Nothing feels better than throwing a ball in the back of an unsuspecting Pokémon

There is something strange with the pokemon-spell. A quarter of a century ago, they were the start of the most lucrative media franchise of all time − revenue to date: a sloppy 100 billion euros. Turn on the opening song of the TV series with a random group of people in their twenties or thirties, and there is a good chance that some will spontaneously ‘I want to be the very best, like no one ever was‘ will sing along. It was not for nothing that it was in the Top 2000 again this year.

Still, you can’t see the money having to splash against the plinths at game developer Game Freak. While other game builders built expansive, three-dimensional universes in recent years, new pokemongames each time constricted in the same formula.

Time and again you were taken in a straight line from town to town until you defeated all the relevant trainers with your own team of obedient monsters. Interactions with the creatures in question were mostly limited to wooden fights, in which it was a matter of choosing an attack from time to time. Visually, the games were hopeless.

A pokemongame sells anyway, but this creative stagnation started to wreak havoc outside Game Freak’s sales department. The game developer seems to have noticed that too, because now there is Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which leaves you free in extensive forest and mountain areas where the colorful creatures just roam. A breath of fresh air.

pokemon stimulates the imagination precisely because behind every tree or stone an imaginative monster can hide. You can fight and capture them to complete your own team (yes, animal activists still have some work to do in this world). This game finally manages to capture this feeling of freedom and adventure.

First you have to go through an excruciating hour full of explanations, but then you can go free, into the wilderness. In the distance you can already see the monsters walking and flying. Squatting, you sneak through the grass to be able to surprise them – some species will run away as soon as they see you, others will become aggressive. What a liveliness, compared to the past. Here twenty-year-old boy and girl dreams come true.

The story is not very interesting, you can say a weak point, because it is served in way too long pieces of text. Importantly, you have to study the creatures more closely by catching and defeating a lot of them.

Catching is done with so-called ‘pokéballs’, in which you can store the sometimes meters high beasts to hang them on your belt − Pokémon is not an abbreviation of for nothing pocket monsters, pocket samples. It pays off for the research to catch the same species several times, which makes it addictive to keep wandering, even in the same place. Nothing feels better than throwing a ball in the back of an unsuspecting Pokémon.

Some things have stayed with the old, after all it is still a pokemon-game. The battles are broadly as usual, with alternate attacks, although the pace is faster and the wild Pokémon are much more dangerous.

If a fight goes wrong, you have to run, whether or not ducking for attacks. The trainer himself can also be hit hard and become unconscious. In previous games you were sometimes told that the pokemonworld can be dangerous. Now you really experience this.

It remains clear in other areas as well pokemonGame: It doesn’t excel in finishing. The game looks rough and could be more atmospheric, interactions between characters are stiff. That remains striking, given the enormous amounts that the games generate. Nevertheless, it is nice that after years of exhaustion of the old formula, a new, contemporary one is available again pokemonuniverse has been created for Game Freak to work on.