Unreleased ‘Pokémon Legends: Arceus’ Leaked and Streamed Online, But People Love It
Earlier this week, Pokémon Legends: Arceus was leaked online and trainers are already uploading playthroughs on Twitch and YouTube.
The leaked game ROM has made its way online and been downloaded by several enterprising individuals. These folks went on and streamed the game to Twitch and YouTube. You can search yourself, as we won’t be linking to them. The game is set to officially release this Friday, January 28th. But now it seems that the game will be fully spoiled before it even releases.
There is a silver lining to all this, however. All the early reports and reviews are saying the game is pretty great, despite a lack of graphical polish. A lot of the “standards” of Pokémon have been refreshed or removed and the game has a lot of quality of life changes over previous titles.
Gameplay Spoilers
According to the various reddit posts about how Pokémon Legends: Arceus leaked on /r/PokeLeaks and /r/GamingLeaksAndRumors, the game has a runtime of about 20-30 hours. The battle system isn’t real-time but the speed mechanics have been updated to allow for more tricks regarding turn order.
The wild areas from Sword and Shield have been expanded upon and allows for a better tracking and capturing of Pokémon. Plus, since Pokémon Legends: Arceus has a more open world style of gameplay, this fits into that really well.
Abilities have been confirmed to be absent from the game, from multiple sources. Excepting a few notable exceptions who have hard set abilities.
Overall, the general consensus seems to be this is a huge step in the right direction in terms of development and production. But the game still has some flaws, most notably in graphics and some performance issues. Still, everyone seems to agree Pokémon Legends: Arceus is a great step forward for the franchise.
Leak my Pokémon game once, shame on you…
A similar thing happened late last year with the release of the Pokémon: Diamond and Pearl remakes. Giving early review copies is a pretty typical thing for developers to do. That’s how we got our hands on an early copy of Total War: Warhammer III.
But, now since Pokémon Legends: Arceus has been leaked as well, Nintendo might want to start vetting their reviewers a little more carefully. They should start doing that thing authors do where they change one small thing in each review copy they send out. That way they can figure out who is leaking it. Until then, Nintendo might be locked into their own Sisyphean cycle of early leaks.
On the first draft, I spelled it ‘leek’ every time. Stupid Farfetch’d.
