I've liked Legends: Z-A much better than Legends: Arceus. They've fixed a number of things that were problems in Arceus. Now they have a feature that lets you lock onto a target- rather than expecting you to align up with said target yourself- so you don't have that annoying thing they had in Arceus causing you to lose Poké Balls and other items. Likewise, they have this nice fellow in front of the Pokémon Centres that gathers and returns any Poké Balls you may have thrown that either missed a target or didn't work because the Pokémon was enraged at the time- it really annoyed me in Arceus that any Poké Balls that I'd thrown that missed the target, or if I accidentally hit the throw button and wasted a couple, were gone and wasted. Now you just get them returned to you, and nothing is being wasted.
As other people have said, you get to battle more in Z-A, so you don't have to deal with the levelling problem Arceus had. Arceus mainly just had a couple battles, and all other experience was gained through catching and battling wild Pokémon, which made it obnoxious to get through some of the story content sometimes. Arceus also had the problem that during battles your Pokémon didn't get any experience until the entire battle had ended, so if one or more of your Pokémon got knocked out and were still like that at the battle's end, they didn't get the experience they'd earned earlier in the battle.
Z-A still doesn't have abilities for the Pokémon, but at least we have held items again.
Z-A gives you rewards for completing research requests and filling up your Pokédex, but they don't make completing them a requirement for story-progression like Arceus did.
Z-A also doesn't have those stupid Agile Style and Strong Style features in the battles that made Arceus battles further obnoxious.
I've really liked all of the characters in the game, and other than the grinding the game is very enjoyable.
It does have some problems, though. Besides the grinding, you also have the problem of Pokémon ganging up on you in wild zones- and some of these can be Alpha Pokémon, so you often don't get to take your time and battle/catch Pokémon like you can in the mainline games. For example, there's a wild zone that has a bunch of female Pyroar with an male Pyroar who's also an Alpha Pokémon. If I want to try to catch the other Pokémon in the wild zone, I usually have to defeat all of the Pyroar before I can do anything- whilst avoiding any attacks from them at the exact same time. This also brings up the problem that Alpha Pokémon seem to go after you even if you have a Pokémon out, which is annoying.
Near the beginning of the game, you're introduced to the research requests by having to catch five other Pokémon from one or two wild zones. This was a little obnoxious because it sort of sets up your beginning team and makes you have to catch them, rather than letting you have more say on who goes on your team.
I haven't gotten the Mega Dimension downloadable content, and I'm really considering not even getting it. I keep hearing things about it that don't sound appealing, like how you couldn't get the original Kalos starter Pokémon's Mega Stones unless you got the paid online membership and competed in online battles some number of times or something like that- people have been waiting and asking for years for the Kalos starters to get Mega Evolved formes, and then they go and pull this rubbish. Ach...
