I don’t play Pokemon competitively. To this day, I’ve never battled another person in any DS, 3DS, or Nintendo Switch Pokemon game that I’ve ever owned. I’ve traded with thousands of people and interacted in other ways, but I never battled. Hell, I haven’t even learned how to play the card game until Pokemon TCG Pocket came out. But then Pokemon Champions came out, and it felt different.
Champions is a pokemon game that’s just dedicated to live battles. In all the other games, you play the game normally and then however you build your team is what you play with competitively. Everything is limited to how you play the game beforehand. In Champions, as long as you have enough currency, you can build any team you want.
You start off with one Pokemon that you get to choose, and then you’re given a starter. But then that’s it, you’re on your own. No single player experience or long-winded tutorial, you’re able to immediately battle against other real people. The stats of every Pokemon are standardized here. There are no level advantages, your skill is based on how you distribute extra stats along with your moveset and ability.
You pick a party of six Pokemon and then you just start battling. The main game mode is ranked battles, but there are others too. When matchmaking, you can pick between single or double battles. I actually don’t do doubles at all, so I’m only going to go over the single battles. When starting a single battle, you pick three of your six Pokemon to battle. You get to see what six Pokemon your opponent has, but you don’t see what three they selected or the order until the battle starts.
The rest is self-explanatory, the first trainer to have all three of their Pokemon knocked out loses. If you win, your trainer rank will increase. You’ll also gain VP and Battle Pass experience. If you lose, your rank can drop, and you gain small amounts of VP. What is VP? It’s the most important currency in the game because it controls everything. It lets you recruit new Pokemon and train the ones that you want to turn into the best.
To recruit a Pokemon, you visit the ranch. You’re shown a selection of Pokemon that you can choose from. You can either rent one out temporarily or permanently keep one by spending VP. The roster changes every day, and you can use tickets to speed up the process. You can also transfer Pokemon from Home into Champions, but can’t be transferred at all. Ones that do get transferred might have incompatible moves that need to be swapped out.
VP is also used for training. You have a pool of 66 stat points to distribute to any stats you want, but you spend VP every time. You also spend VP to change each move as well as their ability and nature. There’s limitless options because any move that a pokemon can naturally learn in the main line games can be learned this way. As long as you have enough VP, you have instant access to a Pokemons entire move pool.
But is the game fun? Absolutely. Matchmaking only takes a few seconds, and unless your opponent is distracted or takes too long to make choices, each battle might only take a few minutes. One of the reasons I never played competitively in the console games was because I knew I’d build a team that I thought was good and then spend a long time waiting for someone who had a better team for longer beat me. Champions utilizes a much more even playing field for everyone.
But it’s also a great learning experience. I learned more about Pokemon move sets and strategies in one day of playing Champions than in thousands of hours of playing the mainline game. When I first started playing, I won the tutorial and the first two ranked battles but then lost the next one. Their first Pokemon knocked out all three of mine using just two moves and their ability. Another trainer beat me because of a held item.
I took both of their methods and was able to integrate them into a single Pokemon build that worked with my play style very well. Because everyone was on the same playing field, I was able to learn something new every time I lost. The game also includes a very limited roster of Pokemon, items, and moves. For example, there’s fewer than 200 Pokemon that can be recruited or transfered into the game. If you ask me, I think that’s a good thing.
Maybe they’ll add more once they figure out how to keep them balanced, but this is a great way to keep the playing field even. If all the Pokemon and moves were available, there’d likely be a huge gap in skill level. Many players who have already been playing competitively for years will resort to the overpowered meta builds instead of relying on skill. We saw this when Pokemon TCG Pocket was first released, players latched onto the first two meta decks and made it impossible for a large group of players to succeed.
There’s still meta builds in Champions, but a smaller pool that’s immediately accessible by everyone turns it into an even game of skill. It would have been awesome if there was a single player mode, but since it’s a free game, there’s enough content to keep me happy. Spending real money also doesn’t do anything competitively since playing the game and unlocking VP will get everything you need. You can easily try the game out for like an hour or so to see if you like it.
10/10