I think the Pokémon Legends: Arceus main story wrapped up pretty nicely. I personally found the experience quite fun to sit through; with the cutscenes, references to older games, and characters, everything was such a fun experience that even left me a bit emotional at times (feeling actual emotion and investment for a Pokémon game in 2022, I wouldn’t believe myself years ago). While I’m definitely down to talk about that at one point, I’d like to talk about the post-game instead. Major-ish spoilers ahead for the post-game, so if you didn’t finish and want to experience the whole thing fresh for yourself, you can click off the article now.
After you save the region of Hisui and get past the end credits, what’s left to you is a huge task: catching all of the Legendary and Mythical Pokémon to flesh out the Pokédex. Pretty fitting for a Pokémon game with “Legend” in the name, I’ll be honest. There’s a lot you have to track down and you need to catch them in order to fully complete the game, since the main point is to “seek out all Pokémon.” Because I wrote an article about my dissatisfaction with the handling of Legendary and Mythical Pokémon in the past, I think it only makes sense if I follow up with this one. So let’s see how legendary GameFreak actually made these Pokémon this time around.
Much like the last article, I’ll be referring to both Legendary and Mythical Pokémon as “Legendary” from here on out for convenience. Besides that, I’ll give each Legendary Pokémon, or group of them, a score from one to five based on how well I think they were handled. “1 out of 5” means I thought they were done badly, and “5 out of 5” means I thought they were done excellently. I’ll also try to go in order of when the missions for each of the Legendaries were given, so even if it’s new to you and you still want to read this, you can read along as you complete the missions yourself. I’m leaving Arceus out though, since getting to it is a main mission and not necessarily post-game (totally not because I haven’t found all the Pokémon yet, nope). Alright, let’s get into it.
Lake Pokémon (3 out of 5)
What stops Uxie, Mesprit and Azelf from receiving a low score is how well they were integrated into the story of the main game. When you seek each of them out at their respective lakes, they put you through a trial that ties into the part of the mind they brought about. Mesprit, my favorite of the Lake Trio, puts you through a trial of emotions where you have to share your feelings about the experiences you’ve been through. I’m not sure if there’s a way you can fail this one, unlike the other two (even though they’re pretty easy as well), but it was a very nice tough regardless.
In the post game, however, catching them is just like catching any other Pokémon, made even easier by both the fact that they’re more or less waiting to get caught at their lakes, and the fact that they all only use a single move outside of battle. It’s a bit disappointing because they could’ve done more with them, like make you share more of your emotions with Mesprit, turn catching Azelf into a full battle like the Noble Pokémon and Dialga/Palkia, and give you harder quizzes from Uxie that would be difficult to cheat on, maybe with a timer. It’s still not bad though.
Heatran (1 out of 5)
Speaking of bad. Heatran was always a Pokémon that didn’t seem to fit the Legendary status it has in my opinion. Sadly, Pokémon Legends: Arceus didn’t do them any favors in order to change that. When you land in the Cobalt Coastlands, after you get the hint from Cogita to go to Firespit Island, you’re just told that something’s going on at the Lava Dome Sanctum. Oddly enough, nobody knows what it is.
Even when you make it to the Lava Dome Sanctum, however, and lay your eyes on Heatran along with everyone else, all you’re told is to “be careful.” They don’t drop a name, give them some lore or a description, or anything, not even after you end up catching them. They just talk about whether Irida actually needed to be there. The better question is if Heatran needed to be there, because it feels like they were put in the post-game with no idea what to do besides stuff them in a volcano. Fighting them outside of battle is at least interesting but it doesn’t change the fact that Heatran was done so poorly.
Cresselia (4 out of 5)
Cresselia got better treatment than Heatran did, for sure. You follow Cogita’s hint to Moonview Arena (even before I knew for sure Cresselia was in the game, this was a bit on the nose honestly), where Melli and Calaba are waiting. Melli asks you whether you know about Cresselia or not, which is already off to a good start. But you also get some lore about the Pokémon and learn about her special Lunar Feathers. However, she came into Lord Electrode’s arena and scared it off, so it’s up to you to catch it.
That would be where this ends and I give my score, but it’s worth noting that fighting Cresselia was actually interesting both in and out of battle, even more than Heatran. It starts with her confusing you and mixing up your controls until you manage to hit her protective field with something. After that it’s only a matter of throwing one of your Pokémon close enough to battle her. But if you wanna pull off the Secret Back Strike Technique for a possible extra turn, she doesn’t make it easy, since she can still confuse you if she catches you in a small area surrounding the ground underneath her. Inside battle…all there really is to say is Lunar Blessing is busted. It was an overall great experience.
