Pokémon Champions

Pokemon Champions is a competent option for those that only care about Pokemon battles, but it doesn't offer much else.

Pokémon Champions is the perfect starting point for anyone who wants to be the very best, making competitive Pokémon so much more accessible.

Despite its fantastic core battle system, poor game direction and an overbearing free-to-play structure keep Pokémon Champions from reaching its full potential.

Does Pokémon Champions successfully open up a previously difficult-to-access side of the franchise? Or is it less than super effective?

For better and worse, Pokemon Champions achieves its goal. It’s a competitive battling game that does a fantastic job of onboarding casual fans while streamlining much of what made constructing a battle-ready team in the mainline games so long-winded.

It's not just bugs and technical issues that are holding Pokémon Champions back. The game is limited to 3v3 battles, much to the chagrin of casual players everywhere who were hoping for a 6v6 format at the very least. A lot of held items are straight-up missing from Champions, which in theory should shake up the meta, but just ends up limiting it. The smaller Pokédex is also one of the most pressing problems at the moment, as many staples are not included at all, and cannot be transferred in via Pokémon HOME.

Pokémon Champions feels like a work in progress, in a bad way. While the battles are fine and the QoL improvements are a godsend, there's a distinct feeling that the product is unfinished and lacks vital content that will be rationed over time. Throw in the bugs, and the result is a game that I might want to check out in six months or a year, but doesn't have enough quality content to attract me now.​​​​​​​

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