Pokémon Champions is Out, And...

It's finally here. After how many months of waiting for the Official VGC Simulator, it's finally out. And...

...Well, if you've been on social media, you can probably guess how most people, including myself, reacted to it. Not well.

Pokémon Champions formally released on 08 April 2026, give or take timezones, on Nintendo Switch and Switch 2, with Mobile Phone ports announced to arrive soon (I don't know when those phone ports are coming, and that won't be important for my first thoughts today; I'll come back and revisit that thought once the port drops however). Champions is exactly what it sounded like in that first paragraph: an official game dedicated solely to competitive Pokémon under The Pokémon Company's VGC label. Currently, there is only one regulation set you can play under either 3v3 Singles games, or 4v4 Doubles games. If you were looking for a new Pokémon game with a story mode where you travel the region and hunt new Pokémon while beating up in theory bad guys, this isn't the game for you. If you were just looking for an official competitive ladder, then here you go.

This game wasn't exactly taken well by the Internet once it dropped. While bug fixes were acknowledge (but not yet released) about a day after launch, many people were still not happy with these bugs existing in the first place. Not to mention this game follows your standard modern mobile game marketing format, which I and many others am not a fan of. This game isn't 100% unplayable, but there are certainly places in this games that need at least some polish and at most some dedicated time to fix.

I wanted to document my initial thoughts playing through the game over its first few days. This won't be formatted like your standard review, though (if you want the standard review: the game's fine, I wish it was better but I also understand it could have been worse. If you really hate this game that much then you can go back to playing competitive on Scarlet & Violet as many people have recommended, and I'm sure a large majority of these issues will be fixed by the time major tournaments such as Worlds takes place). Instead, it's just an almost-rambly series of notes I have regarding this game's current state and where it could go from here.

The Good

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I want to start off with some of the good things I noticed in Champions, mostly because so much of the coverage online has (rightfully) been focusing only on the negatives. There are a few genuinely good things about this game so far and I think it's fair to at least start with those before moving onto my biggest gripes with this game. If you're here looking for only the negatives, you probably skipped to that section anyway.

✦ Mega Evolution (And Possibly More) Returns

I'm not going to pretend I'm a Mega Evolution fanboy, nor am I going to pretend that every gimmick since Mega Evolution has been terrible (though I'll admit some bias: I do not like Terastralizing in competitive matches; it didn't work there in my opinion). But Mega Evolution returning here to me indicates that we're going to see more diversity in the game again.

Our current regulation is called "Regulation M-A." While they didn't explain what this means, I'm willing to bet this is shorthand for "Mega Evolution ver. A" or something along those lines. It seems random to me to bring a new game that's intended to "go on forever" if they're going to bring back one specific older mechanic and nothing else. To me, making some sort of indication that this is a special Mega Evolution format implies that they at least intend to use other formats in the future.

We could very well see similar future formats in future updates, such as Regulation Z-A ("Z-Moves ver. A"), D-A ("Dynamax ver. A"), T-A ("Tera ver. A"), and whatever future gimmicks they come up with for Generation X next year.

Even if you're not a fan of certain mechanics, having the variety is a good sign of a game staying healthy and changing things up every so often. I don't know how often they would change gimmicks in this scenario, or if there's a possibility of having multiple in the same regulation, but if my hunch is correct then this could become the ultimate competitive ladder.

(And yes, I said "could become," I've said this a million times already but I have no intention of pretending this game is perfect.)

✦ Ease of Use & Beginner Friendliness

This game, at least on the surface, is a lot easier to work with than trying to manage Pokémon in the main games. Sure, if you're someone who already knows about IVs and EVs and natures and all that, you could spend a few hours breeding for exactly the kind of Pokémon you want. Then, if what you came up with doesn't work, you can either take another hour to breed a new one or use items to fast track that a bit. But if you're not already in-the-know? Well, I hope you have someone experienced hand holding you through the process.

The IV change alone feels weird and will take some getting used to, but I think this is probably better than special items that artificially raise or lower IVs like Bottle Caps.

I really do enjoy being able to use a pseudo-slider to assign EV spreads instead of doing the math to figure out how many Carbos you need, then how many Speed feathers you need, or how many Poliwags you need to defeat to raise those Speed EVs instead of feathers. I'm not a fan of how they charge you for changing these stats, but I'll get to that later in this blog. As it is now, it's a lot easier to make micro-adjustments on Pokémon as you go, or completely build a new Pokémon if you learn the one you have is not quite doing what you wanted.

