Legends ZA has been out for a few days and I've played for over 10 hours, so I wanted to give my review of ZA. I think I gave it a more fair chance than most and am not just saying something that is going with the consensus that the game is bad.
At first I thought the game was bad like many people, but it's growing on me because of the nostalgia factor. Not from the Pokémon though, but because the gameplay heavily reminds me of one of those many shovelware asian mmorpgs that came out around the late 2000s early 2010s. The combat is a simple button mashing of your cooldowns plagued with terrible pathing and clunky controls. It's also a very grindy game for no reason. It gives you the illusion you can dodge or move in some strategic way, but it's not really so most of the time. It's very reminiscent of an early free to play asian mmorpg. It even has a similar art style and graphic quality. So if you liked the early era of shovelware asian mmorpgs, play Legends ZA and you won't be disappointed.
Some observations on the game.
Many people are complaining about how it's essentially a $600+ game if you want the "full optimal experience." It's true, you need a switch 2 and a switch 2 copy of the game, $500 or more depending on if you got the bundle or not. Then there is the $30 day 1 DLC, which isn't really out yet, all you get right now for the DLC is a couple of cosmetic items that look terrible. Finally, certain megas, mainly greninja, delphox, chesnaught, are locked behind Nintendo online, which is a subscription service that costs at least $20 a year, but maybe you can get in on a family account and get it for free if you know someone who has that.
However there is other paywall gated content that I discovered. The shiny charm is locked behind a "Mabel Research task" where you need to be traded pokemon that evolve such as haunter, kadabara, machoke. Therefore if you don't go online and beg people for trades, have multiple switches to trade with yourself, or know someone else with the game then you cannot finish the Mabel's Research tasks to unlock the shiny charm.
I'm not far enough into the game to know yet, but there's at least another choose one of three Pokémon aside from choosing your starter, with squirtle, charmander, and bulbasaur. Presumably you will have to trade to get the Pokémon you didn't choose somewhere along the line. Also the lanky hotel owner with the cane gave me my starter's Mega stone and it's unclear to me where I would get the other 2 since you can't trade for them.
Gamefreak must of been cognizant of people cheesing the game by trading with a hacked switch, so some items are not tradable, notably the megastones and something called a colorful screw. You have to explore the map to get colorful screws to trade them for items that boost the rate you get resources. I recommend immediately maxxing out the item that gives you more mega shards because you can't trade for mega stones. Everything else can be somewhat compensated by trading with a hacked switch.
About cheating/modding/save editing in the game: Kaphotics probably won't release PKhex for Legends ZA for a few weeks. So if you want to use unauthorized by Nintendo means to enhance your gaming experience you must use a hex editor or the edizon cheat overlay. Both of which have a very good chance to corrupt your save file if you don't know what you are doing. Personally I am using a maxxed out cheated save I found on gbatemp to trade with my Switch 2 playthrough while I wait for PKhex to be updated. There is a very good tool out on github to fix corrupted game saves at least.
It's not the best game, but I'm not really bothered by it because modding is still possible and I knew it wouldn't be a very engaging game going into it. In my opinion, GF really needs to make their first Switch 2 exclusive Pokemon game not terrible because there likely will not be easily accessible modding/cheating to enhance the game experience. When that happens, as I don't see anyone modding the Switch 2 anytime soon, Pokemon will need to be fun or I predict people are going to engage with the game even less so than usual. I give the game a highly mediocre rating. It's somehow below the standard subpar pokemon gaming experience GF has delivered for sometime now, but not too far gone that I find it unplayable.
