pokémon champions finally released last week! for those who are unaware, champions is the first pokémon game ever to be focused entirely on competitive battling. while i'm not the most experienced competitive pokémon player, i was very excited for this game - leading up to its release, i spent hours laddering on pokémon scarlet, i watched every speculation video i could find, and about a week ago, the game finally released!
i wasn't able to play it right away, so while i was at work, i continued to consume every bit of champions content i could - i had youtube videos and streams playing in the background nonstop, and any time i wasn't working was spent scrolling bluesky or reddit to see what everyone was saying about the game.
...most talk i saw about champions upon its release was very negative.
it's really frustrating to build up hopes for something to be good, only to hear that it isn't everything it was expected to be! i had thought that everything in the trailers and promotional material seemed really good, and a lot of prominent competitive pokémon players seemed to agree... but regardless, i kept seeing tons of posts complaining about the game. so what are they complaining about?
a lot of pokémon fans seem disappointed by the lack of single-player content, the smaller roster of pokémon and items, and the absence of 6v6 single battles as a playable format... notably, these are all things that i thought nobody was expecting the game to have in the first place?? from its first announcement, this game was always advertised as the future home of online VGC (4v4 double) battling - single-player story content might have been a nice bonus, and maybe casual battles between friends could have allowed 6v6 singles, but... this is why people were bashing the game?? calling the release a complete failure??
for the record, i got home that day, built a team, and had a ton of fun!! the game seems super approachable for new players, the roster of available pokémon seems fairly well balanced, the tutorials are great, the free pokémon and items are generous, and the monetization is far from predatory. there are still plenty of flaws - mega floette being unavailable to f2p players is really disappointing (though expected considering the history of the cost of competitive pokémon), and there are a couple of bugs (that maintenance is already scheduled to fix, thankfully!).
the reviews i've seen do bring up these issues - but the general discussion surrounding these games on social media has just been so vitriolic that i can't continue to expose myself to it. negativity gets clicks, and humans just weren't built to be constantly exposed to the negativity of thousands of people at once - or, at the very least, i'm not 😵💫 this isn't a pokémon-exclusive thing at all, of course - social media is full of negativity on all fronts. for a long time, i've done my best to minimize the negativity i see, by using a chronological following feed rather than an algorithmic one, and by being extremely particular about who i choose to follow in the first place. but it's still overwhelming!
given my recent experiences, i'm taking an indefinite break from social media. in times like these, i have to remind myself that the people who are vocal about their disappointment over pokémon champions are the ones who have already dropped it, while the people who like the game are the ones... playing the game. they aren't going on the internet to share their opinions, because they're too busy having a blast playing pokémon! i'm trying to follow in their footsteps - and if you've been overwhelmed or upset by the stuff you're seeing online lately, maybe you should, too!
i'll hopefully have another blog post soon, as i'm currently learning the new format and preparing to play in the grand champions festival! see you then! :3