Tag: pokémon legends: z-a

Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s Mega Dimension DLC is a lengthy coda to the base game, riffing on every narrative and mechanical overhaul Game Freak brought to Lumiose City. It is essentially the postgame that Z-A lacked when it launched in October, and while your mileage may vary on whether or not you want to spend an extra $30 to play it, what’s here is a compelling spin on everything that made the game one of Pokémon’s most compelling experiments.

Mega Dimension is set after the events of Legends: Z-A, so you’ll have to see the credits (the real ones, not the fake ones) to dive in. A young girl named Ansha shows up in Lumiose City to ask for Team MZ’s help. She’s in search of a powerful legendary Pokémon to give to her mother as a present. Because we’re heroes who never turn away a person in need, we agree to help her find this mystery beast, but before we can really start looking, the city is overtaken by mysterious portals that lead to a bizarro version of Lumiose called Hyperspace. In this mirrored universe, we find Pokémon that aren’t native to the city and are more powerful than they’re supposed to be. 

The only way we can face these powerful foes and investigate this odd phenomenon is by Ansha feeding her partner Pokémon Hoopa berry-filled Donuts that allow it to power up our Pokémon as we head into Hyperspace on short expeditions. All of this paves the way for an interesting, albeit slightly underbaked (ironic, considering the whole Donut gimmick) roguelike mode that puts all your battle knowledge to the test. 

Mega Dimension doesn’t quite introduce a complete mechanical overhaul of Legends: Z-A’s real-time battle system, but it is far more demanding. Each time you head into Hyperspace, you’re on a timer whose length is determined by the quality of the Donut you make for Hoopa, which also increases your stats and raises your level beyond the typical cap of 100. You only have so much time to complete a few missions to gather intel points, and learning how best to make the most of your limited time can be the difference between a lucrative run or a wasted one. 

These trips into this mirrored version of Lumiose can last anywhere from a few minutes to almost 10, depending on the recipe Ansha cooks up, all determined by the Berries you bring her. Once you’re in Hyperspace, you’ve gotta make quick choices about what enemies you fight, which objectives you focus on, and the Pokémon you bring and use with you. Even your most powerful monster might waste some of your time because its moves take too long to charge up, and the clock won’t stop ticking as long as the game is unpaused.

Getting a hang of the whole system can take some time, especially when the early expeditions you take into Hyperspace give you just a scant few minutes to acclimate yourself to the ways in which you must change how you carry yourself in this hostile new environment. By the time I was making Donuts that gave me more minutes on the clock, I had a strategy in place that I would adapt on the fly. I’d lead with a Pokémon equipped to handle a rift’s assigned element, barrel through the mini-quests I was assigned for that route, then head to high ground to find the Bonus Ball treasure chest that would spawn after I’d completed my tasks. I’d use my Salamence to search for this item, because his flight ability meant he could get to this golden ball from just about anywhere, helping me snag it within whatever precious seconds I had left in a run.

These trips into Hyperspace made me more aware of some of the weaknesses of my party’s composition. I didn’t trade out Pokémon, but as the time limit ticked down in these sections, I became more aware of how slow my Houndoom’s Dark Pulse charge-up was and the time I could save by swapping it out for a faster Crunch attack. My Raichu is spec’d as a physical attacker, but only one of those attacks can reach targets in the air. By the time I was really trying to min-max every Hyperspace run, I had changed several of my go-to movesets just to accommodate the ever-present threat of being yanked out of Hyperspace. Fast attacks that could reach targets above eye level were more important than heavy-hitting ones that would take precious seconds to cast. 

While Mega Dimension’s roguelike elements are a bit shallow, with your success mostly determined by how far past the level cap you are when you enter Hyperspace, the time limit and focus on verticality do require you to rethink what efficiency looks like in a Pokémon game, and ideally, you think of those things before you head into the imaginary city with level 140 monsters.

The trouble I expect some folks to have with the roguelike half of Mega Dimension is that it is a huge grind. I hit the credits at about a dozen hours, and large chunks of that time were spent going in and out of Hyperspace to gather intel for folks back home to research the cause of this phenomenon before it engulfed the entire real city. I don’t mind it personally, as Legends: Z-A’s battle system has always felt more like a puzzle game to me than a grindy RPG. I like seeing a Pokémon in the distance, choosing who in my party can most likely take it out the fastest, and seeing if I can pull it off. The grind started to hit me hardest in the endgame as I tried to capture some of the major Legendary monsters in the DLC, and even as I chip away at some of the post-game stuff, I’m still feeling that. But I still enjoy Legends: Z-A’s battle system enough that the grind’s not a detriment for me.

