I have finished the Pokemon Legends Z-A DLC, Mega Dimension.
Meh.
The highest of highs can be followed with the lowest of lows, I suppose. But before we get to that.
I usually like to remain positive in what I say or present, whenever possible. Obviously being human I don’t achieve that 100% of the time, just look at some of the gameplay videos during frustrating parts. That’s about as real as it gets, and I don’t hold back.
Here, it’s a little different. The written word gives me a chance to reflect, to reconsider how I want to phrase something. Or sometimes not and I just let fly with the words as they come to me. But for multiple reasons do I try to remain positive in all things.
One, it helps me at my core. If I don’t let myself get upset, I don’t feel bad about it later.
Two, I don’t like to talk bad about something someone worked on. Be it a game, movie, book, etc. You name it. Someone at some point put in some effort and that might not always come through if you’re talking bad about that work. And art is so subjective, I never look at reviews for anything besides a product I want to buy. Even that I’m looking through half closed eyes to try and not warp my opinion based on what I’m reading from people who aren’t me. Grain of salt and all that.
So with that being said, it really feels like they took everything I didn’t care for in the base Z-A game, and made that the DLC.
Seriously, I didn’t focus on it in the last post for all of the above reasons, but the ranked battles were annoying. Stealth doesn’t work when the NPC can whip around and spot you instantly while you’re waiting for your slow ass pokemon to get around to doing the move you pressed the button for a while before. Oh and also you can be extra punished for that because even if you’re targeted onto the enemy and have ordered the nuclear strike… they’ll somehow turn around and catch me off guard???
And I also really didn’t groove with the… parkour? I don’t even know if you can call it that. Getting around the city with only a roll was bad at first, I kept feeling like I was missing something when I couldn’t make jumps and gaps. I don’t really play platformers much so maybe that was just me? No, there was a mechanic they’d introduce later letting you “glide.”
But you can only start that by being in the air already and with a button press. So you can’t go straight off an edge to gliding, and the loop of down to back up. It just doesn’t feel good to me. It’s very hard to control and judge where I can make it or not when trying to cross gaps between rooftops. I just never got the hang of it.
Now take those mechanics, add in a huge load of new difficulty after you hit the max level… and my least favorite:
A TIMER.
I DON’T NEED TO FEEL RUSHED WHILE I’M ALREADY DOING POORLY.
The entire DLC takes place in these pocket dimensions, which are timed and the timer seems to mean nothing. Seriously, I’m a grown adult and I also tried looking it up to understand what the hell is going on where sometimes the timer seems to obey the normal laws of time as we know it, and sometimes it’s ticking down like someone just cut the wrong wire and just for fun the time sped up.
I once again tried to find information about this, internet search is absolutely useless.
I found something though in a reddit thread:
- 1 star is 1 calorie per second
- 2 stars is 1.6 calories per second
- 3 stars is 3.5 calories per second
- 4 stars is 7.5 calories per second
- 5 stars is 10 calories per second
Hey, why?
Go to hell with that. It’s annoying to keep track of, like there’s not enough going on. Just give me a normal timer that means actual seconds.
Jeez
Making donuts should be fun, but unfortunately with the rest of it bringing it down I just don’t care enough.
I pushed through the DLC simply because I have already played every pokemon game before, and then went further to 100% complete a pokedex.
But, fun was not had. It was a struggle. I may have scraped by in the base game without needing to continue on a boss fight except for the final one. Which is fine to me. That’s a decent progression although there were points where I was less than thrilled.
But I just kept getting stomped in the DLC. Not a single mega boss battle was I able to complete without a continue. I maxed all my pokemon levels, I made sure to have the type advantage and choose moves more carefully. I even looked up the whole nature mechanic and had to play around with mints. Something I had never cared about in any other pokemon game and I did fine enough in those.
But it sure doesn’t feel good to get utterly destroyed so badly. Time and time again.
After going through it I actively am telling people who are interested not to bother buying it. Unless you’re mad like me and now wanting to keep up with a complete pokedex, so I’m trying to get all the mega evolutions, it’s absolutely not worth it.
It has killed all motivation I had towards playing. I finished the main campaign and just stopped. I still have to continue grinding (which is so boring, that’s the whole DLC) to get enough dumb points to go after Rayquaza. I’m certainly not playing everyday anymore, it’s dropped all the way of games I’m playing to the bottom. Which means it’s only when I’m working out. Usually that’s to distract myself from a thing I hate doing, exercise, but now it’s coming at me from both sides. I hate the exercise and I hate the game. Fantastic.
I’ll keep chipping away at in small chunks, but it’s only because I’ve come so far. I put in a decent amount of time over the holiday break to push through it. But it was so disheartening I couldn’t keep at it just to push through to 100%. I’m working on a living dex of the base pokedex and now the DLC dex. Just so when the time finally comes to transfer out of there and into home I’ll be all set.
Before starting the DLC I did find a couple shiny pokemon. So that’s cool, never was one to go out of my way to hunt for them. But I have found more in this game than previous ones (that still have the original shiny rate)
In happier words, I instead turned my focus to a game I’ve had set aside for a while that I also talked about in a video. Tears of the Kingdom.
So much more fun, I like sticking stuff to other stuff.