If you grew up on Pokemon games like I did, you know that exploring the map took time. With Pokemon Legends: Z-A, you might think that Lumiose City would feel small compared to exploring a full region like Kanto. And that may be true in some regards, but even so, the game manages to make Lumiose feel pretty big. With various districts to explore and key points to visit, it can still take some time to traverse the city. And that’s why fans will be glad to see that one recent change in Pokemon history has returned in Pokemon Legends: Z-A.
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Once upon a time, fast travel took some time to unlock in a Pokemon game. You needed to find the right HM to teach a Pokemon how to Fly to be able to more easily revisit key locations. Even then, you could only really go to a specific city, then find your location from there. But more recent iterations have let you unlock fast travel more quickly, with mechanics like Pokemon Sword and Shield‘s Flying Taxi. But in Pokemon Legends: Z-A, fast travel is perfected. The game offers two options that will help you quickly and easily explore Lumiose City, while finally giving us a map that’s full of things we actually want to uncover.
Fast Travel Is Available As Soon As You Visit a New Spot
Once you arrive in Lumiose City, you’ll be able to get around pretty quickly. Each time you visit a key location, you will get the ability to fast travel there. Locations with Fast Travel available have a little wing symbol next to them on the map. Single city versus world map aside, this is pretty much how fast travel worked in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet. But Legends: Z-A steps it up a notch in two ways – more fast travel locations, and a clearer record of when new Fast Travel options unlock. Not to mention, must faster load times on the Switch 2, though your mileage may vary on the original Switch.
As you explore Lumiose, you’ll get a notification any time you visit a new Fast Travel location for the first time. This makes it easy to keep track of when new options open up, even before you open your Lumiose City map. Pokemon Centers are Fast Travel locations, but so are cafes, restaurants, and important landmarks like Hotel Z-A or Emma’s detective agency. This makes it very easy to move swiftly through certain plot points, and also ensures there will always be a fast travel location pretty close to your next objective.
That doesn’t mean there’s not value to exploring, though. Lumiose has various nooks and crannies where Wild Pokemon lurk, or where you might run across an interesting side mission. The game manages to nicely balance ease of getting around when you want to Fast Travel, while still making exploring rewarding enough that you want to do it. That makes it a huge step up from Scarlet & Violet, which offered an open world that felt a bit too empty to encourage exploring once Fast Travel was available.
Lumi Cabs Offer Early Travel to Key Locations
Another way that Legends: Z-A makes Fast Travel better is the Lumi Cab service. You can use this to travel to many central locations throughout the city, even ones that wouldn’t otherwise be available as Fast Travel hubs. This service helps you get around early on, before you’ve unlocked many Fast Travel points. You can use the Lumi Taxi to get to the central plaza in each sector, a great starting point for exploring and unlocking more Fast Travel locations… or just finding your next side mission.
Although the Fast Travel mechanic itself works pretty similar to how it has in the last few games, Legends: Z-A makes a few key tweaks that improve how you get around the map. From actually rewarding exploring to adding more Fast Travel points when you want them, this game shows what traveling around the map in a Pokemon game should feel like. And the taxis add a nice layer of flavor as well as another quick travel option, which I very much appreciate. I hope this well-balanced combination of travel options, along with a map that actually makes you want to forgo them to just roam, will return in subsequent Pokemon games.
Are you enjoying exploring Lumiose City so far? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
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