Pokemon
Pokemon
Here’s what we know about Pokemon Legends: Arceus DLC plans
Steven Rondina
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is almost certainly going to receive DLC, but what exactly does that entail? What are Nintendo’s plans for Pokemon Legends: Arceus DLC. There have been various rumblings about the future of the Pokemon Legends franchise after its debut with Arceus. Nintendo has yet to give official and definitive word about whether the game will be a one-and-done spin-off like Pokemon Conquest or the start of a brand …
Pokemon
Fans are talking about Pokemon Legends: Celebi, but what is it?
Steven Rondina
The concept of Pokemon Legends: Celebi has captured the imagination of Pokemon fans, but is there anything to it? Pokemon Legends: Arceus has entranced Pokemon fans around the globe. Its unique setting in an ancient Sinnoh region and novel gameplay has been well received among fans and critics alike. Pokemon fans are hoping this isn’t a one-off affair in the way some games have been, such as Pokemon Let’s Go …
Pokemon
5 things Pokemon games need to improve after Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is here, and it’s been a big success both commercially and critically. But it hasn’t been perfect. The game’s blend of open-world elements, action sequences, and standard Pokemon gameplay has breathed new life into the franchise for the first time in years. While this is a big step forward, there are still some important improvements to be made. Odds are that Pokemon Legends: Arceus will be the …
Pokemon
Here’s how to catch Enamorus in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon Legends: Arceus has a lot of legendaries to catch, including Enamorus. Here’s how to catch this new legendary Pokemon. Enamorus was the lone new legendary added in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The Pokemon has garnered a decidedly mixed responses since it was first leaked to the public. On the one hand, the new Pokemon’s appearance was widely derided. The newcomer looks more like a common enemy in a typical role-playing …
Pokemon
Here is every Unown location in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Finding the location of every Unown in Pokémon Legends: Arceus can be very difficult. But we can help. There are a few different collection quests in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Alongside the 107 wisps and the general goal of catching ‘em all, players need to complete the Unown alphabet. The sole users of Hidden Power are scattered across all six of the main regions of Pokémon Legends: Arceus, with many of …
Pokemon
These are all the wisp locations in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Tracking down the location of every wisp in Pokemon Legends: Arceus is a hassle, but it’s a necessary step for completing the Pokedex. And we can make it easier for you. Pokemon Legends: Arceus centers around several open areas for players to explore. Though it doesn’t go fully into The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild territory with its open-world elements, the game borrows some features from the game. …
Pokemon
Here’s what to do with shards in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Red, Green, and Blue Shards are all important in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but it helps to know what to do with them. Shard items have taken on various roles in the Pokemon series. In the original Ruby and Sapphire games, they were traded for evolution stones. In Black 2 and White 2, they were required for move tutors. In Sun and Moon, they were traded for Bottle Caps. In Pokemon …
Pokemon
How to complete Uxie’s trial in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Uxie’s trial in Pokemon Legends: Arceus is one of the weirder challenges in the entire series. But we can help you to complete it. Pokemon games have never been afraid of testing their players’ general knowledge. Starting with Pokemon Red and Blue when players needed to answer trivia questions in the Cinnabar Island gym, the occasional pop quiz has been a very real possibility for players through the Pokemon series. …
How to complete The Sea’s Legend in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Pokemon Legends: Arceus has a special request called the Sea’s Legend that rewards players with the mythical Pokemon Manaphy and Phione. There are loads of mythical Pokemon in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and the Sea’s Legend request is one way to get some of them. The request is difficult to complete based on the information that’s made available to players in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The trick is that the guide to …
How to battle and catch Noble Pokemon in Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Noble Pokemon are a huge part of Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ story, but what are they? Pokemon Legends: Arceus does things that player have never seen before. Even Pokemon veterans are going to have trouble figuring out many of the new facets to the game, both in and out of battle. Noble Pokemon are the best example of this. While Pokemon games have always had bosses, they’ve almost exclusively been trainers, …
Here’s how to use Linking Cords in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Evolution items work very differently in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, and a great example of that is the Linking Cord. Pokemon Legends: Arceus is the first Pokemon game in a long while that’s designed to be a primarily single-player experience. While it does have some multiplayer features including the ability to trade, the Pokedex can be completed without any outside help. That might sound strange to new players, as getting help …
What’s the Pokemon with 3 leaves in Search for Bitter Leaves?
