Day-Night Cycle glitch in Pokemon Legends Z-A: Possible fixes and reasons

Pokemon Legends Z-A is a new frontier for the beloved JRPG franchise, and that means a new wave of bugs also arrives. While this latest open-world entry boasts a day and night cycle, players have come across a glitch where the game is stuck infinitely cycling between the two modes. This essentially prevents them from playing the game at all.

This game-breaking bug can be quite problematic, so this guide aims to help players mitigate it. Here are the details.

Also Read: Pokemon Legends Z-A timeline explored: When does it take place?

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How to fix the Day-Night Cycle glitch in Pokemon Legends Z-A

Autosave breaks the transition, causing the game's auto-save to loop during a specific quest (Image via The Pokemon Company)

Firstly, why does this happen? This glitch seems to occur during the Rank E quiz section, where the game transitions between day and night. Unfortunately, since the game auto-saves between these points, this may cause the game to enter an endless loop of switching between day and night as it loads the autosave between transitions.

Pressing buttons does not work either, nor does quitting and restarting since this transition is where the auto-save loads from, making Pokemon Legends Z-A unplayable. There is only one working solution to this problem: Loading a backup save.

Here are the steps:

Quit to the title screen
Press the D-pad Up + X + B buttons simultaneously

This will load a usually inaccessible backup save file, where players will be transported to a Pokemon Center, thus removing them from the loop. This grants them back control of the game, and they can continue exploring Lumiose City as normal.

Interestingly, the 2013 predecessor games Pokemon X & Y also had a similar save-bricking glitch that also occurred in the game's Lumiose City area. If players saved the game in the North or South Boulevard area of the city and then reload that save file, there is a chance the game fails to render properly and freezes, making the game unplayable.

Thankfully, the issue was soon resolved by developer Game Freak, so fans can expect a patch for this issue as well.

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About the author

Siddharth is an esports and gaming writer at Sportkseeda. With nearly 10 years of experience in the industry, he also contributed to renowned publications like Gameffine (formerly IndianNoob), the British retro FPS magazine E1M1, and Gaming Purists, the latter being a passion project which he founded with friends.

Holding a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Siddharth's journalistic pursuits extend beyond reporting; he throws himself into the heart of gaming communities. His positive exploits in the industry have led him to interviewing Rohit Jain, a prominent Tekken 7 player from India.

Though he currently specializes in Nintendo, Overwatch 2, and RPG coverage, Siddharth's expertise spans a multitude of platforms and genres. He believes in doing extensive research across a mix of official, community-driven and diverse media sources for all of his article categories.

Siddharth has been an avid follower of Pewdiepie, which has also helped him expand his horizons to new gaming genres and titles. Beyond gaming, he indulges his love for literature with a particular fondness for horror and thriller novels. Moreover, Siddharth’s culinary enthusiasm for global cuisine enriches his palate.

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Edited by Siddharth Patil