Pokemon Legends ZA Really Stretches The Definition Of "Sidemission"

Pokemon Legends: Arceus isn't a particularly long game, but it offered plenty of ways to keep players busy, thanks to its dozens of quests. Pokemon Legends: ZA aims to do the same; when players meet Emma at the Looker Bureau, they can begin taking on tasks around town, this time called Side Missions. Each completed story beat typically earns the player another handful of side quests, each of which provide generous rewards upon completion. I think this is an area there though Pokemon Legends: ZA largely fails, as it seems to have opted for quantity over quality in its Side Mission design.

Tons of Pokemon Legends: ZA Side quests can be sorted into one of two boxes: a battle with a trainer who favors a certain gimmick, or a battle with a wild Pokémon in an odd situation. As a result, most of these quests are just short diversions. Pokemon Legends: Arceus Requests had lots of simple entries too, though ZAs side quests pale in comparison to the best that Arceus had to offer.

Spoilers ahead for Side Missions and some stories kick in Pokemon Legends: ZA.

Many Pokemon Legends: ZA Side Missions are hardly missions at all

Over and over again, Pokemon Legends: ZA asks players to complete side quests that simply involve battling trainers who use a specific strategy. Examples include:

A debate about whether paralysis or poison is the better status condition
A trainer that fixates on trap moves like Spikes and Sand Tomb
Two trainers who love to use buffs and debuffs respectively
A trainer who loves move Detect
A devoted fan of the Pidgeot evolution line

Overall, each of these quests generally involves a short conversation, a fairly simple Pokémon battle, and final thoughts on the trainers' selection strategy. The intention here is undoubtedly good: this is Game Freak's way of highlighting obscure or unusual combat mechanics that players may not know about or generally overlook. However, this has repercussions for the entire side quest system. While each of these missions can be opened and closed in the space of a minute, they are not missions at all, as they ask almost nothing of the player that differs from a normal battle. These side quests might as well just be old school trainer battles found when you follow one Pokémon Route.

Quests about Pokemon exhibiting unusual behavior are a bit more interesting, but not by much. To name a few, players can:

Fight a fierce Chespin three times in a row
Fight a group of Binacles at once
Have a rematch with a Hawlucha that previously experienced Rogue Mega Evolution

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These side quests have a bit more character in that they are snapshots of a core theme Pokemon Legends: ZA: the complications that come from humans and wild Pokémon trying to live together. Still, they tend to be as short as the trainer battles, so it's hard to really think of them as “missions”.

Why Pokemon Legends: ZA's side quests are such a disappointment

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There are two main reasons why I feel so strongly about these types of side quests. Firstly, Pokemon Legends: ZA initially frames these quests as jobs the player takes on to help Detective Emma. These types of missions completely fail to live up to that pitch, being fairly trivial and involving none of the searching or complex problem-solving that requires a detective's attention, and would ultimately make for more engaging missions.

Secondly, Pokemon Legends: ZA already had many better mission blueprints to steal from Pokemon Legends: Arceus. This is not to say every PLA The requests were ground-breaking — many of them just boiled down to “fight me” or “show me a Pokemon” — but many others broke the mold. Players can:

Go in search of a missing person
Play a balloon-bursting mini-game
Solve a Pokémon's disruptive behavior in the village without fighting it
Work with specific entries in Pokemon Legends: Arceus' unique Pokedex
Perhaps the most memorable is collecting 107 mystical whisks to unlock a Spiritomb

Quests like these made an attempt to break the regular gameplay loop at least a little, and felt more like real quests by requiring some critical thinking or thorough exploration of the player. They stand in stark contrast to all the side quests that boil down to a one-and-done battle that's functionally no different from an encounter in one of Pokemon Legends: ZAs Wild Zones or Battle Zones. They are just more profitable.

ZA dropped Arceus' Pokedex task mechanic, opting instead to reward players for studying Pokemon through Mable's Research, which is much easier overall.

Pokemon Legends: ZA side quests don't have to set the standard

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ZAs side quests aren't a total loss. I've been charmed by quests that ask me to move a group of Trubbish near a restaurant, or find medicine for an ailing Fennekin (who became a core member of my team). Unfortunately, these modest format breaks still tend to be very simple and very short, so they fail to make up for any repetitive combat missions. I would have rather had half as many side quests in it Pokemon Legends: ZA if it meant they could be something more.