Pokémon Champions Limited To "Select Pokémon" At Launch

I don't think that's a good idea for me.
It will looks like Pokemon Stadium Wii version with limited Pokemon to choose.
Even I still on the fence with Wii version as the game was rare here in my country, the price was quite inflated and the gameplay was really boring & monotone (Hit and Avoid only).

Honestly this might be okay. It's obvious that they will more than likely build the roster of available pokemon as time goes on. I would also like to point out from the trailer we saw terastilzation and mega evolution so on release it will likely only be compatible with legends ZA and scarlet and violet on release

Not surprising because of the difficulties in developing 3D models, but why does this game exist if that's the case? You can already battle in the main games, what exactly is this adding that would make me want to play this as opposed to a game like SwSh and SV? This is why we haven't had a game in this style for a while.

@Bolt_Strike I think it's a way for people to play with all the mechanics including some of the game specific gimmicks.

Can someone explain what this game is, and/or the benefits of it over regular battling? Is it just a turn based 3D model of how battles work in regular pokemon games? I'm not joking as I do not understand the point of this. Also I've only played the original pokemon roughly 25 years ago

This is a good way to ensure a more level playing field at the start, to help new players get into it.
I'm okay with it. My level 100 mythicals can wait their turn.

@rvcolem1 It's basically a battle stadium that lets you use your Pokemon from other Pokemon games.

It's basically the return of Pokemon Stadium, in a sense.

@LadyCharlie so a companion game to games and services I don't have haha lovely.

My theory is it’s a way to rework Pokémon models / animations.

To be perfectly honest, I think I’ll stick to Showdown!

Eh. If it's only at launch then I think it's fine, but it depends on how quickly they're going to add the missing pokémon. If that's going to be a case of them taking years to add all of them then I'll feel even less compelled to get the game.

Not that I'll be getting the game at all if it does happen to have microtransactions.

But honestly, just the fact that you need the expensive subscription of HOME to make proper use of this game already makes me not want to get it. I'm still a firm believer that HOME should be free with a NSO+EP subscription. I don't care about having to get subscription on top of subscription like this and it's something that I feel should be fought against more, but of course that's not going to happen because pokémon yay.

If HOME was just 5 bucks as it was with Bank, I wouldn't have minded nearly as much, but an extra tenner is a big no no.

.... anyway, guess what all that means is that I'm probably not getting this game even if it did include the full roster at launch, even without microtransactions.

I won't be surprised if the Pokédex expands as time goes on, but it's still yet to be seen how it's going to synergize with the mainline games from now on.

Gives me a bad feeling it's going to be super restrictive and take too many years to catchup with a full roster before all interest is lost.

They're likely going to make it stick to the pacing of VGC itself and add mons as they're meant to be unrestricted in VGU. Which would kill ever getting the chance to use event mons.

The only thing fans want is to be able to use their composition of favorites and team build around them... I was so excited that I'd get to rebuild old teams with megas again, and got depressed that still might not even be possible.

I see no reason to pay a HOME subscription, a nintendo online subscription, and buy an incomplete digital only game when showdown exist.

I actually prefer it that they don’t offer the entire Dex at once, because it gets harder and harder to remember each new creature. If they are all available from the start, it would probably be overwhelming. This way I can gradually get into it.

I love the slow drip of Pokemon rather than having them all at the start. Encourages people to try new strategies and new Pokemon they may have not before! I also imagine they'll add Z Moves and Dynamax as time goes on. Very excited for this. Love that I can play it on the TV on Switch or on commute on my phone like Showdown.

Is there literally any chance at this point that a future game allows all Pokemon in it again?

@Bolt_Strike From the looks of the trailer, multiple gimmics in 1 battle. (Mega evolution, Terra, etc.)

