Having a graveyard as a wild zone in Pokemon Legends: ZA is tragicomic

In Pokemon Legends: ZA, wild mons have started appearing in the Lumiose City environment, inhabiting different parts of different neighborhoods. As a means of limiting this growth, city officials have established closed areas, called Wild Zones.

However, while Trainers can still enter these Wild Zones to battle and catch Pokémon, this means that the locations are pretty much off limits to the general population if they don't want to risk being attacked by the wild creatures.

I imagine it's frustrating when it comes to local parks and select streets. Parks themselves are a piece of nature in a crowded city, so cutting them off can be pretty demoralizing for the average citizen.

Demarcating select streets as Wild Zones is even weirder, as it surely means that the people who live on those streets would have to brave wild Pokemon just to get home from work.

Let's not even get into the battle zones that open at night and practically turn Lumiose City into The Purge.

But there is one particular wild zone that caught my eye. Wild Zone 4, which is Dormez Bien Cemetery. How was it approved?

Pokemon has the most realistic reign as it turns out

Pokemon Legends ZA Cemetery Fight and Gastly with Tepig.

I live in the UK so I'm used to local councils choosing to neglect things that really should be dealt with. But cutting off access to the local graveyard instead of choosing to relocate wild Pokémon? That seems like a particularly new low to me. This isn't just another park that now has a few new Pikachu and Pidgey residents so you're out of luck and have to find a new tree to sit under; it is a place where people bury the dead, where people go to pay their respects to their deceased loved ones.

The first entry into this wild zone will likely be part of one of Emma's side quests called Sableye in the Cemetery. When we talk to Moire, the elderly lady at the cemetery gate, she will inform you that she was visiting a loved one's grave when a wild Pokemon suddenly jumped out at her. She fell, injured her back, dropped the ring and quickly fled the scene.

She's clearly frustrated that the graveyard is becoming a wild zone and is too scared to go back and look for her ring. It's safe to assume that she may be too scared to even return to the cemetery afterwards, meaning she can no longer visit her loved one's grave. Is that fair? Of course not.

But put your woes aside, Moire, because this is video game logic! We needed somewhere for ghost pokemon to hang out. Creepy creeps on the walls and too many enemy Gastly Pokémon. I can think of at least a dozen who are currently looking for this ring, so I can't imagine a civilian will want to enter the property anytime soon.

All the more training for me, a newbie with no personal ties to this graveyard, thanks to Lumios' brilliant reign, which turned rare spots into a sport. I know people say tourists are insufferable, but imagine people coming to your hometown for a tournament, only to spend days chasing bugs and dangerous ghouls on the graves of all the grandparents you once knew.

Sorry Moire, I know you were visiting your loved one, but now the place is owned by a Gastly Pokemon. And I could really use them to get to the next rank BEYOND Royale.