Regigigas (2 out of 5)
It was hard deciding which Legendary got the worst of it between Heatran and Regigigas, since they were both handled pretty poorly. However, Regigigas ended up being a very close second (alright, almost done with the Heatran slander, I promise). I will say, however, that doing Regigigas this dirty makes no sense at all.
You have to make your way back to Snowpoint Temple, this time going downstairs instead of up. It’s when you get to a door there that Adaman and Sabi follow and impart some lore to you about a Pokémon that’s strong enough to move entire continents. It’s believed that it could be on the other side of the door, but they’ve tried opening it with no success. Apparently, all that was needed were three of the plates given to you throughout your journey (take a wild guess which three they are). After that, Regigigas is just further downstairs, chilling. Sabi’s clairvoyance deduces that it’s a Pokémon and you walk up to battle it and try to catch it.
Now, Regigigas is a Pokémon known, if not for its trash Ability, for the insane mysteries and puzzles you have to solve to get to it. It’s crazy that all you essentially need to do here is go to the right place and walk down some stairs, in an area that already has the tools for a puzzle in it, no less. You don’t even fight it outside of the battle like the others mentioned so far, which doesn’t really matter but …come on. While Regigigas’ treatment wasn’t the worst of them (now the Heatran slander is over), how it turned out was definitely the most disappointing.
Giratina (5 out of 5)
I’m gonna try to go through this as quickly as I can because there’s so much to talk about here, the journey to catching Giratina was a spectacle and it was definitely the star of the post-game. Volo tells you its story about how it was banished by Arceus to the reverse side of our world and that it wants revenge, which I find so cool. He also tells you the plates can possibly draw out Arceus at the Temple of Sinnoh, where the space-time rift first opened.
You make it there where Volo is waiting, and it turns out he wants to use Arceus to erase the current universe and make a new, better world. Sounds a bit familiar right? However, he can’t do that without all the plates, which would be a problem if it wasn’t for the fact that not only did you collect 17 of them for him, but he also has a plate of his own. You battle his team that also looks a bit familiar, and when you beat him, Giratina somehow appears and wants to take you out.
Giratina has two phases though, with the second one being stronger than the first. You also don’t get fully healed at the end of your battle with Volo or Giratina’s first form, so it’s a three-phase fight and possibly the hardest battle in Pokémon history. You can’t go in with just any team and expect to win. If you do somehow beat Giratina, he flies away and all that’s left is for Volo to hand you the last plate, which transforms your Celestica Flute into an Azure Flute, meant to be played atop the Temple of Sinnoh when you’ve “seeked out all Pokémon.”
After that, you receive word that a large shadow had been cast on the Cobalt Coastlands, and it could be related to Giratina. When you make your way there and go to Turnback Cave (raw name, but also on the nose), Giratina is there and you gotta battle it in order to catch it. After you manage that, you head back to Laventon and he tells you that Volo told him more of what happened, that Giratina chose to protect Hisui after you bested it (I would’ve liked if it stayed vengeful even after you caught it but whatever). I’ve already said so much and I still feel like I didn’t do it justice, so I’ll just leave it at this: catching Giratina was a trip, and while that wasn’t the purpose of collecting all the plates, doing so to get to that moment, on top of the epic fight against Volo, made it a very fun and challenging experience that I’m willing to do all over again.
Forces of Nature (5 out of 5)
Landorus, Thundurus and Tornadus were so difficult to catch for many reasons, but they were also fun. When you first make it back to the Galaxy Hall after fighting Volo, Cogita is there and she tells you about the three of them, the locations they reside in, and the proper weather conditions they’ll show up in. She doesn’t tell you exactly where they are on the maps though, so even when you get to the locations and have the right conditions, you need to seek out the exact area they’re in. And that’s only half the battle.
The other half of the battle is making it so you can actually battle or catch them once you find them. When they spot you, they’ll quickly zip away to another part of the area they’re in. If they do this and you end up close to them when they stop, they’ll spawn multiple hard-hitting tornadoes that’ll also leave you with a status condition dependent on which Force of Nature it is. This will go on until you can manage to hit the protective shield surrounding them three times, which will dizzy them briefly. If you don’t throw out a Pokémon to battle them before the dizziness wears off, or fail to catch them outside of battle, the shield comes back up and you have to do it over again. If you do manage to throw out a Pokémon, it’s just a matter of capturing them in battle.
When you catch them all and report the completed dex entries to Cogita, she tells you that the Trio have a sister, a fourth Force of Nature named Enamorous. Cogita tells you the location she’ll be in and you pretty much have to do the same thing you did for Enamorous’ brothers: track her down, shut down the shield, catch her, and complete the dex entry. When you report back to Cogita again, she tells you that she’ll leave Enamorous in your care for now and you get dialogue that’s a bit deep and thought-provoking about Legendary Pokémon in general. The quest to catch the Forces of Nature truly emphasized the aspect of hunting for Legendary Pokémon, on top of making it a proper challenge due to their speed, whirlwind attacks and protective wind shield.
