Pokemon Champions

Pokémon Champions is what I've always dreamed of getting my hands on. An official way to play competitive Pokémon that eliminates all the unnecessary hassle that used to exist.

Pokémon Champions scores points with a strong combat system and stable online matches. Technically, however, the game exhibits several weaknesses that tarnish the otherwise positive overall impression.

Pokémon Champions is a Pokémon battle simulator; it does just that, and that's fine. It was developed with that specific purpose, and it wouldn't be fair to dismiss it as a flaw. As it stands, the game is a bit lacking in content, completely missing the possibility to battle against the CPU, and more could have been done to teach newcomers the basics of high-level competitive play. On the plus side, the experience is completely free to play, with a non-predatory, and indeed very fair, monetization system. Pokémon Champions is therefore a good foundation to build on, a live service built to last. If the game wants to be the home of competitive Pokémon in the long term, however, it must prove it with continuous improvements over time.

Pokémon Champions delivers a more accessible competitive experience with smart quality-of-life improvements, but it falls short of greatness due to limited content and critical bugs. While the foundation is strong, it currently feels like an unfinished product that needs significant updates to truly shine.

Pokémon Champions could have, and should have, been an easy knockout, but instead, fans got a stripped-down, underwhelming, and content-barren package with an unfortunate monetization model. Battling Pokémon and testing your team against folks around the world is as fun as it has ever been, and thankfully, Champions manages to deliver on the core of what it’s trying to do there. I’ve enjoyed the matches I’ve played, but all that the time I’ve spent has mostly just made me want to hop back into my saves from the main series. Pokémon Champions proves that the tried-and-true combat system that helped define Nintendo’s monster-catching monolith has endured for a reason, but it’s going to need a lot of updates and maybe even an evolution of its own, before this is the definitive way to do battle.