Overview

• Hands-on sessions report that fights now play out in real time with four mapped moves on cooldowns, area effects, and positioning that can cause attacks to miss.
• Lumiose City serves as the entire setting, split into Wild Zones for daytime catching and Battle Zones at night for trainer encounters that use stealth and line-of-sight.
• Traditional gyms give way to the Z‑A Royale, a rank climb from Z to A where players earn points and promotion tickets by defeating trainers.
• High-risk encounters return through Alpha Pokémon and new Rogue Mega boss fights, including a Mega Victreebel that litters the arena with hazards and requires collecting Mega Energy to Mega Evolve.
• Previewers widely praise the faster, more tactical combat but flag dull visuals, potential zone repetition, and occasional technical hiccups like geometry snags and whiffed hits.