If all Mega Dimension had to offer were the roguelike elements, however, I wouldn’t be that hot on it. Thankfully, there’s also a bevy of new quests full of funny citizens saying silly things, stories to hear, and monsters to catch. Over 100 returning Pokémon from regions far beyond Kalos appear in Hyperspace, and that includes a ton of new Mega Evolutions as well. As anyone who has paid attention to me yelling about it on Kotaku for months will know, Mega Dimension added two Mega Evolutions to my favorite guy, Raichu. I was a mark ready to slap down $30 to finally see my boy get some love, and the X form’s Superman-like fighting style makes him one of my favorite Mega Evolutions Game Freak has ever put out. But Raichu is just one of several Megas added in Mega Dimension, and there are some inspired choices. Legends: Z-A’s base-game Megas skewed a bit too silly for some folks’ liking, and Mega Dimension definitely tips the scales in the opposite direction with a ton of “cooler” designs. I won’t spoil some of the monsters Game Freak decided to give a new form to, but suffice it to say that I was really eager to see each new form when I finally came to face them.

A lot of those Megas are especially memorable because Mega Dimension brings back the best part of the base game with Rogue Mega Evolution battles. These lengthy boss fights against rabid Mega Evolutions are still some of the most entertaining skill checks in probably any Pokémon game, and they’re made all the more challenging because they take place in Hyperspace, thus having a time limit and broken level cap to deal with. These frantic fights are tough, require coordination between your player character and Pokémon, and still find ways to surprise me in how the different Rogue Megas behave. 

One of the best things Mega Dimension adds is the ability to replay these fights, which wasn’t available in the base game. I’ve had a lot of fun going back to some of those fights with Mega Raichu in my party, so he can actually take them on. One of my biggest problems with Legends: Z-A was that its focus on Mega Evolution made its party compositions feel more limited, as it was much more difficult to handle some of these fights without Mega-Evolution-capable critters on your team. Mega Dimension doesn’t change that, but at least it gives me a chance to play through these fights again with my favorite guy.

All of this is tied up in a story that ties together multiple sides of the Pokémon universe. Each of this series’ generations has been set in a different region, and as such, they can feel a bit disconnected from one another. Mega Dimension makes a point to spotlight multiple sides of its mythology, so it surprisingly feels like a sequel to games you might not expect. Fans of Ruby and Sapphire’s Hoenn region will probably get a kick out of how much it factors into Mega Dimension, but there’s something here for fans of Diamond and Pearl’s Sinnoh legends, as well.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension

• Back-of-the-box quote:

  “Raichu flies around like he’s Superman, and if you don’t think that’s the tightest shit you’ve ever seen, I don’t know how to help you.”

• Developer:

  Game Freak

• Type of game:

  Post-game expansion for Legends: Z-A with more monsters, Megas, and challenges

• Liked:

  Roguelike mode is a new challenge, interesting use of the series’ mythology, Mega Raichu.

• Disliked

  It’s a grind, roguelike elements could be a bit meatier.

• Platforms:

  Switch, Switch 2 (played on)

• Release date:

  December 10, 2025

• Played

  ~12 hours to credits, still chipping away at post game stuff.

As much as I loved everything Mega Dimension gave me, I understand the $30 price tag is a big ask for folks. I try not to weigh in on the price of things in reviews because I don’t know every reader’s financial situation, and it feels disingenuous of me to try to make some sort of judgment call about whether or not something is “worth” a certain amount of money. Mega Raichu sold me on the expansion before I’d even played it, but looking at the DLC in the context of Pokémon’s long history, it does feel a little bit icky. Legends: Z-A’s post-game was practically non-existent, and Mega Dimension makes the post-game one of the most robust in the series, but it’s on top of an already pricey game in a world where video game prices are only getting more expensive.

