Pokemon Champions is just a couple of short weeks away, and it looks primed and ready to shake up the competitive Pokemon scene in a major way. Not only is it introducing new abilities for Mega Pokemon introduced in Pokemon Legends: Z-A, but it’s also completely scrapping IVs, changing the amount of PP certain moves like Protect have, and more.
We should see some interesting new strategies come out of battles in Pokemon Champions, although you shouldn’t really expect weird and wonderful teams. That’s because, despite it being a feature in the game’s closest competitor, Pokemon Showdown, it will only feature fully evolved Pokemon, meaning not every single Pokemon will be supported by the game at launch.
Pokemon Champions Doesn’t Have Cubone, So What’s The Point?
This was recently confirmed by Pokemon Champions development director and game producer Masaaki Hoshino in a recent roundtable interview (thanks GameSpot), as he stated that only the fully evolved Pokemon of evolutionary lines will be supported at launch, trimming down the game’s available ‘mons rather significantly.
Hoshino does later claim that they “might consider earlier evolutions” in the future, suggesting the game could get some pretty robust post-launch support, but don’t expect to dive into battle with a Chansey or a Rhydon at launch.
Pokemon Champions Should Be The Stadium Revival We’ve Been Waiting For
This online take on signature Pokemon battles needs to channel the classics.
It’s a bit of a weird decision, especially since non-evolved Pokemon have been pretty popular in the competitive scene in the past. Aforementioned ‘mons like Chansey and Rhydon, as well as Dusclops and Porygon2, can hold their own against the vast majority of fully evolved Pokemon if equipped with an Eviolite, and are actually preferred to their fully evolved forms in some teams.
Little Cups have been a thing for quite a while too, which is a tournament quite literally designed for non-evolved Pokemon and those on the weaker end of the power scale. Heck, even Pikachu isn’t a fully evolved form, so I guess that means the mascot of the entire franchise is barred from battles for now. We’ll have to see what the full roster of available Pokemon is like when the game launches next month.
- Released
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April 8, 2026
- ESRB
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Everyone / Mild Fantasy Violence
- Publisher(s)
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Nintendo
- Multiplayer
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Online Multiplayer
