Pokémon Legends: Z-A is looking a lot better after our second hands-on

A new in-depth demo of Pokémon Legends: Z-A suggests the new real-time spin-off may have more depth than previously thought.

After a string of well-received trailers, advertising new mega evolutions for Pokémon Legends: Z-A, online sentiment seems to have shifted against the game.

This is thanks to the recent Nintendo Direct, which announced that no less than five of these new mega evolutions are effectively being paywalled, either by the £25 DLC expansion or by the online multiplayer, making the complete package far more expensive than the base game’s price tag would have you believe.

Honestly, the timing couldn’t have been worse, because after going hands-on with a second gameplay demo for Legends: Z-A (which took place a couple of days before the Direct), we found ourselves feeling a lot more positive about it, after our slightly underwhelming Gamescom session.

For this demo, we were given a lot more time with the game, playing through three distinct sections. The first saw us entering one of Lumiose City’s wild zones, which is where you’ll go to catch new pokémon.

While there are understandable concerns that all these areas will look near identical, since you never leave the confines of the city, hunting for new additions to your party is as enjoyable as it was in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

Considering Legends: Arceus was set in the distant past, a time where people saw pokémon as mysterious and dangerous, we feared Legends: Z-A’s contemporary setting would mean that sense of trepidation would be lost.

Fortunately, that’s not the case. Stealth remains a key factor, since while some pokémon will harmlessly bound up to you, others will attack you on sight. If anything, it’s a lot more tense in Legends: Z-A, since the wild zone we explored lacked wild grass to hide in, making it much harder to sneak up on pokémon.

Plus, since battles are real-time now, there’s nothing stopping other pokémon from jumping into the fray. For example, while trying to contend with a couple of Houndour, we were suddenly ambushed by an alpha Houndoom.

Yes, the larger alpha pokémon are back, complete with the ominous glowing red eyes, and they can make short work of your party if you’re unprepared. Even the Gyarados we had was quickly taken out, despite its type advantage.

The real-time battles also mean pokémon are just as capable of hurting you as your own pokémon, forcing you to always be on the move. This makes real-time battles feel like a better fit for the Legends formula, especially since this means you can throw pokéballs at your target’s behind while they’re distracted battling your pokémon.

Speaking of catching pokémon, Legends: Z-A introduces a neat quality-of-life touch we hope carries over to future games. Defeating a wild pokémon doesn’t cause it to instantly vanish and it instead becomes stunned, allowing you to try to catch it, although it seems you only get one chance as the pokémon flees if it breaks out of the ball.

Compared to the trainer battles, we found running around and encountering wild pokémon enjoyably hectic and tense, and it helped us get a better handle on how real-time battles work.

If you read our last preview, you’ll know we weren’t too impressed with them, since it felt like the newfound ability to move your pokémon by having them follow you didn’t make much of a difference.

However, further playtime reveals that this might have been because we were constantly using the lock-on function to keep the camera focused on the enemy, which slowed down our movement and thus our pokémon’s movement.

Once we let go of the lock-on button and began sprinting around our pokémon were noticeably speedier and thus we could draw them out of the way of certain enemy attacks. It’s not entirely foolproof but it can make all the difference, especially when battling alpha pokémon.

We applied this to the second section of the demo, which was another go at the Z-A Royale and its trainer battles, and had a much better time with dodging attacks and timing our own moves to hit defenceless targets.

Unlike regular battles in the wild though, trainer battles do demand a bit more strategy beyond simple type matchups. During a special fight to increase our ranking, our opponent cleverly timed their use of Protect to block our attacks, which was the good kind of frustrating, that forced us to try and be more patient.

The demo culminated with another rogue mega evolution fight, this time against Mega Victreebel, which proved a little more challenging than Mega Absol. While it was stationary and a large target, it had vines for close-quarters combat, projectiles to hit us from a distance, and could cover the battlefield with poisonous puddles.

This made us far more conscious about not just our own positioning but also our pokémon’s. Aside from ensuring they wouldn’t accidentally run over a poison puddle to reach us, we had to make sure any attacks we picked didn’t see them rush forward into a puddle either.

Admittedly, the fight itself wasn’t particularly difficult, but that was thanks to having a party of decently levelled pokémon; one of which was a Houndoom that not only had a type advantage but also a mega evolution. We were assisted by a computer-controlled ally as well, but we couldn’t tell you how helpful they were. We honestly kept forgetting they were there.

We still think it’ll take a while to fully adjust to the real-time battles, but this second demo has done a much better job of presenting Legends: Z-A as a fun continuation of the Legends formula.

It’s just a shame that it’s hampered not only by the negative online buzz, but that the game still looks worryingly cheap for a big budget release, with mediocre visuals and a lack of voice-acting. Hopefully, Generation 10 will deliver a true evolution for the series but in the meantime this is beginning to feel like a useful half-step towards that.

Formats: Nintendo Switch 2 (previewed), Nintendo Switch
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Game Freak
Release Date: 16th October 2025

Email gamecentral@metro.co.uk, leave a comment below, follow us on Twitter.

To submit Inbox letters and Reader’s Features more easily, without the need to send an email, just use our Submit Stuff page here.

For more stories like this, check our Gaming page.

MORE: Rarest ever Pokémon card sells for $4,000,000 on eBay

MORE: Nintendo Pokémon patent is an ‘embarrassing failure’ that could ruin other games

MORE: You’ve been saying all these Pokémon names wrong for decades