As the mainline Pokémon games start experimenting with the formula more and more, an opening has appeared for the return of an old concept: a game focused entirely on traditional turn-based Pokémon battles. Back during the first few generations of Pokémon, this position was occupied by the Pokémon Stadium series and its successor, Pokémon Colosseum. Pokémon Champions, in some sense, has kinship with that concept, though for better or worse, it reflects the modern era of gaming in many ways.
That is to say, this is a free-to-start game with ways to spend real money if you’re inclined to do so. Mainly in the form of a paid subscription, but there are a couple of other distinct purchases you can make. You can certainly play the game without spending money, but the game is going to try to make you just so slightly uncomfortable if you do so. Still, like many free-to-start Pokemon games, Pokémon Champions is a bit more generous than the average game of this sort. In this case, you can use Pokémon Home to bring in Pokémon from your own storage rather than being left to the mercy of tickets and points. Hey, it’s better than nothing. This is also a game that can only be played online. There is no single-player content to speak of once the tutorials are done. Just you against a sea of other human players in online battles.
The story here is the familiar one. You want to be the very best, like no one ever was. You can’t be bothered to hunt those Pokémon down, though. No, you’re here to fight. You’re handed the keys to a gym after showing you have two brain cells to rub together, and the two coolest people in town show up to gas you up based on the glint in your eye. You know, Pokémon. After you go through a bunch of training exercises, which do a pretty good job of laying out the basics to those not already familiar, you’re off to battle against other human players in a variety of modes. If you already know how to play, you’ll at least be rewarded with some goodies for going through the whole spiel.
You’ll assemble a team of six Pokémon from your roster of owned or rented Pokémon. Matches are one human player against another, either in three-versus-three single battles or four-versus-four team battles. You can see your opponent’s full team before you pick which of your Pokémon will head into each battle, but you’ll only know the ones they chose when you head into the fight. I think it’s a little odd and unfortunate that the most traditional style of Pokémon battling with a full six Pokémon in single battles isn’t available here. Perhaps it will be added later, but for something that ostensibly wants to fill the competitive multiplayer gap, it’s curious that the standard rules aren’t available.
As has generally been the case with Pokémon games in the modern era, you don’t have the full roster of Pokémon available here. Not even close, really. There are under 200 Pokémon in the game at this point, though it’s not hard to imagine that the game will be kept active by trickling more of them in over time. That’s the kind of game it is, after all. With that said, the current roster covers most of the important bases in terms of pure function. You’ve got plenty of Pokémon of each type, allowing the time-tested battle system to properly stretch its legs and show why it’s one of the best examples of its style in turn-based RPG history. It’s really the saving grace of this whole exercise, and one can imagine that nearly pitch-perfect core will afford Pokémon Champions the time to fill the rest of itself out.
Winning battles earns you experience towards increasing your rank, and reaching the top rank is essentially the goal of the game. Since this is a modern free-to-start game, you’ve also got a bunch of daily and weekly missions to complete as you go. You’ll get some rewards for checking those off. Those spoils generally take the form of one of the few currencies involved in recruiting Pokémon, either temporarily or permanently. It’s the usual gatcha system with rotating banners, a free daily draw, and so on. You’ll likely want to keep your points and tickets until a banner comes up with Pokémon you really want, so that you can get a better chance of getting something useful. Other goodies include held items and Mega Evolution stones. Weirdly, some of the more popular held items for competitive play are absent thus far. Weird! Wonder if those will show up later?
Look, a lot of what Pokémon Champions is missing right now is almost certainly by design due to it being a service game. Of course, they’re going to add more Pokémon, items, and maybe even more modes. There’s one thing that I can’t chalk up to that set-up, however, and that’s the rather weak presentation. Pokémon Stadium understood that if the whole game is going to be about Pokémon battles, they should look as good as they possibly can. I won’t say the presentation in Pokémon Champions is bad per se, but it’s not all that great either. It looks pretty much how you would expect a modern Pokémon game to look, no better or worse. That’s a shame, because I think there was a real opportunity here to lean into the pagentry of the whole affair. Make those moves look really cool and over the top, and have the interactions between the Pokémon feel less like banging two toys together and more like the anime.
I think Pokémon Champions has some potential, despite its many shortcomings at the moment. It’s carried by the excellent Pokémon battle system, to be sure. As the number of Pokémon available to use increases and the game gets more filled out, this could eventually grow into the true competitive scene that Pokémon could use. I at least appreciate that the current monetization method limits what you can spend and largely avoids potential pay-to-win problems. Still, there’s no denying that this feels somewhat undercooked, both technically and in terms of what’s actually included here. Hopefully Pokemon Champions can, over time, grind its way to living up to its name.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
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