Pokken Tournament, first impression

[Guffe]

Pokken Tournament has been released for the WiiU.
I played it for an hour yesterday, completing the Basic 3 tutorials and going a few rounds aginst a normal leveled CPU.
I chose Machamp, in case someone was interested.
First thoughts: I haven't played fighting games in a loooooong while, so the complexity of the game really took me by surprise, the way one must master different combos, the two differen "battle modes" that switch mid battle after strong attacks/combos, the special moves, the support pokemon etc etc.
I think after training and battling a bit, I will enjoy it, it seems like a game I feel I just have to master, which means I will sink hours and hours into this.

As for questions in case you wonder what to write, you can start of with these:
Are you interested in the game? going to get it or not?
First impressions?
Do you play other fighting games?

 

[chozo_hybrid]

I just played the demo, and I have to say, game play is fine but the fights are far too short.

The visuals, for the demo at least look sub par, the resolution seems smaller than 1080 and it just had a hazy/fuzzy look to it, which was off putting, also the arena seems to have quite a low poly count in some areas you see... I'm not normally a graphics nit pick kind of guy, but I have to say, this game with as small a roster as this, I expect better visual fidelity.

And to think the fps tanks if you play local multiplayer as well. Bad enough someone is forced to use the gamepad screen (why not use the kind of camera the Naruto Ninja Storm games have been using) but the frame rate really takes a dive. I don't know if I'll get this any time soon, unless it's really cheap.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

Pokken Tournament has been released for the WiiU.
I played it for an hour yesterday, completing the Basic 3 tutorials and going a few rounds aginst a normal leveled CPU.
I chose Machamp, in case someone was interested.
First thoughts: I haven't played fighting games in a loooooong while, so the complexity of the game really took me by surprise, the way one must master different combos, the two differen "battle modes" that switch mid battle after strong attacks/combos, the special moves, the support pokemon etc etc.
I think after training and battling a bit, I will enjoy it, it seems like a game I feel I just have to master, which means I will sink hours and hours into this.

As for questions in case you wonder what to write, you can start of with these:
Are you interested in the game? going to get it or not?
First impressions?
Do you play other fighting games?

I haven't playedit, but I was wondering how it handled type mismatches.
If you are Machamp and you are fighting Alakazam, are you basically boned like you would be in a real pokemon match?

 

[Guffe]

As for questions in case you wonder what to write, you can start of with these:
Are you interested in the game? going to get it or not?
First impressions?
Do you play other fighting games?

I haven't playedit, but I was wondering how it handled type mismatches.
If you are Machamp and you are fighting Alakazam, are you basically boned like you would be in a real pokemon match?

No, there are no type advantages as in fire-water-rock-grass-etc
There are 3 types of fighters though, strong-fast and a third one...
Then battles have grapples, punches and counterattacks which work as a rock paper scissor system.
So all fighters are basically eaqual, with their strengths and weaknesses, but not in any HUGE ways, like water beating fire.

 

[spartandude]

I have yet to play this game. In fact I hate fighting games. But I've just seen that this game has Lucha Libre Pikachu. This is now the greatest game ever made.

 

[monkeymangler]

Played about 15 minutes of it as Gardevoir. The close/long system is interesting, but it ends up being very similar to the Naruto Storm games where a pressed advantage can be impossible to overcome.

 

[Roxas1359]

My friend and I recorded two sessions of the game going through the "Story Mode" and managed to get through the Green and Blue Leagues with Chandelure. Seriously though Chandelure is OP for some of its moves, mainly its beam moves (which apparently may be Minimize) and it makes the AI freak out. I'm not that good at the game but I hope to get better.

 

[loa]

Watched some videos and charizards "voice" is the most annoying thing ever and to make matters worse, everyone has the sounddesign of "some dude yelling into a mike".
I can't get over it. Too much cheese for me.

 

[LauriAJ]

I haven't played Pokken Tournament at all but I definitely can see the appeal of more 'dynamic' Pokemon battles.

 

[ultrabiome]

I was watching some of the matches of some tournament on Twitch and it looked quite neat. As a fan of Soul Caliber, it seemed similar to SC in the 3D play, switching to Tekken for the close phase.

