Pokémon Legends Z-A Trailer Unveils Launch Timeline and Revamped Combat Mechanics

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.

Pokemon Legends Z-A will also mark the return of Mega Evolutions–which originated in Pokemon X and Y for the Nintendo DS. Multiple Mega Pokemon are shown in the trailer, including Mega Lucario, Mega Ampharos, and Mega Kangaskhan.

The trailer also introduced many of the characters inhabiting this version of Lumiose City, which include both new and returning faces. We see the player character’s friends Urbain and Taunie, Quasartico CEO Jett and her bodyguard Vinnie, and the return of AZ–the mysterious former king of Kalos–as the owner of the hotel the player-characters stays in during the game.

Pokemon Legends Z-A is the second installment of the Pokemon Legends franchise, as it follows 2022’s Pokemon Legends: Arceus. It is scheduled to release in late 2025.