By Chad W. Shreeves

Today during the Pokémon Day celebration, Nintendo and Game Freak announced multiple things that would be coming to retailers from the multi-billion dollar franchise.

From toys to merchandise to a cell-phone version of their extremely popular trading card game, Nintendo rolled out all the stops. But the most exciting moment of the quick 13 minute presentation was the announcement of the next major game in the franchise.

Game Freak announced Pokémon Legends Z-A, the next entry in the spinoff franchise. Pokémon Legends: Arceus released in 2022 and was considered a breath of fresh air for the aging franchise. With a new open air approach and new gameplay innovations, it gained massive praise.

That was followed by Pokémon Scarlet & Violet, the next mainline entry that was not as well received. While it’s been patched since, the launch version of the game was criticized for its aged gameplay, poor performance, and bugs throughout the experience. This left Game Freak to go in a new direction.

This brings Pokémon Legends Z-A, the newest entry. A spinoff of Arceus, it’s assumed it will use the same open-world approach and action based gameplay mixed with some turn based elements. The trailer did not give a ton of hints, although we know that it will take place in the Kalos Region and Lumiose city will be the game’s major hub.

The game was also confirmed to release in 2025. The Nintendo Switch logo was visible, although many fans have already speculated the game may actually launch on the yet-untitled next generation Nintendo hardware.

This makes the speculation around Pokémon Legends Z-A exciting as more information will be coming later this year.

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