Since its release several days ago, I’ve been playing the new Pokémon MOBA, Pokémon Unite, from The Pokémon Company and Tencent on the Nintendo Switch. For those that don’t know, MOBA stands for multiplayer online battle arena. League of Legends and Smite are two notable titles in the genre although there are plenty others.
What sets Pokémon Unite apart from other MOBAs, for me, is that it plays more like a sports game. It’s setup as 5v5 with a ten-minute cap on the match. Points are collected by defeating other players and NPCs, but then need to be dunked into one of the opponent’s five goal rings before they count towards your score. Getting defeated before cashing them in will cause you to lose some of your point stockpile. You can’t keep scoring on the same ring however, because after a set amount of points the ring breaks, driving you further into the opponent’s side of the map until only their main ring remains. In-between the rings are a speed buff or debuff depending on who’s side of the map that you’re on. As rings break, this effect goes away. Throw in a couple of boss-like Pokémon that grant various effects and bonuses and you end up with a pretty wild sports match.
Starting the game off for the first time you’re asked to create your trainer (which really has no bearing on the game) before getting your first Unite License. In short, your starter Pokémon. You’re given five to choose from at the start, such as Pikachu or Charizard, and others can be unlocked later by purchasing them from the store or earning them through other means like a daily login bonus. Each Pokémon comes with their own roles ranging from attacker to defender. Because every team can only have one of each Pokémon at a time, you’re encouraged to create a balanced team utilizing all the roles. To help with that the game shows you not only Pokémon you currently own, but also rental ones marked with a clock. Presumably they’ll be rotated out on the regular, but it’s still early to say on that one. Though there are only twenty or so Pokémon available now, more are planned for release later.
All of this so far is a lot of information, but thankfully the game forces you into some tutorials before setting you loose with other players. There’s a lot of details I’m not going to get into here because, frankly, the game does a better job of explaining it than I could rewrite. In short, Pokémon level up and evolve in matches, get new moves, can carry stat enhancing items, and use rechargeable items like potions in battle. Everything is slowly rolled out to the player so it’s not like you’ll get in over your head with a deluge of information and explanations. The game only makes you do a couple of the tutorials at first so it’s well worth it to go back in and complete the rest to get a better understanding of the game mechanics and how to play.
Pokémon Unite is setup like a lot of other mobile games meaning that there's daily login bonuses, a multiweek new player reward, and daily limits to rewards earned from playing the game. Thankfully, if there is an energy bar that limits how much you can play in a day I've yet to find it. It should come as no surprise that the game will be released on mobile devices later this year. One other annoying similarity Pokémon Unite shares with mobile games is an unintuitive user interface. Getting into a match is easy enough, there's a giant button for it, but other features are spread throughout the whole UI. Equipping a held item is in a different menu than the one where you choose which default moves you want to get when levelling up. Even items that you're rewarded can be collected in three different menus. There's also a lot of talk going around right now about how the game is pay to win. I haven't progressed far enough yet to see it firsthand, but it looks like it revolves around powering up the held items.
MOBAs have never really been my thing as a lot of them expect you to keep playing until someone wins. In many cases that's a half hour or more. The hard ten minute limit makes the game a bit more palatable to me and the focus on keeping it more like a sports game makes it more enjoyable. Thanks to the chat options being limited to preset phrases, you also "miss out" on the toxicity of other players like you would see in League of Legends. If you're looking to dip your toes into a MOBA, Pokémon Unite is a good first step. It's free to play so there is no real harm in trying it out. Purchases are optional, but with the claims of pay to win popping up it's likely that the difficulty will ramp up and your enjoyment may suffer. That aside, the game is currently pretty fun so give it a go.
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