Pokken Tournament Review – Gotta Fight ’em All!
Pokémon began as a role-playing game, where you explore a beautiful world filled with adorable creatures called Pokémon that you capture and use within fights. There has been plenty of spin-offs off the series but we’ve never had a fighting game… until now. Pokken Tournament was initially released in Japanese arcades in 2015 but due to its popularity, Nintendo decided to expand it to the rest of the world through the Wii U and we are definitely lucky that we have it.
Pokken pits two Pokémon against each other in a standard arcade-fighting game but instead of selecting moves by clicking through text, like in the original Pokémon series, you get to perform them. You fight best-of-three battles using your Pokémon’s unique skills to defeat your opponent and rise in the ranks.
What becomes apparent when the game is first booted up is the bold colours and detailed textures, making this one of the best graphically looking games on the Wii U and the most beautiful Pokémon game I’ve ever played. You can see the tiny, yellow strings of hair covering Pikachu and the rippled veins of Machamp bursting through its body, all this being a delicious sight.
This level of detail is also applied into the mise-en-scene of each battle stage, showing that the developers truly want to showcase this world in tune with the lore. Ghastly is floating around the haunted mansion, you’ll find Lapras dipping in and out of water and the dojo is filled with fighting-type Pokémon practicing in the background. The sets feature Pokémon from every generation, being an image to behold.
But it’s not as stunning as the battles you partake in, the true highlight of the game.
The combat works similar to most fighting games; you can use basic moves like a heavy attack, light attack, ranged attack, or block as well as perform combos by memorising button sequences. It’s very newcomer-friendly as you can mash as many buttons as you like and create some crazy-looking moves but there is also a level of complexity that takes a long time to master.
Battles switch between two phases; field phase, where you use long-ranged attacks, and duel phase, where you can inflict a great deal of damage whilst facing your opponent in arm-to-arm combat. Within these phases you need to always be thinking about the combat triangle; counters defeat normal attacks, normal attacks beat grab attacks and grab attacks defeat counters. On top of this, memorising move sets for each different character and utilising your power-up mode is essential. It’s a lot to take in but upon mastering these mechanics you’ll feel incredibly satisfied. The battles are always fun and quick, and when playing with a competent player you’ll participate in the tensest fights.
A lot of the content (such as battle arenas and other Pokemon) is blocked off and made unavailable until you progress within the single-player campaign, which is by far the worst part of the game. It is mostly tournament battles, where you fight until your crowned the champion of many leagues, but these battles are long-winded and the computer’s AI is not too savvy. I went through over seventy-five battles with zero loses, seeking some sort of challenge. Between fights are flecks of story about some Shadow Mew-Two that is using some dark energy that really doesn’t matter in the scheme of things. Basically you’ll unlock Mew-Two if you can make it through the horrible cut-scenes that contain some of the worst voice-acting imaginable. It is horrendous!
Pushing the campaign aside, the game truly shines through the local and online multiplayer. I found nearly no problems finding online matches and if there wasn’t a person available within 10 seconds of entering the multiplayer lobby, the game automatically produces a computer opponent to fight and practice your moves on. Sadly there is a limited amount of Pokémon available to play as – only 16 in fact – despite the expanding collection of over 700, but each character is unique enough to make up for small library.
Pokken Tournament is truly a magnificent fighting game, which is easy enough to pick up for newbies but has enough complexity to satisfy competent gamers. There’s joy to find in every fight and much love has been brought to cement this game into the Pokémon series.
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