Pokémon Champions review: Peak monster battling

I've been playing Pokémon since Red and Blue first arrived in the US nearly 30 years ago. But somehow during all of that time, I never really got into the competitive side of monster battling. You see, during the heyday of the original Game Boy titles, winning matches on the playground routinely amounted to stacking your team with as many legendaries as possible. The biggest tryhards often showed up with multiple Mewtwos. And when I checked in on the scene in later generations, I was turned off by Smeargles spamming Baton Pass (and later Dark Void) and the massive time sink that was required to field a competitive roster. This caused me to write off the competitive aspect of Pokémon almost entirely.

When Pokémon Champions came out earlier this summer, I decided to give it a shot. It immediately unlocked a newfound love and appreciation for the PVP side of the turn-based combat system Nintendo and Gamefreak pioneered way back in 1996.

Unlike other entries in the series, Pokémon Champions is a platform solely focused on competitive monster battling. There are no gyms, towns or really any NPCs to speak of, and the few that do exist, like Tatora and Kitt, are largely there to serve as a guide for various in-game functions. It's just you facing off against other trainers online to determine whose team of Pokémon is the strongest.

It's available for free on the Switch and Switch 2 (via the Nintendo eShop), and on mobile (both Android and iOS). There are a handful of microtransactions — such as the monthly battle pass, membership subscription or the $7 starter pack — some of which provide useful but not totally essential bonuses like extra storage space for Pokémon.

This question is a bit trickier because the short answer is very simple: It's a standalone game to support Pokémon tournaments and online battling. However, the long answer is a bit more complicated. Before Champions existed, competitive matches were held using whatever the last mainline Pokémon title was at the time — i.e. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for generation nine, Sword and Shield for generation eight and so on.

This system worked well for a long time, but with the introduction of spin-off games like Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Pokémon Legends: Arceus that feature new Pokémon (or Pokémon with new mega evolutions) or reworked battle systems that depart from the series' classic mechanics, Pokémon Champions also exists as a way to showcase those monsters while preserving the franchise's traditional turn-based combat.

Furthermore, Pokémon Champions greatly lowers the barrier to entry into the competitive scene. Instead of needing to catch or breed monsters with the exact stats you need, you can simply recruit who you want and allocate points as you see fit. This might not sound like a big deal, but depending on the specific generation, by some accounts it could take multiple hours just to catch and get the ideal stats for a single Pokémon. Then you multiply that by at least six in order to fill out a full team (and most likely a lot more if you're experimenting with various rosters) and suddenly team building turns into a part-time job. And that's before you ever battle another person. A side effect of this is that it sometimes caused players to use third-party apps to generate Pokémon with perfect stats, or rely on others to trade them the Pokémon they need instead of catching them normally, which potentially jeopardized the integrity of the game.

Instead of catching Pokémon, the way you build out a team in Champions is simply by visiting Kitt at the ranch and recruiting them. The game starts you off with 10 Pokémon, but after that, you only get to pick a single 'mon every time you generate a new lineup. You can do this for free once a day, but if you want to speed up the process, you can spend Quick Coupons or Victory Points (VP), with the latter being the title's in-game currency.

The other way to get Pokémon is by transferring them into Champions via Pokémon Home. This provides a very easy and straightforward way of using monsters you may have already caught from previous games. The one important thing to note is that even after you send a Pokémon to Champions, it's merely visiting. This means it still takes up a storage slot in Pokémon Home, which may be an issue if you're a free player that hasn't paid for additional space.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Once you have a team you like, you'll need to adjust their stats, which can be done by tapping the training button in the game's menu. The big change for this game is that Champions has done away with traditional IVs and EVs, combining them into generic Stat Points. All monsters are automatically set to level 50, so everyone is on a level playing field. From there, if you want to do something like max out a Talonflame's speed and HP, you can simply move the respective sliders all the way to the right until you use up all of your 66 total points. After that, you can select their nature/alignment (Adamant, Jolly, etc.) before choosing the exact moves you want each Pokémon to have.

