Pokémon Legends: Arceus players are reporting climbing glitches to scale steep slopes

Written by. Nick Mosier based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-02-07 18:41 JST)

A number of glitches related to climbing mountains in Pokémon Legends: Arceus have been reported by players lately. Normally, steep slopes and ledges cause the protagonist to slide backwards, but we can see through videos posted to social media a nimble Pokémon trainer scaling mountains with ease. There are also videos of the protagonist sliding around at high speeds and other glitches that may be useful for speedrunning.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus is an action RPG and the latest title in the Pokémon series. The game takes place in the Sinnoh region during an age when it was still called Hisui and tasks players with completing the first Pokédex. It incorporates many action elements into the gameplay with systems totally different from anything the Pokémon series has seen before.

Pokémon Legends: Arceus contains a map full of mountains and valleys. But the protagonist of the game doesn’t have the ability to climb and will simply slide down any slope that’s too steep to walk up. However, one Twitter user has found a glitch to flout these rules.

Twitter user Akuma posted a video of them scaling a nearly vertical slope within the game. Akuma accompanied the tweet with the comment, “APPARENTLY HOLDING THE AIM BUTTON WHILE WALKING UP SOMETHING MAKES IT SO YOU CAN’T SLIP OR FALL IN ARCEUS.” It looks like the secret is to enter the aim mode where the camera switches to an over-the-shoulder view. Other players were likely surprised as well with the tweet having over 12,000 retweets as of this writing. Akuma followed up the tweet with another helpful technique and noted, “If you’re climbing up a REALLY steep slope, you can just keep aiming, and cancelling, and it’ll just let you slide up it.”

When I (the original author of this article) tried to recreate the glitch myself, I was sliding down slopes even when holding down the aim mode button. I thought maybe footwear could have some hidden impact on the glitch and bought different pairs to try, but I didn’t notice any difference. It was the same when trying to repeatedly press and release the aim button. It looks like the above tweet also received a lot of comments from players saying they couldn’t recreate the glitch. But we can see other players independently posting that they found a glitch that demonstrates the same behavior. It seems likely the glitch can only be performed in certain locations or under special conditions.

Other reactions that stood out were all the people comparing it to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. In that game, the protagonist can make use of jumps and horseback riding to gain inhuman climbing abilities. Seeing another game character oddly shuffle up a mountain likely gave many players déjà vu.

There’s also another example of strange behavior revolving around slopes in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. For some reason, when taking an attack while in the middle of sliding down a slope, the player is able to move around at high speeds no matter the terrain. This was reported by multiple players, and I was able to recreate it in my own game. The direction the protagonist runs doesn’t match up with where they’re actually moving, so it kind of looks like they’re moon walking. At any rate, it looks like there are lots of ways to climb up steep slopes in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.

Later in the game it becomes easy to climb up mountains with the help of a Pokémon, so it’s not really necessary to make use of these glitches when playing. On the other hand, many players have commented that these techniques for letting players climb and move at high speeds could be useful for speedrunning.

Speaking of which, according to the speedrun aggregate website Speedrun.com, the current record in the Any% category of Pokémon Legends: Arceus is 4h 29m 55s by Saiyan.