For the first time in the Pokemon franchises’ long merchandising history, Nintendo and Tencent have released a MOBA starring all your favourite pocket monsters for the Switch. And it’s free!
What is a MOBA, you ask? The Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre, where teams of players fight against each other over the internet, has taken off in recent years, with some of the most notable ones being Riot Games’ League of Legends and DOTA 2.
Last year, Nintendo announced that they would be working with Tencent (the Chinese company that owns Riot Games) to release Pokemon Unite - a free-to-start 5v5 experience for the Switch and mobile (in September). Released this past week, I wasted no time in getting to grips with it.
Once you get through the now customary Terms & Conditions agreements, you’re greeted with a little skippable cutscene showing 10 of the game’s current 25 Pokemon taking part in a match. It shows off the basics of the game - scoring points in enemy goals - quite well, so I would suggest sitting through it if you’re as new to MOBAs as I am.
After this was the character customisation, where you mold your Trainer in your own image. It’s no Miitopia, with only six options in each category, but I was still able to craft an avatar that I only saw mirrored once in 20 matches. “Thankfully”, you do have the chance to change them up a little more later on, with costumes and eye colours and more being available to you once you’ve earnt some Aeos Coins and Tickets - Pokemon Unite’s main currencies.
With that out of the way, you’re introduced to Professor Phorus, the head researcher in the Aeos Region, and thrown into the two-part opening tutorial as a Charmander.
In matches, you move your Pokemon around the arena map, fighting Wild Pokemon and the opposing team as you go to collect points to score and EXP to level your Pokemon up. When your Pokemon reaches a certain level, they evolve (with the exception of the sole Legendary Zeraora) and develop new abilities to replace their old ones, much like in the main games.
Combat largely involves pushing ‘A’ or ‘B’ to do a basic attack. Pressing the right bumper uses a slightly stronger attack or ability (such as a dash or shield) that has a cool-down of about 7 seconds, while pressing the right trigger will use a more powerful attack with a longer cooldown time, still no more than 10 seconds.
When you evolve fully (about level 9 out of the maximum 15), you have access to your Unite Move - the Pokemon’s single most powerful attack accessed with the left trigger - which has a much longer cooldown, lest the game become unbalanced.
The standard map has two lanes and a central area, with Wild Pokemon dotted around. Before each match, players pick which of these areas to stick to for the majority of the 10 minute match, except when backing up your teammates or going to score.
And you will need to back up your team at times : at certain points throughout each match, a heavyweight Pokemon spawns in each lane for all players to smite (a Rotom, Zapdos and Drednaw in the top, central and bottom areas, respectively). They are quite powerful and can kill unstrategic players in a couple of hits if they’re foolish enough to take it on alone. In my time with Pokemon Unite, this was all too common an occurrence.
As they heal within seconds if you disengage to fight another day, it’s best to approach them as a team or swoop in to finish it off after the opposing team wears it down, though that is hardly sporting.
You will want your team to land the final hit, however, because that team gets 30 seconds to score in their opponents’ areas without danger. Once the required amount of points has been met (either 80 or 100), that goal is destroyed and the opposing team can no longer heal by standing in it and your team no longer slows down in it.
Throughout matches, the game will give hints like “We’re really struggling!” to your team meant to motivate players, but having the scores on-screen would be a much better way of getting this across.
Something MOBAs like League of Legends have been notorious for is a toxic community that reaches every part of the game, especially the chat. To get around this, Pokemon Unite simply restricts players to a couple of set phrases when in a match such as “I need backup!”. Simple and functional, if a bit bland.
After playing enough games with someone, you can message them privately, which does give the game a risk of cyber-bullying, but you have to add someone as a friend to reliably play matches with them and can remove them as a friend if this happens or report them for harassment.
Outside of matches, most of my time with Pokemon Unite was spent claiming and spending rewards that the game offers to players to encourage them to log in each day to earn more Aeos Coins.
Speaking of which, you’re probably wondering what the point of earning them is. When out of matches, players have access to the various shops, where they can spend Aeos Coins or Tickets on Unite Passes, which allow them to use that pass’ Pokemon in ranked matches, and purchase costumes for their trainer and favourite Pokemon.
Future updates will add in more Pokemon (with Gardevoir coming the day after this piece), with Zeraora free to players who log in before September without having to do a quest, but for now, this covers everything Pokemon Unite has to offer.
Footnotes
- Why isn't this a review? Well I feel the the game in its current state is not quite representative of the final product (and I wanted to give the Next Big Thing a go, but MOBAs just aren't for me, so I doubt I could do this game justice)
- I haven't really touched on Tencent's unethical practices and whatnot here, as I'm still finding my voice and want to do that story justice with proper research in due time. Do look into it yourselves, though, before you try out Pokemon Unite