I can’t make the call for you on whether it’s “worth” the price, but I can tell you that I got a whole lot more of a game I loved and that spoke to the things I enjoy most about this series. Legends: Z-A’s greatest strengths are in its experimental battle system and its city-centric storytelling that makes the most of its merry band of misfits. I got that in spades here, and I got to see it with a Mega Evolution of my favorite Pokémon by my side. 

If you didn’t already  love Legends: Z-A, I would be surprised if anything here changed your mind. I’m having a great time, though. Raichu and I aren’t done scavenging every inch of Hyperspace for the Pokémon we haven’t met yet, and if this is the end of Legends: Z-A’s story, it’s still going to be one of my favorite games in the series.

I’ve put maybe five or six hours into Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s Mega Dimension DLC, and I spent maybe two of those hours desperately searching for two items: Raichunite X and Raichunite Y. These two Mega Stones would allow Raichu, my favorite Pokémon who has never gotten any respect, to Mega Evolve into one of two forms. I had been begging Game Freak for Mega Raichu for so long, I had honestly given up hope that my boy would get a superpowered transformation in Legends: Z-A, then they gave him two. I like them both, but I gravitated toward the X form pre-launch, and now that I’ve seen the guy in-game, I’m feeling very vindicated, because my guy is flying around like Superman.

Raichu never got a Mega form when the mechanic was introduced in Pokémon X and Y, which was just one of the many examples of Game Freak and The Pokémon Company giving my boy the shaft in favor of Pikachu, his much more popular pre-evolution. Pikachu got the Gigantamax kaiju-style transformation in Sword and Shield, as well as exclusive Z-Moves in Sun and Moon. The only time Raichu’s ever gotten any “love” is when Game Freak turned him into something else entirely by giving him a floating psychic version in the Alola region, and that imposter won’t stop following me around in every game. Now, however, the OG can float around, too, thanks to Mega Evolution.

According to the Pokédex, Mega Raichu X is able to float like this because of the electromagnetic repulsion from his two tails. Before we saw him in-game, I imagined this would manifest in Raichu floating with a vertical stance, almost as if he were ascending with his tails pointed toward the ground. This would’ve probably looked silly, but I liked the design enough to let it go. What I wasn’t prepared for was to see that my super-powered mouse friend pulls a Clark Kent and flies with an arm extended like he’s got a city to save. Y’all, I am obsessed.

It’s a fun stylistic choice, but it actually has some pretty important perks in battle, too. Mega Raichu X can fly up to attack targets in the air, letting him knock Mega Shards off the sides of tall buildings and use physical attacks on flying enemies. This is kind of his whole deal. Mega Raichu X is the physical attacker, while the Y form is focused on special attacks. Now that he can fly, no one is out of range of a punch from his chonky paws. Neither Mega Raichu gets a type change after transforming, so while Mega Raichu X doesn’t become an Electric/Flying-type, I’m fairly certain he will gain the Levitate passive ability that makes him immune to Ground-type attacks, though we won’t know until a future game, as Legends: Z-A doesn’t include abilities. If that happens, Mega Raichu X will be one of the few Pokémon without any weaknesses, as Electric’s only weakness is Ground. That would be such a cool perk, and might make this transformation a force to be reckoned with in competitive play in Pokémon Champions next year.

Both Mega Raichus have gotten some flak for looking too similar to Pikachu, with X having its pre-evolution’s color scheme and Y maintaining its body shape, but I couldn’t be happier with these two. I like seeing the entirety of a Pokémon’s lineage show up in its Mega form, and Mega Raichu X’s flight-based movement is a really endearing new page to add to that history. I hope this form shows up in the anime soon so we can have sick clips of Mega Raichu X flying around and whooping ass. Until then, I’ll be using mine to save the citizens of Lumiose City. It’s a Pidgey…it’s a Latias…no, it’s Mega Raichu X!

Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s Mega Dimension DLC is just a few weeks away, and it’s bringing a handful of new Mega Evolutions, a roguelike mode, and additional story to the RPG. Today, Game Freak announced that Zeraora, one of the rare mythical Pokémon from Generation VI, is getting its own Mega Evolution in the DLC with a new trailer, and it sure does sound like the datamined list of new Megas is legitimate.

The trailer is brief, but shows the Legends: Z-A protagonist running around and fighting hostile Pokémon in a weird bizarro version of Lumiose City with Zeraora by their side. Just as the pair seems overwhelmed, Zeraora mega evolves and manages to win the fight.