Last night, I played a few practice matches with a friend where I slightly adjusted my Venusaur's build between matches to better figure out how to spread its remaining EVs. All the fancy tricks that competitive players learned, such as tracking Speed Tiers, still work if you do the research ahead of time. The EV update makes that process just a little faster to work through.

A minor change, but I also like the additions of "Extremely Effective" and "Mostly Ineffective" to move tags. I keep forgetting the typings of different Pokémon (skill issue, I know), so seeing those reminders helps me with the extra math in my head. I'm sure that'll come in handy for newer players. That and seeing opposing Pokémon's typings when you look at team preview should make that aspect of the game easier.

✦ Competitive Battles Are Still Fun (At Least for Me)

I like competitive battling. I still like the live-action battles in Z-A more, if I'm being honest, but these matches are still fun. Is this extremely subjective? Absolutely. But it's worth noting that once you get settled into the game and actually play the game, you still get that experience they advertised. It's a competitive Pokémon player, nothing more, nothing less.

Do I wish we had more rulesets in place? Absolutely. I wish we had more side formats, such as Little Cup or the Magikarp Tournament we had back on Sword & Shield. Many people were talking about how this game isn't compatible with formats like Draft Leagues. I don't think it's fair to say this game took those away, though, when we've never had any indication it would have that. This game always pitched itself as the new location for VGC, and it runs VGC perfectly well. Even if you have gripes with this specific Regulation's roster and items available, the game still plays like VGC.

Or, at least it does in spite of its bugs that I have to allude to two sections early or someone will pretend I'm intentionally ignoring them.

The (Petty Kind of) Bad

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Now let's get to my favorite section where I post my extremely petty and personal gripes with the game. These gripes aren't necessarily a sign that the game is bad; they're just extremely minor things that annoy me but aren't fair criticisms in the slightest. They may lead into actual complaints, but what you see here are just the parts that irk me on a personal level.

✦ Character Customization & Clothing Options

Those default outfits looked ugly. I made this plan going into the game that I wouldn't mess with how my character looked until I at least hit Great Ball tier since those items cost the same currency as adjusting Pokémon, but seeing those default options after the tutorials and some practice matches just made me hate them even more.

Now my current character looks a bit better, but we still didn't have many options I liked in the shop.

And that blasted Rotom floating next to your ear that you can't customize isn't helping. It's ugly. I decided I'm calling that floating Rotom Robin. We do not like Robin on Rukinations. Why can't you customize Robin? You can customize the Rotom Phone you have in Scarlet & Violet, and you rarely even see that one. You see Robin every time you see your Champion, even in the main menu screen. I'm already not a fan of the clothing options as of now, but we also have to work with a floating red piece of junk? What is Robin even doing in-world? Is it whispering game mechanics in your ear like which moves are "Extremely Effective" while you whisper your strategy to it?

I need you to understand how much I hate Robin. I keep complaining about Robin on Discord. People I talk to know about Robin.

✦ The Roster

Where is my Raichu X? Raichu X was in the trailer, why is it not at launch? What about my Lucario Z? Lucario (and Raichu) are two of my favorite Pokémon and they just got new forms, why didn't they give us their new forms so soon after releasing them?

I do get why they gave us a limited roster, especially for a Day One format. It just feels weird that they wouldn't give us the Pokémon that are still new (the DLC Pokémon came out in December of this past year, four months earlier, and the Garchomp Z mystery gift event in particular was dropped on Pokémon Day at the end of February, just a little over a month earlier). Why immediately hide them away? Especially if you're still going to include highlights from Z-A such as Eternal Floette?

The held item choices on release are weird, too. Thankfully they gave us meta-defining held items like the Oran Berry, which restores a whopping ten points of HP if you lose 50% of your health first. But other than that, the held item choices are rather limited. I'm not saying we need only meta-defining items, it just took me longer to finalize my team than normal because I had to debate who gets the few really good held items and who has to deal with the extras.

While I have that Oran Berry on my mind, I will die laughing if Worlds is determined by someone's Oran Berry triggering, thus triggering that Pokémon's Unburden, or triggering Belch, or simply surviving thanks to those few extra points that they would not have received from a Sitrus Berry that's being held by a different, otherwise ignored Pokémon. It feels like an easy clickbait video: I Won Worlds with an Oran Berry.

