Pokkén Tournament DX | First impressions

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Of all gaming’s many genres, fighters are my least favourite. They’re just not my forté. Back in the early 2000’s I was known to boss a game or two in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and going back further still I could just about hold my own in Street Fighter II on the SNES thanks to some full-on button mashing (so many blisters!) but my appreciation for fighters piqued with those two.

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​by Liam
Andrews

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​@pass_controller

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Developer: Bandai Namco
Publisher: Nintendo
Platforms: Switch
Players: 1-2

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The same could be said with Pokémon. I haven’t fully played through a Pokémon title since the days of Red, Blue and Yellow, and feel no attachment to the hundreds of monsters that have been created since. It was with some trepidation then, that I decided to give the Pokkén Tournament DX demo a try.

Much like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, another Wii U title recently ported to Nintendo’s latest console, the Switch version of Pokkén Tournament will include all previously released content, and even a couple of new Pokémon, ensuring Switch owners like myself who missed out on the Wii U edition are picking up the definitive version of the game.
 
Obviously, this being a demo, only a fraction of the full game’s content is on offer, with Charizard, Pikachu and new boy Empoleon the three playable Pokémon. You only get to duke it out in one arena as well, which feels like a fairly generic stadium.
 
The demo gives you 15 matches to try the game ahead of its full release later this month – it took a lot less than that to know it wasn’t for me.

Even a rookie like myself had no trouble dismantling the AI opposition, which got boring very quickly.

It’s not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with Pokkén Tournament DX, it’s just the demo’s lack of online multiplayer did not feel like the best way to advertise the game’s arrival on Switch. Failing to include an online component was a particularly significant missed opportunity, as even a rookie like myself had no trouble dismantling the AI opposition, which got boring very quickly.

The unpredictability of human combatants is, in my admittedly limited experience with the genre, what makes fighting games - and multiplayer in general - engaging, challenging experiences. A simple control scheme coupled with a surprisingly in-depth tutorial means Pokkén Tournament is very easy to learn, but with the demo’s lack of a human element, it was impossible to tell if it would be difficult to master.

​Yes, the Joy-Cons do facilitate couch co-op, and getting two Switches in the same room would also allow you to take part in local multiplayer matches in the demo, but unless you’ve got people on hand ready to jump into a game at a moment’s notice (and of a similar skill level) these weren’t really viable options.
 
In the end, the Pokkén Tournament DX demo served only to reinforce my desire to see Nintendo pull their finger out and get Super Smash Bros. onto the Switch in some form. If not as a new entry in the series or some sort of virtual console offering of Melee, then at least a port of the Wii U’s release, another well-received title from the doomed console’s back catalogue that remains frustratingly out of my reach.