
While The Pokémon Company has been on mobile phones doing games and apps since 2011 – long before Nintendo seriously considered going mobile – it has never jumped into what many believe is the secret sauce to securing a successful mobile game: Gacha-style mechanics. These are games where you get characters through random drops with various events adding more characters. However, now The Pokémon Company has released Pokémon Masters, a game where you’re not collecting Pokémon, but rather collecting trainers.
Pokémon Masters is a very simple concept. You are a standard nameless character who goes to the artificial island region of Pasio to take part in the Pokémon Masters League. To do that, you need to recruit various other trainers to join you and level them (and their Pokémon) up. These trainers are all from various main series Pokémon games: you have Kris, the main female character from Pokémon Crystal, Nanu the Ula’ula Kahuna from Pokémon Sun & Moon, Marlon the Humilau City Gym Leader from Pokémon Black 2 & White 2, and so many more. There are 65 at launch, with the promise of more to come.
Each 'Sync Pair' is a trainer and a Pokémon, and you can’t change the Pokémon a trainer has – although some can Mega Evolve. Now, with a Gacha-style game, this may seem like a bad thing, but Pokémon Masters starts off with 18 chapters and each chapter comes with a Sync Pair for free – many of whom are really good and helpful. It is entirely possible to beat the game with your free Sync Pairs without too much trouble.

Each Sync Pair has a star rating and a level cap based on that star rating, but this can be improved using various items – and this is where the mobile-style elements come in. Between events, if you have beaten the story, there’s little to do except grind Training and Co-Op missions to get resources in order to boost your Sync Pairs up to their maximum potential and level, and this is necessary to do the 'Very Hard' Co-Op and Training levels, which (of course) promise the best rewards. If you want these rewards and want to boost your Sync Pairs to their maximum, you will need to go through and beat all of these repeatedly.
The game’s story consists of chapters that contain story levels which are just cutscenes interspersed with battles – this is similar to how DeNA’s Fire Emblem Heroes works, but it means many of the game elements and the size of the story are not really represented in the gameplay. However, it does flesh out some of the characters who had just small amounts of screentime in the main series games and has them interact with characters they never would have had to chance to before; this, for your average Pokémon fan, is both surreal and awesome. Pokémon Masters also lacks a Stamina system, so you can play for as long as you want without having to wait for recharges or having to collect certain items to play stages. Considering the state of other mobile games – including other Pokémon mobile games which make you have to regenerate playtime – this is really welcome.
The battles in Pokémon Masters are fairly simple. You use moves which gobble up part of your move gauge, which regenerates over time. The mechanics are similar to the mainline Pokémon games, but far more basic in scope. Pokémon only have one weakness and no resistances, so you can more easily fine-tune your teams. You can even set the battles to play automatically if you’re grinding courses, so it doesn’t require your full attention; however, this doesn’t work as fast or strategically. The whole system is rather basic, but that's perhaps to be expected in a mobile game.

Pokémon Masters' scouting elements – which allow you to find new trainers – are actually fairly generous without being too generous. Through the completion of the story you will earn literally thousands of gems that can only be used on scouting other Sync Pairs; we were able to scout around 20 Sync Pairs simply using these free gems. If you get a Sync Pair you already own, you will power that Sync Pair’s final move up – and if that is maxed out then you’ll get items that can boost the Sync Pair’s star rating and stats up.
It’s even generous in that you gain points for every 100 gems you spend, and once you reach the threshold (at time of writing 400 Points) you’re able to literally select a Sync Pair to unlock. However, that requires a crazy amount of money. There are also special promotions being held that won’t allow you to use your free gems and require you to use ones you have paid real-world money for. It’s really hard to say if this approach is worth it; granted, the most beloved characters are included here, but you don’t really need them. In future events, they’ll be adding more enticing characters as well. It’s a tricky proposition and as you can’t guarantee the character, it’s all too easy to spend a load of money in the hope that you'll get the character you want.
Pokémon Masters is multiplayer, but not in the sense of a player vs player; instead, it is focused on co-op play. This mode works well, but is somewhat slower than the standard battles due to all three players being connected – so you can’t speed things up. However, it does involve a bit more strategy due to each player having one Pokémon. If no available players are found, then it will place an NPC in your party, and if a player disconnects, they will be replaced with an NPC. This isn’t ideal for the hard co-op courses, as you need high-ranking Pokémon and real people coming up with strategies for it to work.

