Pokémon Unite (2021)

I have always been drawn to the competitive-ranking-y side of gaming. Since 2004-2005, I'd say, when I first started to be a part of the local FIFA scene, a time when we played over IP matches in teams (or clans) and competed in a national league even with fake budgets where players (us, not in game) can be transferred to different teams. Or in a 2D games racing whose name I don't remember but looks quite like ultimate racing. Or age of empires II, or even Worms. Virtual tennis. Unreal Tournament. Playing against someone has always been fun, either win or lose, even as a casual gamer like I am, someone who does not train at all, just plays and competes against other mediocre players. It's the challenge what counts.

So, when MOBAs started to be a thing, that was obviously my alley. Except for the complexity and game length. I never wanted to be a pro but never liked to be bad, and when LOL first came, I knew I sucked at it and that I would have to put just too much time to be mediocre. That short experience shaped my complete view of MOBAs. That until Pokémon Unite came.

Yeah, it was Pokémon, a franchise I've been familiar with for at least 20 years. It was a MOBA. And it was simple. The games were short, there's only a few buttons, and the game was of course marketed for kids (it's still Pokémon, after all), so being mediocre at it was almost a given. I finally enjoyed a MOBA.

But the game is simple, maybe too simple. Ranking is not difficult at all, and rising up became kind of meaningless. Here is where the game, in my view, loses it all: there is no reward, yeah, but there isn't a fair challenge either. You can climb ranks as a mediocre player or even worse than that, which means that every single rank, no matter where you are, will be full of them. You would assume that the higher you get, the better the player base is, but that is unfortunately not true here. You can't rely on your teammates, as a non negligible percentage of them seem like they do not know what they are doing and the games rapidly evolve in a flip coin won by the team that has the least clueless teammates.

It is a zen experience, yes. For me, a moment of growth: playing hundreds of hours of a game that mechanically was quite like I was into but that could not make me happy. A story of letting go.

When Pokemon Unite was first announced I was stoked! I have been an on and off fan of MOBA's for years and so to combine a series I hold dear, Pokemon, and a genre I have always wanted to put time into I was ecstatic.

Before I managed to try the game I heard about the predatory monetization but I thought it was blown way out of proportion. But this game is a tragedy as it's impossible to enjoy a well-crafted MOBA experience without constantly thinking about the P2W mechanics.

See when you level up your trainer you gain the ability to use held items to boost some of your pokemon's stats. This is all good but the issue arises when you can pay real money to upgrade these items and increase your stats further. This mechanic remains in the back of your mind consistently throughout gameplay and it bogs down the experience.

Combine this disgusting whale-hunting practice alongside terrible performance in menus it takes what could've been one of the best multiplayer games on the switch and turns it all into a frustrating experience.

67/100