Happy Pokémon Day, trainers! Unfortunately, this year’s presentation was beyond middling, and didn’t give fans too much to be excited about. For me, anyway. I’m happy for you if you loved it.
The showcase started off with the promising looking Pokémon Concierge animated series, which I will now take a closer look at, but then continued with all of the same old live-service mobile game stuff that everyone either forgot about or moved on from.
Pokémon GO, Pokémon Masters EX, Pokémon Sleep, and Pokémon UNITE only took up about three-and-a-half minutes before the reveal of a new Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket mini set, Triumphant Light, dropping tomorrow. I’m still on board with TCGP as a collection game, because the battling is not for me. But ranked matches are coming next month, so that’s awesome.
Up next was what I consider the highlight of the presentation: Pokémon Champions. While mostly still a secret, the game looks and sounds like a successor to Pokémon Stadium, and that’s something that everyone can get behind. Plus, the fact that it will be released on both the “Nintendo Switch family of systems” (Switch 2) and mobile? That’s some big potential there.
Obviously, the trailer didn’t show much, but a pure PvP battling game that utilizes Pokémon Home and evokes the memories of link battling on the original GameBoy is enough to get my blood pumping. I’m excited to see more of what’s next for this game, hopefully at another Pokémon Presents presentation this year.
But then, after cool news about language localization coming to more regions, we got the biggest disappointment of the day. Our latest look at Pokémon Legends: Z-A inspired next to no hope or excitement, other than an interesting-looking real-time battle system where you can dodge with your partners.
If the game truly is to take place completely in Lumiose City, that’s kind of a bummer. How big can the city actually be? How varied are the environments? The “wild areas” within the city sound uninspiring compared to exploring the wilderness of the map in an open world filled with Pokémon.
And don’t even get me started on the selection of starters in this game. There’s no choice to be made. Totodile clears Chikorita and Tepig any day of the week, and I think the latter two should be embarrassed by their participation in the game.
Still, even with all of my disappointment, I’m choosing hope. However unlikely, I’m hoping Pokémon will make an appearance at the Nintendo Switch 2 presentation at the beginning of April. Maybe The Pokémon Company will be on hand to tease the next big game in the franchise. A true sequel and series evolution, and not another Legends game.
Or at the very least, what about the next set of remakes? A Black/White remaster in 2026 in between Z-A and whatever’s next would be a positive. Maybe. Just… something more than what we got today. Something unique and inspiring, and not just what looks like a Scarlet/Violet sequel stuck inside of an urban environment.
It’s also entirely possible that I’m outgrowing Pokémon, although I don’t think that’s the case. I’ve been playing since Pokémon Red when I got it for Christmas in 1997, I still get thrilled by the series in my late 30s, and I’m blessed to have a career that allows me to do so.
Pokémon has been iterated on and milked dry 10 times over, but it still feels like there’s more that can be done with it. And as fans of the game for decades, those like me should expect more from this billion-dollar franchise.
Anyway, I’ll see you all online on day one.
Published: Feb 27, 2025 11:24 am