Pokémon Champions targets newbies to competitive Pokémon

Another important olive branch for new players is that Champions’ initial format is much less imposing than the recent competitive circuit. Since there aren’t hundreds of items and 1,000 Pokémon to choose from, there’s less to memorize, and the gap between the strongest and weakest teams is much smaller. This new lineup has led to an entirely fresh meta, something that usually only happens when a major new game comes out, meaning veterans can’t just import their already dominant teams and start rolling newcomers.

This better onboarding helps newbies realize something important: Competitive Pokémon is pretty neat. Over the decades, this seemingly simplistic “RPG for babies” has built up depth and complexity, eventually becoming a nontraditional turn-based strategy game that rewards planning, knowledge, and prediction. First, there’s the team-building step, where you put together a squad that can handle a wide range of threats while potentially going for a specific strategy. For instance, many of the current best teams are built around creating weather effects like snow, sandstorms, and droughts to beef up their side.

Then there’s the tactics of playing out a match. At the start of each battle, you get a look at your opponent’s full lineup and then pick four Pokémon out of your six that you think will best counter theirs. This step is maybe the most important and heavily rewards smart prognosticating: Do you lead with your “standard opening” or go for something that will directly counter what you think the opponent will do? Once the fight begins in earnest, there are a whole bunch of permutations for how a turn can go. Which attack do you use, and who do you target? Do you switch out in a bad matchup, or go for a quick KO before that Tyranitar can Rock Slide your Charizard into the dirt? While Champions can’t take credit for the Pokémon series growing into an engaging battle of wits over the years, it makes it more accessible to enjoy this PvP fun than any official release has ever done. There have been unofficial battle simulators like Pokémon Showdown, but this being a sanctioned thing increases the game’s reach beyond those willing to scour old Smogon forum threads.

Most of the popular complaints about Champions, such as its smaller roster, have an upside, but that doesn’t excuse every problem—the biggest one being that this is basically a gacha game. While you can transfer over your existing Pokémon from other releases, if you want to catch new ones in Champions itself, you’ve got to “Recruit” them through randomized lineups that refresh each day. There is a lot of free in-game currency that makes it pretty easy to wrangle up almost every strong creature within a few days, but it would be much less exploitative if you could just, you know, buy the game, like with most other entries in the series. There are other annoyances, too, many of which boil down to monetization, like how there’s limited storage space for your Pokémon unless you sign up for a monthly subscription. Then there are the bugs (no, not Caterpie). If you return to your Switch and try to play without closing and reopening the game, you’re likely to get a connectivity error and be booted back to the main menu before you can do anything. There are typos and moves that don’t work correctly, as well as performance issues, especially on the original Switch—how this is supposed to eventually run on mobile phones is anyone’s guess.

Champions is rough around the edges. And more than that, it seems niche, likely at odds with what most fans want out of the series. At the same time, though, there are simply so many people that play these games that even a small slice is probably enough to keep this boat afloat: Champions’ first competition, the Warm Up Challenge, racked up almost a million entrants. Sometimes a game isn’t for everyone, and that is perfectly fine, especially when it’s part of the highest-grossing piece of media in existence. Is it a bit eccentric to become obsessed with the competitive intricacies of a 30-year-old series initially targeted at children? Maybe, but it’s never been easier or more rewarding to do so.