LAPU-LAPU CITY, Philippines — Finally, Pokemon Champions arrives just in time for the franchise’s 30th anniversary.
Although a majority of Pokemon fans are just casual battlers — with some only battling for plot progression — competitive Pokemon has slowly gained sizable fanfare over the years.
With that in mind, Pokémon Champions aims to be the go-to platform for competitive play, with plans to host official Pokémon Video Game Championships (VGC) tournaments.
After spending (a lot of) time with the game, here’s how it holds up.
Accessible Online Battles
The biggest barrier for competitive Pokemon is its cost.
During the Nintendo Switch era, online battling required an active Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) membership. Then, you also need to have copies of the games, as well as their downloadable content (DLC).
The cost to buy everything adds up to a significant amount for some people (admittedly, this includes me — I am broke for games most of the time).
This is where Pokemon Champions comes in. As a free-to-play game, Pokemon Champions allows more trainers to experience the thrill of battling competitively.
In Champions, online battles are accessible by default. This includes the casual and ranked Singles or Doubles format, private battles, and even online competitions (although there were no competitions at the time the game was released).
You definitely don’t need to pay for anything just to play Champions. That’s money saved for your Pokebank!
Catching? Just Recruit Pokemon
How exactly does Champions further mitigate the disparity between players who can afford multiple Pokemon titles and those who can’t?
First, you can get battle-ready Pokemon by simply recruiting them. No need to catch Pokemon from other Pokemon titles.Just pick one from a ten-Pokemon lineup presented to you, which refreshes for free daily (or you can use tickets to get another lineup immediately).
Once you’ve decided, you can recruit them temporarily via Trial Recruitment or permanently via Permanent Recruitment. For Permanent Recruitments, you can use Victory Points (VP), the game’s currency, or tickets.
As such, you don’t really need a copy of Pokémon Legends: Z-A or Pokémon Scarlet/Violet just to get a Mega Starmie or a Gargancl.
Furthermore, you can also connect your Pokemon Home account to Champions. Which means you can also use Pokémon transferred from Pokémon GO in Champions. It’s another way to get Pokémon for free, with no Home or NSO subscriptions needed.
(Forced) Spoon-feeding Tutorials
When you start playing Pokemon Champions, you are then introduced to Cordy, a new non-playable character debuting in the game. Cordy owns the Battle Arena, and he is responsible for showing you the ropes in the game. Basically, you meet Cordy for the game’s tutorials.
That said, I do have something to nitpick with the tutorials. Understandably, the game expects new battlers to try out the game, which is why the tutorials are spoon-fed.
However, what I didn’t like about the spoon-feeding tutorials is that they forced you to pick just one option despite showing other options. In this case, I am talking about the early battle tutorials.
Here’s the situation: Cordy lends you a Charizard as you go against a Venusaur for your first-ever battle.
As the Seed Pokemon (that looks like a giant frog) is a Grass-type, Pokemon common sense dictates to choose Fire-type moves like Flamethrower and Fire Punch, or a Flying-type move like Fly, all of which were available to the lent Charizard.
Now, why would the game lock me from choosing the super-effective attacks and force me to use the Normal-type attack Body Slam? Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I must say. They didn’t even bother turning the obsolete options opaque.
This might be very nitpicky, but it was quite an annoyance when I started playing the game.
Confusing Navigation
Besides the fake options in the tutorials, there are instances where I found myself navigating the game confused.
First, it took me a bit of time to realize how items are found and equipped. When I got the mega stones as rewards, I didn’t know you could toggle the item lists via the L and R buttons.
There were no indications for that. If I didn’t discover the mechanic by accident, I probably would have to look it up (great for search-maxxing articles; bad for player experience).
The next one would be how exactly do you transfer Pokemon from Home to Champions.
Although the game states you need to bind both accounts, it does not explicitly tell players that it needs to be done at Home. I spent numerous gaming sessions — four, in fact — before I decided to look it up.
These navigation oversights slightly detracted from my overall experience with Pokemon Champions. Mind you, this isn’t my first Switch game (I’ve written other Switch game reviews before). If I found the navigation confusing, a first-time Switch player jumping into Pokémon Champions would likely struggle even more.
You might think these are just some minor inconveniences, but I’d like to emphasize the ‘inconvenience’.
Sometimes, I just wanna play on without being bothered by the game’s annoying, possibly overlooked, design. I’d even deduct some points for accessibility.
Missing Pokemon, Items, Moves
Moving on to the next problem with the game, I do want to talk about the missing Pokemon, items, and moves in Pokemon Champions.
Despite its competitive focus, Champions, unfortunately, does not feature the entire 1025 National Dex. Furthermore, with its limited Champions Dex, only one-stage and full-evolved Pokémon have made the cut (Pikachu, who can evolve to Raichu, is included , of course).
The limited Champions Dex means we lose a lot of competitively viable Pokemon. For example, Eviolite teams that feature Stage 1 Pokemon like Murkrow and Porygon 2 are not available.
Also missing from the game are the restricted (legendary) Pokemon. Although, it’s great for most of us newbies as we don’t have to worry about the Calyrex and Urshifu teams (for now).
Besides missing Pokemon, there are also missing items and moves from the game. Several competitive staples like Life Orb, Assault Vest, Choice Specs, and Light Clay aren’t in the game. You also can’t aura farm with Splash, as the game doesn’t allow its use at the moment.
The community is currently divided regarding this missing content. On one hand, some favorites currently won’t see the light of day. On the other hand, it’s a fresh, clean slate for everyone, a leveled battleground with newbies in mind. Personally, I’m cool with what we have at launch.
Voiceless Acting
Unfortunately, as expected, this new Pokemon game still has no voice acting. Even though Champions followed successful Pokemon titles such as Pokopia and Legends: Z-A, it seems like there’s still no budget for voice actors.
This has been Pokemon’s biggest complaint. Alas, every dialogue here might feel a bit soulless as it lacks in the audio experience department. I guess we continue reading texts even if it’s tedious at times.
Achievement Hunting
Whether you take this as good news or bad news, 100%-ing this game includes winning battles with each and every one of the available Pokemon in the game.
This means you have to win with Watchog and Castform and not just with meta Pokemon like Whimsicott and Incineroar.
Furthermore, 100%-ing in this game also involves winning 100 battles per Pokemon. As such, good luck grinding those wins with Simisage, Simisear, and Simipour. After all, a true Pokemon master knows how to win no matter which Pokemon they use.
It’s still very much pay-to-win
It’s a tough pill to swallow, but Pokemon Champions is still very much a pay-to-win game. Although I’ve made several points earlier about how Champions cost less to play competitively, paying for perks is definitely a stronger strategy with the advantages that come with a premium membership.
If you go for the pay-to-win route, you can pay to gain more box spaces and battle teams, which means more Pokemon to experiment with and build lineups.
Additionally, you get access to exclusive missions that give you more resources. These, on top of possible placebo effects, if you believe certain battle music can boost one’s performance.
Final Verdict
I’ll be honest, this review took its time as I was hooked on playing this game.
As someone new to competitive Pokemon, I found myself grinding to the next rank, win after win (sprinkle in some losses in between; I’m not a genius after all).
Despite the gaps, the holes, the flaws, and the occasional annoyances in this game, Pokemon Champions rebounds with its quality gameplay.
For newcomers, it’s an excellent entry point into the competitive scene. For veterans, it’s a solid but imperfect platform for future competitions.
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That said, I have booted up my Switch whilst writing this ending just to play Pokemon Champions again. That’s how fun the game is for me, hopefully for you as well!
