I am quite interested in being the very best like none other has ever achieved. Confining an undisclosed thing of some sort is my factual examination; making said thing stronger is something I believe to be a virtue. Pokemon is very good. Am I making myself clear enough? I was a child in 2008. I know what it's like to buy a turn-based JRPG because of an anime adaption that includes flashy combat not at all reminiscent of said JRPG and then fall in love with it. And I know what it's like when they dangle a product that much more closely resembles what you came for in front of your nose and then wait several years before they mention it again only to release it in arcades, and then when they do release it on more practical consoles, they only do it in Japan and wait months before bringing it west to you, and by then your mind is so ready to love the game, you lose sight such luxuries as "opinions" and accept that regardless of quality, the game will go down as the best thing to ever exist. God damnit, I'm talking about Pokkén Tournament!
WARNING: If you're not interested in a complete regurgitation of every feature in the game, please skip to the picture of the Fire Emblem games.
Pokkén Tournament is a 3/2.5D Fighter that plays similar to Tekken/Street Fighter. If you're confused, it's because these slashes represent one of Pokkén's many oddball ideas that lead you to ask "Why not just make it a simple Pokémon fighting game?" Fights begin in the "Field Phase," an open, 3D arena with free movement and the camera fixed on your opponent (actually a lot more like the Naruto Shippudden Ultimate Ninja Storm games than anything). As fights progress, one fighter is bound to use some move that will cause a "phase shift", changing the arena into a 2D plane where fighters with movement fixed to left, right, up and down until another phase shifting move is used. A large part of fighting is knowing when to shift the phase and knowing which moves will do that effectively because phase shifts make the opponent's damage "final" (or at least that's the word I like to use). During fights, as you take damage, your health bar will lower but the part you lost will remain as a faded green bar segment, and if your opponent causes a phase shift, that bar segment will disappear, making that damage final; but if you cause the phase shift, you'll get some of that health back. Phase shifts will also force your opponent to quickly switch up their tactics to accommodate the completely different battle style.
Attacks are split across three buttons, Y for light, X for heavy, and A for Pokémon attack. Alongside this, pressing A and X together (it's easier to do than it might sound) produces a counter-attack, which alone is a chargeable attack of low-medium to high-medium damage but can also completely nullify one of your opponent's regular attacks, so if your opponent dares leave a few frames for you to make a move before attacking, you can catch them by surprise and start launching your own combo on them. Then on the other side of the diamond, Y and B together will produce a grab which will throw the opponent into the air for a devastating mini cutscene of pain. Also, grabs are the counter-attacks of counter-attacks, so if you have a feeling your opponent is ready to reverse your combo back onto you, just grab them and you're good. And if you're wondering, yes, a regular attack will counter a grab. This attack triangle is an interesting way to keep combat varied, but you wouldn't be dumb to forget it was there entirely. It's not uncommon to find yourself attempting to escape a combo by randomly mashing regular attack buttons when you probably could've just used a counter-attack and you'd end up in a far better position. And then when you do remember about counters, you'll start spamming them until you get the satisfaction of getting one off or until your opponent realizes what you're doing and responds by grabbing you, pissing you off to the point where you forget about counters for the rest of the match.
Wow, we haven't even spoken about your two gauges yet. Your Support Gauge fills at a fixed rate specific to the Pokémon it pertains to and can be activated to release a support Pokémon to help you out in some way. Then there's the Synergy gauge which fills up as you fight in some manner that I just can't discern from normal play, and can be used to activate a huge buff in all stats and can be input again to use a big, colorful, cutscene that can take away nearly half your opponent's health bar. (Hold on, I need a deep breath).
These battles of course take place over a variety of Modes, including an Arcade Mode-ish Single Player campaign, a Local Multiplayer that somehow both forces you to use the game pad and makes the game drop in frame rate, an Online Multiplayer that's pretty smooth relatively speaking, and a training mode. And yes, I did just describe any fighting game. Oh sorry, I forgot about you Street Fighter V *air horns*.
Now, if you're still here, you deserve a reward. Here's a summary of the 2016 election:
Now, go take a bathroom break, make a sandwich and get ready for a full analysis.
(Ok I lied; I assumed you would all take the shortcut and skip over my explanation of the game's features but there's one that I seriously NEED to talk about and analyze in the same paragraph.)
So they made it an RPG. A major part of the game is having each of the game's characters gain Experience Points after each fight (Online and Local multiplayer included) and eventually level up allowing you to increase one the character's four stats. These stats can be turned off in Local Multiplayer, but matter entirely in all other modes. This makes absolutely no sense. What is the deal with this system? Why? WHY? This system completely splits the game's audience between early adopters and all the people who got it later on as older players will have much better stats than you. Of course, the game separates people into 25 ranks, so you'll usually be playing against people with similar amounts of play time, but for your first several online battles, as you struggle to learn all the thousands of other systems in the game, you'll be crushed by your opponent's heightened experience and augmented stats. And once you do make some sizable progress in your own stats, it will be become impossible to switch to another Pokémon after that, because all the others don't have that progress so unless you're willing to bang your head against the wall all over again to get your characters all roughly similar in usability, you're stuck playing the same Pokémon over and over again. And this is completely encouraged seeing how at the beginning of everyone's experience with the game, you pick a "partner Pokémon" that appears as part of your player profile and is used in Story Mode. This of course can be changed at any time, but it's highly discouraged and you'll feel like a colossal douchebag who just dumped a Pokémon you once called "Partner" which will feel almost as bad as dumping a girl you said you loved though I suppose I wouldn't know seeing how women tend to avoid getting into relationships with unlovable basement dwellers such as myself... RPG elements in a fighting game made me think about my love life. Nice going Bandai-Namco. Oh, yeah. They made the game. I think I forgot to mention that.
So what do I think of the game? It's complex. It's visually spectacular. It's nostalgic. It's just... Incredible. I've bagged on the complexity and the idiotic RPG elements and the fact that I'm never getting a girlfriend and these people realize, but there really is just nothing quite like being able to finally play out Pokémon battles the way you've always wanted to. Pokkén Tournament is the kind of game we'll, be playing for a while especially with DLC characters being a definite for this game. So, Pokkén Tournament gets "The Blinding Power of Nostalgia" out of 10. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go travel around the planet Earth, looking both far and wide using every Pocket Monster to come to a better understanding of the strength within something or another. Ya know, maybe these lyrics weren't meant to make sense.
