 If I told you that Pokemon Legends Arceus was yet another repetitive, soulless, and borderline unfinished video game designed by Game Freak, would anyone even be surprised? No? Sounds nice. Prepare to be surprised. Arceus does everything you have ever wanted a Pokemon game to do and then some, and it wraps it all up in a nice turd colored bow because who needs to polish the visuals when there are deadlines to meet? Although, I do love the throwback easter egg to Duck Hunt. Speaking of throwbacks, here's a little video of this guy from 2017 talking about their dream Pokemon. Just to have a game like Skyrim where you go around in this huge open environment just like the one behind me right now traversing the landscape and stumbling across real life Pokemon Pikachu down there or a other kind of Pokemon that's not a Pikachu down there that I can see in the distance and I can go and walk to and throw my Pokeball at or I can throw a Pokemon at and start battling. Well, what do you know? I predicted everything perfectly. I just want to I want a Pokemon game in in what feels like 2017 in what feels like current day generation. I even wanted a current generation Pokemon game that felt like it was about five years too late. Hold up a second. Crapping on this game's crappy visuals is kind of a crap way to start this video. I mean, Pokemon is the world's largest franchise, but this is also the same company that left a mouse cursor in the end credits of Sword and Shield. So what did you expect? Let's backtrack a little and start this whole video over with a more positive tone would this guy. Okay, I have a problem. I can't stop playing Pokemon. I'm trying to make a review that would have been out days ago, by the way, but I'm making a review on a game I'm addicted to and I can't stop playing that game while trying to make the video. It's a vicious cycle. But at least the one thing I haven't had to worry about is what I'm going to eat because this video is sponsored by Factor. Factor delivers fresh, never frozen dietitian approved meals right to your doorstep. They support wholesome, clean and delicious eating with no cooking needed. Their menus are updated weekly with over 27 meals and over 33 add-on options. You can either pick what you want to eat or just let Factor pick for you based on your preferences, which is what Kim and I did. I'm doing a low calorie diet right now because, well, I'm not expanding any calories by sitting down editing and playing video games all day. So I picked their low calorie option and it was great. They also offer keto, chef's choice and vegan or veggie options which include seafood, meat and plant-based meals. Great for all kind of diets. We didn't need to go to the grocery, we didn't even need to cook. It takes literally two minutes in the microwave. It felt like I had so much extra time in the day to play more Pokemon. So head to go.factor75.com slash beat-em-ups120 and use code beat-em-ups120 to get $120 off. I didn't even realize it was that much. That's a lot. Can I get that? Can we do that? Factor, can I get $120 off? I guess yeah, if I just use my own code. Thank you Factor for sponsoring this video and without realizing it, supporting my gaming addiction. All right, I should probably finish the review actually. Legends Arceus is like, I believe it's menage à toi. Remember what we talked about the other day? George is into it. Just so we're all on the same page, I love this game. Like if this game and I were in high school together, I'd ask it to the prom. In fact, I had so much fun playing the game that the first day I went live on Twitch, I accidentally streamed for 13 hours straight man. I spent the entire time crying, oh my screaming and laughing. The only other thing I have accidentally done for 13 hours in my life was sleep. So when Pokemon sleep comes out, that's going to be dangerous for this guy. I fully believe this is the best Pokemon game ever made. And I'm going to tell you why in this video, but when the graphics look so rough that you didn't even notice this footage you're seeing is actually from a 2018 fan made Pokemon MMO and not Legends Arceus. It's kind of hard not to point and laugh. Terrible draw distances, crazy pop in and pop out. And don't get me started on whatever it is that happens to the edges of your character model when you're in caves or standing near water. And I'm starting to think that Game Freak is anti-anti-Alessing. Also at times I can't tell if my game is glitching or if Game Freak just got really creative with the new Pokemon types. I'ma get me this new Boulder Bronzel on my favorite Badoof's new form, Tree Badoof. Anyone else see that Badoof? Game Freak have been designing Pokemon games since the Game Boy and yes, I still have mine, jealous. But they just never figured out 3D visuals and aren't handling the leap into full HD environments very well. But credit where credit is due. Literally everything else about this game is a massive improvement over every other title. So let's set aside the visuals for the rest of the video and focus on what makes this game so great. I'm not even gonna mention the flat low-poly textures of the fact that the grass doesn't get displaced when you move through it, the new footprints in the snow or just the trees, period. I'm not even gonna bring that up. Again, Pokemon Legends Arceus begins with you, a 15-year-old kid waking up on the beach after