US sales tracking firm Circana’s Matt Piscatella says that the recently released Pokemon Legends Z-A is the best-selling video game of 2025 so far in the United States. Pokemon Legends Z-A was released on both the Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2.
US: Circana says Pokemon Legends Z-A best-selling game of year so far
So much for it being a flop according to all the doom and gloom videos.
I don’t know if anyone said it was going to be a flop. They just said it wasn’t very good. In fact, I’d say a lot of the friction with critics and fans is that the games are reviewed as mediocre (and buggy now) but they still end up breaking sales records. It’s like, “Hey you’re making all this money off the games. Why isn’t the quality of the product reflective of that?” And then those critics also get mad at the consumers like, “Hey why are you buying this when it should be better? Why not send a message to the company to increase the quality by not buying the latest mid-tier game?”
It’s hard to say how Legends ZA compares to the mainline entries, in terms of sales. Legends is one game but the mainline games are sold as two separate games but counted as one game in sales charts so you got one person who will buy Scarlet AND Violet but then only buys one copy of Legends ZA so… kinda hard to compare. But I bet ZA had good sales for a Pokemon game.
“Why not send a message to the company to increase the quality by not buying the latest mid-tier game?”
I’d say it’s because said “mid tier game” isn’t mid tier at all.
I think it’s fair to say that it’s mid-tier. I know a lot of people would say it’s low-tier but it’s a bit of a biased reaction.
And there’s nothing wrong with mid-tier games. We’re just… you know, not talking about a mid-tier franchise here. And the Legends series was primed to be a bit more ambitious than the mainline games with it’s more open-world designs, exploration, and revamped catching and battling mechanics. It feels like a step backwards for them to just make the game take place in one map/city and change the battling to just “use every move that isn’t on cooldown and dodge”.
Don’t get me wrong, I agree with a lot of the criticism with some I don’t agree like people not liking that it’s contained to just the city, that one I’m fine with since this is a small game, doesn’t need to be huge and open like SV. Bugs I haven’t encountered nor framerate issues since I got the SW1 version with the upgrade path. Visually it looks fine and a lot of character look attractive, more so the females. Shiny hunting is different but fun. The Megas are either cool or goofy looking.
Damn, that’s pretty surprising that it’s the best selling. It’s actually a decent game amidst all the internet rage, I really enjoyed it
Don’t take the internet seriously. The game is actually very good. People just turned on the “hate mood” and forgot to turn it off. It’s boring seeing tons of “why I hate X game” and “why X game is bad” videos lately.
It’s not that it’s a bad game it’s that it’s not good enough to warrant it’s price tag or the blatant attempts by the company to stop competition that would make them have to produce a higher quality product. It’s like going and buying a $15 cheeseburger meal and it has the same quality and taste as a Big Mac. Yeah you still got to eat and it didn’t taste bad, but for $15 I’m expecting a restaurant quality burger. (The prices have probably changed due to the economy, but the point still stands)
Good. Mostly trash came out this year. Is Battlefield 6 the number 2? Ninja Gaiden 4 is the only other great game I can think of that came out this year and sadly isn’t charting. Only other games I think look great this year are Anata and Where Winds Meet both free. Just realized this outsold Mario Kart?
Mostly trash is wild. Sonic Racing Crossworlds, Silksong, Dispatch, Digimon Story Time Stranger, Monster Hunter Wilds, Clair Obscur Expedition 33 and Split Fiction all came out this year. All of these are great games even if they’re not your cup of tea. Even on the Nintendo side they released Mario Kart World, Donkey Kong Bananza, and Kirby Air Riders is coming out soon. The glaze for this game is crazy.
Damm it…
Overall, I have enjoyed Z-A. I do wish the story was a little better than it was. Also, too much fluff added to certain missions to complete them. The Rogue Pokemon could have been narrowed down to less than what you had to battle for the campaign. There are always stuff being added that I cannot keep up any longer between the Mega Stones and the Shiny Pokemon and others that are hard to catch. Playing online has become annoying. Players will get down to nothing left hardly and then swap out Pokemon only to take everyone else out. Just a bunch of try hards playing now online. The items you get are not even that great. I sold all of my stuff that was not a mega stone to get funds for other things in game. I hope the DLC can bring something different and solid next month.
We are skipping this one. I wouldn’t have brought it for myself, but for my Nephew and borrowed off him when he was done with it, but he’s not at all bothered by it. He likes Pokemon, but Scarlet/Violet put him off the games.
I wish it had an option to play turn based battles. The combat on this game feels bad like kingdom hearts chain of memories.
Gamefreak, please remove Avery from pokemon shield because he reminds me of Hasan Piker, my least favorite internet streamer.