| Pokémon Champions | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Register & Pre-Order | Review |
Overview
What is Pokemon Champions?
Pokémon Champions is a competitive platform that centers exclusively on Pokémon battles. It is expected to be an official avenue for competitive players to test team compositions and strategies. It utilizes established mechanics such as Pokémon types, Abilities, Natures, and moves, as well as the meta surrounding held items. It also streamlines stat points by confirming the removal of Individual Values (IVs).
Pokemon Champions features:
⚫︎ 3v3 Singles game mode
⚫︎ 4v4 Doubles game mode
⚫︎ Pokemon Home compatibility
⚫︎ No Stamina System
⚫︎ A pseudo-gacha system for obtaining Pokemon
⚫︎ Trainer customization
⚫︎ Currency-based Pokemon customization
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Pokemon Champions’s gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Switch |
 Switch 2 |
 App Store |
 Google Play |
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| Free-to-Play | |||||||
Pokemon Champions Review: The Winning Formula Is Still Incomplete
Accessible for All, but Optimized for Few
Accessibility has always been the main issue with the official Pokemon competitive scene. Not everybody has money to purchase the mainline games, not to mention the expensive consoles required to play them. On top of that, not everybody’s willing to play through a few dozen hours of the flagship titles’ main campaigns before they gain access to every item and Pokemon needed to create proper competitive teams.
Pokemon Champions has almost entirely solved this problem overnight. Not only can anyone with a Nintendo Switch play it for free, even those who don’t have one can do so later once the mobile version comes out. No more having to skip meals just to be able to afford the console, and then a game!
—Almost, because the mobile port is still a ways away.
Anyway, as a massive fan of Pokemon VGC, the idea of having more people join the fray is nothing but a massive win. However, its shift to a live service format is a double-edged sword, bringing with it many of the caveats that the model is known for. Yes, the entry fee has vanished, but it’s been replaced by the features and "quality of life" toll fees that define the modern mobile scene. So, while Pokémon Champions is finally inviting everyone to the party, it’s very clear that the best seats are still reserved for those willing to pay.
No Story is the Best Story
Games that don’t have a story generally fall under three categories; those that should have it, those that are fine without it, and those that benefit from a lack of it. Pokemon Champions falls firmly under the third category, as beyond introducing you to your new life as a Pokemon Gym manager, it just throws you into battle afterward without ever forcing you into another story cutscene again.
Champions was never designed for anything other than battling. The only mystery you need to solve is if your Incineroar should use Fake Out or immediately Parting Shot on the first turn, and the only antagonist you need to defeat is the guy across the arena.
This no-friction experience means your urgency to play the game is mostly only dictated by your own drive to play, and not by any coerced incentive like needing to catch up to access content. Yes, there are daily quests and all that, but it’s still an incredibly forgiving and considerate way to make it feel like the game respects your time and choices. And that’s especially true considering the current market where every other mobile game seems like aggressively fighting for a permanent slot in your daily routine.
It’s Basically Free
Besides the obvious and massive accessibility upgrade to competitive Pokemon thanks to the free-to-start model and it being available on Switch and, soon, mobile, there’s more. Despite being advertised as a platform that allows you to transfer your teams from games like Scarlet/Violet, Legends Z-A, Sword/Shield, or Legends Arceus, you’re not actually required to do so.
In fact, you don’t even need to have Pokemon Home Premium or a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. As long as you have a device compatible with Champions, you can just download the game, blast through the tutorial, and then start playing. This kind of accessibility for competitive Pokemon used to only exist outside the ecosystem of the official circuit!
Besides needing to have either a Switch or a good enough phone later on, there are a number of caveats, though. Big ones, at that. For one, if you don’t have any of the Pokemon games to transfer from, you will be at the mercy of Champions’ pseudo gacha system to form your team. On the other hand, those who do have the game essentially have full access to two (or three, when Wind and Waves come out) generations of Pokemon to use, unless they’re unavailable to use in the format.
Secondly, since you will unlikely be able to partake in the special distributions that the mainline titles have, you won’t be able to use these Pokemon in-game. Yes, this includes the special Incineroar a while back. But while this doesn’t affect your chances in winning matches unless these Pokemon have distribution-exclusive moves, this is still a massive con for VGC fans.
After all, for many people, being able to show their support for their favorite VGC players is still a form of victory.
Paying Still Gives You Boons
Competitive Pokemon has never been a pay-to-win game. Sure, you need to actually buy the game in order to participate in the first place, or their expansions—but that’s more like an entry barrier than anything. At the end of the day, it’s skill that differentiates players in VGC.
But that doesn’t mean Champions won’t try to entice you to spend, though.
For example, the game’s $10 premium battle pass unsurprisingly contains items such as cosmetics, gacha tickets, and currency. However, it also has Pokemon and held items—absolutely devastating news for if you really can’t afford to pay for it at that time. This is a dangerous precedent because they could pull this off with actually important and commonly-used held items that will be implemented in the future, such as the Assault Vest, without having to add them to the currency shop.
