Pokémon Lazarus Review 

As you progress through the story, you come to find that Team Chimera’s leader, Kalliope, was once the eighth Ilios Gym Leader, who turned her back on the region in order to start Team Chimera and enact her evil plans. She uses an Ancient Mechanism to awaken the three Legendary Beasts, Entei, Raikou, and Suicune, in their ancient Paradox forms, Gouging Fire, Raging Bolt, and Walking Wake respectively. With these legendary Pokémon, Kalliope controls extreme weather conditions, bringing chaos to the Ilios region. In order to stop Team Chimera, you must call upon three legendary Pokémon of your own, those being Kyogre, Groudon, and Rayquaza. With the Hoenn trio’s help, you neutralize the ancient Paradox Pokémon, and head into Aerios Hideout, the home base of Team Chimera that was once a regular town. Once inside, you face Kalliope, and ultimately defeat Team Chimera for good while also receiving the final Gym Badge.

After Team Chimera’s defeat, you head towards the Ruins of Ahiyawa for the final challenge, the Elite Four, made up of four of the Gym Leaders you previously fought. After that, you face the Champion, a trainer named Anaylios who thought he was too good to be present for any of the things that just happened in the Ilios region. After defeating him, you become the new Champion of Ilios. The game’s story is unique, while also adhering to themes and tropes found in many of the older Pokémon games, such as the 8 Gym Leaders/Elite Four/Champion structure, stopping an evil organization, and encountering Legendary Pokémon. 

Content-wise, Pokémon Lazarus has a ton to offer. The Ilios region is a very unique and interesting place to explore, and it offers hundreds of Pokémon for players to use and build their teams with. I used a group of Pokémon that I liked and hadn’t really used in other games, with my team consisting of Primarina, Vikavolt, Hisuian Arcanine, Gourgeist, Braviary, and Goodra. Like Emerald Seaglass, Lazarus brings modern Pokémon mechanics such as the physical/special split, Fairy types, and numerous new moves, while having even more new additions such as Mega Evolutions. In addition to pre-existing Megas, Lazarus adds completely original ones like Mega Ribombee and Mega Gogoat.

The game is in the same Game Boy Color-inspired art style as Emerald Seaglass, and it looks absolutely incredible, with new sprites for every Pokémon. The various environmental backgrounds also look really good. There is also a really nice soundtrack in Lazarus, with route themes remixed from previous generations as well as completely original songs. Some of my favorite original tracks in the game are the Pokémon Center theme, Rival battle theme, Gym Leader battle theme, and Team Chimera battle theme. 

To conclude, I really liked Pokémon Lazarus. It has a ton of great ideas, really nice art and music, robust modern Pokémon mechanics, and a very good amount of content and replayability. I would recommend it to any Pokémon fan looking for something new to enjoy. The patch files to play Lazarus yourself can be obtained for free from the developer, at https://ko-fi.com/nemo622.