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
One NPC in Pokemon Legends: Arceus tasks players with catching a mysterious “Pokemon with three leaves” in the Search for Bitter Leaves request. Many requests revolve around asking the player to find vaguely described Pokemon. A big part of Pokemon Legends: Arceus is receiving requests from NPCs that want to see, or even take, some of the player’s Pokemon. The Search for Bitter Leaves quest comes from the Galaxy Team’s …
How to use space-time distortions in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Space-time distortions are a big part of the Pokemon Legends: Arceus experience. Here’s all you need to know about making the best use of them. The latest installment of the Pokemon franchise is receiving strong reviews and a big part of that positive response is the new mechanics and rewards for exploration. Among these is space-time distortion. This phenomenon gives a chance at catching some rare Pokemon and an opportunity …
Complete guide to mass outbreaks in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ mass outbreaks feature is useful for all sorts of players. Unlike in previous games, catching an abundance of a single Pokemon is heavily rewarded in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. There’s no better way to do this than during a mass outbreak. From the new Pokedex to the different ways of traversing the environments, shiny hunting in Pokemon Legends: Arceus certainly works differently, and it revolves around mass outbreaks. Here’s …
How to shiny hunt and catch shinies in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Catching and hunting shiny Pokemon works very differently in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. That’s not surprising, of course. The latest installment in the series is different from mainline Pokemon games in many ways. But for shiny hunters, many of Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ new gameplay mechanics are incorporated into the shiny hunting experience. New methods of traveling come into play, as does the more open-world nature of the game. Combine this with …
Pokemon Unite teases 3 new Pokemon, but who are they?
Olivia Richman
Pokemon
The Pokemon community has been given some hints about the next additions to the Pokemon Unite roster in February and March. Ever since Pokemon Unite came out in July 2021, the MOBA has continued to add popular and obscure Pokemon alike to its ever-growing roster. Now, there are three new Pokemon coming to Pokemon Unite and The Pokemon Company has offered some telling hints about what’s coming soon. A bulletin …
MoistCr1TiKaL blasts Pokemon fans over Legends: Arceus graphics
Olivia Richman
Pokemon
Pokemon Legends: Arceus has received strongly positive reviews but that didn’t stop some streamers from speaking up about the game’s shortcomings. This included Charles “MoistCr1TiKaL” White, who had some advice for The Pokemon Company. The Pokemon community has been anticipating Legends: Arceus for quite some time since the game takes a break from the usual formula that most Pokemon games follow. The Pokemon spin-off has open-world environments and unique mechanics. …
Here’s how to evolve Stantler in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Some Pokemon have always had weird methods for evolution, but few are as much of a grind as how to evolve Stantler into Wyrdeer in Pokemon Legends: Arceus. Right from the start, Wyrdeer was one of the most heavily promoted Pokemon in the buildup to Pokemon Legends: Arceus. The bearded reindeer is recognizable based on the similarities to its original Stantler form, but also has a distinctively new look to …
How to catch and evolve Eevee in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
Players can catch Eevee very early on in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy. Eevee has always been a sought-after Pokemon. Its cuteness has made it a fan favorite throughout Pokemon’s 25-year history, and the various evolution options make it an option for plugging any holes in a party. But here, players don’t need to use Eevee plug a hole in a lineup. With enough dedication, …
How to evolve Pokemon in Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Steven Rondina
Pokemon
An important question for players who are getting into Pokemon Legends: Arceus is how to evolve Pokemon. We can help you to learn how. Pokemon evolution has always worked the same way in the mainline Pokemon games. A Pokemon will level up in battle and, if the right conditions are met, an animation will begin that shows the Pokemon’s evolution. Either that, or the player uses an item and the …
Pokemon stands as the largest cross-media IP in the world by a comfortable margin, but how did it make such explosive gains?