Yeah this seems fine. I keep thinking of Pokemon Stadium/Coliseum/Revolution and their Battle Pass system, where there were preset Pokemon teams that you could choose from, or bring your own via the main games. If that's the case, then the pool of Pokemon you'd be able to choose from would be much smaller than the entire roster of Pokemon, which would be fine as long as they planned to expand the pool.

With that being said, I do hope that they include rule sets and brackets/tiers if they do the Pass system. I'd love to see Little Cup battles, but only if they're separate from Legendary Pokemon battles (out side of an anything goes mode.)

Gatcha might be ok, so long as we can bring pokemon over from Go/the main titles, maybe on some kind of timer or something. It would be a little annoying, but as free to play, I'd be cool with it.

This game has a lot of potential. But it''ll also be monumentally easy to bork it, so I hope they do their due diligence and look into more than just "here's 30 Pokemon, no items, doubles battles only, also you MUST use Charizard" mindsets.

(Also, just realizing that they used the term "Battle Pass" before it was the sinful thing it is today, so I'm hoping they come up with another term lol. )

edit
Also please let us do special battles. Rotation battles would be cool, but bring back INVERSE BATTLES PLZ

Gasp, no way, a F2P (presumably) title drip feeds it's content?
Gasp!

@Bolt_Strike it has both mega evolutions and tera forms. So the point is largely to create an arena dedicated to unifying Pokemon battle mechanics.

The other point is likely the mobile phone app. This basically lets people not able to bring their switch with them still play Pokemon.

Combine this with home, tcg pocket, and go ... And Nintendo is slowly turning phones into a secondary console for themselves.

Since they abandoned dedicated handheld gaming devices with the hybrid switch, this might be part of Nintendo's effort to have a platform besides the switch that appeals to that handheld market that wants gaming in their pocket.

@Araquanid

The point of not adding everything is to keep the game relevant while the game is still active for a long time, because if we remember games like Pokémon GO, the detail was that they have put almost everything from the 9 generations, and even though there are still more Pokémon from previous generations missing, the game has low relevance currently, that makes it difficult for them to keep it strong as before; they don't want this new game to suffer that fate too soon, and more than this type of games, although it can be entertaining and is something that many have wanted for years, it would feel limited in a short time.

Now, one thing I have in mind, is that they will very possibly apply something like Mario Kart tour, that is, that every certain "season", some Pokémon, even if they have been added, will not be available until said season ends and another one begins, however, some that were available, would no longer be, until another season later; well, I repeat, that is an idea of mine, we still don't know much about the game, hehe

I hope this means each Pokémon will get proper attack animations that better reflect each move, rather than the limited ones the main games get.

Right now, there's around a thousand POKeMON. If they were to release a dozen a month, that would take the best part of a decade. The amount they release in this first batch, and how long each batch takes to release, will make or break the game.

I like it, finally getting an official national dex format that will slowly be improved over time, hopefully to focus on models and effects. probably be at least 600 pokemon on launch.

@Anti-Matter it’s a battle sim but I think it’ll have a similar content strategy to something like unite where it’ll add new Pokemon overtime frequently

@8thDoctor does that stuff even matter? If u want fancy animations play ps5 pokemon is about the lore and the world and the battles themselves and the personality and vibes

@ValentineMeikin it’s a battle sim but I think it’ll have a similar content strategy to something like unite where it’ll add new Pokemon overtime frequently

@SakuraHaruka Pokémon go still constantly adds new content and it’s. It low relevancy it still has a large playerbase and makes a lot of money consistently

Ur thinking of Pokemon unite as a comparison

@Metazoxan they’ve been doing this with Nintendo apps for years

it’s a battle sim but I think it’ll have a similar content strategy to something like unite where it’ll add new Pokemon overtime frequently

@PokeMadness1996 not*

@Zaruboggan they’ve been pretty good at handling it with unite and tcgp and go

@IceCatraz it’s a battle sim but I think it’ll have a similar content strategy to something like unite where it’ll add new Pokemon overtime frequently

