There were two things I wanted most out of Pokémon Legends: Z-A’s Mega Dimension DLC: Mega Raichu and the return of Latias to my party. The dragon/psychic monster has been a favorite of mine for over 20 years, and she’s been a mainstay of my team in every game she’s featured in. Latias is flying around the Hyperspace Lumiose City featured in Mega Dimension, but I still haven’t caught her yet. Why? Mega Dimension’s maddening grind makes catching her and several other Legendary monsters a game of chance, harkening back to some of the more frustrating capture mechanics of Pokémon’s past that the series has mostly gotten away from.
Latias, along with several other Legendary Pokémon who aren’t tied to the main plot, is gated behind a mechanic called Special Scans. These allow you to find rare pockets of Mega Dimension’s Hyperspace that include powerful trainers to battle, valuable loot, and, in some cases, Legendary monsters you won’t be able to find anywhere else. All of that is well and good, but the mere act of acquiring a Special Scan is already such a time sink that the randomization of what follows makes the whole process an almost insulting waste of your time.
To get a Special Scan, you have to grind through Mega Dimension’s various mini-quests in Hyperspace. These are typically simple objectives like beating trainers in the Battle Zones, capturing a certain number of Pokémon, or finding loot in the mirrored city. Each of these gives you intel points to contribute to the scan, and it’ll take multiple runs through Hyperspace to reach the appropriate number.
The problem is that the results of Special Scans are randomized. You might find a Legendary Pokémon, but you may also find a battle zone full of powerful trainers that can’t give you anything beyond more intel points to do another Scan, or you could stumble into an area of Hyperspace filled with Pokémon you’ve already caught. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you’ll find a repeat of one of the Rogue Mega Evolution boss fights, which remain one of the best parts of Legends: Z-A, but if you’re trying to find the monsters you need to fill the Pokédex, even those feel like a barrier you can’t get around.
© The Pokemon Company / Kotaku
There’s no way to game the system and manipulate these scans to lead you where you want to go, and even if they do take you to a Legendary Pokémon’s lair, there’s no guarantee that you’ll go back to Lumiose City with one in a Poké Ball. I’ve put more than 20 hours into Mega Dimension and have only found two Legendary Pokémon through these methods, and neither of them was Latias. When I happened upon Virizion’s home after hours of grinding and acquiring one of these scans, I searched every square inch of the space for grass/fighting antelope, and couldn’t find it before the time limit ran out. These Special Scan portals close behind you after you leave, willingly or not, so I spent all that time grinding and battling through Special Scan areas with nothing of value in them to get to this point, all for nothing.
Gating Legendary monsters behind chance is bad enough, but making it a lengthy grind to even roll the dice artificially inflates an already hefty expansion that relies on the grind to fill out the time between its better moments. If your sole value determination for a video game is how much time it takes up, Mega Dimension offers that with reckless abandon. If you want to feel like you’re accomplishing something rather than wasting your time, Special Scans are one of the most annoying things Pokémon has implemented in years.
In some of the earlier generations, certain Legendary Pokémon were roaming encounters you had to essentially track and follow throughout a region, hoping that you’d stumble upon them in a random battle. This mechanic was notoriously derided, and the series has largely moved away from it, but Special Scans feel like that design philosophy magnified in a way that kills momentum so thoroughly that I’m not sure if I’ll ever actually complete the Mega Dimension Pokédex. I guess I can live with that, but I’m pretty fucking sad that my girl Latias is waiting for me in Hyperspace, and we might not get to reunite until another game.