The next three Legendaries are from requests on the board, so you don’t really get these in any set order. If you still don’t want to be spoiled, feel free to do them all first before coming back to this post and reading on.
Manaphy (5 out of 5)
Catching Manaphy was definitely the most interesting of all of them, and I mean that in a good way. This board request comes from Laventon himself, who saw a Pokémon swimming from on the beach. He deduces that the Pokémon swam away to Cobalt Coastlands, so he calls Iscan over to ask if he knows anything about a Pokémon that washed up over there, but considering Pokémon always wash up there, that wasn’t much to go off of. He does give us some info about a princely Pokémon that resided there, and that the Cobalt Coastlands was known as the East Sea.
By itself, this still leaves it a mystery, and the game plays on that, which is cool; but to players that played Pokémon Brilliant Diamond or Pokémon Shining Pearl, all of this would most likely sound familiar, as there’s a book in Canalave Library that mentions those things. It also mentions everything else you need to trigger the event, like the Pokémon you’ll need (Buizel, Mantyke and a Quilfish with huge spikes (which is the evolution of a Hisuian Quilfish called Overquil)) and the locations you need to go to. Once you trigger the event and make your way to Seaside Hollow, you’re greeted by Manaphy and a party of Phione…that immediately attack you, which is hilarious.
After catching Manaphy and reporting to Laventon, the quest is over. Without the knowledge of the book in the Canalave Library or looking online, this is definitely the hardest quest in the game by a longshot. However, what makes it great is that it emphasizes and plays on the aspect of Legendary Pokémon that the Forces of Nature request didn’t, which is the mystery that comes with searching for them. It’s also great how it integrates lore present in different games into the mission. The Sea’s Legend was probably my favorite request (and it was also the name of the book in Canalave Library, so that should’ve tipped players off too).
Darkrai (4 out of 5)
The request for Darkrai is pretty great. A member of the Pearl Clan tells you a tale about a Pokémon that can trap people in nightmares to never wake again, and that he saw it while walking out at night on Clamberclaw Cliffs in Coronet Highlands. Not wanting any casualties to occur, it’s up to you to catch it.
When you get to where Darkrai is, it sneaks around pretty quickly, toying with you a bit before showing itself. From there, it’s a matter of battling and catching him…if it could stay still. If you’re a split second late on throwing a Poké Ball or an item at it, it teleports away to reappear in a different spot. It can also attack you and cause drowsiness, making it a lot harder to both catch it when it reappears and avoid other attacks it might throw out. If you can get through all that though, it’s pretty much yours.
This isn’t important to the mission but the Pearl Clan member comes to you to thank you for your help. However, he then says “Yes… Now no one else will fall victim to such dark nightmares…” It sounds like there’s more to his experience with Darkrai than he had let on. In any case, with a nice bit of story paired with an amazing encounter and battle, Darkrai was very fun to try to catch.
Shaymin (3 out of 5)
Honestly, the best thing Shaymin really has going for it is a heartwarming story. You get the request from a Diamond Clan woman that got lost in the Obsidian Fieldlands when she was younger. However, with the aid of a Gracidea Flower that she got from a Pokémon in a field of flowers, she made it back home safely. She wants to thank the Pokémon and doesn’t know how to find the field of flowers, so that’s where you come in. Despite the field of flowers not looking so…flowery, explorers of the Obsidian Fieldlands should know exactly where to go.
So once you find the field, the Diamond Clan woman follows, and she recognizes the area despite the flowers being all withered. She shouts out her thanks, then the flowers grow back and Shaymin appears. You’re then left to catch Shaymin and complete the request.
Besides the new field of flowers being a permanent change to the map, the heartwarming story is really the best thing the quest has going for it. It’s not a bad thing, but fighting it outside of battle isn’t really interesting either, and if you fail to catch it before it disappears you can just come back to it after returning to the village for another shot. I’m not sure what else they could’ve done for Shaymin, but the quest wasn’t anything special, just ok.
Conclusion
I think GameFreak did a pretty good job here. While some things could’ve been better and a few other things were absolute misses, I think more often than not, the quests to catch the Legendaries were fun experiences. It wasn’t perfect, but for their first attempt at a game in this formula, they did well with these quests and I’d love to see more things like this in the future. While they’re not quite there, I still can’t help but feel confident in saying GameFreak indeed made Legendary Pokémon feel legendary again.
What do you think? Do you agree or disagree with any of my ratings? Where would you put them instead? How do you think Pokémon Legends: Arceus treated Legendary Pokémon in general? I’d love to hear your thoughts.