This greatly streamlines the process of getting the right stats for every 'mon. You don't have to worry about catching or breeding a creature with the perfect IVs and nature, training their EVs across dozens of battles or finding the right TMs or the Move Relearner like you would in traditional Pokémon titles. And the only cost for this is Training Tickets or VP. I should also mention that the game is pretty generous about handing out VP. Even if you only do a couple battles a day, you'll likely have more than you need unless you're constantly tinkering with moves and stats.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

To me, this is the biggest upside of Champions as it takes a lot of the tedium out of setting up the right team. You can just hop in, adjust your roster and battle in just a few minutes instead of hours later, as often happened in previous games. The drawback is that technically, this does reduce skill expression. This results in a small increase in speed ties, which the game decides by doing a coin flip to see which Pokémon moves first. Whereas in previous games you had more room to tweak how you distributed stats. But I'd say the added convenience is worth it. The only other thing you need to worry about is held items (including mega stones), which can be purchased from the in-game shop for VP.

As someone who grew up playing Pokémon, I feel like it's easy to dismiss recent mainline titles for being too easy. But that's not really a fair criticism, after all, these games are made just as much for children as they are for adults looking for a breezy single player adventure. In response, some players have turned to self-imposed challenges like Nuzlocke runs to up the difficulty. But after reaching the Masterball tier across several seasons, the thrill of competitive battles against human players delivers a totally different kind of thrill, and I feel like I'm only just starting to scratch the true depth of the game.

In a traditional single-player Pokemon game, it's often enough to simply level up your Pokémon, pick the proper STAB moves for their type and then just steamroll all the Bug Catchers and Cool Beauties you encounter in the world. There's rarely ever a need to factor in things like status conditions or use moves like Protect, which is a cornerstone of PVP battles. In fact, I never realized that Tinkaton has such an abysmal attack stat until I played Champions because Gigaton Hammer regularly one-shotted my foes in Scarlet and Violet.

However, in Champions, if you're not actively doing things like anticipating turn orders, remembering the passive abilities of various Pokémon and thinking about different weather conditions and terrains, your team will get knocked out in a jiffy. And even though only a quarter of all 1,025 total Pokémon are currently supported in Champions, it feels like there's an endless customization and variety to be had.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

Sure, some Pokémon — like Mega Charizard Y, Basculegion and Kingambit — are a bit over represented right now, but I've seen so many interesting team comps in my competitive journey thus far. I've been demolished by a surprise Eeveelution team based around abusing Round. But I also found success with a water-based team (hat tip to Pokeaim) featuring Vaporeon, Heliolisk, Toxicroak and Politoed to spam Surf, dealing damage to both enemy 'mons while healing my team in one fell swoop.

That said, I do feel like Champions could do more to embrace different battle formats. Currently, the only two game modes are 3v3 singles and 4v4 doubles (aka the official VGC format used in tournaments). There's no 6v6 singles mode or native support for best of three matches like you see in proper competitions. All you get is the best of one, which sometimes feels like it's designed to encourage cheesy teams that wouldn't fly in other circumstances — especially open team sheet matches where you can see exactly which moves and abilities opposing teams are using. And it's a similar situation for the monthly online challenges, which aside from the first one, have all been singles battles.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

The one thing to watch out for is it's easy to become overconfident in your abilities — even for people familiar with the series. At launch, the competitive Pokémon community had a blast looking at one-star reviews left by players complaining about randomness or overlooking battle mechanics to their detriment. Admittedly, when compared to your average story playthrough, a high-level PVP match is much more complicated. Before you blame a loss on bugs (which I have yet to encounter), it's important to factor in mechanics you missed. That said, I do think Champions would benefit a lot from a combat log like you see in a lot of online MMOs, as that would be a helpful tool when it comes to teaching players the tricker ins and outs of competitive Pokémon.

As for graphics, I think Champions looks good for something that's available on both the Switch 2 and mobile devices. The Switch 2 edition runs at 60 fps while the mobile versions are capped at 30 fps. This is understandable given the performance variance between platforms, though it would be nice to have a high graphics settings for people with beefier phones and tablets. Even so, I find myself preferring the mobile version. This is partially because I usually play on a foldable phone with a larger display, but also because the game still loads quickly, which makes it easy to squeeze in a match when I have time. As much as I like the Switch 2, it's simply a bit too bulky to bring with me on every commute.

Sam Rutherford for Engadget

No one is going to mistake it for the next AAA open world blockbuster, but the game does a solid job of adding visual excitement to matches without becoming distracting. Moves like Grav Apple are downright funny while Armor Cannon looks like a pumped up Charge Shot straight out of Mega Man.

