In May 2019, The Pokemon Company revealed a new Pokemon mobile game: Pokemon Masters. Developed by DeNA, which assisted on other Nintendo mobile games like Fire Emblem Heroes and Super Mario Run, Pokemon Masters is a lot more complex than you might expect. In some ways, it`s like many other gacha-style mobile games, tempting you to play more with the promise of (possibly) pulling your favorite characters. But Pokemon Masters limits microtransactions to a small corner of the game, leaving room for a surprisingly involved story mode to show through.I recently played around 45 minutes of Pokemon Masters, and it`s not quite a pick-up-and-play kind of game. The actual narrative part of the story mode, like a lot of Pokemon games, is not particularly complex; you`re a trainer in a new region called Pasio, where Pokemon Trainers form a `Sync Pair` with one partner Pokemon, and your goal is to become the Champion. But each chapter is broken up into several activities centered around battles, from point-and-click exploration of the region to boss fights against a famous Trainer. A big focus of the game is co-op play--it currently doesn`t have a versus mode--but you have to go through a handful of story chapters to unlock the option of playing with others, because there`s just so much to learn.It`s hard to come to grips with Masters` 3v3 battles if you`re used to Pokemon`s traditional battle format. You control all three Trainers on your side of the battlefield, as well as their Pokemon--Trainers have support moves they can use just like a Pokemon`s moves. The type-matchup system is simplified in that each Pokemon only has one type and one weakness, and those weaknesses are displayed clearly in battle. The battles take place in real time, and moves are tied to a cooldown timer, so there`s a lot to manage all at once. Do you wait until your move meter fills to three sections so you can use a more powerful move--but possibly get hit a bunch while you wait--or do you forgo a ...
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