I have loved Pokémon and Nintendo for many years, and when I saw the release trailer for Pokémon Champions, I was psyched when I heard that it was free on mobile devices. Since , I’ve been eagerly awaiting the moment when it was ready for mobile devices. I also got it on switch. and now it is finally ready. Phenomenal experience and I love the customization options for your character. I also swear I saw my user in one of the clips in the App Store video. One of the first Pokémon I got was Lucario because it’s been my favorite for a long time. I’ve also been able to upload my Pokémon home Pokémon to my app. I also love how you can pick from so many Pokémon instead of just finding Pokémon in the wild. I love it! I’m playing it whenever my brother is using the switch. Thanks again Pokémon!!!****update****HOW DARE YOU POKÉMON?!?! I wanted to be able to access Pokémon Champions from multiple devices, and at first I succeeded. And then, when I opened it on the first device I signed into, it said that my data had been transferred to another device already and wouldn’t let me play! Fix this bug or else I’m permanently changing this rating to one star!****update****I fixed it! I just had to delete the app, reinstall it, and sign in to my Nintendo account again. Great! 1000 times better than Pokémon Masters EX!

If your an old school Pokémon lover like me who played Red Blue gold silver Pokémon stadium 1 and 2 or Colosseum and you have not played many of the new Pokémon games on switch then you will love this. A lot of hate seems to go towards this. And most of those ppl are used to playing Competetive multiplayer matches against others on switch with the newer Pokémon games. I think this game was made for those who have not. I have been begging them to make a game like Pokémon stadium 2 forever now. That’s the key for a good game. And YES this game only features fully evolved Pokémon. And only a few dozen from each generation as of right now. I would love for them to at least eventually add every single fully evolved Pokémon from each generation at some point. Having only a few dozen from each generation leaves so many out of the game. But if they add them all whether they are good or weak or whatever, Ís what most ppl are hoping for. If we can’t have all the Pokémon forms then All fully evolved Ís the next best thing. We hope they do this. Make this game as good as Pokémon stadium 2. Right now Íts still alot of fun

This is a good proxy for getting into and actually competing in competitive Pokémon, however there are a number of performance issues that have been unaddressed by a series of patches since the games release. On a number of occasions, a battle will “start” only to lock you on a loading screen as the actual battle timer ticks down. Your moves are selected for you, and the game gives you a nice little “haha” while doing so. The buffering on the side of either player makes games stall unreasonably as timers are half finished by the time you actually gain control enough to influence any decision making. It seems to me that focus on rendering and graphics performance are higher priorities than user experience. If the game looks pretty but does not function in letting the player play the game, it is a terrible game. The barebones “we made user interfaces better” or “fixed gameplay issues” patch notes are completely useless to anyone who actually cares to remain informed about the game as well. By extension of being a Pokemon game, it gets a pass in many ways, but the gameplay is suffering for reasons that should not exist. WiFi check your playerbase, have options to give lower connection players a chance to reduce the strain, or don’t make an in game timer a necessity. These small choices compound to make a currently very unfriendly game.

The game runs surprisingly well on mobile (honestly a little better than the Switch at times which is a bit strange). This would be a five star review if just a few things were fixed. First, having Pokémon (especially very good ones) locked behind purchase of a different game is not acceptable for a competitive game. Second, the battle pass is very short and doesn’t have the greatest rewards (even the paid tier is pretty underwhelming). However, these issues aren’t make-or-break for me (unless they lock more Pokémon besides Floette behind other games). By far the biggest issue with the game is the box limits for Pokémon storage. They are extremely limited. Even after hitting Master tier, you can only have around 50 Pokémon (100 if you buy the one-time purchase). That sounds like a lot, but really isn’t enough for anything besides regulation M-A. Docking two stars for issues that mainly consist of what essentially amounts to inventory space may seem like an overreaction, but it cuts into what you can do so much when you don’t transfer Pokémon from Pokémon Home (since battling is all there is in this game, restrictions when you are building your teams are extremely noticeable and how they implemented it here feels almost suffocating at times). Obviously, you can get the subscription and have plenty of storage space, but having such aggressive storage limits really rubs me the wrong way, so I don’t feel like rewarding them for that. If storage space was purchasable through VP (even if it was fairly expensive), I would have few major complaints with this game. As it stands however, this is as highly as I can rate it.