LEGO Pokemon Rayquaza review by a non-Pokemon fan! #NotAd 72168

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Hello everyone, this is the LEGO Pokémon Rayquaza set, or as some of us stubbornly say, Rayquaza. This is specifically inspired by the version of the encounter from Omega Ruby Alpha Sapphire. The set comes with 1,083 pieces. I paid $130 US for it. It's 130 Euros, 120 pounds UK, or $180 Canadian. Now a very important thing for you to know as you watch this video is that I have never played Pokémon myself. I've watched a bunch of gameplay of it. I did a little bit of research here, but I come to this with absolutely no nostalgia. As an outsider, someone who appreciates the game series, appreciates the art and everything, and game encounter design in general. But I don't have too many expectations coming into this other than having checked out the references that this is based on. The section of sky pillar that's depicted here I think looks very, very good. Obviously, we're dealing with all sorts of issues with scale and proportion, but I feel like the LEGO designers have done a really good job with the presentation here overall, keeping the Pokémon itself nice and large and towering. It looks like it's fairly minifig scaled, fairly appropriately minifig scaled, even though this surface right here doesn't give you the full size of the entire encounter and everything. The texture on it is really nice. I mean, look at those stairs right there. Look at all the work that went into doing the little half stud offsets and then also getting the small cracks in the stonework there. Also around the sides. You know, everything has texture. You've got the tiles going around around the edge. It's very nicely finished off. However, I have a problem with this, and it doesn't matter whether I'm a Pokémon fan or not. I can say the following: this base used too many pieces and too large of a portion of the entire set itself. I'm not saying that the base is too large. I like the size of it. As a matter of fact, it could have been larger. What I'm talking about is how much effort we consumers, people buying this, put into building this and also how much we paid for the parts that went into this compared to the Pokémon itself. Specifically, the base alone used up seven bags of parts. Do you know how many bags of parts there are in this set? It's nine. That's right. Seven of nine bags of this large epic Pokémon set are dedicated to just this base, this plinth right here. That doesn't feel right to me. It didn't feel right as I built this. Again, the end result does absolutely look good. But a large part of me wishes that this could have been done with far fewer pieces. I mean, I was building and building and building and building and then just right at the end, you use quite a large number of larger pieces and relatively simple construction to create Rayquaza itself. And Rayquaza looks good. Like, it doesn't feel like they cut too many corners in its design. I feel like, you know, its proportions are good. It has a little bit of wobbliness there. It's just not an issue. It's just the way that it's built. You can do a little bit of reposing of this. It's got the neck right there. So this can be turned. You've got the up and down. You've got the mouth being able to open and close. You've also got an additional neck joint right here. You've got ball joints for the arms. And the elbows are able to be moved in and out. You can completely repose each of these sections, moving them 90 degrees at a time. Or actually, these, yeah, each of these can go 90 degrees at a time. But there aren't a whole lot of really useful ways to set that up. This is fairly free-flowing right now because it's just kind of sitting there. The whole thing is attached very securely to this little clear section right here, which allows it to float in the clouds a little bit. And then this is actually a pretty good trick here, how easy they made it to remove this. It's really securely attached. And yet, it comes off fairly easily. And then you can put it on the ground. And you can adjust the angles of these, I don't know what these side flaps are specifically called. And you can fairly quickly and easily get it into a pose where it will stay. This is a little bit too close to the ground, a little bit low, though. Let me see if I can get it to stay a little bit higher up. There we go. There we go. I knew there would be a spot. Now, this isn't particularly secure. But for some basic display purposes, I feel like there's something that's working here about this. It does have to be balanced just a little bit. And again, you can see that it is going to wobble back and forth a little bit. You can adjust your center gravity as you need. It's not going to be perfectly secure. It would be nice if we could kind of lock down that joint that rotates freely. But, you know, you've got some significant size to this thing. I had, when this was first unveiled, I said I would like to compare this to the Bondi plastic model that I have. And it's not a very, it's not a very good look for Bondi. I mean, Bondi did an excellent job with their design as far as like comparing the sizes of them. Obviously, people, many people would prefer to have the much larger thing. And of course, Lego fans would prefer to have the Lego thing because it's Lego. But this does kind of show that even when you have the opportunity to go with all exclusive pieces, you're still not going to end up with something that looks dramatically better than this Lego version, which just fundamentally, I think, is a good mark and a good look for the Lego version. All of these decorations are prints and the print quality is pretty good, I have to say. It's not absolutely perfect, but it definitely feels like it's well within the range of more than acceptable. You know, it's not, it's not just good enough. I'm actually pretty satisfied with all of these prints. They're pretty consistent as far as the level of opacity. They're pretty crisp around the edges as far as the, just the edge definition. And that includes both the black and the yellow. And just generally, I think that the quality here is good. It's nice to get these sword and, you know, just the sword pieces in a couple of different sizes that have been recolored into the green there. Just the colors in general, I think, have been done pretty well. There were a couple of blue Technic pieces used in this, but overall, oops, there we go. Overall, the end result, I think, is good. The