Today is Pokemon Day, the annual celebration of the original Pokemon games–Red and Green–releasing in Japan. With it comes a new Pokemon Presents video, and today’s ended with a new look at Pokemon Legends: Z-A, along with a release window of “late 2025.”
Pokemon Z-A will take Trainers on a tour of Lumiose City, the bustling Paris-themed city from Pokemon X and Y’s Kalos region, which in this game is undergoing a “high-tech urban redevelopment” by a company called Quasartico for both people and Pokemon to enjoy. The city will feature multiple open areas for exploration, including rooftops–which players can jump off and glide back down to the ground–and Wild Zones where new Pokemon can be battled and caught.
We see multiple Pokemon encounters during the trailer, some of which resemble the turn-based battling featured in many previous games, as well as the “throw a Poke Ball without battling” mechanic seen in Legends: Arceus. Along with those came a new type of battling system where distance and movement play a key role, as attack moves have a certain amount of reach, and moving a Pokemon out of the way will cause the attack to miss.