As someone who grew up playing Pokémon, I feel like it’s easy to dismiss recent mainline titles for being too easy. But that’s not really a fair criticism, after all, these games are made just as much for children as they are for adults looking for a breezy single player adventure. In response, some players have turned to self-imposed challenges like Nuzlocke runs to up the difficulty. But after reaching the Masterball tier across several seasons, the thrill of competitive battles against human players delivers a totally different kind of thrill, and I feel like I’m only just starting to scratch the true depth of the game.
In a traditional single-player Pokemon game, it’s often enough to simply level up your Pokémon, pick the proper STAB moves for their type and then just steamroll all the Bug Catchers and Cool Beauties you encounter in the world. There’s rarely ever a need to factor in things like status conditions or use moves like Protect, which is a cornerstone of PVP battles. In fact, I never realized that Tinkaton has such an abysmal attack stat until I played Champions because Gigaton Hammer regularly one-shotted my foes in Scarlet and Violet.
However, in Champions, if you’re not actively doing things like anticipating turn orders, remembering the passive abilities of various Pokémon and thinking about different weather conditions and terrains, your team will get knocked out in a jiffy. And even though only a quarter of all 1,025 total Pokémon are currently supported in Champions, it feels like there’s an endless customization and variety to be had.
Sam Rutherford for Engadget
Sure, some Pokémon — like Mega Charizard Y, Basculegion and Kingambit — are a bit over represented right now, but I’ve seen so many interesting team comps in my competitive journey thus far. I’ve been demolished by a surprise Eeveelution team based around abusing Round. But I also found success with a water-based team (hat tip to Pokeaim) featuring Vaporeon, Heliolisk, Toxicroak and Politoed to spam Surf, dealing damage to both enemy ‘mons while healing my team in one fell swoop.
Read Full Article At Source
