Pokken Tournament

Fergus_

Lol Pikachu with Dorya and Heihachi's hellsweep.

Macal

Sairus

Sairus wrote: »

All this talk of only having fighting types in it? Y'all are ****ing crazy to think Pikachu aint going to be in this. ****ing monster crazy.
My random out of my ass assumption: Every character is going to have a Mega Form and it'll work like X-Factor.

I must be some sort of psychic.

Also, yo, location tests on Friday. woop woop

PS: Pikachu having Heihachi's win poses is awesome.

FutureGuy

Up until now, I though this was some fan-made game. Very interesting!

D4RK ONION

Sairus wrote: »

I'm getting the feeling this game is going to play like a crossbreed of Naruto and Tekken.

This foresight doe

Sairus

I'ma Pokemon master yo.

Seriously, this is the best:





Apparently they're giving away limited edition profile storage cards to the first 100 people to fill out the survey at the location tests. I wasn't going to try braving the lines on Friday night for the tests... but now I kinda want a Gardevoir card.

Another interesting thing that came to mind with this: Most JP arcade machines use these profile cards to store your win losses, win poses, colors, costumes, etc. You swipe them on the machine before you play and your profile pops up. These cards all run on NFC chips, which is also how Amiibos work.

I definitely expect this game to be an Amiibo Pokemon flagship title on consoles, but I'd be curious to see if they'll give the arcade cabs Amiibo functionality. Lucario and Pikachu both already have Smash Amiibos and I kind of expect Mewtwo and to a lesser extent Jigglypuff to appear in this game.

D4RK ONION

I miss Japan ;_; I WANNA GO

Sairus

Had a go on this today. I only played it once because I wasn't really arsed hanging around another half hour to play again. I wasn't there early enough to get one of the special profile cards ;_;

General run down: There were 5 characters available in three different classes: Lucario, Pikachu, Suicune are all Standard type. Machamp is a Power type. I picked Sirnight/Gardevoir who is listed as a Technical character. The test was set up so you only played one set against an AI, but it only did that after a 'searching network for opponent' screen timed out.

The game is a pretty unique beast. It has two formats: When you're a decent distance away from the opponent the game plays like Naruto Ultimate Ninja. It's over the shoulder cameras and you can freely run in any direction on the field. You've got huge mobility here with side dashes sending you really far.

When you get closer to the opponent the camera will curl in and switch the game to a side on, Tekken style fight. It's not exactly Tekken, but it's close enough to compare. Your movement controls totally switch for this so you can no longer free run around the field - just back and forth on a straight axis like Tekken, with some slight side stepping.

It feels like the characters are all designed to work better in one style of gameplay. A friend I was with picked Pikachu and he said that of course he works fine in both systems as the jack of all trades character. Gardevoir is heavily stacked to work at long range as she has a huge array of projectiles. A lot of her closer attacks seem to knock the opponent back a lot too, giving you space to fire more stuff. Machamp is probably designed to work exclusively up close.

In addition to your character you also pick an assist. The assists all have pretty huge Area of Effect attacks and have a pretty long cooldown after each use, so you really need to use them sparingly.

Controls: It's a six button game. The four face buttons are: Light Attack, Heavy Attack, Pokemon Attack and Jump. Lights tend to be projectiles and each attack has neutral, directional and dash versions. Combos work like Tekken strings.
I honestly just forgot to even use the Pokemon Attack button so I'm not entirely sure what it does. I think it's powerful attacks that consume meter.

You can push Light and Jump together to do a throw. Throws have GIGANTIC reach. They also leave the opponent on the ground a decent distance away.

Heavy and Pokemon Attack together will do a focus attack. The game is designed like this: Focus beats normal attacks. Normal attacks beat throw. Throw beats Focus.

Once your special meter fills up, if you hit Assist and Block together (L+R) you'll enter X-Factor. All your attacks get massively boosted and if your Pokemon has a Mega Form they'll change into that, otherwise they just start glowing. Your meter will drain pretty quick during this, but at any time before the meter drains you can hit L+R again to do a crazy powerful super attack. From what little I saw the damage values on these are completely insane.

If you can stagger your opponent (I think) by landing a bunch of hits on them a super meter powerup will appear somewhere nearby on the stage. Pick that up and it'll give you a sizeable chunk of your meter.

Probably forgetting a bunch, so ask me stuff.

Angron

Bit of an update, Charizard (expected) and Weavile (a bit less so) have been added to the roster.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ItWRUFTTog

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-VsoiFX4HQ

Sairus

Weavile looks super cool actually.

Sairus

TheMikenyan wrote: »

Dark types like Weavile, Bisharp and Greninja for instance could work, but you're not getting something like Pikachu.

Pokken Tournament announced for WiiU in Spring 2016. Pikachu Libre joins the cast as the second playable Pikachu!
(Also, Blaziken was added to the arcade roster a few weeks back, but no one cares.)

Angron

The Pokémon World Championships are currently running, and as a break from the VGC/TCG stuff they've been showing some of the competitors playing each other in Pokken Tournament. Main ones I've seen that have stuck out have been Charizard, Suicune, Blaziken, and as I type there's a Machamp vs. Gardevoir match being played.

The pokémon they can choose from are Pikachu, Charizard, Blaziken, Machamp, Gardevoir, Gengar, Weavile, Suicune, and Lucario. (I think that's it anyway)

Doctor DooM

Angron wrote: »

The Pokémon World Championships are currently running, and as a break from the VGC/TCG stuff they've been showing some of the competitors playing each other in Pokken Tournament. Main ones I've seen that have stuck out have been Charizard, Suicune, Blaziken, and as I type there's a Machamp vs. Gardevoir match being played.

