This Pokemon Legends: Z-A DLC Feature Is a Huge Letdown That Shows What’s Wrong With Modern Pokemon

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When Ansha and her donuts were first teased, I admittedly got my hopes up a bit too much. The screenshots of donut stats brought me back to the days of mixing poffins in Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. Would this be a true, engaging side mechanic headed our way in Mega Dimension? Alas, no, it was not. Instead, donut making is a shallow imitation of what might have been, reminding me why many fans are frustrated with the direction of modern Pokemon games.

Pokemon Legends: Z-A Donut Making Is Mandatory, Repetitive, and Boring – But It Didn’t Have to Be

As someone who loves a cooking mechanic, I was hoping that Ansha’s donuts would be my favorite part of the new Pokemon Legends: Z-A DLC. Instead, I get a little bit angry every time I have to approach that cute little donut counter in Hotel Z. And if you’ve played any of Mega Dimension, you likely know that you find yourself approaching that counter pretty darn often. Making ever more complex donuts to feed Hoopa is a mandatory part of the DLC, required to open portals to Hyperspace Lumiose. But unfortunately, the mechanic is a tedious shadow of what might have been.

Donut making isn’t entirely without complexity. You do need to select the right berries to combine for different effects. Better berries will give you more time to explore Hyperspace Lumiose and will grant your Pokemon a bigger level boost. But Pokemon Legends: Z-A manages to make this would-be minigame both too shallow and too time-consuming all at once. What could’ve been a fun side element of the DLC that harkens back to some of the best parts of early Pokemon games is instead an annoying item on your to-do list.

I was hoping donut-making would come with a mini-game similar to the poffins of old. Just clicking on ingredients and watching a repetitive little pop-up of Ansha and Hoopa isn’t really engaging. But you also can’t skip it. You can only craft one donut at a time before entering this scene, and then you have to start the whole process over again. It is a time-consuming experience that constantly reminds me it could’ve been fun, but isn’t. If you’re not going to let me actually mix and bake my donuts, please at least speed up the process so I can get more donuts ready to go more quickly. Instead, Legends: Z-A managed to give us the worst of both worlds. And that has me thinking about what I miss the most from earlier Pokemon games.

Recent Pokemon Games Have Abandoned Engaging Side Content for Shinies and Gimmicks

Many Pokemon fans who’ve been playing the games as long as I have are unsatisfied with more recent installments. I wasn’t personally quite as bothered by games like Scarlet and Violet, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see their flaws. And watching Ansha’s static image pop up with different colors of donuts over and over again has made me realize one of the biggest issues I personally have with new Pokemon games. They don’t offer us the fun, immersive side content that once made the Pokemon world feel alive.

Thinking back on those early Pokemon games, what I remember most isn’t catching Pokemon or engaging in battles. It’s all the little quirky side features that let me feel immersed in the world of Pokemon. Berry planting, introduced in Gen 3, was simple but immersive. You got to choose which berry to grow, plant it, and water it. Then, you had to remember to return to harvest it later on. This small but engaging feature made the world feel more alive. A similar thing can be said for Secret Bases, also added in Gen 3, and my beloved Poffin making from Gen 4. Heck, even just searching every trash can for the occasional hidden item made Pokemon feel vibrant and surprising.

These side games and details weren’t necessarily complicated or involved, but they were interactive. They made you feel a bit more part of the game, like you were living in its world. And that’s where modern Pokemon games have been letting us down. Scarlet and Violet did give us sandwich-making, to be fair. But even that felt somehow a bit scaled back, in part because you simply buy most of your ingredients rather than hunting them down as you explore.

Modern Pokemon games focus a lot on giving us a lot of Pokemon to catch, collect, and Shiny hunt, leaving behind a lot of the fun and experimental side content. Instead of putting time into things like donut-making as a true mini-game or side experience, we get Shiny hunting and relatively repetitive multiplayer content like Dynamax Raids and Tera Raids. Each new generation giving us a new gimmick instead of fun new ways to engage with a lived world feels, to me, indicative of that sense that newer Pokemon games have lost some of the franchise’s heart and soul.

When I jumped into Mega Dimension, I wanted more story and new features to experience. Instead, I got even more Megas that I won’t care to Shiny hunt for and a feature that reminds me of what I used to love about the games. I really hope that Gen 10 goes back to giving us a game that lets us engage with the world in more ways than just chasing Pokemon and throwing them into battles. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

What do you think of the donut-making element in Pokemon Legends: Z-A? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!