For a long while, pivoting a video game franchise into a larger brand seemed impossible. Iconic titles like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and Resident Evil received TV and film adaptations, with the most common result being catastrophic failure. That was the norm from the 1990s all the way into the 2020s; and it probably shouldn’t have been.
While Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li and Silent Hill: Revelation were irredeemably bad, Pokemon showed that a video game series can be adapted into many different mediums. Here’s a quick history of the franchise and its future outlook.
Pokemon explodes with Game Boy games, quickly expands
Pokemon first arrived in Japan in 1996 with the release of Pokemon Red and Green; a pair of titles for the Nintendo Game Boy. The two games were largely identical, but each one had a handful of Pokemon that were exclusive to those titles. This encouraged players to collect and trade these monsters with others who purchased the games.
Later on in 1996, the game was reimagined as a trading card game. Then in 1997, an anime adaptation launched in Japan.
Both of those rapid-fire expansions earned strong success domestically. More importantly, it primed Pokemon for an overwhelming global push.
In 1998, the franchise officially crossed over into North America, Europe, and Australia. The games were killer apps for the Game Boy but it wasn’t just a video game. An accompanying anime aired new episodes daily, and the trading card game exploded out of the gate. This made it difficult to ignore Pokemon to the point where characters like Ash Ketchum and Pikachu were universally recognizable. Just like that, the franchise was unstoppable.
Pokemon expands beyond Nintendo consoles, grows even further
For decades, Pokemon video games were among the top-selling games each year they came out. The Pokemon TCG was one of the biggest in the industry. The anime was a constant, without even mentioning its many spin-off movies. Licensing characters for toys and apparel was a golden goose for all involved.
But the franchise was still positioned to grow further.
Almost all of the games were exclusive to Nintendo’s gaming hardware, but mobile gaming was on a sharp rise of its own. The franchise also released a long list of spin-offs, successfully turning the series into everything from a pinball game to a beat ‘em up. The Pokemon Company had dabbled with PC and mobile games previously, but started actively partnering with other studios in the 2010s.
The biggest example of this was Pokemon GO. The Pokemon Company partnered with AR game studio Niantic was an instant hit, being downloaded hundreds of millions of times. It was far from alone, however. Battling-focused gacha game Pokemon Masters, MOBA adaptation Pokemon Unite, and puzzle game Pokemon Cafe launched in the following years.
It wasn’t just licensed mobile games, though. Games like Detective Pikachu and New Pokemon Snap gave players fresh and varied ways to enjoy the familiar franchise.
Modern Pokémon games see mixed response, but sales remain strong
Though Pokémon has many lifelong fans, the mainline releases have long attracted controversy within the fandom. Though the first few generations were generally beloved, opinions on new and modern games releases vary wildly. Starting with the Nintendo Switch, critical response to the games wavered.
Reviews for Pokémon Let’s Go Pikachu and Let’s Go Eevee were lower than previous entries in the series. That pattern held with Pokémon Sword and Shield, which were also met with extreme backlash on social media.
Though each mainline game made every monster from previous generations available up until Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, this ended with Sword and Shield. Several fan favorites, including Beedrill and the Unovan starters, were made unobtainable in the game. The mega evolution and Z-move battle mechanics were also removed from the games. It’s unclear why or what methodology was used to determine which of the little monsters were left out.
Reviews sank further from there, with Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl, then Pokémon Scarlet and Violet garnering the lowest review averages for mainline games.
Despite this, the games were still an enormous commercial success. Pokémon Sword, Shield, Scarlet, and Violet ranked among the best-selling games in franchise history. Its publisher may have heeded some of the fan criticism however, as the company opted against releasing a new mainline game or expansion in 2024. This was the first year without a major game release since 2015.
