The empty environments in Pokémon Legends: Arceus don’t matter, even though they’ve been the subject of online criticism since the game’s January launch. While it would be nice for an open-world Pokémon experience to have enormous, sweeping, well-manicured areas for the player to explore, it’s not necessary. Pokémon is about catching and battling with Pokémon, which Legends: Arceus still fulfills.
Similarly to how Pokémon Let’s Go, Eevee! and Pikachu! experimented with the longstanding catching mechanics of the franchise, creating a gameplay loop that was essentially Pokémon GO on the Nintendo Switch, Pokémon Legends: Arceus flips the series’ formula on its head. The game takes place in the Sinnoh region, but in a time long before the events of Diamond and Pearl. There are still battles in Legends: Arceus, but the main objective is catching every Pokémon and creating the first version of the Hisui region’s Pokédex.
To do this, players explore semi-open world areas of historic Sinnoh, called the Hisui region. Instead of encountering Pokémon blindly in tall grass, the creatures are visible in the overworld, and the player needs to sneak up behind them, tossing Poké Balls or initiating battles depending on their strategy. While these environments may be bland compared to other modern games with large explorable levels, it doesn’t really matter. The trees and rocks and landscapes aren't what players should be iring in Legends: Arceus anyway - it's the actual Pokémon.
The Environments In Pokémon Legends: Arceus Are Bland
The Hisui region is divided into several subregions in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, most of which contain one specific type of climate. The Alabaster Icelands, for example, is snowy terrain that primarily hosts Ice-types, while the Crimson Mirelands contains mud and poison Pokémon. Each section attempts to distinguish its differences from other areas through its overall aesthetic, using marshes, mountains, grasslands, and geographical markers to build a cohesive environment or biome.
While Pokémon Legends: Arceus is successful when it comes to differentiating each level on a grand scale, once the player starts to explore, the areas are noticeably emptier than any real, natural piece of land ever would be. Trees are sparse, ponds are too closely clustered together and smaller details like flowers and grass are only present in unnatural patches. For a game released in 2022, Pokémon Legends: Arceus environmentally shares more DNA with titles from over a decade ago rather than modern masterpieces like Red Dead Redemption 2.
Considering the high hopes that fans have had for a potential open-world Pokémon game, especially one on a home console like the Nintendo Switch, it’s understandable that there would be some disappointment regarding the thoroughness of the world’s natural landscape. However, it is a Pokémon game. While that’s not necessarily an excuse for the bland levels, the goal of Pokémon games isn’t to have the player ire the geographical world around them. Instead, it’s about catching and battling Pokémon, which is more apparent than ever in Legends: Arceus.
The Pokémon In Legends: Arceus Matter, Not The Environments
Perhaps more than any previous Pokémon game, Legends: Arceus emphasizes that the player’s goal is to complete the Pokédex. In a way, the game is similar to Pokémon GO because it doesn’t particularly encourage the player to collect a specific team of six creatures and stick to it for the whole game. Rather than forming a core team to take on strong Gym Leaders and the Elite Four, the protagonist captures multiple Pokémon of the same species, defeats others in battle, and takes notes on specific moves.
For once, the Pokédex truly is a blank slate, and it’s the player’s job to fill it out completely. That’s why Pokémon Legends: Arceus is exciting. For the first time ever, players can explore the world while seeing Pokémon right in front of them instead of simply relying on random encounters as in a traditional JRPG. It’s like the Wild Area in Sword and Shield, but for the entire game rather than just a portion of it.
As bland as the surrounding environments are, it’s hard to be upset or easily distracted by the sparse number of trees or flowers when standing eye to eye with an enormous Snorlax that’s actively attempting to harm the player. Despite the emptiness of the areas, the Hisui region is filled with new forms and interesting Pokémon. Learning how to effectively sneak up on them and throw a successful Poké Ball or engaging in battle to see a Geodude use a specific move draws the player’s attention much more than the landscape.
Even though it’d be nice to have an enormous, open world, highly detailed Pokémon game, Legends: Arceus proves that’s actually not necessary, no matter how much discourse the empty environments cause online. Fans play Pokémon because of the Pokémon, and that’s always been true. Pokémon has never put much emphasis on the world around the player. Legends: Arceus is no different, and that’s totally okay. In fact, it’s already doing more than a lot of other Pokémon games have for years. The early, top-down games usually had nothing more than standard forest environments or snowy mountains. Meanwhile, the later 3D games stuck to the same formula, with the only difference being the perspective of the player as they wandered through Alola or Galar completing the Pokédex.
Legends: Arceus may not have been what fans dreamt of when they envisioned an open-world Pokémon game, but the franchise doesn’t really need a map as detailed as something like Red Dead Redemption 2 or even Skyrim. It’s a Pokémon game, and the focus should be on catching Pokémon, which is exactly what Legends: Arceus does. It’s easy to notice the disappointing empty environments when looking at screenshots or discussing the game online, but in practice, the only thing running through a majority of player’s minds when exploring Hisui is dodging, catching, and battling the creatures that have been a long-standing pillar in the games industry for over two decades. Pokémon Legends: Arceus successfully pulls off what it set out to do, and that was to immerse players in an interactive experience with Pokémon.
