People seem to be weirded out by Pokemon Unite, which is understandable. If you’ve only ever played the mainline series – even if you’ve gone the whole way from Gens 1 through 8 – a MOBA based on your favourite ‘mons probably seems as if it came a bit out of left field. Gengar is a special sweeper, sure, but a jungler? Mayhem. The thing is, right, this mayhem is essential not just for the longevity of Pokemon, but for its continued growth.
Did you play New Pokemon Snap earlier this year? I reviewed it and thought it was excellent. For what it’s worth, I also wrote about what makes Mystery Dungeon special a couple of weeks back – namely, that it’s actually capable of telling a decent Pokemon story. I loved Pokemon Colosseum as a kid and our own Stacey Henley recently made a very compelling case for why Pokemon Go is the game of the century.
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Do you know what all of those games have in common? They’re weird. They’re not like ordinary Pokemon games – they all do something different, something new and strange and oddly brilliant. If you asked me last year, “What’s the most unlikely genre in the world for Pokemon to tackle,” I’d probably say shooter. I mean, unless it’s about war man Lt. Surge or Machamp’s biceps count as guns – which, let’s be real, they should – it’s unlikely we’re going to get Pokemon: Doom. Even the developers of Palworld, that ‘Pokemon with guns’ game, don’t want you to call it ‘Pokemon with guns’. Beyond that, though, I reckon my next answer this time last year would have been, “MOBA, obviously, because how on Earth would that work?”
It must work though, right? I highly doubt that The Pokemon Company, Nintendo, and Tencent have pumped money into a free-to-play game for Switch and mobile because it’s going to burn an infernal hole in their collective pockets. Obviously there’s a market for this, regardless of what whingers on the internet say, and obviously it’s going to be done in a way that pays heed to Pokemon’s stainless legacy. Why would a multi-billion dollar corporation intentionally sabotage the biggest entertainment franchise in the world? It wouldn’t, because – duh! – Pokemon Unite is probably going to be really good.
We won’t know this for sure until it launches on July 21 – which, yes, is next Wednesday – but that’s not my point. My point is that this kind of experimentation is vital. I love mainline Pokemon – I’m one of those people who played Gens 1 through 8, like I mentioned in the first paragraph – but loads of Pokemon’s best ideas come from spin-off games. Go paved the way for Let’s Go, which ended up introducing the best bits of Sword & Shield – the Wild Area, new Legendary catching conditions, and so on. Colosseum had a better battle system than most mainline games – thanks, Iwata – and New Pokemon Snap proved that all Pokemon are decent, actually. I even started to like Trubbish! Primarina is now in my top three starters despite the fact I didn’t really care for it back when Gen 7 originally launched and Florges has somehow managed to almost redeem the previously irredeemable Gen 6 – New Pokemon Snap is the best Pokemon game in years.
I don’t know what Unite could do to influence the main series – maybe it will affect how the economy works, or experiment with new competitive rulesets, or pave the way for a whole new region. It’s impossible to predict how a MOBA can affect an RPG, but no Pokemon games, no matter how different they may seem, are completely isolated from the rest, so it’s safe to say that Unite will have at least some role to play in the wider Pokemon scene.
Pokemon’s willingness to try out new forms and ideas has always been the core reason it’s remained so special over the years. If anything, Pokemon Unite looks like its wildest, most ridiculous experiment yet, but that’s what makes it so integral to Pokemon’s continued success – sure, it might seem a bit weird, but I can’t wait to play it, and I sure as hell can’t wait to see the impact it has on my favourite series of all time down the line.
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