Pokkén Review

Fighting games have come far from the normal health bar which goes towards the counter that came in the early 90's to special moves like wave dashing and L-Canceling that changed the metagame. But this game has made a new change where it gives you two phases to fight your opponent in and master. This game is Pokkén Tournament.

Developers: ThePokemon Company, Bandai Namco Entertainment
Recommended Price: £20-$30

What is Pokkén?

Pokkén Tournament is a Pokémon fighting game where you can play with 16 Pokémon (with 720 Pokemon to choose from why only 16?). The movement in this game is the most unique that I have ever played in a fighting game. This is because they have mixed a zoning mode where you can move around freely and a duel phase which is similar to Street Fighter and other fighting games that use the same formula. Also, another new feature that we have in the game is we get cheering from Nia (our advisor). She can give you some boosts to your character and how they play and can affect your strategies in the game, she can also give you some advice on how you can play and what's the best thing to do in battle. But if you want to you can make her speak less you can.

The Playable Pokemon

The 16 Pokemon are put into 4 Classes, Standard, Power, Speed, and Technical. These mean that some characters will have better movement and control in different stances of the game. This means that you can use some skill to beat your opponent, (or spam the same move like there's no tomorrow). Also, there are support Pokemon that can aid you in battle or hinder you in battle. There are 15 sets of pokémon that can assist you in battle but you only bring one into battle but you can change it between battles.

Online Play

The online play on this game is very good, in almost every single match that I played, it was a solid 60fps, but online can be stressful, it has the same problems as other fighting games and their opponents. But another problem that I got was opponent balancing, Sometimes I was given opponents ranks above and sometimes I was given opponents that were below me. There was no consistency of the people that I faced, I just had to hope that my experience in fighting games would give me the upper hand.

Anyway to the Pros and Cons

Pros

The online is solid

The Playable Pokémon are good

You can pull some cool combos

The Duel and Field Phase is creative and gives a positive change to the genre of fighting games.

Cons

Game is Unbalanced (not slightly off balanced,)

You can't turn off Nia (your advisor) off completely

Battling system can be confusing as the characters also change move sets

Some characters are just cheap (looking at you Chandelure and Braxien)

The story mode is lackluster and is just boring

The roster is small and has no excuse to be. (Maybe time to develop the characters but really, Hitmonlee or Hitmonchan may have been good to add)

This game has all the things to make it an excellent fighting game, however, it just underperforms in some key features. If the Pokkén team fix a few things here and there, I feel that the Pokkén scene could rival even Smash Bros. But for now, I feel that it's a bit lackluster at best.