But the most significant thing Champions monetized isn’t power, but teambuilding friction. See, if you’re a free player, you’re limited to having three teams assembled from a box containing 30 Pokemon. However, with paid membership, you can assemble over a dozen teams using a box with over 1,000 slots! And that doesn’t even include what the Starter Bundle offers.
For most players, the free teams and box slots are more than enough to play with. However, having more of them will not only vastly improve your ability to hoard Pokemon in the future, it will also severely cut down the time you’ll need to manage your storage, keep track of which Pokemon belongs to which team, keep unwritten records of your previous teams, and more. In other words, Champions becomes a much less exhausting game to immerse yourself in.
That’s not all premium membership offers, too. It also has exclusive missions for better daily rewards, and exclusive battle songs for your enjoyment, the former of which provides even more allowance for experimentation. In short, more opportunities to mess with others.
No Stamina Management Needed
On the other hand, Pokemon Champions has done away with the commonly-seen Stamina System that most other mobile games, cross-platform or otherwise, mostly maintain to this day. That is, there’s really no limit to the number of times you can kick butts (or get yours kicked) on the ladder every day. As long as you have the time, you can log in and have a match or two, without ever worrying about whether you’re making full use of a resource that replenishes over time.
This is an excellent counterexample to the game’s eyebrow-raising monetization strategy involving membership subscription benefits and a pseudo-gacha system. After all, traditional stamina systems allow players to refill them using currency, which allows them to keep playing and raise their ranks. But without it, any completely free-to-play gamer can keep up in the rankings as long as they have a good team just by playing more and losing less.
Most importantly, the lack of stamina removes the daily chore
mentality. Since stamina doesn’t exist, you don’t need to worry about having to log in daily for a match and avoid wasting resources. This is another way the game shows its respect for your time: it invites you to play because you want to compete, not because a timer is forcing you to log in.
Removal of IVs Hurt Skill Expression
One of the core changes Champions implemented with competitive Pokemon is the removal of Individual Values (IVs). These are hidden stats every Pokemon you encounter has that make them unique from the rest, even if they have the same levels and moves. That is, the more IVs they have on a specific stat, the higher that stat would be.
That said, having max IVs on every stat would seem like the most logical preference to have. And if so, removing it would make sense to reduce complications with teambuilding. However, for higher levels of competitive play, this is almost entirely a con.
Truly serious players know when to reduce their Pokemon’s IVs for very specific advantages. For example, a common consideration is for special attackers like Calyrex Shadow to have minimum IVs on its Attack stat. This is done so that it takes the least amount of damage from moves that use its own Attack stat for damage, such as Foul Play, or from hitting itself in confusion.
An even higher level case involves purposely reducing a Pokemon’s Speed IVs. This is mostly done so that Pokemon can move faster in Trick Room. But, the more intricate situations where players would put a very specific amount of IVs on their Pokemon’s speed in order to scout for information is also effectively gone.
Regardless of where it’s relevant, though, its removal hurts how high-level players would interact with the game. It’s sort of like simplifying a puzzle they’ve always enjoyed solving; coming back to it wouldn’t feel as satisfying, even if the results are mostly the same.
Where Are the Items?
Though the removal of IVs is somewhat understandable given that it does streamline the process of teambuilding somewhat, Pokemon Champions’ lack of certain but vital held items like the Assault Vest and Choice Specs is much more questionable.
These items, which allow you to modify your Pokemon’s behavior, allow players to customize their team in ways that define their preferences and understanding of the meta. Considering that there’s dozens of these, it turns teambuilding into another form of self- and skill-expression that starts at the planning phase. So, not having a significant amount of these on release is downright baffling, especially considering that many of these items have been staple implements for over a decade.
In fact, this is actually the worst part about Champions because it severely reduces the number of ways you can build your team. No more Life Orb and Sheer Force shenanigans, no Assault Vest Kartanas surviving attacks it has no business of living through, and no Miraidons (when it comes) spamming Discharge with Choice Specs—it makes the game feel less like a poorly planned
title and more like a fundamentally incomplete one.
A Fresh Meta From Deficiency
Though the missing held items definitely hurts the overall teambuilding possibilities of Champions, its adaptation of competitive Pokémon is very faithful to the original. In other words, it's still one of the deepest, most complex turn-based competitive games to ever hit the market; and it's not even close.
Even if you've only engaged in casual runs of the mainline Pokémon games and have never watched a tournament, you may still have an inkling of how a battle against two human-controlled players will go. They would have to strategize against each others' teams, predict their moves, and constantly weigh the pros and cons of each of their actions. And that's not to mention the difficulties involved in building a team alone, with their having to select from dozens of moves available to several hundreds of Pokémon to choose from, as well as having to decide which stats they need to raise and how much they should do so.