falling from the sky. You barely remember anything about yourself or where you came from, but Professor Lammington and his weird hat decides to immediately teach you about the world of Pokemon before, you know, checking for broken ribs or possible brain damage. Almost immediately you are entrusted with the sole responsibility of saving the world, all because you managed to catch three little itsy-bitsy baby Pokemon which apparently nobody else has ever done, even though Professor Lammington must have done that at some point and he taught you how to do it also. Like every best story, this is a time travel story. Whoa, this is heavy. Now, due to a powerful Pokemon, the entire world is frozen in place with everyone just standing still for days on end. Oh, that's not part of the story. The NPCs just don't have walking animations. Oh, okay. I'm 40 hours into the game and she's still sweeping that one spot. Sorry, I said I wouldn't make fun of the game. Bad wood! Set in a time before people caught in befriended Pokemon as partners. Up to now, they were mostly feared and kept away from. Apparently, nobody has ever managed to catch even six Pokemon before, so I guess the lady who had already set up a Pokemon daycare in the town for people who had too many Pokemon was stoked that you just so happened to show up when you did. Honestly, I really liked the story overall. A lot of the characters were really memorable, which is something I have not said about a Pokemon game in a long time. It's just best not to think about the plot holes, otherwise you end up spiraling out of control and wondering how an acorn and a stone make a Pokeball? Is that really all it takes to make a magical ball that sucks Pokemon in and traps them inside? Shouldn't there be like some kind of tech involved in that? And where does the wood grain come from? However, not everyone trusts you immediately as you stroll into town. This cold-hearted witch named Silene gives you a task she deems impossible in hopes that you will literally die and then just throws you into the lion's den. No, really, she wants you to catch a shinx. So my joke is actually quite clever when you think about it. Oh my god. Oh no, it's another song. Silene, Silene. I'm begging of you, please don't take my Pokemon. Silene, Silene, Silene, Silene. Please don't take them just because you can. Your eyes are brimming with despair, scaring me from the first glare. You exiled me and I'm like 15? Something like that. You're scared of bugs, but not this thing. But honestly, I won't complain. My Pokedex complete for you, Silene. Ooh, Silene. When you got a song in your heart, you got to sing it. While we're out here fighting for our lives, let's just talk about how incredible the gameplay is. Free aiming and throwing Pokeballs brings me endless joy and it's an addictive gameplay mechanic all on its own. Do you guys realize that was the first time in my life I have done the thing I've always wanted to do and throw a Pokeball at a Pokemon in the wild in real time and caught it. Honestly, this game could just be a throwing Pokeball and catching Pokemon Simulator and I would still pay $60 for it. Each Pokemon behaves very differently. Some Pokemon will be skittish and they'll run from you on site, like most of the girls I invited to prom in high school. It's a throwback joke. I didn't even have prom, I'm Australian. Even if you try to engage them in battle, they'll just flee. So you need to be stealthy and hide in the grass or behind objects. If you doke them in the back of the head, you'll stun them a little and increase your chance of catching them. Or just trick them with a tasty treat and then you're mine forever. That's also how I got Kim. It was an ice cream and a wedding ring. You'll also have aggressive Pokemon that will immediately try to challenge you and your only option is to battle them before catching. Each Pokemon would act how you would expect, like Magikarp just float around gawking at you with their little stupid mouths open. Idiots. And there's a good amount of craftable items. Yeah, that's right. This game has crafting and it's sick. Like scatterbugs, smoke bombs and these sticky gloves, which are perfect for confusing the heck out of an aggressive Pokemon while you sneak behind it and then ding donk. Is my favorite coin. Game Freak went out of their way to make everything feel as smooth and organic as possible. Why catch just one Pokemon where you could catch, like, I don't know, ten at once? You can throw Pokemon at trees and rocks to farm materials, but the game doesn't try to stop you or slow you down to watch a boring old cutscene of that. You just throw and you run away. Your Pokemon will zip back to you eventually when they're done picking up everything. Freedom to do whatever you want in this game seems limitless. Even in the battles, you can run around like an insane person screaming orders at your Pokemon while trying to psych out the other Pokemon or their trainers with your sick ass dance moves. I'm gonna psych it out. I'm gonna psych it out. There were so many hold ups in previous Pokemon games that just slowed the pace down to a crawl. Having to press A to skip every message in battles, like when an attack was super effective or when you start a battle and have to skip through each Pokemon's abilities and status effects and blah blah blah. Yeah, I know it's raining. Just let me fight already. Arceus