It’s not just the setting and the open world that makes Pokémon Legends: Arceus a huge change from previous games, there’s also some big changes for the battle system.
Picture the Pokémon anime. Ash is caught in a battle that he’s about to lose, “Quickly,” he shouts to Pikachu. “Use Thunder!” In the nick of time, Pikachu lets lose a “pika pika!” and fries the ever-loving hell out of the opponent. Pokémon Legends Arceus takes this idea and runs with it, in what is called the Strong/Agile Style system.
Speed vs power
The long and short of this is that once a Pokémon masters a move, it leans to sacrifice either speed or power for the sake of the other.
Strong Style boosts the power and accuracy of the move, but lowers your action speed, at the cost of more PP than usual.
Agile Style does the opposite, boosting the users action speed, but lowering the power of the move — also at the cost of more PP than usual. Agile Style does not affect your accuracy.
The brilliant twist from this is that it means that battles are no longer a strictly turn-based affair where a Lvl 100 Mewtwo and Lvl 2 Caterpie obediently take turns. Instead, during a battle you can see a turn order on the right-hand side of the screen, and your actions in picking which Style to use, will directly affect that. Agile may move you up the order (it doesn’t always), while Strong may move you down.
This becomes particularly important when it comes to battles in Space–Time distortions, where you’ll frequently find yourself ganged up on by high-level wild Pokémon. Using a Strong move may KO one of your opponents, but if that means the remaining two Pokémon can hit you twice each before you can retaliate, you may well be throwing more Revives than Pokéballs.
The flip-side to this is in the same encounter, if you rely too heavily on Agile Style, you may not do enough damage to take out the Pokémon, drawing out the proceedings.
Of course, you don’t have to use either — you can proceed as normal and not use either style; that is still a valid tactical option
When to change your Style
There are two real considerations here: the first is whether using Strong/Agile attacks actually changes your turn order. If it doesn’t, you may as well use a Strong Style attack to hit the opponent that little bit harder.
If it does change the order, and using an Agile Style attack lets you get in twice, the play is generally to sneak in the weaker Agile attack and then batter them with a follow-up Strong attack — the second attack will drop you down the turn order, but if you KO the opponent, then that’s irrelevant, isn’t it?
The second major consideration here is the boost to accuracy. If your Pokémon is low on health and you absolutely need this attack to land, to beat the opponent and end the battle, it may be worth going all out with a Strong attack. Nothing ventured, as they say.
