Pokemon Fans Aren't Sold on Pokemon Unite Yet

The Pokemon Company held its second big Pokemon presentation this week to unveil just one new project: Pokemon Unite. It's a MOBA-style, team-based Pokemon game where players work together with others to catch, fight, and level up Pokemon with the intent of scoring more points than the other team. The game's developed jointly by both The Pokemon Company and TiMi Studios of Tencent Games. It's quite the different direction for the Pokemon franchise. Pokemon Unite will be available to tons of players since it's cross-platform on the Nintendo Switch and mobile devices and is free to start, but people still aren't sold on the new Pokemon idea just yet.

Pokemon Unite may be hard to picture if you're coming in from only Pokemon games and haven't dabbled in MOBAs much, but the videos here should clear up most questions about it. The one below provides commentary from the game's creators and players as they show what playing Pokemon Unite will look like while the one above is the trailer cut from the larger presentation.

If the map alone wasn't a giveaway, you can see more of the MOBA influences in things like the Pokemon select screen where the players choose their Pokemon they'll do battle. You choose your Pokemon and pilot them around symmetrical map to fight others and complete objectives to score your team points, you can level up your Pokemon to make them stronger, and each one has unique abilities in their kits that set them apart from others. Type advantages are out in this game though, so don't plan on instantly winning in the selection screen with what you think would be an automatic win based on Type.

Pokemon Unite is an innovative direction for Pokemon to be sure, but it sounds like people aren't sure what to think of it yet. Like-to-dislike ratios on YouTube aren't always a representation of the actual product and are often the result of unmatched expectations, but it's hard to ignore the mounting dislikes on the video that's currently at 39,000 likes and 53,000 dislikes at the time of publishing with a similar story told on the standalone trailer. Much of that is likely due to the fact that this was the only presentation during the Pokemon Presents event whereas people may have been expecting more.

But there are some who are looking forward to the Pokemon project. It looks like it has potential, and even if it's not for everyone, it'll likely find a home in the mobile MOBA market.

Below you'll see some of the reactions – positive, negative, and apprehensive – to the new Pokemon project. Pokemon Unite does not yet have a release date.