While each Pokémon offers their own creative and unique moveset, if you’re someone who already bought the original and none of these Pokémon appeal to you personally, there won’t be much else for you here. 4 of these Pokémon - Scizor, Croagunk, Empoleon and Darkrai - have already been present in the Japanese arcade version for a while now, but Decidueye from Sun and Moon is exclusively new to the Switch port. There are a few new additions to this edition of the game, with the most notable being the inclusion of 5 brand new characters to the roster. It adds variety to the strategies that a player might use by forcing them to shift between styles, while also allowing cornered players the chance to escape and have some breathing room rather than being immediately pummeled and discouraged. In my personal experience, I’ve really loved this feature of the game both in the Wii U release and on the Switch. As you battle, certain attacks force you to shift between these two phases, so the key to victory lies in the ability to reflexively adapt to the situation.
Field Phase is the polar opposite, allowing you to run around the arena in all 3 dimensions. Duel Phase is your traditional style of fighting, taking place on a locked 2D plane. Each battle consists of two spontaneously shifting phases, “Duel Phase” and “Field Phase”. Pokkén Tournament DX isn’t quite your typical fighting game. If you’re unfamiliar with the original release, let me fill you in real quick. In light of that, the publishers over at the Pokémon Company and Bandai Namco have decided to port the game over to the brand new Nintendo Switch, and to put it bluntly, a game like Pokkén on this particular system feels like a match made in heaven.
However, the biggest problem at the end of the day was that the install base for the Wii U was rather small, and so many people never had the chance to experience the game for themselves.
Fans had been begging for a Pokémon fighting game for years, yearning for the chance to experience battles like the ones that they grew up watching on TV through the animated series. A very literal hybrid of both Pokémon and Tekken. 2016 marked the console debut of a crossover that many people had only dreamed of up until that point.