Even with all of the changes to core mechanics that Game Freak made in Pokémon Legends: Arceus, the developers still didn’t give us another save slot to use for multiple playthroughs of the game.
This isn’t anything new, however. Pokémon games have only featured one save slot since Red and Green launched for the Game Boy in 1996. And all that means is that players will once again have to wipe all of their hard-earned progress if they ever want to start fresh and play the game over from the beginning again.
This is typically done through a combination of buttons being pressed at the same time on the home screen for whatever Pokémon game you’re playing, at least from Diamond and Pearl through Sword and Shield.
Legends: Arceus takes advantage of the Nintendo Switch’s easy-to-navigate data management tools to make deleting old save data easy. This is because the save data for the game is tied to the profile on your Switch, meaning you can have multiple saves for the game on the same console, just not on the same profile.
Since that’s the case, you’ll need to delete the save data from your profile, not the game itself, which is done by closing out of the game and using the System Settings.
- From the Switch home screen, navigate to the System Settings menu.
- Scroll down to Data Management.
- Select “Delete Save Data.”
- This will be the final option in this submenu.
- Select Pokémon Legends: Arceus from the list of software.
- Select the profile you want to delete the save data from.
- You can also select to delete all save data for the software on your console.
- Confirm your selection.
Following these steps will clear all save data for Legends: Arceus from your selected destination, which should allow you to start the game as if you’ve never played it before.
