I ADORE the concept of Pokken Tournamnet: takes some of the most popular or unique critters from the biggest IP in the world and turn them into actual fighting game characters, with eccentric animations and a stunning graphical presentation.

For most things this title does exactly that. The gsmeplay is energetic and unique compared to other arena games. THe matches are fun and you are always able to turn the tides, creating an engaging combat.
The level of customization is interesting, even if the different modes don't offer a lot of variety and the story mode presented feels a bit too clichè, uneventful and boring.

But the bigges issue of this title, to me, is for sure.... the roster. A total of 21 characters (16 in the original release of the game), including 2 Pikachu and 2 Mewtwos, feels incredibly lackluster, especially considering that Namco's fighter mostly got some large launching rosters full of different characters and even stories to explore.

I had fun with some of my favorites, like Machamp, Weavile and Gengar, and weirder picks like Chandelure, Croagunk and Braixen had an immense amount of personality in their movesets and animations, but I felt like the team didnìt do a lot with the potential of the pokemon world, especially conisdering that a hige chunk of the roster got later added as DLC (even when the game got re-relased on the Switch, they still had the ballzis to add 2 extra characters under another paywall)

One can say that they made the roster this small in order to give a lot of attention to the animations and feel of the chosen characters.... but then you find out that most of the animations are just taken straight from Tekken, and that Pikachu throwing Heihachi fists feels a bit jarring. It's funny at first, but it also feels like Namco kinda just "plagarides themselves" when making thes emovesets.... if that makes sense....

In terms of presentations, Pokken tournament has an amazing concept that I wish was evolved more with time, maybe with a larger selection of character or more options and ways to enjoy this amazing premise.

In order to unlock all the stuff in Pokken Tournament to play with my best friend who loves Pokemon, I had to beat the story mode all the way through. It's an awful long story mode at like 5 or 6 hours. You've gotta win like 110 matches! If you don't, you'll be short 2 playable characters and like 10 support sets (not to mention like 16 stages). Luckily, it's not super difficult. If I can beat it, it can't be that hard of a fighting game :P

The game looks beautiful. All of the Pokemon rendered in beautiful HD never cease to look awesome. The game controls really well, too. For a game that just uses 6 buttons and the D-pad, it's pretty damn complex. What with all of the switching between field and dual mode when certain attacks land, special counter-attacks as opposed to normal attacks. I don't play 3D fighters ever, really, so I can't really comment on its complexity compared to other things in the genre, but I think you could spend a lot of time getting really good at Pokken if you wanted.

One last miscellaneous note: The special Pokken Tournament controller is a bunch of wank. The D-pad is so inaccurate it's awful. Maybe it's my fault for getting familiar with the Pro Controller first, but for something that's $30 new, that thing is nowhere near as good as it needs to be for such a specialized controller :?

Verdict: Recommended. I can certainly see why it outsold Street Fighter 5 for a good while of last year. It's a really great fighting game with a great theme. It makes some mistakes with gating content, but that's not the end of the world, really. My only hesitation in recommending it would be that the Switch version which has like 5 or 6 more characters comes out in like a month or two, so you'll probably wanna wait for that with how much this game'll run ya for a new copy.