keeps all of that information in but just throws it up on the screen as you go with no need to interact with the information or really even acknowledge it. Like, oh, that move I just did was super effective. Cool. Yeah, it's 2022. You don't need to tell me if I electric strike that bird. I'm gonna be eating Kentucky Fried Chicken. All the battles happen in real time in the overworld you're already playing in and rather than slow the pace with load screens or XP bars when a battle ends, it's just, it's just, it's just over. You're done. You're right back in the game and all the XP information is filled in on the left of the screen but you don't need to look at it or pay attention to it. I forget it's even over there. In fact, most battles when I know it's about to end, I'll already be running away to wherever I was already headed before the battle. They end so smooth. My Pokemon will zip back to me and I'll just keep on trucking. Keep on trucking. Tears reach the top. Yeah, keep them wheels rolling. Don't ever let them stop. You can set new moves whenever you want. You can also evolve whenever you want and these evolution cutscenes go hard. The Pokemon battle animations are sick. The attacks actually connect and so many of them look incredible. Almost everything has been improved over previous Pokemon titles and the difference in playing them is night and day. I didn't even think about battles in this game. Oh my God. It's so, it's so different. Oh, it's coming for me. Tackle. Go use Tackle. Yeah. I don't know what this area is. This town's sock. So confusing. Oh, there's Alpha Pokemon Lord. This has to be one of the coolest parts of their game. Massive, enraged versions of Pokemon roaming the land that are typically 20 to 30 levels above where you are at the time when you first encounter them. By late game, they do become a little easier. But early on, these are terrifying and running away screaming and pooping is an honorable defense. I managed to catch an Alpha Lucario. This dude is like nine feet tall and makes the other Lucarios feel insecure. The difficulty isn't helped by the fact that I think Game Freak couldn't figure out how they would handle the player controlling multiple Pokemon at once on the battlefield. So they fixed this by not doing it. So often you'll find yourself battling two, three or even four Pokemon at once. And if they're all using agile moves, it could be a good eight turns before you actually get to do anything. This game is addictive, seamless. And as I said earlier, everything I have ever wanted from a Pokemon game. But there are some things that I would still want done differently. I'm very greedy. Those evolutions are sick, but I wish they happened in the overworld right in front of me. I mean, they did such a great job at having everything happen in the world seamlessly with no other load screens. But then you have to go into this empty void every time you want to evolve something. It just feels really disjointed to me. I like that I can just send my Pokemon out for fun and have all my evolutions just standing around me like the good little boys and girls that they are. And I can speak to them, which is super cute. But why are they just frozen there? Why can't they move and follow me around? I mean, they all have walking animations, right? I've seen it. Uh, what else can I fix? Because, you know, I am such a great game developer and I definitely could do a better job if I was given the reigns. How about in the battles? I want to be able to throw the Pokeballs like I love in the overworld. But it's just delegated again to a button press and watching a pre-animated cutscene. If I can move around freely in the battle space, then let me throw Pokeballs through. And finally, this is the biggest one. You ready? Game freak. And everyone might be controversial. At this point, Pokemon needs voice acting and much better character animations for the story. In fact, any kind of character animations for the story would be great. This huge leap into a Breath of the Wild Pokemon game is incredible. But in Zelda, they brought the story along for that ride. Legend Arceus' story is still stuck in the 90s, with empty repetitive dialogue that goes around and around in circles over and over, repeating the same few sentences countless times just in different ways. Ah, this is the Calvore that was reportedly struck by powerful lightning. Yes, I've heard Calvore so mighty. Calvore is precious lord. Calvore, Calvore, Calvore, Cleo-Cle-Cleovo, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore. How many times have you said Cleo-Vore in the last Cleo-Vore? Cal-Cel-Vore, Calvore, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore. How many is that, dude? Seriously? Cleo-Vore? I'm sick of saying Cleo-Vore. I don't think I'm saying it correctly. Cleo-Vore? Cleo-Cleo-Vore, am I right? Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore, Cleo-Vore. Cal-Cleo-Vore. I have said Cleo-Vore way too many times today. Cleo-Vore. The ancestors of Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cle-Avore. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore's warden who looks after Cleo-Vore. There was two in the one screen. