The Pokemon Edition of Rock Paper Scissors

A Review of Pokken Tournament

By Brendan Mitchell

Of course it’s nerdy to still like Pokemon as a 17 year old. Do I care? Nope. And it’s nice that millions of Pokemon and fighting game fanatics across the U.S. are shameless nerds too, considering they bought Pokken Tournament along with me.

We’ve had some time to dissect this strange mutt of a game since it’s Wii U release on March 18 in the U.S. (July 16, 2015 in Japanese arcades), and it’s easy to tell that this game was made to appeal to a wide crowd.

Why It’s Normal

Like most fighting games, Pokken clearly promotes itself as being focused on competitive PvP games rather than its story mode (both to be discussed later). The standard format for both is the conventional best 2/3 round game, and most tournaments thus far have adopted a format where each set is best 2/3 games. Also unsurprisingly, Pokken‘s cast resembles a piece of lettuce instead of a mixed salad.

The tiny 16 character cast, including 2 unlockables (Mewtwo and Shadow Mewtwo), has had many players complaining.  I’m satisfied with a short list because I favor a small cast with characters of varying play styles to a large cast with redundant characters, but I’ll admit the cast is at best average. To spice things up, though, there’s a burst mode which you can use to give your battle Pokemon buffed power and speed for some time. In burst mode, you can also use a burst attack, which resembles a Super Attack in Street Fighter.

Why It’s Not Normal

For a fighting game Pokken did a great job of being user-friendly. The tutorial teaches you the basics of the game while not overwhelming new fighting game players, and the inputs are extremely simple. In terms of structure, the game consists of two phases. One is the field phase, where you can run around a circular area spamming projectiles like a maniac.

The other is a 2-D side-scrolling format reminiscent of the typical fighting game layout. The support system lets you chose a pair of two support Pokemon for each game, and you can chose either before each round. While assist characters aren’t new to fighting games, their varying abilities in Pokken set this game’s assist system apart from others.

The main flaw of the game is that, despite its excellent online PvP mode, playing with a friend on the same Wii U makes the game 30 frames per second instead of 60, and one of you has to look at the game pad instead of the TV. This can be remedied by using two TV’s and Wii U’s, or by hooking up two Wii U’s to a LAN cable. Despite these solutions, this is still a crippling inconvenience, especially for tournaments.

Sort of Story Mode

Well… if you’re looking for a deep plot you shouldn’t stop here. The “story mode” in Pokken is a journey of battles against forgettable CPU personas in the Ferrum League. Your goal is to win enough matches to move into the next league, hopefully finding yourself atop the fourth and final league (Chroma). You essentially play clumps of five games against five different opponents. Your rank either goes up or down depending on how you performed.

Once you reach the top eight in your league, you participate in an eight player tournament with the top seven league CPU’s. After succeeding here, you can face the champion of that league, and win to enter the next league. While it gets redundant, the Ferrum League is worth investing in to unlock both unlockable characters plus most assist pairs.

But is it Competitive?

Pokken stands out for its mix of conventional and unconventional characteristics, leading to some confusion in the fighting game community of whether the game will be competitive. It has shown up in some Smash tournaments as a side event, but we haven’t seen a massive Pokken tournament since the Nintendo sponsored one. Despite this, you should feel comfortable honing your skills, because it’s already been confirmed for massive tournaments like Evo.

Similar to Smash Bros for Wii U, Pokken‘s nostalgic characters and flashy aesthetics make it seem like it was made by 10 year-olds for 10 year-olds. But with some free time and a console that’s good for nothing other than this game, Pokemon and fighting game fans will probably enjoy the unique competitiveness of Pokken. Overall, I give the game an 8/10 for its creative approach to the genre, great online mode, and its poorly designed local multiplayer.