I love Legends: Arceus, the radical change to the standard formula was needed and appreciated. I became quite engrossed with the game, and at an important time, as I was disappointed with the direction taken with Sword & Shield and the Let's Go games. Dexit was a massive blow to my enjoyment of Sword & Shield, but Galar was also the least engaging region for me and Dynamaxing is my least favorite gimmick that they've tried. Meanwhile, the Let's Go games were yet another tired rehash of the first gen games that also required you to use Nintendo's shoddily-made JoyCons and featured ridiculous move names that were seemingly aimed at three-year olds (Baddy Bad and Buzzy Buzz, among others, like...seriously?). While the Pokémon series has been a part of my life since they hit the US when I was a child, I was considering dropping the series around this time because of these sorts of things.
So, Legends: Arceus was a huge breath of fresh air coming off of those. Having to use different catching methods for different species, whether it be sneaking up and throwing food to distract them, obscuring your presence with smoke bombs, and/or stunning them with sticky globs was fun. Completing the tasks per individual Pokémon's Pokédex page was also fun for the most part (save for some particularly annoying ones) and rewarding in that it increases your odds of encountering their shinies out in the wild. Having to fend off and dodge aggressive Pokémon's attacks and having to contend with the status effects like Sleep, Poison or Paralysis on your trainer was cool and, honestly, it took a little bit for me to shake off the urge to do the rolling dodge in Scarlet & Violet since I got so used to it in Legends: Arceus.
It could've done with more Pokémon battles, but considering the setting it made sense that there weren't many. I was also disappointed with the female hairstyles, particularly the lack of longer styles, but hey, the girls tend to get the better trainer customization in the rest of the games so it's fair enough I suppose.
While they might not revisit this type of game in the future, I'd definitely welcome another Legends-style game.
As it compares to mainline games where you go through the Pokémon League, challenging the gyms and eventually taking on the Elite Four and Champion, I feel like these different styles all have their place. I'm open to the classic style, or something like the Alola region's Island Trials and Kahunas, or a Legends game, whatever they want to throw at me. I just want the games to be given sufficient development time. Hopefully the Scarlet & Violet fiasco will allow for that, though who knows, we'll just have to see what happens.
I really wished that some of the features in this game like the Linking Cord and overworld shiny signal made its way to SV or future games but I won't be holding my breath.
Yes please.
While I can understand why they didn't include the Linking Cord in Scarlet & Violet, since part of their philosophy and business strategy is to encourage trading either online or among friends, I'd really love to see them bring it back in the future. Some people don't have wi-fi or ethernet connection to trade with people, or friends don't play the series. I've been that person in the past who stuck with Machoke, Haunter, Kadabra, etc. due to lack of people to trade with and, while it did make me appreciate them more, I'm also glad I'm past that now and would like others to not have to miss out.
The overworld shiny sparkles unquestionably need to make a return though. While I believe Legends: Arceus was made by a separate team and they were using different assets, it's absolutely ludicrous that you just have to know Pokémon well enough to be able to spot shinies in the wild in Scarlet & Violet; I'm pretty good at spotting them as a series veteran, but considering Game Freak obviously wants to target their younger demographic, and considering some shinies are notoriously similar to their normal coloration, not having that extra indication is a massive oversight. Granted, it's glaringly obvious from their many issues that Scarlet & Violet were victims of crunch development, but still.