The presentation of the game is sublime, but somewhat deceptive. The backgrounds are largely static and, in stages where you can move around areas slightly, the environments are revealed to be really basic. Still, most of the time you’re focusing on the trainers; they’re quite emotive, but they exhibit very basic animations as they talk and a very limited amount of voice acting. The battles are also simple visually, with little in the way of animation – presumably to keep the rapid-fire nature of the battles intact. This is until the Sync Move animation occurs, which shows off the trainer and the Pokémon in unique moves. The standard Pokémon models – and the trainers, for that matter – look great.
The one problem with the game, at this stage, seems to be longevity. Once you have beaten the story, there’s little to do unless you truly wish to max out all your Sync Pairs and get your favourite character. While there are going to be long-form events and more chapters added over and over, there’s little to get you coming back day-to-day, unless there happens to be an event running. Unless the mechanics are shaken up with new features – which we assume they will be – then you might grow bored sooner rather than
Conclusion
Pokémon Masters is a solid mobile release, and perhaps one of the most well-realised Pokémon mobile titles to date – especially in terms of presentation Sadly, the lack of any competitive element and little to do other than grind between events and story addition mean that it’s not entirely clear if the game will have the staying power required to keep people interested beyond the first few months. Still, the potential for character crossover in this game is unparalleled, and hopefully, it won't be squandered.
Comments 32
Gacha style mechanic is still controversial way to play.
It still looks like a gambling.
Belgium and Anti-Gambling system countries will definetely not allowed that game on their country.
I would put "lack of a Stamina system, so you can play as long as you want" under the game's pros honestly. It's really refreshing to be able to just play a game and have fun whenever you feel like it.
I'm not actually all that interested in this game but it looks like it might be fun for a while anyways. I might try it out eventually.
Honestly a very good, yet hard to fully appreciate game.
I absolutely love the basic concept, meeting all the famous trainers and have them join your team is literally awesome, not to mention the presentation is top notch.
However the game is way too..how to say... mobilish?
The grinding is a little ridiculus, there are A LOT of items you need to unlock every aspect of a trainer (from attacks, to abilities and so on); it feels more like an intentional way to waste the player time then an interesting grow system for the units.
Also the gatcha thing is... yeah... way too frustrating, love gatcha systems, but in mobile games they are too expensive with very low chances to get what you want.
To put it bluntly, the more I play Pokemon Masters the more I just wish they could have made a full priced console spin-off with this concept instead then a mobile F2P game.
Gacha I'm fine with, as long as it's done right, at least they're not loot boxes. You don't have to pay money to use it...
Anyways maybe one day this could be turned into a full game, remove the free-to-play stuff (maybe rework the gacha thing, I guess) and add more to the story and stuff and put it on Switch. It could work.
I played the first few missions and ... yeah no thanks. The typical gem currency that infests mobile games coupled with the incredibly watered down combat system make this very unappealing to me. If I want to get my Pokemon fix on the go I'll stick to Let's Go and Sword and Shield
From what I played I really like it but I found the paid gem prices to be too expensive for my liking.
3200 gems cost €32 (normal prices not count the special gems), to me that is alot to just get 10 characters at it's cheapest cost. If other games are around that price then fare enough but still doesn't mean it isn't expensive.
This is the main reason I haven't played it past the first day (only logged on to check the prices) cause the more I play the more I want to buy the characters but I feel the cost is just making not want to play it instead of it being a reasonable price to give something to the devs.
I found it to be a rather boring game. Played it for a bit and deleted it after a while. Not my cup of tea.
I haven’t played it yet (although I have downloaded it). My son sure seems to think it’s fun and has been playing quite a bit since it came out. Seems like another fun way to enjoy the series and something that will drive more kids towards the main line games, plus make Nintendo/TPC so money on the side.
Eh, I’ll play it. I don’t spend money in these and actually enjoy the gatcha mechanics as I like the feeling of getting something rare. If I’m not spending money, no skin off my back but I can see why people with more addictive personalities would really want to stay away from this one.
The game plays fine, but I too wish I could have just bought the game outright instead of gacha mechanics.
@BakaKnig "love gatcha systems"
Was reading your comment thinking "hmm interesting", until I read that and I all I could think was "what the..."
I've been having fun with it so far!
I have been playing this pretty much non stop this weekend and I am yet to spend a penny. Currently on Chapter 10 that I hope to get done before the Blue event kicks off tomorrow and I start spending my gems.
This game will hopefully continue to grow, like FEH did, and will be my go to daily mobile game.
More microtransaction ridden krap.
No thank you more mobile crap that only gets the time of day because it's Nintendo related , if it weren't we would be told how.awful it is
Type of garbage people buy dedicated gaming hardware to avoid.
