Pokémon Champions came to Switch last night and is supposed to be the future of competitive Pokémon, but with less than 12 hours on the clock, a lot of the community is already calling the game a failed experiment. After spending a bit of time with the game myself, I’m kind of astounded by the limitations it puts on what has typically been a pretty expressive competitive game, and how cumbersome it is to actually build teams to use online.
I'm going to say it
VGC should be on Scarlet & Violet until Winds & Waves is out
— Joe Merrick (@JoeMerrick) April 8, 2026
There’s a pretty long list of issues folks are having with Champions right now, but broadly speaking, it feels like the game is constricting competitive play in a way that not even the mainline Pokémon RPGs did when they stopped including the full roster of monsters with Sword and Shield. Champions only supports fully evolved Pokémon with the exception of Pikachu, and even those are fairly limited, with only 186 monsters across all nine generations in the initial wave. Even within those included Pokémon there are odd restrictions, as some characters that are included should have Mega Evolutions, but the held items required for that transformation are not found in the game. Raichu, whose Mega Evolution was shown in trailers for Champions, seems unable to actually achieve this form in the game at launch.
>in the pokemon day trailer from a month ago
>isnt even in the fucking game
what did they mean by this pic.twitter.com/ssdJ3Rn6YE— Lewtwo (@Lewchube) April 8, 2026
The worst part about the limited item selection in Champions is that THEY LITERALLY SHOWED A BUNCH OF ITEMS IN THE OVERVIEW TRAILER AND JUST DECIDED NOT TO PUT THEM IN THE GAME https://t.co/Yl2b2GL95v pic.twitter.com/BRehkOGbSL
— I'M GOLISOPODING IT (@Poke_kaiPJ) April 8, 2026
Some will rightfully argue that including a smaller roster at the outset is a way for Champions to contain the meta, but I don’t think anyone expected the game touted as the definitive stage for competitive play to be as sparse as Champions is. The limitations don’t stop at the Pokémon themselves, as several held items that have been key to competitive strategies before, such as Life Orb, Choice Band, and Choice Specs, aren’t featured in the game, and thus wouldn’t be usable in official competitions.
– Fake Out cannot be selected after it’s used once
– Many widely-used items (Choice Specs/Bands, Life Orb, AV) are just missing
– Less than 200 Pokémon currently
– NS2 version is still low-res/30 FPS
– Stalwart Mega SkarmoryGenuinely, who was this game made for.
— Fran (@FranDarkstar) April 8, 2026
The battle formats are also restrictive. Even when you’re creating a private room to play with friends, you can’t have a full 6v6 battle where both players use their entire Pokémon teams, and instead you’re stuck using either three in single battles or four in double battles. Within those battles, players are discovering several weird quirks, from what seem like bugged move interactions to straight up being unable to use certain moves in specific situations where historically those moves have been doable.
How many months did we wait for to get a functionally worse game? pic.twitter.com/EXtTJkGSR8
— CayennePaprikaVGC (@CayenneVGC) April 8, 2026
On top of all these problems, the actual team building and training mechanics are a massive grind that incentivizes you to actually play online in Champions, but makes it fundamentally inefficient as a way to create and take teams online or prepare them for an upcoming in-person tournament. Stats and moveset changes are locked behind the in-game currency Victory Points, which you can only unlock through playing ranked matches. You accumulate them fairly quickly, but trying to make even one Pokémon battle-ready is a lengthy process. Imagine trying to cultivate an entire team using these tools? This is the same currency you have to use to purchase held items and cosmetics, and to recruit Pokémon to your team. I’m frankly surprised the game doesn’t have microtransactions to let you pay to skip the grind.
Players are still sifting through the game and will likely find more frustrating limitations, but Champions has not made a good first impression on the competitive community which is being forced to use it as their go-to platform for official tournaments moving forward. I’m not even a VGC player and I’m annoyed that it put Mega Raichu X in its trailers and seemingly doesn’t include it in the game itself. Maybe updates and patches will salvage it, but Champions has crash landed at launch.
