Finally started playing Z-A
The one videogame series I can really call myself a brand-loyal fan of is Pokemon. It's had a big role in my life since childhood, when I longed to play it (but was not allowed). I purchased the guidebooks for Gold and Silver at a bookstore and just read them instead of playing the game. It was some real media-longing shit.
Now I can play the games as soon as they come out. I was a huge fan of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, partially because it had a slightly older-kid sensibility, a weirdly dark storyline, and an eccentric-for-Pokemon art style. Z-A, its sequel, is fun so far... but it seems to me like it's discarded most of the things that made Arceus feel genuinely incredible to me. There's definitely some older-kid sensibility in the story, but it's feeling so far like it's a lot less grim than Arceus was.
I really can't recommend Arceus enough... its story goes places that really are kind of emotionally inappropriate for the little little kids who seem to be the target audience of modern mainline Pokemon games on the Switch. It features characters who abandon you, mistreat you, accuse you falsely of various misdeeds, and subject you to a Dark Night of the Soul at the top of the third act which I really did not expect to see. I think I screenshotted every line of dialogue in one particularly long cutscene where a bunch of NPCs treat you like shit. I definitely remember messaging my friends: holy shit, Pokemon got mean again!!
I think Pokemon could make an outrageous amount of money if it got mean a little more often - if it targeted kids 12+ instead of 12-. However, when I made this remark to a friend this morning, they asked me, "But should we want Pokemon to make money any more outrageously than it currently does?" Which is a good question.
I think what I really have is that classic self-serving millennial jealousy that a brand I like won't age up with me...