Pokémon fans have to chill.
Most Pokémon fans woke up excited this morning and looking forward to new news about a new game coming soon.
Most of those same fans right now are disappointed.
When Pokémon Company president Tsunekazu Ishihara announced a “big project” was on the way, most people thought there was a remake of the Generation 4 Diamond and Pearl games.
Instead, what they got was Pokémon Unite.
Pokémon Unite is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game in the mold of something like the insanely popular League of Legends. Not even close to what a traditional Pokémon game would look like. Here’s a look.
To be fair, it might not be so bad!
It seems to play much like other MOBA games — players group up in teams of five and battle against each other over a multi-lane map. Each player gets to play as a Pokémon. As they battle and complete different objectives through the course of a match, they level up.
The kicker here is that the game is free to play on both the Nintendo Switch and on mobile devices. On top of that, crossplay is available. So if your friend has a Switch and you don’t, you can just download the game on your phone and play together anyway.
So, no, it’s not the traditional Pokémon adventure where users go across an entire region catching Pokémon and battling tough opponents, but it still might be pretty fun.
Even still, fans were not happy about the announcement.
Some fans wanted a remake of one of the old generation games. Other fans are just upset with the buildup — why not announce this with everything revealed in last week’s stream?
Either way, there was plenty of disappointment to go around Wednesday morning.
Can’t wait for the new Pokémon game!#PokemonPresents #PokemonUnite pic.twitter.com/UIV4ClADRu
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Iggy
It’s easy to understand everyone’s complaints. This game is absolutely not what people expected and not what the buildup for the announcement signaled it would be. Those are totally fair criticisms.
But it also might be time to look in the mirror — we all might be getting a bit spoiled here with Pokémon games.
Every other year, basically, for the last decade Pokémon has dished out an adventure game of some sort for fans to play — whether it’s a new generation game or a remake of an old one.
And as more and more of them have come out, people have continuously had complaints about the games progressively getting easier and less entertaining every time.
Pokémon Sword and Shield were both just released in November 2019. New DLC just came out for the game last week. It feels totally unreasonable for fans to ask for a new adventure game already. It’s way too soon.
No, Unite isn’t the game people wanted. But it’s OK! If waiting is going to make the game better, then waiting is worth it. It’s not the end of the world. The new game folks are looking for will come along eventually.
In the meantime, just enjoy what we have now.
