I’m not afraid to say it: this bag racket is straight-up extortion. I’m having a blast with Pokemon Legends: Arceus, but every time I start to build momentum I’m stopped dead in my tracks by a full inventory. The only solution? Give this prick Bagin all of your money. Every time I return to Jubilife Village I have to make a Sophie’s Choice between spending money on useful things like new blueprints and crafting materials or giving every dime I have to Bagin for one lousy slot in my bag. And you know what? I choose Bagin every single time.
Like any good pusher, Bagin’s deal starts off sweet. Spending $100 for extra space is a no-brainer. $200? Sure, why not. Pretty soon, you’re dropping $10,000 so you can carry an extra stack of berries. Bagin’s hooks you early before quickly turning on you. Did $500 seem like a lot? Well the next one is $1,000. Better go research some Pokemon kid, because there’s no turning back now.
Thanks to the crafting system, bag space is incredibly precious. There are an unfathomable number of materials to collect, and until you get pretty far into the game, it’s almost impossible to know what you need to keep and what’s useless. Poke Ball mats are always important, but if you want to be able to craft every variety of ball, you’ll need to keep six slots full at all times, not to mention the nine slots for the different balls themselves if you want to carry them all. On the other hand, a lot of the berries aren’t as important. You really don’t need a different kind of cake to attract every type of Pokemon when practically any old berry will do the trick. Something you’ll need to keep for a long time, like evolution stones, power up items, and grit, can be stored away until it's the right time to use them – but to do that, you need to be at a base camp. No matter how clued in you are to the relative usefulness of any particular item, though, you’re bound to end up with a full bag after just a few minutes in the field.
You can play the whole game without falling into Bagin’s trap, I’m sure. But that just sounds like a miserable experience to me. Stopping my adventure to manage my inventory is the worst part of the game, so minimizing menu time via bag upgrades is my number one priority. This comes at the cost of new recipes and other useful items I’d prefer to be buying. It almost feels like Legends has a superfluous number of items to intentionally funnel you into Bagin’s hustle, which isn’t exactly a rewarding or satisfying upgrade path.
What the hell is Bagin doing anyway? He’s got some kind of special technique that increases how much space is available in my bag, but how does that work? Is he some kind of grocery bagging savant that can just fit more into the space than anyone else, or is he sewing pocket after pocket onto my sack, turning it into some kind of hideous Franken-bag? I need answers Bagin, did you name yourself after your own grift?
There’s a simple solution that would make Legends: Arceus far less frustrating, and it’s something every other Pokemon game already does. We just need separate bag slots for all our items. Crafting materials go in one tab, consumables go in another, and Poke Balls go in another. There’s only one extra tab for key items, leaving the rest of the storage space to become one big jumbled mess of rocks and rotten fruit.
I’ll say it again: spending all my money to upgrade my bag one slot at a time is not fun or satisfying. I feel like I’m suffering through one bad loop to help relieve the friction of a different bad loop, and I wish both of them just didn’t exist at all. I’m at the point where I just dump every berry and mysterious plant that’s purpose isn’t immediately obvious to me right on the ground. If I really need something later I’ll pull up a guide and go farm that material specifically, I guess. It’s not how I want to play the game, but it’s a hell of a lot better than constantly stopping to decide which botanicals to leave on the ground to make room for apricorns and iron chunks. I’ve never played another game where I felt forced to craft a bunch of stuff I didn’t need just because the process would consume mats and free up inventory space. Meanwhile, Bagin’s probably out there planting Chesto Berry trees every five feet. They told me surviving in the Hisui wild’s would be hard, but I didn’t know they meant hard on my wallet.
Source: Read Full Article