The pokémon they can choose from are Pikachu, Charizard, Blaziken, Machamp, Gardevoir, Gengar, Weavile, Suicune, and Lucario. (I think that's it anyway)

Some of those players are very famous round these parts.

I had to go but as I was watching, Justin Wong was beasting fools in winners final (Wong would be considered by most to be the strongest FG player America has produced).

Seeing Spooky playing and being referred to as "the hardest working man in the FGC" always brings a smile too!

Angron

Wong just got in to the finals there. Jerk defeated Charizard :mad: Didn't realise those were known FGers cause Se Jun Park was competing, last year's Pokémon VGC champ.

Doctor DooM

Angron wrote: »

Wong just got in to the finals there. Jerk defeated Charizard :mad: Didn't realise those were known FGers cause Se Jun Park was competing, last year's Pokémon VGC champ.

It's actually really, really unfair to have Wong in a tournament along with RIP and Spooky against non FG players, even if they're really strong at their respective competitive games but I understand it's the spectacle!

Angron

Victory spoiler:

And RIP is the winner, playing Pikachu he beat Wong's Weavile in the final.

It was very entertaining, I wouldn't mind if Pokken became a regular feature of the Worlds.

Sairus

It's pretty interesting to see that Suicune wasn't overly prevalent at the event. He's all over the place when I play in arcades here as his ranged attacks are so difficult for a lot of people to deal with. I get thrashed by him all the time!

Doctor DooM wrote: »

It's actually really, really unfair to have Wong in a tournament along with RIP and Spooky against non FG players, even if they're really strong at their respective competitive games but I understand it's the spectacle!

Aye. It'd be like holding a soccer tournament and then asking a bunch of high level Irish football players and swimmers to join. Both sets of players are great at their respective sports, but the football players will have a far easier time playing soccer since they're so similar, unlike the swimmers who have mastered a totally different skill set.

It was extremely unsurprising to see this tournament dominated by the regular fighting game players!

Macal

Any Bruce Irvins fans might be interested to hear that one of Blaziken's attacks has the same animation as Bruce's b+2.

Sairus

I was using Blaziken last night. I think I might actually prefer him to Weavile. He's kinda no nonsense with just a lot of straight, simple attacks.

One thing I gotta say I reeeeeally hate about about Pokken Tournament is its implementation of profile cards.
Virtually all arcade machines use these now in Japan. You buy a card in the arcade, and then you make a profile on that card. When you play whatever game, you can swipe your card and it will load in all your details like rank, W/L, character customizations, etc.
Usually I love this stuff. It's fun having your custom profiles and costumes all ready to go at the swipe of a card, and generally it's 100% optional cosmetic stuff.

Pokken however is a bit sneakier with it.

First and most obviously is that when you play without a profile card, you do not have access to all the Assist Pokemon. These are unlocked as you level up meaning to properly compete you need to have a leveled up Pokemon.
Second is that as you level up, your Pokemon's stats increase. You can choose from 4 stats to increase at each level up: close attacks, far attacks, assists and burst mode. A level 20 vs a level 1 is a fairly noticeable difference.

This obviously makes it difficult to have a properly balanced game. Either you don't have all assists or you probably have lopsided stats.

So that's the straight up gameplay stuff. Aside from that you can also customize your Pokemon trainer, who serves as your avatar in the game. You earn currency for every match you play and can spend that currency to buy new clothes and items for your trainer. As you win matches and meet other conditions you also unlock new items directly... but this is where Pokken gets really dirty. To avail of any of this customization stuff you need to buy a Premium Pokken account, which is 300yen per month.

So to reiterate, it costs 1 euro per game to even play Pokken, then they let you earn in game money and items, but to use any of those items you need to pay another 3 euro a month.

This last point is tied to all of the above. Blaziken released at the start of August.. sort of. For one month he is only available to those with profile cards. After that month he joins the full roster as normal. In order to unlock him during that period you need to pay a bunch of in game currency.
Something I did not get a chance to check though was if you needed to have a Premium account to even have the option to buy him or not, which would be especially awful.

tl;dr, Pokken is super sneaky and annoying with how its profile cards are integrated.

K.O.Kiki

I'm super surprised Nintendo would do that, they're usually nice with DLC strategy.

Macal

This is sounding an awful lot like Tekken Revolution, and that's not a good thing...

D4RK ONION

K.O.Kiki wrote: »

I'm super surprised Nintendo would do that, they're usually nice with DLC strategy.

Isn't SM4SH €5 per DLC character?

Angron

That is a fairly crappy tactic, hopefully those sort of shenanigans will be less prevalent on a console version of the game.

Angron

Since I last posted here, a bunch of supports were added, including Dragonite and Victini, Pachirisu and Magikarp, and Croagunk and Sylveon.

They also added as playable characters Shadow Mewtwo (who will also be a boss), Garchomp, Sceptile, and Chandelure.

UberPrinny_Baal

David on Ultrachen was very positive about Pokken in their recent episode. Definitely raised my interest level for picking it up. Video not embedded so I can put a timestamp on it, should start at Pokken discussion for the curious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LRuXsuDeB0&list=PL45-KVgrSkf4QIhglNdrNqXcmd6-cmWEg&index=1&nohtml5=False#t=6m26s