It didn't even release over here due to bans on these types of games but I wouldn't even have dived into this for those very same reasons, I can't stand gacha-style and it honestly makes me sad that the Pokémon franchise has been tainted with it.
downside
not available in all countries
I won't have to worry about spending money on this game, it's way overpriced. I will generally spend some money on a fun mobile game, but they priced themselves out of my range. If they lowered it a bit, they'd make more money because people like me might buy.
Well it's better than Pokemon Quest at least
I played this a couple times and just could not get into it. This game falls victim to one of my greatest pet peeves in mobile games, the stranglehold tutorial. Sometimes with new games I like to play with quality settings and see what works well for my phone, or play with different volumes. When a tutorial is so locked in that you can't do anything but press the button they point you at unless you completely exit the game it just infuriates me. Especially when it goes for far too long like it does in Pokemon Masters. For some reason I'm just not really enjoying the battle system either. I'm thinking it's just from the appearance of too much to do at once on the screen. It just doesn't seem like it's the right kind of Pokemon game for me.
I just can't play mobile games anymore. If it's set around an IP I love, it just ends up cheapening my feelings for it. The core mechanics are always set around the player's addictive personality traits. I end up feeling like a rat in an experiment pushing a lever for my next dopamine hit. I see my coworkers glued to their phones playing these games. Meanwhile I have my Switch, playing full games with deep mechanics that satisfy me so much more. I don't care who throws their hat in the mobile arena. I'll stick with full games that don't try to manipulate me to continually spend more money.
So Pokemon Shipping: The Game! then.
7 is very very generous. I don't know who this game is really meant to appeal to. Yes long time players like myself are pleased to see favored characters pop up again, but this game still has issues. This style of game is kinda like shipping characters from other series. With Pokemon characters, that's kinda creepy. The gaccha mechanics break any feel of recruiting people to your team and it would have been better portrayed as your MC getting AI simulations of the characters, than the characters themselves. Or some other justification why you can get the same character many times over. It breaks what little immersion there is in the game.
The battles can be interesting but I feel like we often don't have enough info. I had a battle where two of the Pokemon went down to one super effective hit each, then the last one just tanked hit after his for like another 5 minutes despite my type advantage. Why? Was it that overleveled compared to the others? Was there some ability that is new to this game?
Furthermore the game is buggy. I had several crashes the first day on my Galaxy S8 and when I downloaded it on my ASUS tablet it fails to load in ground textures and constantly looks like everyone is walking around on the black void of nothing. I've read about other people not being able to run it at all on phones only a little older than mine.
Visually I would have prefered sprites for the trainers. The 3D models are awkward and only have like, 2 animations each. The lip syncing is totally not existent and some of the characters' move their mouths in unnatural ways. I swear Rosa has fish mouth with the way her upper lip moves - it's weird as heck!
I'd give it a 5/10 a fine time waster sitting at the train station, but not worth putting the effort in otherwise.
3 on 3 ATB Pokemon is a great idea on paper, but the hyper-casual approach of the game's battle system doesn't reveal any of it's potential.
I like the game. I have spent nothing on the game and have nearly all my characters at their max level and am currently working on getting more moves. It is a gatcha game but it is the good kind. It will fill the gap between now and Pokemon Sword/Shield, when I will probably had my fill. Not bad for a free game.
Cool, its not compatible with my K20 I've only had for a year. Looking forward to not playing it.
@AshFoxX I have a Motorola E5 that has Android 8.1, 2 GB of Ram, and can run games like Dragon Ball Legends, Fire Emblem Heroes, Dr. Mario World, etc.
And yet this game refuses to even install on it with not even a hint as to why my phone(which can run pretty much any other game on the Google Play store outside of really old ones) can't handle this game.
Honestly, I doubt it's anymore graphically impressive or superior t in terms of pushing the hardware compared to something like Dragon Ball Legends.
seems like a rip off cause i thought it will get all pokemon..
I love Pokemon Masters same as I loved Pokemon GO
https://myfifa20.site
@Caryslan @AshFoxX Just got my 1 year old $200 (on sale for $70) Samsung Galaxy J7 Crown. 2GB RAM, 1.56 ghz octo-core processor, Android 8.0 installed, the Google Play store still lists my phone as incompatible with this game. That's kinda crazy. I've been playing every other game I want - except this one - on my old J3 Luna Pro, only updated cause the battery was giving way. If a 1 yr old $200 phone with those specs can't run it they should have made it Apple only b/c surely there are more Android phones that can't run it than can. Good thing I didn't want to play it, just wanted to see what all the fuss was about. But it's still crazy.
played it once hated it so much i deleted it instantly
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