Pokemon Unite Review

The initial reaction to the announcement of Pokemon United 2020 was a general enthusiasm in the MOBA community (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena). That anticipation, however, was dampened by the initial growing pains of the Games.

Select a character, get a consumable combat item or stats boost by holding an item, and two teams of five Pokemons begin play at the opposite ends of the map. Once loaded into the game, Pokemon United is most recognisable as a compressed version of the MOBA format, and the limited time and space that its ten-minute winning conditions allow feel rewarding. It distills the characteristics of the genres into an easy-to-understand format and brings into the fold some of its most popular pocket monsters, resulting in a fun and accessible MOBA with a faulty microtransaction system.

Pokemon United makes these abstractions tangible by turning the game into a kind of fusion of basketball and Pokemon battles, where you earn bank points by confronting wild Pokemon that spawn on the map or Pokemon that play on the other team and earn points by scoring goals against one of the opposing teams placed all over the map around the team base. The setup is familiar to veterans of the genre: you play as two teams, each with a goal and an opposing team base, and take one of many different routes or tracks across the map. Each path on a map is populated with target zones that each team must attack and defend to obtain Aeos energy.

Two teams of up to five players control Pokemon as they battle it out on the map to collect resources called EOS energy, resources unique to the region Aeos Island where the game takes place. Teams choose which Pokemon to take to the arena with, and they must defeat wild Pokemons in the area to gain energy and experience. The experience takes a Pokemon to a higher level, boosting its stats, the power of its moves and energy, which can then be used to score points and ultimately win the game.

Once a resource, Aeos Energy, is a resource that only exists in the region of Aeos Island where the game takes place, one of the opposing teams can take it with the aim of depositing it by holding down the button and throwing it in. You can collect it in small quantities by defeating computer-controlled pocket monsters on the map or equipping your pocket monsters with unique powers to obtain large quantities of them by defeating player-controlled enemies. It gives players a lot of individual freedom of action as they don't need their team-mates to defeat the AI-driven wild Pokemons to deprive them of their energy.

Simple game mechanics and recognizable characters provide an accessible MOBA experience, and with a potential catalog of over 900 Pokemon to choose from, hopes for the future of Pokemon United are high. Battles play out like the spectacle for which the Pokemon series is known, with many abilities to choose from and each match feeling like the last one. The Pokemon you own can be used in Ranking Mode, a standard quick match that gives you access to an additional set of four rotating Pokemon a day.

Pokemon United will compete against two teams of five players each, as will complex MOBAs such as League of Legends, Dota 2 and Heroes of the Storm. It is assigned to two lanes with four scoring zones for each team and a fifth scoring zone for each team between the two lanes that meet at the back of each team base. As for the tricky dichotomy between the fact that the game is a lot of fun and the fact that Timi Studios, the group of game developers whose subsidiary is Tencent, the Pokemon Company, has difficulty paying out the "win now" mechanic, the game may not be the most competitive for children but I'm sure I would play it.

Pokemon United is a strategic team battle game developed by The Pokemon Company, Tencent Games and Timi Studios. Pokemon United players are Pokemon trainers who send their pocket monsters into five-on-five contests. The goal is to defeat the wild Pokemon that appear on the Pokemon Unites map as well as the Pokemon of the opposing team to collect energy so you can capture one of their target areas and score a goal.

As more mechanisms emerge to combine moves with other players and synergy train sets, Pokemon United could become a children's football game like FIFA. For MOBA masters who want something more beautiful and with more depth, it is a good starting point for beginners. Pokemon United is a free Nintendo Switch game that comes on mobile phones and uses pocket monsters to make a complex genre more accessible.

Unite has many features of Nintendo's multiplayer games, such as an emphasis on comeback mechanics and a general disregard for balance. You'll need some knowledge of MOBAs, Pokemon and video games in general to pick up on this, but it's a great time. It allows you to invest as much in the game as you want, and it doesn't penalize you for playing badly.

The balance problems could lead to Unite losing players in the long term, but it is not the only problem with the game. As with free-to-play games like League of Legends and Fortnite, there is no real advantage in microtransactions, add-ons and cosmetics, and the predominance of legal currency as a means of victory damages the overall competitiveness of the game. Although the game is a lot of fun, it should not be played as a multiplayer experience.

Granted, there are four or five currencies that can be earned by playing the game, which means that there is always something to be made by crushing matches, but the rate at which money is made is low. The lone premium currency, the Aeos Gem, is available for real money and can be used to purchase things other than the free currency, such as purchasing the Unite license, gaining access to playable Pokemon and increasing the battle points gained by upgrading. Instead of pumping money into the game via premium currencies, Boost Coins are won by using gems to buy items, but players can only buy used items, not gems.