Pokémon Legends: Z-A

Pokémon Legends: Z-A solidifies that the Legends series is the place where Game Freak can take big swings. Without being tied to the usual gym badge-collecting format, Legends: Z-A is Pokémon at its most experimental. It trades the turn-based combat for a new, exciting real-time system that makes you rethink everything you know about the series’ web of elemental interactions. The single-city setting allows Game Freak to explore a static cast dynamic that typically eludes the series because of its transient nature, laying out the red carpet for one of the series’ most memorable casts in recent memory.

The best part, however, is how Legends: Z-A is grappling with the fucked up premise of Pokémon in real time. The RPG is a story of a city trying to fix the broken social contract of people and Pokémon living together in a world where only one of them is captured in decorative mechanical balls, and the fact that it leaves on a note that it seems unsatisfied with is one of the most compelling and honest explorations of this question Pokémon has ever posited. Hopefully, the Mega Dimension DLC will explore this further when it launches in December. — Kenneth Shepard