My small gripe is that I wish the terrain and weather effects were easier to see. Depending on which arena you're battling in, you're often just better off just going into the settings menu and hitting the toggle switch for Display Battle Info. This adds an in-game label that explicitly says how many turns of a certain effect like sun, tailwind or Trick Room are left instead of needing to squint at the visual effects.

One of the biggest pain points about Champions is the way Pokémon storage is divvied out. By default, you only have enough room for 30 Pokémon. Reaching Great Ball and Ultra Ball tiers in ranked battles (either singles or doubles) adds five more each, plus another 10 when you hit Master Ball. But 50 spots still feels paltry considering the total number of Pokémon these days. And that figure is only getting bigger each year.

If you feel like spending money, the $7 Starter Pack is a great value, as it adds another 50 permanent storage slots along with some Quick Coupons and Training Tickets to help you quickly set up some teams. But if you want even more, you'll need to pony up for the $5 monthly membership, which adds a whopping 1,000 spots for Pokémon, 15 team slots and bonus in-game missions and music. This is where the value of Champion's various microtransactions starts to feel a bit thin, because in addition to the monthly membership, there's also a $10 per month Battlepass that unlocks things like extra VP, tickets, select Pokémon and outfits for your trainer.

Having a paid membership plus a battle pass feels a bit excessive. I'd much rather have those be combined, ideally for less than $15, in exchange for being able to buy a wider variety of cosmetic options directly. I'd also like to see Champions add the ability to buy permanent Pokémon storage slots with both VP or cash instead of locking everything behind the starter pack and membership.

After spending a lot of time playing both the Switch 2 and mobile versions of Champions, I've noticed some oddities that could help out new trainers, so here's a quick rundown of the most important ones:

• The Switch 2 edition doesn't really support touch input aside from replica codes, which just seems strange considering the mobile version relies entirely on touch.

• The mobile version of the game can only be linked to one device at a time. As someone who switches gadgets often, this is kind of annoying, particularly if you prefer playing on your phone while out and about but want to play on something larger like a tablet at home. That said, you can swap between the mobile and Switch versions without needing to unlink and relink your Nintendo account.

• If you want to transfer Pokémon you've caught in previous games into Champions, you'll need to use the Switch version of Pokémon Home. The mobile version doesn't work for that, as far as I can tell.

• The amount of stats and info for specific Pokémon inside Champions feels somewhat incomplete. Currently, there's no way to see the ability or stats of a monster when it mega evolves. This can be annoying, especially for creatures like Staraptor that get a different ability when it evolves compared to its base form. While I've been playing, the Pokémon Champions section of Serebii has been my best friend.

• Eternal Floette (aka Mega Floette) is currently the only Pokémon in Champions that can't be obtained in-game. If you want to use one in battles, you'll need to catch one in Pokémon Legends: Z-A or trade for one, and then transfer it into Champions via Pokémon Home. Doing so will also give you Eternal Floette's Mega stone.

• When recruiting a new Pokémon from the ranch, if you already have one in your box, you'll see a little Pokéball icon to the right of its name in the menu. Just be careful: If it's a Pokémon like Furfrou that has multiple variations, each version is unique. The Pokeball icon will only show up if you already have that exact trim. And if it's a shiny Pokémon, there will be a little sparkle icon too.

In a recent video, the 2016 world champ and arguably the best player of all time Wolfe Glick said "Pokémon Champions is the single biggest thing to ever happen in competitive Pokémon's history." And I think he's right, because even though the game still has room for improvement, it's proven itself as a solid platform for engaging PVP battles. There have already been several major tournaments hosted on it, with this year's World Championship set to crown the game's next top player this weekend. It's also massively lowered the barrier to entry for aspiring competitive trainers. Its monetization isn't perfect, but it's far from the predatory schemes you see in so many other free-to-play titles.

The most encouraging thing about Pokémon Champions is how its developers seem to have a firm grasp on how to evolve the game going forward. In a recent interview with Famitsu, technical director Masaaki Hoshino detailed all the work his team has done to balance the game before introducing more complex items like the Choice Band and Choice Specs. After playing dozens of Pokémon games for almost 30 years, I feel like Champions is poised to unlock a huge aspect of the series for millions of players who may have overlooked competitive battling or just haven't given it a real shot yet.