Pokémon Legends: Z-A Can Finally Fix Legends: Arceus' Biggest Mistake (2024)

Pokémon Legends: Z-A could atone for Arceus' biggest sin. An open-world action RPG in which players could control both players and Pokémon, Legends: Arceus delivered on what many players had always wanted for the series. It teased a sequel in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which was officially revealed at a Pokémon Presents event in February 2024. It promises further action RPG adventures in the long-ignored region of Kalos, and moreover, stands a chance to correct its predecessor's biggest misstep.

Because for all of its popularity, Pokémon Legends: Arceus had one fatal flaw that held it back from its full potential. In its next installment, though, the series stands poised to change that for good, and set a new standard for Pokémon spinoffs going forward.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Can Include The DLC Arceus Never Had

Pokémon Legends Has Potential For Expansion

For all the long-suffering Pokémon fans' wishlist items it fulfilled, Legends: Arceus never had a DLC, but Z-A certainly has the potential to. Arceus remains a standalone title, even today. It never got an expansion of any sort, despite plenty of opportunities for one. There's something to be said for a game being a complete experience out of the box, but players wanted more Pokémon Legends: Arceus, and it failed to deliver on that front.

That lack of DLC made Pokémon Legends: Arceus an outlier among recent entries in the series. Sword and Shield had The Isle of Armor and The Crown Tundra, and Scarlet and Violet had The Indigo Disk and The Teal Mask. The era of mainline Pokémon games having DLC is well and truly here, and in the recent spate of titles that have had expansions, Legends: Arceus sticks out.

Of course, it can be argued that, as a technical spinoff, Legends: Arceus isn't subject to the same DLC rules as mainline games like Scarlet and Violet. And it did get a sort of free DLC in the form of a "free content update" released just a month after launch. But as an open-world action RPG, it was rife with potential for expansion. New sections of Hisui tacked onto its map, new entries in its limited Pokédex, even a little epilogue to its epic, but somewhat anti-climactic story - all of these and more could've featured in a DLC. None of it ever did, but Z-A could correct course.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A Has The Perfect Setup For DLC

Exploring The Kalos Region

But as perfect as Pokémon Legends: Arceus was for DLC, Z-A seems to have a setup that's just as good - if not better. Every bit of promotional material for Pokémon Legends: Z-A appears to suggest it's set mostly in or around Lumiose City, the Paris-inspired centerpiece of X and Y's map. That's all well and good, but the Kalos region is much bigger. Pokémon Legends: Z-A could explore the further corners of the region through DLC, taking players to the frozen wilds around Snowbelle City or the hallowed halls of Shabboneau Castle.

The fact of the matter is that Legends: Z-A's map will probably be much smaller than its inspiration, just like Legends: Arceus was before it. The original spinoff doesn't include the entirety of the Hisui region map either, instead focusing on a small segment of it. That may be by necessity; open-world action RPGs do tend to be a little more demanding on hardware, so a smaller map might play better with the Switch's limited specs.

But DLC could fix that. By corralling a map expansion into a separately loaded area that can only be accessed through DLC, Legends: Z-A could include more of Kalos without ballooning hardware requirements out of control.

The most likely reason that Legends: Arceus skipped DLC is that The Pokémon Company was just testing the waters with this first game in a new subseries. Since it was a huge critical and commercial hit, that experiment could be considered a success. In other words, there's clearly a demand for more games in the Legends mode, and players have the patience with them to want DLC. For these reasons and many more, Pokémon Legends: Z-A seems perfectly poised to correct Arceus' mistake by coming out with DLC.

Pokemon Legends Z-A

RPG

Franchise

Pokemon

Platform(s)

Switch

Released

2025-00-00

Developer(s)

Game Freak

Publisher(s)

Nintendo