“Pokémon Champions”, as a new platform focusing on competitive VGC, has been launched on Switch in a “free-to-start” format. After sorting out the first wave of reactions from players and competitive circles, NintendoLife came to a straightforward conclusion: the battle rhythm of the gameplay is indeed smooth and easier for novices to get into, but the overall launch experience is mixed and negative, and many people feel that it is like a complete beta.
The first thing to be named is efficiency.
One of the complaints from players is that both consoles only run 30fps, and Switch 2 was originally expected to have better graphics and smoothness. As a result, at this stage, there is no obvious advantage of being stronger. For a work that wants to be a competitive platform, this gap can easily be interpreted as being introduced before it is polished.
There is no 6v6, no rental team, and a large part of the core competitive gameplay has been cut.
In terms of battle gameplay, players are generally concerned about the fact that there are no 6v6 battles and there are no rental teams. These two items are very important for players who want to get started quickly, or who want to test the environment immediately with a mature team. Without them, it is equivalent to pushing players back to the route of slowly developing and trying slowly, which is very harmful to the positioning of the new competitive platform.
Not all of the Pokémon shown in the trailer were actually made available for the first release.
NintendoLife pointed out that the number of Pokémon available in the first version is less than 180, and many Pokémon that appeared in the trailer have not been implemented. What makes players even more frustrated is that there is a gap in transferring through Pokémon Home: someone opens the collection list only to find that a bunch of Pokémon in the Pokémon Bank cannot be transferred to Champions. For those who have planned a team in advance, it will directly become empty joy.
Key competitive props are absent, and the early environment becomes very strange.
The prop system was also criticized by players as being significantly weakened. It’s not that the effect of the props has been changed, but that many key props that are commonly used in the series and have appeared in promotions simply don’t exist in the first release. Examples of community roll call absences include Heavy Boots, Dainty Headband, and Life Orb. The result is that the early battle environment will become very different, and some people even complain that not paying attention to the system will make the early meta weird, but this weirdness is not necessarily a good thing.
In addition to the home transfer problem, even the interaction between props and moves may be abnormal.
The problems reported by players are not only lack of content, but also various bugs. For example, the article mentioned that some competitive players shared clips in which a certain Pokémon triggered the effect of the Momentum Band after being attacked, but it did not even hold the item at the moment. There were also unusual cases of the move Black Mist, which caused the health of Milotic, who was about to fall, to suddenly return from 1% to 92%. This is an unreasonable state, making players question whether the battle judgment is stable.
It does have potential, but there are too many gaps in the starting lineup
The overall tone of NintendoLife is: It’s still early days, and some people are actually having fun, but the lack of completeness is a visible problem. If The Pokémon Works and Game Freak are willing to continue to update and fill in the missing modes, Pokémon, props and bugs one by one, then it will have a chance to become the main entrance to competitive battles in the future; otherwise, the first impression of “like a Beta” will make many players leave without looking back.