When Pokémon Legends: ZA was first revealed, we all immediately started speculating about when it would take place in the Pokémon timeline. Not where, we knew: it takes place entirely in Lumiose City in the Kalos region from Pokémon
We were wrong! We now know exactly when this will take place, and it’s not as big a step forward as you might think.
We played Pokémon Legends: ZA for review and the embargo is now up. We can therefore confirm, through our direct experience speaking with several characters (most of whom we unfortunately cannot name or show directly due to ongoing embargo restrictions), that ZA takes place just five years after the events of X and Y. This is not a time travel story, it is a direct sequel that provides follow-up to many of the characters and situations introduced in X and Y.
For example, we already know that you’re dating AZ, a 3,000-year-old man who plays a central role in X and Y. We also know that Mable, a former member of Team Flare, takes on the role of Pokémon Professor in this game and sends you to catch Pokémon with various challenges. Other characters you’ll remember from X and Y also appear, some of them changed drastically, but we can’t and won’t spoil them just yet.
Pokémon Legends: ZA being a direct sequel is actually a big deal. The Pokémon universe has been very variable in how different games and regions interact with each other over the years. Although there have been direct sequels before (Gold and Silver after Red and Blue, Black and White 2 after Black and White, etc.), later games introduced time travel (Legends: Arceus), alternate universes (Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire), and basically each game implied that all the locations and monsters from the other games existed in the same world, but the events that take place in these games may or may not be canonical depending on which one you play. Pokémon’s timeline, if long, probably seems a lot more ridiculous than Zelda’s at this point.
But if you were wondering what happened to most of the main cast of X and Y five years after the events of the game, there you go: it’s just a simple sequel! In hindsight, we should have seen it coming when they named it “ZA” after X and Y.
My ongoing review of Pokémon Legends: ZA is now live, if you’d like to check out my impressions from the first 24 hours, with a full review coming next week. I also wrote about how the Nurse Joy position is now open to people who don’t look exactly like the original Nurse Joy after 27 years in ZA.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find his post on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Do you have a history tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