✦ ILCA

I wasn't specifically a Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl hater. We were promised a Diamond & Pearl remakes and got exactly that. Those games weren't liked when they came out, and those same people who didn't like those two games didn't like their remakes.

Could it have been a Platinum remake? Yeah. Should it have been? Probably. But you can't claim that nobody knew exactly what they asked for and receveived when they celebrated a different remake.

(I refuse to complain that BDSP didn't have Mega Evolutions, though. Where the heck did that complaint come from?)

It is worth noting that ILCA is the group responsible for running Pokémon Champions. If that gives you BDSP flashbacks, then take that information as you will. It is worth noting, though, that they were also in charge of Pokémon Home, as well as other successful games such as One Piece Odyssey and parts of The Idolmaster, so it's not like they've only bombed.

The (Actually) Bad

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And now, time for the actual meaningful criticisms.

✦ A Buggy Mess

If you've not played the game yourself, it really is that buggy. Any time I wasn't personally playing this game (including when I was breeding in Scarlet & Violet for this game), I was scrolling through Twitter to pass the time. The entire day on release, people were trying to reverse engineer some of the changes, trying to determine if they were actual updates to how the game would work for now or if they were likely just bugs.

Just a quick list of game altering bugs off the top of my head:

• Visual bugs where an opposing Pokémon's HP would "reset" randomly. It would function correctly, but you couldn't actually see what the proper value was.
• People could not determine the order when Mega Evolving, swapping Pokémon, etc. reliably. If you don't already play VGC, this timing can make a major difference in how games play out, especially since this first season will likely be weather-heavy based on which Pokémon Mega Evolves first.
• Sometimes, Pokémon sent from Home to Champions just wouldn't go to Champions. They were still marked like that in Home, but Champions wouldn't notice.
• I learned while writing this that Leftovers was bugged and restored the wrong amount of HP (I thought that was an intended change). That cost me at least one match personally.
• Some abilities just didn't work.

Thankfully, ILCA already announced a bug fix update soon to fix a number of issues, but how did so many bugs make it to Day One? It already feels like this game was delayed at least once; was there another major issue that caused the game to be delayed that wasn't this? I can only speculte from here, but I really do think something happened behind-the-scenes that made them rush to push the game back and fix something (did Season 07 of Z-A feel like a final goodbye to anyone else before it wasn't the new game anymore, just to get a surprise bonus season before Champions dropped?). I hope these actual meaningful bugs are fixed soon.

✦ Monetization

If you've ever played any modern phone game, you'll know the exact business model of Champions. On top of indirectly supporting people buying Pokémon Home's Premium Plan so you have more slots for Pokémon Champions (because of course they have to remain in Home and take up Home slots at the same time; it's not like we already have a system where you could transfer Pokémon into boxes into different games or anything), you can spend real life money to:

• Buy a Premium Battle Pass for $9.99 USD per month for bonus missions to complete and a special progression rewards list (which, as of writing, includes a Mega Stone you cannot get elsewhere)
• Buy a Membership for either $4.99 for one month or $49.99 for an entire year that gets you:
  • Buy a one-time Starter Pack to give you additional materials in-game
  • One thousand Pokémon slots (there's no way you'll fill all those)
  • More teams slots to save teams to (3 ➔ +18)
  • More missions missions on top of the free ones and the Battle Pass ones
  • More music options

Let's compare those costs so far to getting into Competitive Pokémon in one game:

	One Hypothetical Game	Pokémon Champions
Base Game Cost	59.99, One Time Payment	Free
DLC	29.99, One Time Payment	N/A
Online Servers	Nintendo Switch Online (NSO), 19.99 Yearly ~59.97 Over Three Years	Free
Membership Cost	N/A	49.99 Yearly ~149.97 Over Three Years
Battle Pass	N/A	9.99 Per Season ~119.88 if 12 Seasons Per Year ~359.64 if 36 Seasons Per Three Years
Total over Three Years	149.95	509.61

That doesn't even include the Starter Pack you can buy for this game.

Of course, this assumes you get absolutely everything in Pokémon Champions. If you skip the Battle Pass (and lose access to certain items that are not guaranteed to return to the regular VP shop later), the cost almost completely evens out to buying a single game, its DLC, and NSO. You can even skip that Membership plan (and accept the strict restrictions in exchange) to make it free!

...

