Disclaimer: this is my opinion if you disagree, that’s great I hope we can be chill about it
So a thing of praise I see regarding legends za is the player customization, however I think it’s only a step up from scarlet/violet and BDSP because it is a step down from most other switch games and even a downgrade from scarlet and violet in some aspects, and the only reason it’s praised at all is because it came after Scarlet and violet which is significantly worse in that regard. If legends Za came directly after sword and shield its reception would be considerably worse.
As you saw from the image, I can’t wear the black coat with the white shirt despite both coats using the same model, this is because one coat is only compatible with V-necks and the other is only compatible with off-shoulder tops for some reason, or I really wanted to wear the leather jacket but I didn’t want to wear a turtle-neck so I was out of luck, if this were sword and shield I could pair any shirt I want with any coat I wanted, but for some reason it isn’t like that and shirts are locked to the coats they come with only being able to swap them if it’s the same kind of shirt/coat. They also have these outfit types called “all in one” where you can’t even change your pants, if I wanted to wear a trench coat with shorts I’m out of luck, there are fur coats that you can wear in Za but those don’t even come with pants so the only way to make it look like you are is by using tights
Hairstyles also leave a lot to be desired, I have side bangs that cover my forehead in real life but there's only a single style that does that but it makes you look emo with really unkept hair, the other bangs either look detached from the rest of the hair or doesn’t cover my forehead, this is one of the things scarlet and violet did better than Za did in regards to character customization since there were far more diverse options including bangs that still made your hair look neat. The best way to summarize this point is that scarlet and violet had 25 different hairstyles before the dlc while legends za only has 14.
Facial customization is another shortcoming of legends Za’s character customization that was also beat out by scarlet and violet. In scarlet and violet there were significantly more options that made the player’s face look different compared to other players, Za has this too but to a way lesser extent, Just to go through a few examples; Za has 4 eye shapes while SV has 9, Za has 4 eyelash shapes while SV has 24, Za has 3 eyebrow shapes while SV has 24, SV has 15 different mouth expressions while Za has none, this was the most disappointing for me since I never really smile all that much so having the option to represent that meant a lot for me, but now you can only smile again with the same smile as everyone else.
The only reason I can think of for all these shortcomings was a lack of time on the game’s part, I can’t in good faith think of a good reason that Za doesn’t have the same customization features as the previous games, like something as simple as using different shirts with different coats other than not having enough time to add it since swapping clothing textures is a lot simpler, and what really sucks about this is you know gamefreak can afford better with how much the company makes. There was more I wanted to talk about like how there’s barely any options intended for male presenting players but I don't really want to get into that since it’ll become extremely subjective to what counts or not.
But what do you guys think?
by The-O-N