Pokémon Champions Review

The idea of a battle-centric Pokémon game that lets trainers duke it out without all the breeding and badge collecting has been around since the early days with Pokémon Stadium, so it’s exciting that Pokémon Champions looks to continue that legacy 26 years later. This “free-to-start” (Nintendo’s words, not mine) turn-based battler puts its full focus on online PvP using the series’ classic combat system. That being said, while it may look and play like Pokémon, Champions’ lack of substance keeps it from being the very best way to battle with your Pokemon.

If you have played any of the mainline Pokémon games, Champions will feel like slipping back into a slimmer pair of your favorite Running Shoes. You and a single opponent build teams of six Pokémon to pick from for either 3v3 single battles or 4v4 double battles (sorry to anyone hoping for four-player team matches), pick your moves simultaneously, and slug it out until one team is entirely knocked out. It’s turn-based nostalgia fuel, and Pokémon’s mix of reading your opponent, clever strategy, and a bit of luck are a big part of why I have kept coming back with each new entry for nearly 30 years.

Despite occasional bugs – which, to developer The Pokemon Works’ credit, it has been tackling since release – Pokémon Champions’ battles make for a solid foundation (which is good when that’s really all there is to it). I often found myself swearing I would do only one more battle before calling it quits before inevitably staying up for a few more bouts. I really enjoy this combat system even without all the catching and leveling that usually accompanies it, so the fact that this is all there is wouldn’t be an issue… if the content available at its launch wasn’t so – dare I say – Gloom-y?

For being a dedicated battling game, it’s shocking to me just how few options there are to do that. The option to fight with one Pokémon at a time or two is pretty much the only choice you are given. Champions doesn’t even provide an option to bring your full roster of six into the fray. And why no single-player challenges or any single-player offerings, period? Bring back the Gym Leader Castle gauntlet, or let trainers face off against super-powered legendaries, anything that could be played offline, or ways to test your ideas. As is, it’s online PvP, or nothing at all.

This disappointing lack of content, unfortunately, also extends to the pocket monsters themselves. Champions features a paltry pool of only 186 to battle with. The ones that have been included remind me of the “popular cool kids club” from grade school days. You have the captain of the football team, Charizard, and head cheerleader, Sylveon, hanging out at the lunch table, but the nerdy Porygon or the weird Lickitung that eats glue are nowhere to be found. In fact, basically all early evolutions are absent, and baffling omissions like Rillaboom, Mewtwo, Mew, or most of the other Legendaries leave glaring holes in the roster. We can expect some gaps to get filled in over time with live service updates, of course, but how fast and to what extent is still a mystery, and what’s available right now leaves me feeling like Psyduck – confused and with a headache.

In addition to missing plenty of fan favorites, the competitive community has taken a particularly hard critical hit due to a lack of both Pokémon and held item options. For example, out of the 22 monsters that made up the various teams at 2025’s Pokémon World Championships Masters Division tournament, only three are currently usable in Champions. The unique goodies that you can have your team hold are nearly as uninspired, with a vast majority either being healing berries or items that improve certain move types (not including the Mega Evolution stones), with outliers such as the Scope Lens, Light Ball, Mental Herb, and Shell Bell being the saving graces. Heavy hitters like the Power Herb, Choice Specs, Air Balloon, and many others used by the most hardcore players are all absent, which could make Champions a tough berry to swallow at the moment. With this year’s Pokémon World Championships rolling around at the end of August, it’s hard to say if this will be in a good enough place by then to serve as the de facto battling platform it’s meant to be.

To get your favorite Pokémon onto your team (assuming they made the cut, that is), you have two main options: Bring them over from a previous game via Pokémon Home, or recruit them from Champions’ farm. The Home route I found to be a straightforward and relatively painless process, both when I was importing them into Champions as well as when I sent them back. The recruit method is also fairly simple, but as you can only get Pokémon that happen to be in a rotating pool of seemingly random options, finding one you are hoping for is a bit of a gacha situation. You get one free pull each day, as well as the ability to either spend a resource called Victory Points (VP) to permanently add them to your collection or rent them, for free, for week-long stretches. The countdown to pull again can also be shortened using special tickets you earn by completing objectives. If this all makes Pokémon Champions sound like a mobile game, that’s because it is – or will be later this year, as it’s only available on Switch 1 and 2 as of this review.

Even still, that scent of your typical mobile game app is already all over this. From how the menus and UI are laid out to the various currencies you can earn that speed up timers and expand your storage, the DNA of its mobile-focused business model comes through loud and clear. Thankfully, at least right now, I haven’t found myself hindered by sticking to the free version of Champions – typical of a gacha game, beginner gifts are plentiful in the early hours, even without the $7 (USD) paid Starter Pack bundle that’s being offered. Since the basic casual, ranked, and private battles are all free, I haven’t yet felt the need to put money into continuing playing. And at least for the time being, the primary VP currency can only be earned by completing daily, weekly, and special missions or by competing in ranked battles, so things don’t quite feel as predatory as other mobile games can.

From a visual standpoint, for a game that is all about battling, Champions falls on its face harder than Brock did whenever he tried to flirt with the latest pretty face in the TV show. Instead of being the stars of the show, the Pokémon lack texture and detail. Moves themselves fare a bit better overall, but can swing wildly in quality – for example, Hyper Beam vaporizes the opponent like a scene out of Dragon Ball Z, but Body Slam sees the user simply rise up and come back down, flattening their opponent while remaining in an idle animation. And is it so much to ask that attacks originate from somewhere that makes sense? It’s 2026; it would be great if Bullet Seed didn’t just spawn a few feet in front of my Pokémon.

The Pokémon series isn’t exactly known for its looks, so as much as I would love it if Champions looked like last year’s Digimon Story Time Stranger, I didn’t expect it to – but for a game all about the fighting, I hoped a bit more effort would have been spent on making it all look cool at least. I tried to compare the models to games as far back as 2018’s Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee to see what (if any) changes or updates had been made, and I’d be hard-pressed to point out any major tweaks. Simply seeing your Pokémon in 3D no longer holds the same majesty or gravitas that it did when the mainline games were all 2D sprites, and Champions fails to push the bar any higher to bring back some of that excitement.

While there are many aspects of Champions that doused my excitement a bit, I have found the Training Room and what it offers to be quite successful. By spending your VP, you are able to not only boost a Pokémon’s individual stats, but (far more excitingly) swap out moves, its special ability, and even its nature. All of these alterations stay locked to Champions and won’t carry over if you send them off to another game, but this sort of fine-tuning does provide room for theory and strategy crafting that I appreciate. That said, requiring you to pay VP to make those changes does blemish it somewhat. I worry that if Nintendo ever decides to allow players to purchase the resource directly, it will quickly spiral into a pay-to-win situation.