Yep, I've tried it a while back before my 3DS broke and competitive battling is a different ballgame, and I've won a few times that I've tried it. 3/5 wins isn't bad. What more can be said about it that it takes a while to find the right team with the right moves and the right strategies for everyone on your team. I've also did take a crack at breeding and it isn't as hard as alot of people make it out to be, but it's time consuming.
The Sick, Strange World of Competitive Pokemon
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 On 02/06/2015 at 11:59 PM by Casey Curran See More From This User » |
The thing about Pokemon is that to the naked eye, it is kind of a baby's first RPG. Kid friendly designs, simple rock/paper/scissors combat, and only four slots for attacks. And if you only play the single player, that's mostly what you get. It's in a super addicting package to be sure, but it's easy and simple.
For this reason, the multiplayer may have one of the sharpest learning curves in video games ever. It took me a while to get the hang of Dark Souls, but that's got nothing on competitive Pokemon. It took me months until I, someone who had been playing Pokemon almost as long as he'd been playing games, could get the hang of it.
What is it about competitive Pokemon that makes it so complex? Well, the most obvious reason actually may surprise you: There's 718 of these guys! Now, a bunch of these are guys were never meant to fight each other, a Charmander versus Mewtwo for instance. It's for this reason the website Smogon created tiers for Pokemon.
Tiers are a place where each Pokemon is categorized, mostly based on how often they're used for simplicity's sake. The Uber tier houses the strongest of the Pokemon, mostly legendary ones, followed by the Overused for the best normal ones. Underused is the next tier, followed by Rarelyused and Neverused with a Little Cup where you battle Level 5 first stage evolution Pokemon.
So, obviously, that's a lot of Pokemon, with each tier providing its own flavor. Uber is about high damage output and keeping everyone on your team alive for instance while Rarelyused is more about picking away at the other team and putting up passive damage until you can set up a Pokemon to boost its stats and take everyone out (known as a sweep).
And with the tiers known...honestly, there's not much more I can say that isn't better explained here. There's so much to this game that I honestly could not cover enough to scratch the surface here. So if you're really interested in what makes the game so deep, give that a read.
Next week I'll be back to show you a few strategies to show how crazy this game can really get.
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