Pokémon Day will soon be upon us, which means we’re likely going to get a massive info dump about various Pokemon games, including the much anticipated Pokémon Legends: Z-A. In anticipation of this event, I thought I’d take a look back at the very first game in the Pokemon Legends series (I think we can call it a series now), Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
In this post I intend to review portions of the game’s story, as well as share my own impressions of certain aspects of the game, and also share memories of some of my own experiences with it. Now there may be one or two major spoilers for the game’s story in this post, and I intend to warn everyone whenever one of these spoilers show up so you can skip ahead. I realize this might be a little unnecessary since Legends: Arceus has been out for about three years now, but it could be that some of you reading may not have been able to play the game for whatever reason. Hell, I missed out on four entire generations of Pokémon games because I couldn’t afford console needed to play them. Anyway, let’s get right into it.
Story and World-Building
The thing that excited me most about Legends: Arceus was that it took place in the Pokémon world’s past and expanded on the Sinnoh Region’s amazing lore. Actually, I was more excited about the game being a golden chance to capture my own Arceus, but the other thing was a huge draw. One thing I did not expect going in was that the protagonist of the game was some kid from the modern-day Pokémon world that Arceus decides to just hurl back to the past without any real explanation (because gods like doing that sort of crap). The game’s story takes place only a few hundred years in the Pokémon world’s past, back when the Sinnoh Region was called Hisui and when the bustling metropolis of Jubilife City was only a small but prosperous village of settlers from another region. The only other two human settlements in Hisui were the settlements of the Diamond Clan and Pearl Clan.
The Diamond and Pearl Clans worship Dialga and Palkia respectively, though at the game’s start the two rival clans aren’t even aware that the two dragons are separate entities. They believe the two dragons to be a single deity known as Almighty Sinnoh, and the big dispute between the two clans is a disagreement over whether this god rules over time or over space (hey, holy wars have been fought over stupider reasons). Later after one of the major events in the game’s story, we discover that Almighty Sinnoh is a name that’s also used for Arceus. Now let’s pause here and reflect on this for a moment. This information means that sometime between the events of Legends: Arceus and the events of Diamond/Pearl/Platinum, the region’s name was changed from Hisui to an ancient name that was once used for three of the region’s gods.
Moving on, many of the human characters in Legends: Arceus are heavily implied to be ancestors of the human characters encountered in Diamond, Pearl and Platinum.
WARNING: MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD
The most notable of these characters is game’s main villain and final boss (not counting Arceus), Volo. Volo is implied to be the ancestor of the Sinnoh Region’s champion, Cynthia. The two characters have a very striking resemblance to one another, and also wear the same black pendant. Plus Volo also uses a Pokémon team nearly identical to Cynthia’s, plus Giritina…who has to be beaten twice. Having been thrashed by Cynthia during my first battle with her in Shining Pearl, I was pretty intimidated going into my battle with Volo.
How I managed to beat Volo on my first attempt, I cannot recall. I think it was just dumb luck. Anyway, Volo starts out in the game as a kindly traveling merchant who assists the player character during most of their journey through Hisui, making him initially similar to his descendant, Cynthia. Then towards the end of the game’s story, it’s revealed that Volo’s ultimate goal is to bend Arceus to his will so he can become absolute master of the universe. To that end, Volo had made a pact with Giritina to cause the space-time distortions that had been causing chaos in Hisui as a way to draw Arceus out. I think Cynthia will be in for a shock if she ever visits the Pokémon world’s equivalent of Ancestory.com.
END OF SPOILER
In the end, Legends: Arceus really raises more questions about the Pokémon world’s past than it answers. For one thing, there’s still the question of what happened to the original human inhabitants of Hisui, as the people of the Diamond and Pearl Clans are only settlers themselves. They just came to the region before the settlers of Jubilife Village. There’s also the enigmatic character known as Cogita, who also resembles Cynthia and may or may not be related to Volo. I’ve heard a few theories about Cogita’s identity, but I don’t really buy most of them because they have some small but very noticeable holes. Despite these lingering unanswered questions though, Legends: Arceus does an outstanding job of expanding the Pokémon world’s history.
