I was genuinely pretty excited to jump into the Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension DLC because I’ve been pretty obsessed with Pokémon Legends: Z-A—I was amazed at the parallel between how quickly I realized I wasn’t enjoying Pokémon Scarlet & Violet and how instantly I was having fun with Pokémon Legends: Z-A. So, naturally, I would jump at the chance for renewed reason to continue playing it.
Of course, I was as skeptical as anyone when Nintendo announced paid DLC for Pokémon Legends: Z-A before the game had even shown any real details, but this has been pretty much par for the course with the series for a while now. Much like the main game, there’s a lot I like about the Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension DLC, and some things I wish could be better.
As players will undoubtedly be familiar with if they watched the many Directs covering the DLC, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension begins when players are greeted by a young girl named Ansha, who requests their help in finding a certain legendary Pokémon. In order to do this, they’ll need to use the power of the Mischief Pokémon Hoopa to open portals scattered around Lumoise that lead to a strange dimension known as Hyperspace.
Things get even more complicated when a giant Hyperspace portal appears over the defunct Prism Tower, and wild Pokémon begin undergoing Rogue Mega Evolution within this Hyperspace. To research these strange happenings, Team MZ teams up with the Rust Syndicate in order to investigate Hyperspace and put an end to the chaos.
Functionally, the story works the same as the Z-A Royale in the main game. Players need to dive into Hyperspace rifts and complete small tasks to earn enough points to advance the plot—usually culminating in a boss battle against one of the new Rogue Mega Evolved Pokémon. The tasks themselves are fairly rudimentary and split between two Hyperspace Zones.
In Hyperspace Wild Zones, players are usually just catching a certain number of Pokémon or destroying Holo-Pokéballs. In Hyperspace Battle Zones, players are usually just defeating opponents or using supereffective attacks—it’s generally no different from the fare you’d get on Holo-cards in the standard Battle Zones.
Despite its simplicity, there are some interesting elements that I like about these Hyperspace Zones. For starters, I like that Corbeau and the Rust Synicate are much more involved in the story this time around since they were easily the best and most compelling elements of Pokémon Z-A’s main storyline. As basic as the storytelling still is, I was happy to spend more time with my Crime Bro.
“…for what it is, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension is a decent enough post-game content update…”
Not only that, it was really fun to see how certain side quest characters from the main game found their way into some of the more meaningful moments in progressing the main story of the Hyperspace mission. It genuinely gave me a sense that the things I did kind of mattered in the main game, and these memories of past good deeds were coming back within Hyperspace—the game kind of explains why this makes sense.
Furthermore, as players are probably aware, Pokémon found in Hyperspace far exceed the 100 level limit, and they’ll need to feed Hoopa donuts to give it the energy it needs to open each portal and power up their Pokémon. Similar to Pokémon Sword & Shield’s curry-making minigame, players will use Berries to give each donut a different flavour (sweet, sour, spicy, etc.).
Depending on how well players make their donuts, they can increase their level caps by certain amounts, apply unique effects to their run, and give themselves different lengths of time to run through each Hyperspace portal. I like this element because it adds a unique layer of consideration to how you approach both Wild Zones and Battle Zones in Hyperspace. It keeps the pace really snappy and fun in a way that best suits the Switch’s handheld format.
I also really enjoy how battles work in Hyperspace, since they lack a lot of the more…let’s say, bureaucratic elements of the standard Z-A Royale. Because players aren’t gaining any ranks, battles start and end in a flash, keeping them really fast and exciting—also, it doesn’t seem like players can be “caught off guard,” which I still don’t understand mechanically.
But trying to optimize the experience in the Z-A Royale while the nighttime clock ticked down was something I always found interesting, particularly since the clock stopped during a battle. Even though the “Battle Zones” are smaller, players need to be a lot more efficient in not only how they approach a battle, but also how they execute during. On top of this, the Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension adds double battles to a few story-specific fights, and I really hope this gets expanded on for multiplayer.
However, a big issue I have with the Hyperspace Zones, which really exposes a bigger flaw of Pokémon Legends: Z-A as a whole, comes from a research task that tends to pop up a lot: “Catch Pokémon Undetected.” Since most of the Hyperspace areas tend to come from a seemingly random pool of Lumoise City streets, there aren’t many ways to conceal yourself while trying to catch Pokémon.
The only way players can hope to catch a pokémon undetected is to stay out of its field of vision, and I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to watch a Pokéball bounce off a Pokémon because, for whatever reason, Game Freak programmed the actual catch window to be so unbelievably tight.
Lastly, and possibly most contentiously, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension comes with an expanded Pokédex—roughly 109 new Pokémon—and Mega Evolutions for new and existing Pokémon. Most interestingly, there is the new Z-Form Mega Evolution, which allows Pokémon to use their attacks much faster than standard Mega Evolution, but burns through the meter way quicker as well. Z-Forms do add an interesting new function to Mega Evolution, and it’d be fun to see how it’s utilized in the online.
But a bigger Pokédex apparently means a bigger price tag, and this is where the Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension DLC absolutely DOES NOT fly. Much like the Donkey Kong Bananza: Emerald Rush DLC, this is a substandard content expansion charging what used to be the price of a full-priced game. At MOST, this should’ve cost $10.
That being said, for what it is, Pokémon Legends: Z-A – Mega Dimension is a decent enough post-game content update that will give fans of the game even more reason to keep playing. Whether you’re willing to spend $29.99 ($39.99 CAD) for some interesting gameplay mechanics and an expanded Pokédex really depends on your financial situation or dedication to completion.
