Pokémon Champions, the upcoming battle simulator that will act as the series’ new platform for competitive play, is going to be at PAX East this weekend for those in Boston interested in giving the game a shot. But if you’re going to the show and don’t want to wait in lines, you can probably just chill, because the game is coming out very, very soon.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have announced that the Switch version of Pokémon Champions will launch on April 8. The mobile version is still set for later this year, but has no release date yet. Champions is free-to-play but a paid starter pack will also be available that includes additional Pokémon storage, a battle theme from Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee, 30 teammate tickets and 50 training tickets used to recruit and train Pokémon in game. I imagine most players will be transferring Pokémon they caught in other games from the Pokémon Home app, though, so your mileage may vary on whether you actually want to buy that pass or not.
The overview trailer goes over the various ways in which you can recruit and train Pokémon in Champions itself, and overall it seems like kind of a hassle with some micro-transactioned limitations, but hey, I guess that approach can still be easier than catching and training a Pokémon in one of the RPGs? The game lets you freely adjust movesets, stats, and natures by using in-game Victory Points acquired through playing online matches, whereas the RPGs are much less free-flowing and require you to track down items to micromanage your Pokémon’s stats.
We’ll see how the competitive scene takes to the game when it comes out next month, and whether it acts as a gateway for non-comp players to finally give ranked play a shot. One small thing I’m looking forward to is seeing how the Mega Evolutions from Legends: Z-A pan out competitively, as this will be the first time they’ll be usable in standard format, which also means they’ll finally get Abilities which are omitted in the Legends games.