Imagine Pokémon Stadium spanning all generations in the palm of your hand, an ambitious premise that falls short for die hard fans but is still surprisingly free and fun to play for the average competitive Pokémon fan! Where does the game fall short and how can they address this problem in future updates?
Gotta catch’m all, all 187?
That’s right, if you were planning on importing your full Pokédex to this online-only competitive brawler, you’re in for some disappointment. At the moment of reviewing only 187 “pocket monsters” can be used and while 59 Mega Evolutions try to make up for it in this first season, it’s a bit restricting for a series that just celebrated its 30th anniversary with the slogan “What’s your favorite?”. While restricting at first, it creates a mental exercise where you try out new Pokémon instead of importing your fixed battle-ready teams from earlier games through Pokémon Home. Instead, I found it refreshing to try out different Pokémon and find my own new meta. To be honest, I played competitively locally back in the XY-days so I needed some time to adapt to new natures, attacks, and even new Pokémon forms I hadn’t used competitively before, apart from playing story mode in main line games after XY. I spent quite some time in Champions’ casual arena to get to know the game it has become in 2026. The fact that everyone, casuals to pros, are restricted by the same creature and item roster for this first season creates a new meta and also lets you play different Pokémon you wouldn’t have tried if your lifelong team was up for grabs straight from the start.
The game works with a 24h roster lineup you can recruit from. Either permanently or on a leasing spot for a week. Somehow, I only recruit them permanently as the collector in me doesn’t want to lose any good Pokémon I invest that precious VP in. More on that later.
Champions has all Pokémon “levelless,” and all Pokémon are stripped of their perfect IVs. Instead, you’re offered the chance to tweak every Pokémon in EVs like speed or attack and even their nature or abilities. All of this is laid out in a super easy-to-use menu where you can exchange your VP to make your team battle-ready without spending days in mainline games to level, breed, or even import Pokémon from Home. Champions offers a way to do it all within the competitive brawler itself, and I am close to the Single’s Masterball division without transferring anything from other games.
Visually, the game looks great and apart from some FPS issues that’ll be addressed for sure, I believe the game truly captures the spirit of Pokémon battles as we imagine them. In all fairness, some attacks look goofy, especially the physical contact attacks, but then again, most of the special attacks look stunning and almost have that anime feel to them with great effects that amplify the scope of the battle. Sound-wise the game does some fan service by adding classic themes from the likes of GB games to newer iterations, so there’s something for everyone. I like to keep my music choice on random to be amazed when the classic GSC theme suddenly drops while looking at these modern graphics, it’s conflicting, but it works for me! Apart from the training room and the main arena, there aren’t any other sceneries to brawl in, so I do hope they’ll add some classic Pokémon locations to battle in with updated graphics.
VP doesn’t stand for Very Pricey!
When the game was announced as a free-to-play game, many fans were anxious about the monetisation feature, as this is due to other games and franchises becoming a very pay-to-win situation. Something Pokémon should avoid at all costs, in my own opinion. Luckily, apart from the starter pack that I bought ($7), which gave me some extra tickets I haven’t even used completely, and 50 more storage spaces for my box (haven’t filled half of that until yesterday), I can safely say that Champions is surprisingly accessible to play without spending real-life money. The battle pass doesn’t really wall you off from obtaining most good Pokémon that the new meta Champions created. And while playing competitively, you’re awarded 300 VP for every match you win; this can increase in long stall matches. The daily, weekly challenges also reward you with lots of VP, and when ranking up to new divisions (Pokéball to Great Ball for example), you’re awarded extra storage space and VP as well. I’m sitting on 70k VP right now by just playing the game for free. The starter pack VP I bought has been completely spent on cosmetics for my trainer. And by far, the trainer cosmetics are more expensive than Mega Stones or even tweaking EV and other stats to make your recruit Pokémon battle-ready. Items are also not that expensive, and if you’re not just randomly buying things, you can start hoarding VP and only spend it when the need arises, for changing your teams or buying that cool vest for your trainer.
The Omni Ring holds the key to the future.
This first season and its regulations are all tied to this first Mega Evolution-centered roster. The Omni Ring your character uses will eventually house Z-attacks, Key Stones etc. It’s clear that the roster will expand in future seasons, and while being restrictive at first, I feel like it’s a deliberate choice to carefully tailor the roster for each new season and eventually change into other key features from each generation. I don’t expect future games to have Mega Evolutions, Terastal Pokémon, or Z-attacks. Champions will act as a hub to have all these special changes so that main games can focus on being their own thing instead of having to cater 1000+ Pokémon and their special forms.
How can we improve?
The game launched with its fair share of bugs and performance problems for sure. Framerate issues during simple single matchups and faulty text on tactical attacks like Leech Seed are not very beneficial for a game that wants to portray the ultimate VGC hub for Pokémon. Luckily, some of these problems were addressed already, and the News menu also shows the development team is aware of these bugs and is very transparent towards their community. Nothing that can’t be patched, but coupled with the seemingly restrictive roster, it made up for a rough start and a lot of online complaints. We hope these will all be fixed fast and that more care will be taken into the next major seasonal update, which will surely expand the roster to include more of our favorite competitive items and Pokémon.
Conclusion:
Pokémon Champions is surprisingly accessible without spending any money if you’re a casual VGC enthusiast. Launching with a few bugs and less content than fans of the series expected, it’s clear that we’ll have to wait for future updates to know where the series is heading in this purely online competitive Pokémon game. The fact that you can play the game without importing from Home by recruiting and tweaking stats on the fly makes this game a very competitive hub for the series. We hope future monetisation plans will not eventually wring out casual players from the game’s population. A tailored selection of Pokémon and items for this first season has both casual and competitive fans creating a brand-new meta for competitive play, and while it falls short in some areas, the game has the potential to become the ultimate generation-spanning battle arena for everyone.
