Keeping up with competitive Pokémon battling has always been a hassle. As the mainline series shifts from generation to generation, so does which Pokémon are available, access to specific Pokémon, methods for training those Pokémon, the introduction of new moves, abilities, and held items, as well as a continued cycle of overpowered strategies and how to counter them. It’s very easy to fall behind.

I myself fell behind after skipping most of the Pokémon Scarlet & Violet era that ran from November 2022 to April 2026. After such a long break, I was excited to hop back in to the next era with Pokémon Champions.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Champions, you see, is the new free-to-play home of competitive Pokémon, releasing on both Switches and eventually mobile devices. It promises to both centralise and streamline battling; what’s more, Champions’ structure alludes to the eventual return to older battle gimmicks like Z-Moves and Dynamax, which aren’t available in Scarlet & Violet and likely won’t be programmed into the upcoming Pokémon Wind & Waves.

Which all sounds great if you’re a veteran player or a newcomer curious about competitive Pokémon, right? Well, yes and no – Champions has released in a sorry state that creates more problems than it solves, though it does solve one massive issue that overshadows all others.

With Champions, training Pocket Monsters has never been easier. Traditionally, breeding for perfect Individual Values (IVs), Effort Values (EVs), specific moves, and hidden abilities could take hours per 'mon; for an average player like myself, experimenting with different Pokémon and stat spreads was not worth the time commitment.

That is no longer the case. In Champions, you can hop into the training menu and simply set your desired EVs, abilities, and moves. IVs thankfully have gone the way of the Aerodactyl.

Before, if I wanted to make a Trick Room team — a move that allows slower Pokémon to act first — I’d need to catch Ditto with the lowest possible Speed IV to breed the rest of the team with. Then, I’d need to hatch dozens upon dozens of eggs per Pokémon until they were all as slow as possible, allowing me to beat out other Trick Room teams.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

It took me less than five minutes to put a Trick Room team together before queuing up for ranked battles in Champions. When I wanted to use my slow Incineroar on a faster team, I quickly switched the infamously overpowered Pokémon’s stats around for the low price of some in-game resources – more on those later.

Champions further streamlines things by introducing a way to recruit Pokémon, sidestepping the need to boot up a different game, transfer a 'mon to Pokémon HOME, and then transfer it into Champions – though that option is still available and likely preferable to those that already have battle-ready rosters, because recruiting relies on a bit of luck.

You can roll a random lineup of 10 Pokémon once a day — or spend a resource called Quick Tickets to do so immediately — and recruit one of them on a trial or permanent basis with the latter requiring a different type of ticket, though unfortunately these recruited 'mons can’t be transferred to other games.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

I found this immensely helpful to bring myself up to competitive speed because I did not have a Sinischa, Basculegion, or Sneasler ready to go, which are three of the most powerful Pokémon currently playable. I simply spent some Quick Tickets to roll the gatcha-like system a few times until these Pokémon appeared and voilà – a handful of competitive monsters were born.

No longer do I feel like there’s a massive Mount Coronet to climb before I can even think about competing on a ranked ladder. As a result, I do think Champions will draw more people into the scene – especially if future updates solve the new problems introduced alongside these boons.

Foremost is the convoluted monetisation. It’s ‘free-to-play’ but offers a $6.99 / £5.99 Starter Pack that entices with some resources and much more space to store Pokémon, as the initial limit of 30 is incredibly restrictive. There’s a premium in-game battle pass that — thankfully — only locks cosmetics behind a $9.99 / £7.99 price tag, and then a $4.99 / £4.19 monthly Membership (or $49.99 / £41.99 for 12 months) that provides more missions to obtain resources to train and recruit Pokémon, even more spaces to store Pokémon, and some other goodies.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

Then there’s a Pokémon HOME subscription ($2.99 / £2.69 monthly or $15.99 / £14.39 annually) that you’ll probably want so you can bring over Pokémon from other games more easily, as the free version is also restrictive on space. Other than the Starter Pack, these are all recurring monthly or yearly charges.

Having transferred over and trained lots of Pokémon already, I can say with confidence that most of the paid content is unnecessary – especially the Battle Pass. I have plenty of tickets of every type to use if I wish to customise teams further. That said, I could definitely see resources becoming scarce in the future when more Pokémon are added.

Regardless, Champions can get expensive quickly for what amounts to not much more than an online mode available in every other mainline Pokémon game. Other than some helpful tutorials and some quirky characters that act as glorified menus, there’s no story here, nor are there any unique ways to battle or — inexplicably — options to customise rulesets in private matches.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Docked)

Making matters worse are technical issues and oversights. Certain mechanics — like the order Mega abilities trigger in — are broken at launch, though there are plans to squash these bugs in the works.

I’m personally more annoyed about the poor performance on Switch 2. I assumed the promised free Switch 2 upgrade was delayed at first because Champions looks rough and runs at 30 fps. Turns out there’s a bug where you have to undock and redock your Switch 2 for it to load 4K visuals. However, I was certain some 60fps update was on the horizon when an opponent’s Politoed set up the rain weather effect and the frame rate dropped further.

But no – it seems that update was automatically installed and this is the best it gets on Switch 2. Pokémon Legends: Z-A and the Switch 2 version of Scarlet & Violet ran at 60fps, so I found it bizarre that Champions launched in this state on the more powerful console. I didn’t mind this as much when playing undocked, which quickly became my preferred way to battle. Champions looks good on the smaller Switch 2 screen.

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Captured on Nintendo Switch (Handheld/Undocked)

I do, however, disagree with a common criticism I’ve seen online that Champions has too few Pokémon or removes too many staple held items like Life Orbs and Choice Specs. We don’t know the timeline for new additions, but this restrictive start has two things going for it: it allows newer players to get up to speed and recruit good Pokémon, and it creates a unique meta where veterans can enjoy figuring out what works and what doesn’t instead of falling back on known, overpowered combinations and steamrolling the competition.

It’s simultaneously the most accessible and flawed competitive Pokémon has ever been.

Conclusion

With that all said, the core mechanics of online competitive Pokémon battles remain as solid as a Steelix. Predicting whether your opponent will switch out their Whimsicott, protect with their Mega Charizard Y, or try to catch you off guard with a powerful, offensive attack creates mind games as addictive and intense as ever.

And as someone who has participated in competitive Pokémon on-and-off since 2011’s Pokémon Black & White, the ease with which I can now train Pokémon has me hopeful that Champions will, much like Scarlet & Violet before it, evolve into a more complete, comprehensive experience. But as it stands, the convoluted monetisation, disappointing performance, and inexplicable bugs make this another lacklustre Pokémon experience to add to the pile.

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