I will say it deserves to sell well. It has its flaws, but in general it’s a very good game that clearly had a lot more thought put into it than any of the earlier mainline 3DS or Switch titles. Improvements like being able to evolve your Pokémon at any time, change out their moves at any time, use faster and less powerful or slower and more powerful attacks, and many more are such a breath of fresh air. It’s clear that they took a lot of inspiration from Breath of the Wild, from the large open areas to the music, the jingles, the artstyle, the sound effects like the rain on tents in the base camp, being able to run straight into much more powerful Pokémon (and actually being able to battle and/or catch them), smooth switching between different rides, and so on, and they didn’t mess it up.
Some improvements I’d like to see in the next Pokémon Legends would be
- change up the button mapping a bit so it doesn’t feel as fiddly (I’m mostly thinking of how you need to press X to swap between items and Pokémon)
- give the main character a jump button
- more interactions between Pokémon in the overworld (right now they move around quite naturally, but it would be great to see Pokémon play with each other, or see rival Pokémon fight each other)
- drop the stamina for the main character or at least give a visual indication of it, with ways to increase it as well
- some other nitpicks
I really hope these improvements will also make it to the normal mainline games. I didn’t expect this game to be great but I’m happy it is.