Zinnia figure is Lego-ified in Lego minifigure style. So there's no way on earth she would be accurate or correct. There's no winning here. Absolutely no way that that was going to happen. It's, you know, it's two completely different art styles that are just not fully aligned. That said, is this a good enough Lego-ification? At least, I think the leg printing is done really nicely. It's lined up pretty well. The opacity is pretty good. Just generally, I think that the decos that are here are pretty good. I'm not super happy with the cut of the cloth pieces here, but it is nice that it has the good print on it. The worst problem about this, well, two things. First of all, you know, Lego eyes, eye size and eye spacing is not compatible at all with any of the Pokemon styles. But the Bob haircut is just too clean. It needs to have more, it needs to be tussled up a little bit more than that. You know, this just looks too rigid, I think, is the biggest problem with this. If they just had a version that had more messiness to it, I think this would look so much better and would be just easier for more people to accept. The skin color print on the back of the torso is not as good as it should be. That's probably the worst thing quality-wise on this figure, but fortunately it is on the back. And you do get this very good alternate print, actually, like that face, especially with the color of the tongue. And I feel like they just took liberties a little bit to try to get this a little bit closer to that proper style. Of course, if you want Pokemon minifigures and you don't care about anything else, the figures are the main thing that you're interested in. You can always get figures, you know, third-party figures from Joybricks and Brickstoy and Rebuild Venus, etc., etc., etc., etc. Tons of places out there for like a dollar each. I haven't specifically looked to see what they've done for Zinnia, but there are different actual graphic design styles that have been chosen as well and, you know, get different accessories and stuff. So we do have options out there. I'm going to have to ask for some help from viewers because on the LEGO website, it says she's holding an Ultra Ball. And what am I missing here? Does that look like an Ultra Ball? There's got to be something I'm missing, right? Please tell me. Let me know. What am I missing? I don't get it. But to me, you know, one of the coolest things about this entire set is the fact that it is a basically minifig scaled or minifig compatible location and a good place to have battles and stuff. Like, I wish they would do more minifig scaled stuff that's for play or, you know, whether it's for adults or whatever, just to be able to set up. Obviously, I don't have any other of these figures right now, but you have to be able to set stuff up and these might be oversized or something, but like, you know, little battle arena. Like, why can't we have a little battle arena? I just feel like there's, I feel like it's kind of meant for stuff like this to have, you know, scenarios played out or at least posed up and stuff. Obviously, these aren't supposed to be there, but, you know, like, this is very inviting to minifig play or at least display with more than just the one single figure. So, the biggest thing that I wish this had was more, and not necessarily from this set, but more that could potentially go with it. Again, the price of this was $130 US. No stickers are used for this, all prints. Everything that's here, again, I think is good. I'm happy with it, looking from the outside, with the exception of the hairpiece for Zinnia specifically. Again, I do not dislike this base. I don't. I like this base. I like it a lot. I just do not like the fact that seven out of nine bags of the build and, like, that kind of percentage of time that goes into the build went into the base. Lots of, lots of stacking up of little pieces, very, very small pieces, very, very slow progress. And then just at the end, you actually build the thing, you know, the thing that this is, this is all about. $130 by Lego standards, you know, Pokemon company has to get its, it's, it's part of the deal in there. It's a licensed character. It's a licensed space, licensed theme, licensed specific character right here as well. Those all have their, their own costs incurred. You know, Nintendo gets its piece and stuff. I'm honestly not shocked at the price, seeing the size of this thing. And fundamentally, it does look like and feel like it is well designed. It feels like something that you can be proud to have. And, and that comes from, again, the perspective of someone who does not even have nostalgia, does not even love the source material. I, I would love to hear from folks who are inside of the, the Pokemon, you know, fan world. If, you know, if kind of my feeling matches up with some of what you feel as well, or if you even feel it more strongly or if I'm completely off base. But yeah, $130 by Lego standards today for this much stuff just doesn't shock me. I would love if it was cheaper. Of course, I would love if it was like a hundred, you know, look at the price part ratio. I would love if it came with some additional figures, some additional Pokemon, some actual little Pokeballs, you know, just some random additional things, just more, more, more, especially for the price. But again, I'm just not shocked at the price here. And I do think that people who do get this because they want it will be happy with it and will like it more over time. Obviously, you have to dust it over time, but I think you'll be able to look away from this for a while, you know, some, some number of days. Come back, look at it again and just be, oh yeah, I have that. And that is cool. I'm happy to have that. So in that sense, I think that this is very much a successful product. Really weird that they chose not to even try to integrate it with the SmartPlay system because they easily could have just included a couple of tags with this, with this set. Possibly just a couple of places you could have put the smart brick. I think that could have been integrated into this without too much difficulty, but they didn't. So, you know, it is what it is. Thank you for watching. I hope that I provided some value to you here, even though I'm not a Pokemon super fan. Maybe that even brought some additional value just to have, you know, a different perspective. And I thank you for your support of the channel and your support of my independent content creation. Bye for now.