constantly glowing parts of it does make it look a fair bit cooler. 

What happens next is a bit of a chase as Zygarde runs around the city, and we have to keep track of it until Emma arrives. I do this with Whirlipede gloriously bouncing like a mad tire next to me. 

We reach the side of the building and Zygarde jumps, drags me and drops me on the rooftop of the building. Are you mad, Zygarde?  On the rooftop is an Absol surrounded by pink energy, and... it's starting to Mega Evolve. Emma arrives and yells at me from the street level in panic. AZ and a Lucario also shows up, and he notes that I have to handle the Rogue Mega Evolution. AZ sends his Lucario up with a Mega Ring, allowing to access the game's gimmick.

Absol, of course, transforms and Mega Evolves, growing large as well. It's an Alpha and Mega Evolution at the same time, I suppose! A swirling vortex similar to the raid dens of Galar appear around me, as this happens.

And then we have a tutorial on the Mega Evolution battle in Legends Z-A... with AZ's Lucario as the creature I control. I am a bit eye-rolling that I'm not allowed to use one of my own (not that any of them are eligible at this point, admittedly) because isn't the whole point of Mega Evolution is that it's caused by a strong bond between trainer and Pokemon? This is just some random Lucario! It would've made more sense if we actually interacted with this specific Lucario at least once before!

The battle is neat, though. Lucario's regular attacks can't damage Mega Absol, and Mega Absol is locked on me and I do have to roll around and dodge a lot. Lucario also has a rather poor mix of ranged (Aura Sphere) and close-range (Bullet Punch and Rock Smash, I think) so it keeps jumping around. The idea is for Lucario's moves to hit Mega Absol, have Mega Absol drop some mega evolution shiny shard things, and as we collect them, we charge the mega evolution meter. And when Lucario goes Mega Lucario, we can finally damage Mega Absol and even knock it prone for extra moves. 

Again, not the biggest fan of the setup, but it's a neat battle mechanic. Dodging is also neat. The battle is won and the energies coalesce into an Absolite. 

Emma and AZ congratulate me. Taunie also arrives, and is surprised that I could Mega Evolve so early. Emma tells me that I saved the Absol from the pain of Rogue Mega Evolution.... and also notes something I didn't quite catch becuase I was a bit preoccupied with Lucario. That Absol was wild and had no trainer, but just went berserk and Mega Evolved on its own. Emma notes that there's a certain company (presumably Quasartico, since that's the only company we've seen running around. Taunie reveals that this is the 'cause' that AZ and her wanted to protect Lumiose City from. I mean, an Absol appeared, so clearly some cataclysm is about to happen! Sounds neat enough, I'm in! 

In a surprising twist considering Lucario's status as a mascot, AZ doesn't give his Lucario to me. Rather, the rescued Absol decides to join my team in gratefulness of me being its rescuer. You know what? I much prefer Absol by a significant margin compared to Lucario. I think I'll let this emo wolf-goat hang out with me for a while. 

As I wake up the next day, Taunie tells me that two areas, Magenta Plaza and Jaune Plaza, have both been converted into Wild Zones. Mable was right, they are just randomly fencing off random parts of the city and turning them into Wild Zones! It is kind of obvious from the layout of some of those areas that they're going to have wild pokemon in them. This conversation ends with a call from Vinnie, who wants Taunie and myself to come to Quasartico Inc's office. We do know that Taunie and Vinnie are on good terms, but it is interesting that Emma and AZ seem to need the battle royale to gain access to the company records or whatnot. 

Taunie waits outside the hotel for a fight, telling me that she's going to teach me how to use Mega Evolution in combat. Putting Absol wielding the Absolite in my party (you have no idea how happy I am that this is the mega they make us use. No shade to Lucario, but I like Absol so, so much more) I fight her! She has evolved her two other starters, so we fight Croconaw and Pignite. The Mega Evolution conundrum is here, I suppose. I was excited to use Mega Absol again so I mega evolved to fight the two starters, and beat them handily with Mega Absol... but both the timer and Absol's health have kind of been taken out. 

Taunie then sends out her own Mega... Mega Manectric! Okay, Mega Manectric actually looks a lot better in Z-A, not because they changed the model or anything... but becuase I feel that's a design that is always meant to be dynamic on screen or on page, instead of just breathing up and down static on the battlefield as it did in the turn-based games. This big-ass thunderbolt just zips around, takes down my Absol, and I had to pull out Bayleef to take it down. Fun! Again, I really do feel that this is how XY should have been. Give all the prominent NPCs some mega evolutions to play around with! As much grief as I give Sword/Shield, they handled the distribution of Gigantamax very well among the main cast! 

Anyway, that's a bunch of main story stuff dealt with. See you guys next time for some more sidequesting probably!

Random Notes:

• 
  Random lady in the fashion mall: "Everything that lives must die. It's an immutable rule -- and straying from it can only bring pain." Damn, ma'am, that's profound, but maybe something more befitting to, like, a main supporting character or even if it has to be a nameless NPC, one that's like in the graveyard or something. 
• "I'm an ordinary man by day. But by night... I'm still an ordinary man."
• I have been doing a bunch of the parkouring to just explore the city more  and collect all the items I can come across. 
• I also collect a bunch of sidequests that I can't finish just yet since I need to collect the Pokemon. A cafe owner wants to differentiate his cafe with Pansear, Panpour and Pansage, using the monkeys' abilities to make his coffee special. Another lady wants all five colours of Flabebe.
• One of the not-so-interesting sidequests that just expands on a Pokedex entry involves Skiddo, where a lady just really wants to taste the mints growing on the back of Skiddo and gets excited when I show her one and she gets to pluck a leaf from my baby goat. 
• Oh wait, I got it, Lida uses a Vanillite because her brother (?) Tierno is wearing a Vanillite shirt! It always kind of bothered me that Tierno had a Vanillite shirt but to my knowledge never actually uses a Vanillite!
• One of the newest expansions for the TCG (which I've been borrowing the art of as my let's play artwork) is all about Mega Evolutions... and boy, the art for them look so much better than the very overcrowded Gen VI cards that had lots of words exploding around the Pokemon. The TCG kind of didn't really do much with Megas other than the initial generation they debuted in, so it's nice to have options to pick from for the older megas.
  
• I don't think that I mentioned it in any of my previous write-ups, but poison is back! They took away the 'poison hurts you when you move' gimmick that Generation I was so infamous for in... Gen V or VI, I want to say? And now it's back! I love it. Honestly, I generally love how a lot more moves interact with you outside of battle. I've always felt that it was something cute that the first couple of generations were trying to do. The HM moves, things like Dig and Sweet Scent actually mattering in the overworld... and at some point all the moves just become varying degrees of 'I shoot lightning bolts' or 'I shoot a fire but of a different shape'. That's why the reviewing moves feature on this blog kind of stalled, really, because there really wasn't a ton I really can say.