Pokémon: Legends Z-A Players Outraged As Fan-Favourite ’Mon Is Ruined

Pokémon: Legends Z-A has absolutely not had the reception that Game Freak was hoping for from their legion of fans, with many taking to the internet to criticise the areas of the game that they feel fail so egregiously.

Though the game has garnered a genuinely respectable 80 from 58 critic reviews on Metacritic, the user score is considerably lower, sitting on a fairly pitiful 4.5 from 1,395 user ratings. Those cite everything from the map to the battle system as major issues for the game, but there are much more specific gripes that the community is keen to share with one another.

As first reported by ComicBook, one player took to Reddit to share their complaints about the way bizarrely beloved Pokémon Aegislash functions in Z-A. Essentially, the complaint details how the 'mon has to go through a stance change each time it wants to use a damaging attack, going through severable vulnerable phases along the way, that usually leave Aegislash on red health or even dead, before it has managed to do anything.

The post has received more than 1.4k upvotes and there are a raft of comments that agree with the OP. "Aegislash is one of my favourites too and yeah, it is basically unusable in long fights due to its terrible stance change animation delay and inability to mega-evolve," one said. "I really, really hate what they did with it overall, it is basically a glass cannon. In a game where you need to fight against the targeting system and weird animation delays that cause the AI to quite often get the first strike, being a glass cannon is not a good thing."

"Sad. Aegislash is my favourite Gen 6 'mon and a top five 'mon for me in general. Already invested a mint and several vitamins into Honedge. Disappointing to learn that it's just bad in this game's system," another added.

A third suggested a possible solution, saying, "They should do like an 'attacking form change' animation, like it draws itself and strikes in the same motion. But also it's interesting to consider normally good Pokémon struggle now. Also I think it might be less egregious in 1v1v1v1?"

Whatever does happen with Aegislash particularly, the volume of complaints from players will have come as a surprise to developer Game Freak, and it has a lot of work to do to get the community back onside heading into its next release.