Pokemon Legends: Arceusinnovates onPokemonconventions in a lot of ways, and the experience of catchingPokemonis one of them. Naturally, players can battle wild Pokemon and wear them down before throwing a PokeBall, but that’s only one of several options. Sneaking up to a Pokemon with a Heavy Ball is a great way to quickly catch a Pokemon, and even without stealth, players can simply toss PokeBalls at many monsters that they pass, quickly collecting nearby Pokemon in the style of Niantic’s mobile gamePokemon GO.Aside from these,Pokemon Legends: Arceushas yet another unique catching experience to offer: the search for Unown in the Hisui region.
Unown operate very differently inPokemon Legends: Arceusthan they do in most games. Rather than simply being another type of wild Pokemon to encounter and catch, Unown have their own list of objectives, and they’re far rarer than most of theother Pokemon available inPokemon Legends: Arceus.Interestingly, this is another trait thatPokemon Legends: Arceusshares withPokemon GO.In both of these games, Unown are particularly challenging to find and serve as a consistent excuse for players to explore the world around them as thoroughly as possible.
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Unown in Pokemon GO and Pokemon Legends: Arceus
Once players have progressed through a certain amount ofPokemon Legends: Arceus' plot, they’ll receive a list of riddles written using Unown that tasks players with finding all 28 versions of this alphabetical Pokemon.Pokemon Legends: Arceusmakes it easier to collect new Pokemon than most games, since its various regions are filled with Pokemon large and small, but Unown is significantly rarer, since it can only be found by solving these riddles. Once an Unown is found, however, it can be caught instantly. In that way, the search for Unown encourages players tofamiliarize themselves with Hisuias much as possible so that they can solve riddles more easily, but they don’t stress the actual catching components ofPokemon.
For years now,Pokemon GOhas had a notably similar relationship with Unown. In theory,players can find Unown in the wild, but it’s such an extraordinarily rare spawn that players will largely have to rely on specialPokemon GOevents and Raids to find this Pokemon. Even then, events usually only highlight a couple versions of Unown, meaning collecting them all is a painstaking task. Those players determined enough to seek Unown on foot are sure to get extremely familiar with their neighborhoods, figuring out good PokeStop paths, identifying nearby Pokemon nests, and so on.Pokemon GOhas notoriously simple catching mechanics, however, so finding Unown is the vast majority of the work.
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Unown’s Special Role in Pokemon
These twoPokemonside games have each found a unique way to incorporate Unown into the franchise, which is great to see. Unown has always been a special Pokemon in that it isn’t particularly powerful in battle, but it’s very influential inPokemonlore, and it inherently comes with a special subset of catching objectives that few other Pokemon have.Recent mainlinePokemongameshaven’t made Unown a priority, but maybe experimentation inPokemon Legends: Arceus,as well as Niantic’s ideas inPokemon GO,will inspire Game Freak to revisit the Symbol Pokemon.
WithPokemon ScarletandVioleton the horizon, the unique ideas featured inPokemonside games feel more important than ever.Pokemon Legends: Arceusstands out as a particularly successfulPokemonspinoff, so its ideas about combat, Pokemon outbreaks, Pokedex objectives, and much more could all affect the design of Generation 9Pokemongames. The way that bothPokemon Legends: ArceusandPokemon GOhandle Unown seems like a great design element to borrow from inScarletandViolet,since it introduces some variety in the process of collecting every Pokemon. Hopefully Game Freak will hint at Unown’s role in future games soon.
