Pokémon Champions announced during Pokémon Presents
A new cross-platform game was announced during today's Pokémon Presents. Here's what we know so far about Pokémon Champions.
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Today, during the Pokémon Presents presentation, a new kind of Pokémon game was announced alongside new information on the Pokémon Legends: Z-A. A new battle-focused game, Pokémon Champions does not have a release date yet, but will connect players across mobile devices and the Nintendo Switch console. There’s still a lot we don’t know about Pokémon Champions, but let’s look at what was revealed.
Pokémon Champions announced, a new mobile and Switch game focused on battles
One of the most interesting details revealed about Pokémon Champions is that Gamefreak, the developer of most core Pokémon games is involved in planning, but development will be handled by another studio called The Pokémon Works. Gamefreak rarely hands off development to other studios when it comes to games that will be on the Switch, so this could indicate that this game will not include much other than battling.
Not much gameplay was shown during the reveal, but there were a few glimpses of a battle in a never-before-seen stadium. Two players faced off, one mega evolved their Charizard and the other terastallized their Dondozo. This might not seem too unusual, except that this is one of the first times Mega Pokémon have returned since Violet introduced Terastallization. None of these three mechanics have ever coexisted in one game. But it appears that Pokémon Champions will change that. This should make for some unique battle experiences that players have not encountered before.
Players will be able to connect Pokémon Champions to Pokémon Home, the modern cloud service that allows individual Pokémon to be transferred forward to new games. So, players will be able to battle with their favorite Pokémon from their favorite games.
Aside from the fact that this new game will focus on battles, we still don’t know exactly how Pokémon Champions will work. From the Pokémon website, “Look forward to cross-platform battles alongside your favorite Pokémon on Nintendo Switch and mobile, with a variety of different modes available for your desired experience.” There are not currently any more details than this, but this quote seems to hint that Pokémon Champions will include at least a handful of different ways to battle. This could vary from different competitive formats such as double battles versus single battles, or it could mean there are different ranked ladders for beginners and more experienced players.
As a long-time fan of the Pokémon games, particularly its weirdly deep and complex battle mechanics, I would love to see Pokémon Champions make battling more accessible. Every recent Pokémon game has made strides towards making high-level competitive battling more accessible, but it still takes far too much time, effort, and knowledge for the average person to pick it up easily. If Pokémon Champions allows players to easily change moves, edit in-depth stats like EVs and IVs, uses any held items, and build and save teams, it could become a great way for new players to break into the competitive scene. If The Pokémon Company doesn’t want players to be able to make changes like this and then transfer Pokémon back to their games via Home, that’s fine. As long as this becomes the premiere place for Pokémon battles, that’s all I care about.
For now, we will have to wait to hear more about Pokémon Champions at some point in the future. Hopefully before Legends: Z-A, but it would be a bit of a shame for this game to bring back Mega Evolution right before Z-A does. Either way, I am looking forward to learning more about what this game will be.
