Legendary Encounters Will be Battles in Pokémon: Let’s Go

When Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! were first announced, one of the major changes from more traditional mainline Pokémon games fans noticed was that wild Pokémon cannot be battled in these new games; rather, players can only either try to catch them Pokémon GO-style or run away. One of the worries this led to was what this would mean for encounters with Legendary Pokémon, as many worried that these epic confrontations would be reduced to just chucking Balls.

However, a new video was recently uploaded to the official Japanese Pokémon YouTube channel, which clearly shows the player battling the Legendary Pokémon Zapdos (0:37-0:39 in the video) and Moltres (0:50-0:51), rather than just throwing Balls at them. So rest assured, you will still have to battle Legendaries in order to capture them, rather than just throwing PokéBalls like you’ll be doing for normal wild Pokémon encounters. It is not yet clear if simply defeating a Legendary in battle will automatically add it to your team, which would seem to be the more beginner-friendly thing to do, or if the player will be given a chance to catch Legendaries using the normal catching sequence once the Legendary has been defeated in battle, which would be the more Pokémon GO thing to do.

Pokémon: Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Eevee! will be released on November 16 for Nintendo Switch.

https://youtu.be/n9KY2tM7cCw