Pokémon Champions is simultaneously inaccessible for newcomers and too shallow for veterans

When Pokémon Champions launched on Nintendo Switch earlier this year, I heard rumblings of it being a slightly confusing collection of ideas. That seemed particularly baffling to me, given the simple premise of focusing entirely on battling. However, now that it's come to mobile and I've spent some time with it, I completely understand what people have been saying. It tries to please everyone and, ultimately, pleases very few.

Take new players, for instance. If you've only ever casually dabbled with the main entries, chances are the intricacies of competitive battling are an unknown. It's easy to wade through the campaigns by over-levelling your favourite Pokémon, after all. In competitive, you need to understand EV and IV spreads while possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of matchups and abilities.

A lacklustre tutorial

I'm not an expert either. I will train my Pokémon properly, but my team usually consists of all Ghost types that I stubbornly use to my detriment. Even so, the tutorials Champions provides cover none of the intricacies in-depth and brush over topics with a single example. Take status effects. The tutorial here only explains Burn. That's right. Not Paralysis, Sleep, or Poison. Likewise, in the weather section, it only covers Rain and not in any real depth. It taught me absolutely nothing new and, as I've mentioned, I'm not deep in the competitive scene. That said, they're still worth doing because you'll get some VP and other goodies that you'll need to recruit other Pokémon.

And that brings me nicely to my next point. If you're not a hardened Pokémon Master, you're at a huge disadvantage here. To add to your roster, you're effectively relying on a gacha machine that throws up a bunch of Pokémon to choose from. Once a day, this is free. Beyond that, it's in-game currency earned from missions, the battle pass or battling. However, if your Pokémon Home is full to the brim, they can come over for no extra cost.

Now, I don't for one second mean that anyone should be charged to transfer their own Pokémon. It just seems very harsh that someone without an extensive collection is at the mercy of RNG. A system that lists every available Pokémon with equal costs would be the dream scenario. Of course, for various reasons, that's unlikely to happen.

To be fair to Pokémon Champions, some elements are accessible to newcomers. Sorting out the build for each Pokémon is a straightforward affair. Simply pick the moves, the stat spread, the ability you want, then pay the VP cost. Sure, it provides no guidance for what works best for, say, a Chandelure or a Sylveon, but at a certain point, that's what the internet is for. The players will always know what works better than the developers long-term. That's just the way of multiplayer gaming.

A balance that may never be struck

So, it's not particularly newbie-friendly. Surely that means veterans will feel right at home? Well, yes and no. While they'll get off to a quick start - even I breezed through the early rankings with nothing more than a Blizzard-wielding Mega Froslass and a dream - the lack of depth is unlikely to satiate their competitive nature.

The current roster is fairly small, with just under 200 Pokémon available. I will say that's bigger than you think. The ‘There's over 1000 Pokemon' brigade will get up in arms about such a pithy number, no doubt. However, aside from a few exceptions, only fully evolved Pokémon are included. In the competitive scene, that's mostly what you want. Unless Eviolite stalwarts like Porygon2 are in meta, of course. If you take that into consideration, it's not missing as many as you might initially believe. Even so, many are absent, which removes a lot of potential variety from the meta.

Alongside that, several held items aren't here either. Life Orb and Assault Vest didn't make the cut despite being hugely popular in the online realm. For veterans, it means Pokémon Champions is far from the complete package. Sure, those items and other Pokémon will likely arrive in the future, but until then, it all feels a bit like early access.

Does that mean Champions is completely without merit? Not at all. The battles themselves actually look great, and if you've always loved the turn-based combat they offer, it's a lot of fun. The problem is, I can see newcomers getting put off by the many nuances, while longtime players will see the meta as incredibly limited. As for me, who is somewhere in the middle, I'll probably enjoy ranked until it feels like I'm coming up against the same team over and over.