How to delete your save data in Pokémon Legends: Arceus

While it's been some years since Pokémon Legends: Arceus dropped, many of its players would still want to get back to it for replaying this 2022 title. But if you are like me, you fiddled around in the settings of the game, trying to find how to restart and make a new save.

Since the release of Pokémon Red and Green for Game Boy in 1996, the Pokémon franchise has only provided players with one save slot. As it was with previous Legends titles, so it will be in Legends: Arceus, where players will have to backup their entire save file if they intend to replay the game from the start.

With other, older Pokémon games, such as Diamond, Pearl, Sword, and Shield, one would usually mash a combination of buttons on the home screen to advance the games. However, at Legends: Arceus, one intends to wipe their save clean and begin afresh, which involves fiddling with your console's settings. This is so because your Switch profile is where the saves from your games are stored. That is, you can have more than one save in the same system, but those will not come under the same profile. Well, starting a new game on Legends: Arceus is pretty simple. If you have already saved a file in your Switch, you simply can delete it or start a new profile to begin all over again.

How to delete your Legends: Arceus save file

To delete your Legends: Arceus save file, you actually need to delete the save data from your profile, rather than deleting the game itself. You can do this by booting up the System Settings - the gear icon on the home screen - once you've quit out of the game. The steps to do this are below.

Open the System Settings menu on the Switch home screen.

Scroll down to Data Management on the left side of the screen.

From there, select "Delete Save Data."

This is the bottom option in this submenu.

Select Legends: Arceus from the software list.

Then, choose the profile whose save data you'd like to delete.

You can also select all of the program's save data on the same console.

Select to confirm your chosen option.

If you want to reset all your Legends: Arceus save files to your desired location, then follow these steps.

Legends: Arceus: How to Factory Reset

You can start fresh in Legends: Arceus with a new save file in one of two ways: making a new profile or deleting an old one from your console. When I decided I wanted to start fresh, rather than deleting my initial playtime, I chose the option to use a secondary profile. This method does necessitate creating a new Nintendo Switch account and linking it to device information.

For this, head back to your device's settings and follow these steps:

To proceed with the Users area, go to the left-hand side of your screen and scroll down.

Here should be listed your profiles. There are a maximum amount of eight different accounts that can have their own profile on one console.

Click the button in the "Add User" window.

It will then offer you an opportunity either to create a new profile or log in with your existing profile.

Once you select one of these options, it will guide you on-screen through the remaining steps.

Any game you download will be playable under a separate profile once you log in. In fact, immediately on launching the console, it will ask you which account to play the game as. Once you choose the new account you just added or created, immediately the game would fire up as if you'd never played it.

What happens if you remove all of the save data of your profile is precisely the same. After clearing your save, simply start Legends: Arceus again to begin a new game.

By following these steps, you should successfully be able to delete your save data in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.