@Yosher even if it does Pokémon spin offs like go and unite have been pretty consistently good at balancing that stuff it’s never been in the way

@Araquanid no one said this is a replacement for showdown they can coexist

it’s a battle sim but I think it’ll have a similar content strategy to something like unite where it’ll add new Pokemon overtime frequently

@Bolt_Strike people have criticized the online component saying it’s holding the games back from being more experimental and creative and many fans think seperating them into seperate games is a good thing to keep the scene but let the mainline games to go off and do their own thing and just let that part of them go and leave it behind

@Yosher home isn’t even that expensive you can use it for free it maybe limited but it’s still completely usable

@rvcolem1 people have criticized the online component saying it’s holding the games back from being more experimental and creative and many fans think seperating them into seperate games is a good thing to keep the scene but let the mainline games to go off and do their own thing and just let that part of them go and leave it behind

@nessisonett you can use both no one is making you pick

@Cathalm agree

@Duboiss I play for vibes over that stuff

@PokeMadness1996 You could have put all those messages into one message maybe? That's a lot of spam.

For your messages towards me: I don't care about the "balance", just the very presence of microtransactions like that rubs me the wrong way. Ergo, I don't care for it one bit.

HOME gets the most use of it by far with the description. Without a subscription you can only deposit 30 pokémon. That is an extremely small number when you consider how many pokémon there are; even for generation 1 standards. Yes you can use it for free, but it's almost pointless. The free use is entirely meant to give you a taste and pull you over into purchase. And I do think it is too expensive, considering they're already making us pay for online. I don't care for subscriptions upon subscriptions. It comes across a greedy as heck, and I don't like how greedy they've become with the Pokémon franchise between those microtransactions and stuff like HOME, expensive DLC on top of full priced games that you need to buy twice if you want to experience the DLC for both games, etc.

I'm assuming since it's also mobile, it's gonna be live service trash with no couch co-op, nothing like Gym Leader Castle or other single player offline content, or mini-games. People keep throwing around "Stadium/Colosseum successor" but I don't see it at all.

Wolfe Glick has a theory where this will more or less become the platform for VGC moving forward. If that's the case, the selection isn't like super important. They really just need to focus on what's tournament legal for the time being. That's still a lot of Pokémon, though.

@Yosher expensive? Barely 30 dollar dlc isn’t that expensive and it’s worth it with the amount of lore and content we get

Home is 15 bucks a year that’s nothing

And the free is small but it’s still manageable and functional enough

Yall like to toss around the word greedy for everything it’s losing it’s meaning

Greedy would be if they charged 100 dollars for the dlc and 90 dollars for home lmao

If it’s cheap it’s not greed

@Yosher dlc for most premium games these days for like ps5 games is like 60 dollar DLC or something 30 is nothing added on to a game with already loads of content

@Paychi it’s more like an official pokemon showdown showdown doesn’t have any of that stuff either and people love it

Not all life service games are trash

The ones Nintendo has made like Mario kart and Pokémon’s one like Pokemon unite are great

@PokeMadness1996
Great until they take them down and you can never experience it again. You're relying on fickle playerbases holding them up. As soon as people get bored and leave, it's time to turn the lights off.

I'm wondering if they're maybe gonna go the way of the OG Pokemon Stadium and maybe not include some of the unevolved Pokemon?

Are we actually surprised by this though? They have been too lazy to put in more than half the pokemon in any game for the past decade. I don't see why one of their mobile games would be any different.

@PokeMadness1996 for this 1 specific game it does matter because this is exclusively about the battles. There's no lore, no grand story, no vibes from the journey; just a clean, no nonsense 2v2 turn based-battle game, so yeah I think this game would warrant a bit more detail put into the battles from models to animations.

@8thDoctor I was referring to the series in general

@PokeMadness1996 and I wasn't in the comment you originally replied to

That kind of defeats a large purpose of the game for me. I was hoping a game solely focused on battling would be able to feature every pokemon.