This becomes an even more complicated task considering that VGC, the official competitive format of Pokémon tournaments, uses a doubles battle system. There, due to having two Pokémon up on each side simultaneously, a single turn is enough to create an advantage so deep that recovering from it would require several extremely lucky or fortunate events. So, every player, especially at the highest levels, treats every action as if it could be their last.
Pokémon Champions has faithfully recreated the mainline titles' most important mechanics and more, ensuring that every turn is an exercise of every player's full attention. Every move, every ability, every mechanic, and every point in a Pokémon's stats still interact with each other in such intricate ways that an entire review of the gameplay would be necessary just to cover the surface.
Sure, the audiovisuals still look and sound... strangely basic. But then again, only very few competitive players actually care. I mean, Terastalization is widely considered to be the greatest generational gimmick Pokemon has ever introduced for the competitive scene, yet almost everyone agrees that it just looks absolutely goofy.
It's the perfect platform to serve as our new battlegrounds. Even the missing held items on release can be reinterpreted as a new meta born from a much more restricted environment, just like how Pokémon Scarlet and Violet's formats regularly expanded and contracted the list of viable Pokémon that players can use.
All Roads Lead to Gacha
Lastly, there’s one more point to talk about, and it’s probably the first thing people started to ask themselves the moment they heard that this will also be a mobile game: Is Pokemon Champions a gacha game?
It’s not your traditional gacha game, sure, but it does use the same idea as one. That is, you pull random Pokemon from an available pool and select one to keep as either a temporary ally you cannot modify, or as a permanent team member that you can train. And the former is why Champions isn’t your “traditional gacha game”; because you have to spend even more to actually keep the Pokemon you pulled. Otherwise, it disappears from your roster after a week.
Fortunately, there’s no rates involved and no rarities to speak of unless we’re talking about competitive viability. Also, for the most part, only fully evolved Pokemon are included with very specific exceptions such as Pikachu.
There are some good points about this system, alongside even more and very problematic caveats. For example, the most obvious plus is that this system allows players without the games to collect Pokemon. However, the extremely slow rate of obtaining Pokemon and the fact that your pulls are entirely reliant on RNG means that you’ll be extremely unlikely to form a decently competitive team with strong synergy unless you, surprise, buy the game and use the Pokemon Home integration.
Inevitably, you will fall behind unless you play the game often enough to keep pulling. This, in turn, makes playing feel less like you battling wits against others and more like a necessity in order to collect more Pokemon.
Not having access to pre-evolved forms of Pokemon also has its issues. Sure, it does help tighten the draw pool in a way, but if that was their intent, why is every color of Florges there? Or the different sizes of Gourgeist? On top of that, it also somewhat limits player skill expression, too, as it’s more difficult to find holders of Eviolite now.
Modern Competitive Pokémon's Fundamental Barrier, Torn Down
Despite the rather eyebrow-raising monetization system Champions has implemented into the game, though, you need to understand that all of it, at the end of the day, is completely optional. Sure, it helps a lot to spend money for the additional team and box slots, as well as to buy the mainline games in order to collect Pokémon easier. But, you can still rely on your inventory management capabilities and the game's own pseudo-gacha system in order to manage your roster.
What Champions offers, however, is a platform that allows you to play competitive Pokémon without any fees. This is in stark contrast to previous generations since Sword and Shield, where a Nintendo Switch Online subscription, which is only really useful on their console, and the latest mainline Pokémon titles were required to play with others.
And now, even that barrier is gone. In essence, you now only need a Nintendo Switch 2 or, in the near future, a phone (and internet, of course) in order to engage in the official competitive circuit. This is a level of accessibility that was lost ever since Nintendo started charging for online services back when the Switch was launched.
This will undoubtedly cultivate a vast number of new players, each forged in the same shared fires as some of the best players in the world, and result in even more tournament participation records being broken in the coming years. And ultimately, that is the greatest victory Pokémon Champions will achieve.
Is Pokemon Champions Worth It?
It’s Still Worth a Try
Regardless of its many deficiencies, Pokemon Champions is still a respectable attempt by Nintendo to make competitive Pokemon more accessible to the general public. Sure, it’s been streamlined for a less problematic beginner experience, and there’s an alarming number of held items mysteriously missing from the list. It also paywalled very important quality of life upgrades and it subtly pushes you to purchase the games anyway.
—But it’s still free, eliminates the troublesome process of raising competitive-viable Pokemon, and also respects your time within its confines. So, do give it a try for yourself. Besides, the developers can always just add the missing items back in later, anyway.
FAQ
Does Pokemon Champions need a Nintendo Switch Online subscription?
No, it doesn’t. The online functionality will work without it.
How do you catch Pokemon in Pokemon Champions?
You can either pull for them in the game’s gacha system, or transfer them from an official Pokemon game using Pokemon Home.
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