I just don't know if I can justify $60 for it though as it seems like a title that will retain some value due to Pokemon, but fighters never stay retain their value. If the graphical issues are true, that's frustrating in a fighter. The low roster is disappointing (although the support teams triple it), but seems open enough for DLC, and at least there are both traditional "fighters" and extreme crazy fighters like Gengar and Chandelure to keep it more interesting. Pokemon everyone knows look and move like you'd expect at least, like Charizard and Pikachu doing their respective giant fire dragon and spark spitting hyper mouse things. Maybe wait and see for me.

 

[Maximum Bert]

I was watching some of the matches of some tournament on Twitch and it looked quite neat. As a fan of Soul Caliber, it seemed similar to SC in the 3D play, switching to Tekken for the close phase.

I have just had a 5 hour session and as someone who has quite a lot of play time with the Soul Calibur series since Blade/Edge I can tell you that it feels absolutely nothing like SC or SB in either the field phase or duel phase. It also does not feel very much like Tekken in the duel phase either. The closest thing I can approximate to it in feel is the Naruto Shippuden ultimate ninja storm games with a tinge of Dissida (psp version) but really its different enough to be its own beast but if anyone thinks it will feel anything like a traditional fighter I believe they will be disappointed.

As I said I have only played for 5 hours and have only used Gengar and while I am enjoying it so far it feels very slow and while not unresponsive it definitely does not have the fluidity I was hoping for. I do think that it has promise however and is definietly not lacking in depth but it will still take awhile to wrap your head around despite the limited movesets as its so different to what a fighter usually is even an arena fighter imo.

I like the league system which is basically arcade and story mode in one (lol story) but it has an appropriate thematic twist. Im up to red league so far and have only had 2 defeats one against a pikachu (dont understand how to deal with his field game as gengar yet) and once against the second mewtwo encounter 3/4 health damage super woo! but I am not feeling in control at all its like 70% of the time they do what I want but 30 they seem to do summit else probably because of the weird combo system which feels very unintuitive for me even if it is extremely simple.

Game has a great tutorial however and them actually showing when to press buttons for combos while doing them to show the timing while a bit hard to see is a great feature. All in all I am having fun but im not sure how long I will continue playing for.

 

[PurplePonyArcade]

I have not had a whole lot of time with Pokken so keep that in mind. First of, not bashing it with this statement, but its name is A LIE. This is NOT Tekken with Pokemon characters. The only place that a name like "Pokken" is accurate is in it being a Pokemon game that just so happens is made by the Tekken team and to me is not as good as Tekken, especially not as good as the recently released Tekken 7 which I have also had some time with thanks to its frequent tournament appearances. However its not a bad game at all. Its a good game with lots of potential buried on a horrible button layout. The layout is awkward and annoying at first. Eventually if you spend more time than me or you are a filthy casual to fighting games it will not bug you as much. Other pros I give are its odd and varied roster. I guess gengar was a given since its a Kanto pokemon and GameFreak is terrible with Gen1 pandering, but while that makes me sick I love the pokemon and it feels and looks cool here. Shadow Mewtwo is a welcome addition as well and a much better designed pokemon than that mess Mewtwo-x. Braixen and chandelure! Simple as it is to be happy a character you like is around it does make me happy. Braixen's animations and chandelure's voices are also pretty adorable.
Anyway I guess a warning would be that Pokken is a very perspective based fighting game. I heard it may take two WiiUs to do proper 60FPS gameplay and frankly I am not surprised. A lot of arcade machines in the last decade for fighting games are set back to back with each person taking one cab and having a screen all to themselves. It seems for better or worse Pokken was designed around this for reasons I cannot figure out and this may be odd to some, but this is part of the transition issue to WiiU, other than the WiiU's garbage touch pad controller.

Overall Pokken is a unique experience I do want to try out some more.

 

[GestaltEsper]

It's pretty fun. I like the dynamic of switching between phases and once you adjust for the perspectives I'd say it flows pretty well. I'm curremtly deciding on a main, torn between Charizard, Machamp, Genger and Blaziken. Although my friend showed some cool moves with Lucario.