Pokemon Champions is the future of competitive Pokemon, but it’s so much more than that. It represents a division of the core games – your Winds and Waves, your Legends Z-A – into more single-player focused experiences and straight battling. At a media event this month, I was able to get hands-on with Pokemon Champions for a brief taste of how this game puts the focus on Pokemon battles while offering a customization players have never seen before.
If you’ve seen the latest Pokemon Champions trailer, which confirmed the game’s release for April 8 on Switch and Switch 2, then you have a good idea of the experience I had. The demo included a run through some of the game’s tutorials, a chance to select Pokemon from the Ranch, Pokemon training, and finally a battle with another media member. While brief, this Pokemon Champions hands-on experience provided a succinct encapsulation of what players can expect when the game releases next month.
Pokemon Champions Eases Players Into Battle Fundamentals
If you are completely new to the world of Pokemon video game battles, Pokemon Champions will hold your hand. In fact, the game is willing to do a lot of the thinking/strategizing for you if you find the idea of making a 6-Pokemon team daunting. But it starts with the tutorials.
These were fairly basic, but they help introduce the core concepts of the single or double battles, as well as how to use type effectiveness against specific Pokemon. The tutorials also covered concepts like Speed and its impact on how quickly your Pokemon can attack. Pokemon Champions is also bringing Mega Pokemon into the fold, building on the momentum from Pokemon Legends Z-A, and there is a tutorial covering how the concept works and what benefits it gives in battle.
I didn’t get to see everything that the tutorials in Pokemon Champions cover, but it seemed to be a great introductory lesson for those who might not have any idea how battling works but feel compelled to experience everything The Pokemon Company puts out. Or maybe you have a special fondness for Pokemon Colosseum and want to capture that magic in a modern game. Pokemon Champions seems to fit the bill on both counts.
Choosing and Customizing Pokemon Brings Tons of Possibilities
Of course, you can’t have Pokemon battles without Pokemon and Pokemon Champions has its own mechanic for recruitment. Every 22 hours you will visit this Ranch where a random selection of 10 Pokemon will appear and you can pick one to join your roster. There is the option to have the Pokemon join as a 7-day trial for no cost, purchase them permanently for Victory Points (VP) or a ticket.
Victory Points is the currency spent for acquiring everything in Pokemon Champions. It’s unclear how you acquire tickets, though.
Once you have a Pokemon or multiple Pokemon, you can then train them to customize their move set, change their nature, or even individually tweak specific stats. All of these tweaks to the Pokemon cost VP, but the granularity of the customization was impressive. For those who may just want a specific style, there are presets available, but you can also allocate a pool of stat points into any category. You could make the beefiest Pokemon possible by putting every point possible in HP and Defense or Special Defense, or you could go for a glass cannon build and target Attack and Special Attack.
Presumably, there will be logical choices based on the Pokemon, but it seemed like there was a lot more freedom than ever before. If you’ve always felt that a certain Pokemon should perform a role, then you can make that happen. Moreover, you can put any move on a Pokemon regardless of its type. It’s similar to the TM concept in other Pokemon games, but taken to the most extreme level. If you want Hydro Cannon on Charizard, for example, it seems like you could do that.
On top of customizing the stat distribution, Pokemon Champions lets you give each Pokemon one item from an inventory of VP-purchased ones. The ever-popular Focus Sash is available, for example, allowing you to prevent those pesky one-hit KOs. For the preview, we had a ton to choose from, but presumably the more useful ones will be rarer – it's unclear how the shop will work. But again, you can kit out your Pokemon and team how you see fit.
Now you can set a Pokemon team of 6, and you can once again dial in those stats, change items, or make any necessary tweaks. But once you have the 6, that’s your team for the upcoming battle. However, if you are feeling overwhelmed by choice, there is an auto build option as well that will assemble a strong team for you with just the press of a button. I can’t say how optimized an auto-built team might be, but it seemed to give me a decent team with an obvious favoritism towards Pokemon with a Mega Evolution.
Battling is as Visually and Mechanically Exciting as Ever
Battling in Pokemon Champions is arguably the aspect that aligns the most with expectations. There are Casual, Ranked, and Private battles, along with planned limited time events. You can choose between single or double battles depending on personal preference.
If you were a fan of Pokemon Colosseum, you are going to love Pokemon Champions.
Before a battle, you can see your opponent’s team of 6 and choose which 3 (for single) or 4 (for double) Pokemon you want to pit against theirs. From there it’s very similar to what we have seen before – strategize how best to reduce the HP of your opponent’s Pokemon before they do the same to you. For my battle, the arena had a sandstorm that chipped away at both our Pokemon’s health, so it sounds like weather can be a factor in the battle like in Scarlet and Violet.
Visually, this is a sharp Pokemon experience, which you would expect given that the focus is almost exclusively on battles. The flashy attacks are all well represented and the 3D Pokemon look crisp and clean. This is not a photorealistic game on the level of the Detective Pikachu film, mind you, but fans will be happy to see their favorites look just as colorful, vibrant, and animated as ever.
In a post-hands-on interview, attendees were able to ask a few questions about Pokemon Champions to learn more about the development team’s approach to this game. Highlights included:
- IVs are not a part of Pokemon Champions. Each Pokemon has its own stat allocation.
- For the time being, only the final evolution of Pokemon will be available (so no Charmander, for example).
- The devs didn’t want to say too much about past mechanics like terastallization, but they did confirm that Pokemon Champions will incorporate future mechanics like whatever is part of Pokemon Winds and Waves.
If you’re in the camp of Pokemon fans who look forward to battles, then Pokemon Champions is right up your alley. But even if you’re not, the game has enough resources and support to help ease you into that experience. Some choices will likely be seen as controversial, but time gating and economic restrictions have been a part of Pokemon for a while now and it’s not too surprising to see it here.
That said, Pokemon Champions has all the style you want out of a Pokemon battling experience and it captures the spirit of games like Pokemon Colosseum extremely well. I also think its existence will have a bigger impact than many realize. The game releases in April, but in May is when we will start to see it included as part of the Video Game Championships and as the main experience moving forward.
Having a game devoted specifically to competitive play does a lot for the mainline Pokemon games as well. Instead of Pokemon Winds and Waves using battles as its endgame or as its core replayability element can do something unique, and that’s exciting. On its own, though, Pokemon Champions is the Pokemon battling experience fans want.