What's that? You want to use certain Pokémon only available in certain games that are not available in the Register pool? Well, now, you need to no matter what buy a copy of that game or hope someone is willing to help you out at great personal expense without anything in return (or something special in return) and just hope they're not scamming you with an illegitimate Pokémon that gets flagged for hacks or isn't simply incompatible with what you want to do. Currently, on top of the one Mega Evolution that's locked to the Battle Pass, the Mega forms for Chesnaught, Delphox, Greninja, and Eternal Flower Floette are locked behind sending a copy from very specifically one game into Pokémon Champions, so you better own a copy of Legends: Z-A if you want to build around one of those four Pokémon. If not, you can add another 59.99 on the Switch 1 or 69.99 on the Switch 2 for one of those.

Not to mention if you want to use, say, Bloodmoon Ursaluna, you have to buy a copy of Scarlet or Violet, its DLC, and complete the Pokédex for all three regions including unbreedable Legendary Pokémon in the opposite game's DLC just to encounter it. Assuming you have a friend that can help you, add only another 99.99 to that total.

Look: I get buying each new game as they come out is pricey, especially if you add in a potential second mirrored game to complete the set, thirty-dollar DLCs you can't even buy cheaper second-hand, a potential second matching DLC, side games that may add an extra handful of new Pokémon, and a Nintendo Switch Online subscription. But there were ways to make that easier to manage. You didn't have to buy any DLC unless you wanted the exclusives it offered, such as new Pokémon you can't get easily while trading (the only new Pokémon in SwSh's DLC I used competitively was Urshifu, and those were easy to come by on Pokémon Home since they were significantly easy to farm compared to the main game's Legendary Pokémon). People trade with each other to acquire the alternate game's Legendary Pokémon mascots, and you only need one copy of a breedable Pokémon to get as many as you want without needing to buy the DLC. You also didn't need to use special Pokémon exclusive to side games or DLC (Enamorus was definitely not a meta-defining Legendary Pokémon, even if you did own Legends: Arceus). You could get by bare minimum with spending sixty dollars to access the base game, one-hundred fifty dollars for NSO over three years, and a dedicated group to playtest with ($210 over three years, or $70 a year, give or take taxes or currency exchanges).

My point is that there were ways to do it cheaper, and starting fresh on day one of Scarlet & Violet would still be significantly cheaper than starting on Champions.

At least you don't need to also buy a Switch 1 or Switch 2 to play, since this game's compatible with mobile devi— wait a minute. Let me try that again.

At least you can't spend real life money on in-game currency. Yet. That's a standard in a freemium marketing system in a game like this.

Funny Thoughts

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To end off, I do want to list some funny things I noticed while playing the game.

✦ Robin's Not In Competitive

Robin only gets on my nerves next to the player model. Robin doesn't actually take part in the battle. ...Then again, I wouldn't mind knocking out a few Rotom-Robins.

✦ (Un-)Official Simulators

This game far from negates the need to use third party simulators and servers like Pokémon Showdown. Heck, with all that time I spent talking about monetization in this game, Showdown looks significantly more intriguing. Not only can you simulate the M-A season in Showdown, but you can also simulate any past season or unofficial seasons that were already popular before Champions launched. Were you unhappy that Champions isn't compatible with your local Draft League? Well, guess what: it works on Showdown!

✦ They Blessed Us with Oran Berries

I can't imagine a competitive-based game without being able to use the quite overpowered Oran Berry to heal 10 HP. Imagine using a berry to restore a percentage of your HP instead of a flat ten points!

Final Thoughts

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I do want this game to succeed. Think about the alternative: If this game flops, then competitive Pokémon as a whole could suffer for years. People are already calling for VGC to stay on Scarlet & Violet, but it's clear that The Pokémon Company put most (thankfully not all) of their eggs in one basket. Even if this game flops and we still have a few eggs in a Generation 10 basket or (fingers crossed) a basket similar to Z-A, many people won't bother after everything that happened here if this game fails.

Thankfully, like I mentioned earlier, ILCA already announced they are working on some of these updates (did anyone think they wouldn't?). We are going to get more items and more Pokémon slowly as seasons progress, a more extreme version of slowly getting new Pokémon in the main games as seasons progress and new items and Pokémon as DLC drops. Soon, we'll have a mobile version of the game and can play competitive matches from anywhere. This game has the potential to be something great. We just have to hope the people in charge meet that potential and the playerbase lasts long enough for that potential to be met.

They still need to do something about Robin, though. At least let me pay VP to change its color or give it a special shell casing.