In 2022, there was a very real chance that the last video game I would ever play in my 41-year-old life was Pokémon Violet for the Nintendo Switch. Days after its release, I underwent lifesaving surgery to remove cancer. I played the game all the way until anesthesia, and it kept me company as I recovered and relearned how to walk again.

I loved that game, despite how unattractive it looked or how the animations chugged under the first Switch, an issue that’s plagued developer Game Freak since they transitioned Pokémon, the world’s most valuable intellectual property, from 2D games to 3D worlds. Despite their ugliness, the games re-create a timeless hero’s journey tale of collecting, empowering, battling and, of course, evolving cute monsters that’s hooked me since my high school years. As other modern games obsess over mega-budget hyperrealism, it’s worth celebrating games that focus on imagination over spectacle.

The last three years were never promised to me. At 44, life feels like something newly borrowed. I’m grateful to have lived long enough to see another entry in the spin-off Pokémon Legends series - Game Freak’s latest attempt to reinvent a dream millions of us have carried since youth. But survival sharpens perspective, and it’s harder now to mistake repetition for comfort.

Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which was released last week on the Switch and Switch 2, cages the adventure into a single city, the Paris-inspired Lumiose City. In a break from the series’ decades-long focus on turn-based strategy, the game emphasizes real-time action. The four face controller buttons are assigned to trigger four special moves that can be reused after cooldown meters, leaning this game toward high-octane esports-like battles and away from the series’s tabletop roots.

This is an exciting pivot for the series. For once, positioning counts - for you and your Pokémon. Area attacks carve through mobs, a necessity in Lumiose’s “wild zones”: fragments of cities where Pokémon prowl through parks and alleyways instead of grasslands and canyons of the past. The player must also avoid damage, although it seems opposing trainers can’t be hurt. It’s engaging and challenging, especially during the raid-like battles against Mega Evolved monsters (bigger and stronger creatures with some wild new designs).

Instead of the series formula of battling across gyms for glory, players must compete in qualifying matches to climb through the ranks, from letters Z through A. Each rank ends with a fun, quirky opponent. Qualification involves jumping unsuspecting trainers in nighttime battling zones, making this feel like the most dog-eat-dog story in the series.

The story feels oddly rushed, pushing the player through its beats before they can settle in. Despite that, the writing is fun and moves to a familiar beat - believing in yourself, helping others, growing together. It’s trite stuff, but after all they’re lessons meant for children and still resonant in our real world, whose evolution is far from complete.

My disconnect with the game begins and ends in Lumiose City, a flat echo of what should be the beating heart of its world. On the Switch 2, it glides at 60 frames per second - a huge improvement over the previous Switch titles’ terrible performance - but that smoothness comes at the cost of soul.

The thriving urban culture hinted at by characters’ bright personalities and street fashion is totally absent in the city itself. Windows, doors, balconies: All are pressed flat against lifeless walls that fail as believable architecture. Wide streets stretch empty or are thinly populated by silent, slow-turning pedestrians. Every district blurs together, a copy of a copy of a copy, and rooftops and underground areas add barely any variety. A city that once promised romance and whimsy now feels like literal wallpaper.

The battles are fun and a key part of the magic. But the Pokémon brand is so strong in other mediums such as merchandise, movies and fashion because of how badly we want to live in a world teeming with life, where its people, creatures and ecosystems intertwine. Single-city video games can work brilliantly, as with Sega’s Yakuza games. Here, the parts failed to add up. I have never played a game in this series with a world that felt this lifeless.

I knew the limits of this one-city game the moment the music loop refused to end. Hours passed, the same jazzy tune trailing me as I went through my routines leveling up Pikachu, Magikarp and my chosen starter, the fiery Tepig. The melody shifts its colors with battle and daylight, and while it’s a playful tune, it never really changes. The city hums in circles, a closed loop of engaging gameplay and flat visual design with nowhere new to go.

Critics have said for years that Game Freak seems to coast on success, doing just enough to keep the series moving forward year after year. The studio took a bit more time to make this game, yet it comes with all these cut corners. If the transition to 3D worlds is this difficult, I almost prefer that Game Freak returns to two dimensions.

I know. I’m 44 years old, having played these games through at least two decades of a life that still feels too short. I took a long hiatus during the 2010s. Maybe I need another?

Three years ago, Pokémon helped me hold on to life. Today, it reminds me I already did. These are the years I wasn’t promised, and I’m not sure I want to spend them chasing the same dreams again. Maybe I’ll be back when Pokémon further evolves - when it learns, as I have, that survival is only the beginning.

Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Switch 2

Online: legends.pokemon.com/en-us