Pokemon Legends Z-A real time battles could learn big lesson from ARC Raiders

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Pokémon Legends Z-A revolutionized the series by switching from traditional turn-based battles to a real-time combat system. Players now control their Pokémon’s movements and use attacks that have cooldowns, offering a more dynamic and action-packed experience.

Okay, so I’m really enjoying how much faster battles feel now, and it definitely adds some excitement! But honestly, there’s this one thing that’s been bugging a lot of us. For years, Pokémon battles have been about taking turns, and whether a move hits always came down to accuracy. It just felt…fair. But now, this new system is really highlighting a problem with how things work under the hood, and it’s honestly pretty frustrating.

Legends Z-A revamped the battle system. Now, moves only miss if a trainer skillfully moves their Pokémon to avoid them, and battles flow seamlessly instead of happening in turns. Pokémon can use moves continuously, as long as they aren’t on cooldown, drastically altering the way battles are fought.

Despite being a real-time system, the game has a noticeable problem: Pokemon frequently struggle to find the best path to their targets, which can cause frustrating and unnecessary failures during important moments.

the way i was screaming at my damn TV when this happened

— Anthony (@KirbyCheatFurby) December 16, 2025

Pokemon Legends Z-A pathfinding needs an ARC Raiders update

One of the biggest issues players are facing in Pokemon Legends Z-A is how difficult it is to move their Pokemon around. After choosing an attack, Pokemon often get caught on obstacles, bump into items like Mega Crystals, or even move in the wrong direction.

Often, characters don’t move correctly to hit enemies that are right in front of them, causing their attacks to miss completely.

Man, I’ve noticed a really frustrating bug, especially when I’m playing with the Mega Dimensions DLC. It’s like my Pokémon have a mind of their own! They’ll just randomly run off the edge of buildings when I’m trying to catch them with floating Poké Balls, get stuck on trees or posts, or completely fail to move when I’m trying to escape a Hyperspace Wild Zone before time runs out. It’s super annoying!

Because of the time limit, even small movement issues can cause players to miss out on rewards, even if they’re skilled at the game.

Okay, so how does all this relate to ARC Raiders? Well, even though it’s a totally different game than what I was just talking about, the developers at Embark Studios ran into a similar problem. The good news is, they jumped on it right away to fix things.

The ARC Raiders update includes improvements to the Shredder enemy. It now takes less force to knock it back, and it moves and turns more quickly. We’ve also increased the health of its head to prevent it from being destroyed prematurely, which was causing unexpected issues.

— ARC Raiders Updates (@ARCRaidersMedia) December 16, 2025

Shortly after being added to ARC Raiders, The Shredder – a particularly challenging enemy – had its movement improved. Embark, the game developer, made adjustments on November 20th and December 16th to stop The Shredder from getting stuck on objects while pursuing players.

And it was super effective.

Just a week after its release, the Shredder received an update because players reported it frequently got caught on objects in the game environment, like bushes and desks. This made what was meant to be a challenging enemy surprisingly easy to defeat, and went against how the developers intended it to play.

Pokemon Legends Z-A still has some of the same problems as before. The new Mega Dimensions expansion adds timed challenges and increases the pressure with Hyperspace timers, which makes the frustrating movement and pathfinding issues even more apparent and impactful. Players aren’t asking for Pokemon to move faster or for cooldowns to be removed – they just want the game to consistently follow their movement commands.

It’s hard to ignore the feeling that a simple, direct attack would be more reliable than Zygarde’s super-fast move when a Pokémon is almost capturing a rare prize – especially with just seconds left!

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2025-12-17 20:49