Pokemon Legends: Arceus Dropping Held Items, Abilities, and Breeding Would Be a Huge Loss

A new Pokemon Legends: Arceus leak suggests the game will let go of some important Pokemon features that are very hard to replace.

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Pokemon is a franchise that famously prefers to stick to tradition, rather than drastically reinventing itself with every entry. That’s one reason that Pokemon Legends: Arceus looks so compelling. Game Freak’s new Pokemon title takes a vastly different approach to Pokemon mechanics than most games. Pokemon Legends: Arceus seems to give players much more freedom to explore its partially open world. Choices between Strong Style and Agile Style to modify attacks shake up Pokemon combat, while encounters with Noble Pokemon that put players in the middle of the action offer a thrilling new way to engage with formidable wild Pokemon.

However, some fans have been asking questions about whether Pokemon Legends: Arceus is too different from the core franchise. For instance, a recent Pokemon Legends: Arceus leak claimed that the game will omit some key Pokemon features that fans have grown to depend on. According to the leaker, the game won’t have held items, Pokemon Abilities, or breeding. Pokemon Legends: Arceus looks like a breath of fresh air for a lot of reasons, but dropping these features would be a major loss for fans. They all serve crucial functions that’ll be hard to replace, even in an innovative title like this one.

The Utility of Held Items In Pokemon

If held items don’t appear in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, then there’s a lot of Pokemon evolutions that’ll need reworking. There’s a long list of Pokemon, from Onix to Swirlix, that only evolve when traded while holding a specific item. If those items are inaccessible, then Pokemon Legends: Arceus has to come up with new ways to let fans evolve those Pokemon, which could make them lose a trait that made them unique. Dropping held items in Pokemon Legends: Arceus could be a sign that Pokemon is moving away from trade evolutions, and while that would be convenient, it’d also mean Game Freak has a lot of evolution reworks to do.

Held items aren’t just significant due to evolution, of course. They’re also a core part of Pokemon strategy. Held items can do everything from buff a Pokemon’s moves, to provide healing over time, and competitive players pay close attention to each Pokemon’s equipment. Losing held items would mean losing a core component of Pokemon that’s even harder to replace than evolution items. Even if Pokemon Legends: Arceus players have the benefit of Strong and Agile Styles, those functions don’t fill the gap that would be left by the absence of held items.

Abilities Make Pokemon Unique

The loss of Pokemon Abilities would be a big deal too, partially for the same reason as held items. Abilities act as variables in Pokemon combat that really shake things up. Some have simple functions, like Oblivious preventing the niche status effect of infatuation, while others are game changing, like Thick Fat’s huge reduction of Ice-type and Fire-type damage. Without Abilities, Pokemon players have far less power to construct unique builds for their Pokemon and have to put much less thought into each Pokemon matchup, which would be a major loss for Pokemon’s combat, which is already relatively simple.

What’s more, without Abilties, certain Pokemon would lose the functions that define them. For instance, Unova’s Zorua and Zoroark are most well known for the Ability Illusion, which lets them temporarily disguise themselves as another Pokemon. Without Illusion, there’s not much to set Zoroark apart mechanically, which is very relevant to Pokemon Legends: Arceus since Zorua and Zoroark have Hisuian variants who presumably have similar illusionary capabilities. If Pokemon like Zoroark don’t have Abilities in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, then they’ll lack a defining characteristic that justified their creation in the first place.

The Impact of Pokemon Breeding

On top of that, breeding may be missing from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which would make players lose out on some very important functions. Breeding not only allows players to replicate valuable Pokemon and get baby evolutions of Pokemon that might be hard to find otherwise, but it can let players pass on Egg Moves to the baby Pokemon, which can result in powerful Pokemon that couldn’t be found in the wild. The loss of breeding in Pokemon would mean players lose a vital way to create unique Pokemon teams.

Historically, breeding has had value in the hunt for Shiny Pokemon too. Although the numbers have changed a lot over the years, as a general rule, it’s a little easier to hatch Shiny Pokemon from Eggs when players make use of the Masuda method, where players breed Pokemon from games with different languages. Although players will certainly still have ways to look for Shiny Pokemon in Pokemon Legends: Arceus, the loss of the Masuda method would be a major inconvenience for Pokemon fans who favor that technique for IVs and Egg Moves. Breeding is a mainstay mechanic of Pokemon by now, so it’d be a shame to see Pokemon Legends: Arceus drop it.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus’ Pros and Cons

Game Freak hasn’t confirmed that these features will be missing from Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but if they are, then the game has a lot of work to do to make up for it. Abilities, held items, and breeding aren’t just supplementary parts of Pokemon that come and go regularly; they’re fundamental building blocks of the franchise that players make use of constantly. A Pokemon game without these distinctive features would need to offer a lot of new concepts that play similar roles or fill the niches in order to justify the absence of such basic Pokemon content.

It’s at least good to know that Pokemon fans won’t have to wait long to see if these Pokemon Legends: Arceus leaks are true. The game’s release is right around the corner, meaning soon players will get to see for themselves just how drastically Game Freak has changed things. Pokemon Legends: Arceus was always going to be different from the core franchise by a wide margin, and that’s a good thing, but it does mean it’ll have a harder time appealing to some Pokemon players than most Pokemon spin-offs. Whatever features Pokemon Legends: Arceus sacrifices, hopefully its new content adds up to a positive experience in the end.

Pokemon Legends: Arceus releases on January 28, 2022, for Nintendo Switch.

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