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cal-Celv-Cleo-Cle-Cle-Vore. Calv-Lores. Cleo-Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. Cleo-Vore. And the gimmick of fading to black every time anything happens that would otherwise need to be animated is just too dated to be cute anymore. Bad guy still growleth, better fade to black. Oh there he goes! How did that happen? I don't know. We didn't want to animate it. Guy with weird blue chest hair shaved into a patent needs to climb down a mountain. Oh let's fade to black. Where did the hairy guy go? Game free. It's okay to ask other dev teams for help if you don't know how to do something. Hmm. I'm just going to sample some of this bee's honey. I'm just saying this is an example of something that probably shouldn't be left up to my imagination. Bad wood! It honestly feels bad to complain about anything in this game though when I finally got everything I wanted. And I mean look at elements like the world traversal. It's so smooth. Switching between riding to swimming to flying to climbing. Ah! Could do it all day. Also I want to add what this game lacks in visuals. It more than makes up for in audio design. Oh do you hear that noise it made? That entire audio team of one guy deserves a raise. Some people are quick to mention that the world seems barren. A similar complaint people had with Breath of the Wild and I do understand that complaint but I think those people might be missing the point a little. This is not a traditional open world game where you set off and explore a huge map with different locations and towns. Very much taken huge inspiration from Monster Hunter. Something that I called way back when like the initial trailers were dropping. You have your home base where you pick up quests, missions, craft items, buy things at stores and where most of the main story will progress. But then you head out on expeditions. Sorry. I mean excursions. Intercept areas filled with wild Pokemon. Just like Monster Hunter, yeah all there really is to do out here is battle collect and farm materials to grow your rank number and progress the story. But that's all you need Pokemon as far as the eye can see. I could be out here all day catching and hunting. I gotta be the very best like no one ever was. But that said, there actually is a big difference between these two games because Pokemon Legend Arceus has a lot of its main story beats happen within the world on top of world events like mass spawning of a certain Pokemon which is the perfect chance to complete your Pokedex entry of the Pokemon as each entry will require you to catch, defeat and complete many other various tasks to study and learn enough about the Pokemon in order to fully finish the entry which adds to that ever addicting gameplay loop or it's also just a great place to find shinies as with so many spawning you have a lot of chances to get that lucky one in 4000 spawn rate. Something that's actually happened to me a couple of times. Although one time I didn't notice until it was too late. Wait, wait, no! Oh my God, that was a shiny. Are you kidding? But if hunting shinies and doing side quests ain't your thing, you can try the new Pokemon Battle Royale mode. The storm clouds are coming in. Actually these are time pockets that just so happen to look like you're playing Fortnite with Pokemon. They randomly occur when you're playing in the open world sections and in my 35 hours of playing I've only ever seen four of them so they're very exciting. They spit out rare and tough Pokemon and oh my God, they're sick. Also while you're out there exploring, keep an eye out for collectible wisps or hiding unknown that essentially yaktas collectibles in this game. Although I guess Pokemon are already collectibles, like extra collectible collectibles. I have been wondering what the future of Pokemon games will look like. Getting up to this release, I figured what they might do is split into two genres. The traditional style of Pokemon game and this new style, creating both moving forward. But now, I'm not so sure anymore. To me, this is the pinnacle Pokemon experience. If we look at the last traditional Pokemon game, half the game was based around the wild area, which was full of concepts and ideas they were clearly exploring for Arceus. In fact, both DLCs for the game were completely removed from traditional Pokemon game design and added two huge chapters set in purely new wild areas. Sword and Shield ended up resembling something closer to Arceus than not. This is just the new evolution of Pokemon. I'm not intended. What Game Freak managed to do here is take my childhood and bring it to life. For many of these legacy video game franchises from the 8-bit era that have managed to stick around to this day, we've been able to see how they evolve and bring the small concepts they had to life in a big way. But Pokemon has stayed true to its original format for 26 years. It's only now, finally, that selecting throw Pokeball isn't just a button press. When I run from battles, I'm literally screaming and running away. I don't have to root around in the grass hoping to find a Pikachu. I'm hiding in that grass, watching Pikachu waiting for the perfect moment to throw the Pokeball. I got it! Yeah, so the game isn't at its prettiest, but it is so damn fun that I don't care. This is the best game that Game Freak has ever made. This is the best Pokemon game ever made. And it is already one of my favorite video games I have ever played. If you have never played a Pokemon game before, this is the new place to start. So Gyarados can fly, what the fuck?