Pokémon Unite! What Is It All About?

The Pokémon Company has announced a new upcoming game called Pokémon Unite. The premise is a 5-on-5 team battle with an assortment of Pokémon as your playable characters. This is League of Legends but instead of champions like Miss Fortune or Lee Sin, you’ll be playing as Blastoise or Charizard.

Pokémon Unite Cross-Play

Pokémon Unite will be available on Nintendo Switch, iOS and Android devices. They will offer cross-play between all the available platforms. The game is referred to as free-to-start and will probably have a system similar to League of Legends where cosmetics are sold but the game is free to play.  

That being said, I don’t find this news to inspire much confidence. It seems as if Pokémon is trying to get into the competitive MOBA space but still wanting to appeal to the casual space. Playing on mobile has to be vastly different and is sure to bring about a lot of toxicity. 

Pokémon Unite Gameplay

Pokémon describe the game as players cooperating with their teammates to catch wild Pokémon and leveling them up to defeat opposing teams and trainers. This will be interesting to see as catching Pokémon in a match could be interesting. They have removed type advantages from this game and rely on the different skills and traits each Pokémon possesses. The game also has evolutions and seems like you can evolve after a certain amount of EXP. Pokémon have ultimate moves which are called Unite Moves which can turn a fight quickly. 

The gameplay so far suggests that you go around catching Pokémon and defeating enemies which will grant you points. Then you take these points to certain checkpoints where you can give those points in to add to your teams total score.   

Pokémon Unite Roster and Characters So Far

The playable characters so far are: 

  • Pikachu
  • Talonflame
  • Gengar
  • Blastoise
  • Charizard
  • Venusaur 
  • Lucario 
  • Machamp
  • Snorlax
  • Clefable

The game starts you off at your 1st evolution and as you catch and defeat enemies you can level up and evolve. So as the game progresses, you can go from Charmander to Charmeleon to Charizard. 

Pokémon Unite Thoughts

I have some mixed thoughts about this announcement. Although I love Pokémon, this game seems to be Pokémon trying to copy and bite off of big popular MOBAs like League of Legends. The game is also backed by Tencent who has the social stigma of being a greedy and terrible company which does not not give this game a good outlook. 

Online comments have expressed a lot of disappointment and hate towards this announcement and I can see where they are coming from but, hopefully The Pokémon Company will be able to release a good game and overcome this.

James Chow

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