Items are still ever-present in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, though, and players can find heaps of different types of them - from crafting materials to the usual potions and Poke Balls, including plenty of evolution items. Speaking of evolution items, Pokemon Legends: Arceus players can evolve Haunter into Gengar completely solo if they want, and the same holds true for all other trade-exclusive evolutions in the game - including Pokemon like Porygon Z, Steelix, Alakazam, and even more. In fact, items that are normally supposed to be given to Pokemon and then trade in order to evolve them can now be used on those creatures directly, evolving them immediately. On top of that, Pokemon that were only ever evolved through trades and without held items can now evolve thanks to a precious, rare item: the Linking Cord.
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Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ Solo Evolutions Perfect the Experience
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is designed as a solo experience, and while trading and online connectivity are still available throughout the game, this title was conceived to be fully playable alone. The game’s theme of Pokemon trainers being scarce because people are afraid of the creatures is a recurring one throughout the different acts that make Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ story, and thus it makes sense for players relying only on themselves to complete the Pokedex by catching them all - this time for real.
Pokemon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl needed trade-exclusive evolutions to go away too, and players were very unhappy with this because many creatures were impossible to get in any given playthrough unless they were traded with other trainers. This approach has been there ever since Generation 1, back when players needed physical linking cords to connect their consoles and get the trade going, so it’s wholesome and very clever to use an item called Linking Cord to evolve trade-exclusive creatures this time around.
The main problem with trade-exclusive evolutions is that they prevent players from achieving the team composition they want, forcing them to choose different Pokemon that they might like less. Making some Pokemon evolve through trading as a mechanic shouldn’t be removed from the series entirely, but players should have alternatives - which Pokemon Legends: Arceus does provide. Having Pokemon like Magmar and Electabuzz capable of evolving simply by using their respective evolution items on them is a fantastic change, and it also stimulates players to actually go out of their way to catch different species of Pokemon and find rare items.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ Linking Cord should become a staple of the franchise moving forward, and starting in Generation 9 Pokemon games should allow players to have more options to evolve their beloved pocket monsters. One could argue that having trade-exclusive Pokemon pushes sales of different versions of any given release more as well as tries to build a branching community, but many Pokemon fans end up playing on their own because they prefer so, and they shouldn’t be forced to change that. Having the ability to evolve any given Pokemon completely solo changes and enhances the experience, and taking that away from future games would be a huge step back.
Pokemon Legends: Arceus is available now for the Nintendo Switch.
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