If you want to be the very best, Pokémon Champions is your new arena. Sam Rutherford for Engadget I've been playing Pokémon since Red and Blue first arrived in the US nearly 30 years ago. But somehow during all of that time, I never really got into the competitive side of monster battling.

You see, during the heyday of the original Game Boy titles, winning matches on the playground routinely amounted to stacking your team with as many legendaries as possible. The biggest tryhards often showed up with multiple Mewtwos. And when I checked in on the scene in later generations, I was turned off by Smeargles spamming Baton Pass (and later Dark Void) and the massive time sink that was required to field a competitive roster.

This caused me to write off the competitive aspect of Pokémon almost entirely. When Pokémon Champions came out earlier this summer, I decided to give it a shot. It immediately unlocked a newfound love and appreciation for the PVP side of the turn-based combat system Nintendo and Gamefreak pioneered way back in 1996.

What is Pokémon Champions? Sam Rutherford for Engadget Unlike other entries in the series, Pokémon Champions is a platform solely focused on competitive monster battling. There are no gyms, towns or really any NPCs to speak of, and the few that do exist, like Tatora and Kitt, are largely there to serve as a guide for various in-game functions. It's just you facing off against other trainers online to determine whose team of Pokémon is the strongest.

It's available for free on the Switch and Switch 2 (via the Nintendo e Shop), and on mobile (both Android and i OS). There are a handful of microtransactions — such as the monthly battle pass, membership subscription or the $7 starter pack — some of which provide useful but not totally essential bonuses like extra storage space for Pokémon. Why does Pokémon Champions exist? Sam Rutherford for Engadget This question is a bit trickier because the short answer is very simple: It's a standalone game to support Pokémon tournaments and online battling.

However, the long answer is a bit more complicated. Before Champions existed, competitive matches were held using whatever the last mainline Pokémon title was at the time — i.e. Pokémon Scarlet and Violet for generation nine, Sword and Shield for generation eight and so on. This system worked well for a long time, but with the introduction of spin-off games like Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Pokémon Legends: Arceus that feature new Pokémon (or Pokémon with new mega evolutions) or reworked battle systems that depart from the series' classic mechanics, Pokémon Champions also exists as a way to showcase those monsters while preserving the franchise's traditional turn-based combat.

Furthermore, Pokémon Champions greatly lowers the barrier to entry into the competitive scene. Instead of needing to catch or breed monsters with the exact stats you need, you can simply recruit who you want and allocate points as you see fit. This might not sound like a big deal, but depending on the specific generation, by some accounts it could take multiple hours just to catch and get the ideal stats for a single Pokémon.

Then you multiply that by at least six in order to fill out a full team (and most likely a lot more if you're experimenting with various rosters) and suddenly team building turns into a part-time job. And that's before you ever battle another person. A side effect of this is that it sometimes caused players to use third-party apps to generate Pokémon with perfect stats, or rely on others to trade them the Pokémon they need instead of catching them normally, which potentially jeopardized the integrity of the game.

Team building and training Sam Rutherford for Engadget Instead of catching Pokémon, the way you build out a team in Champions is simply by visiting Kitt at the ranch and recruiting them. The game starts you off with 10 Pokémon, but after that, you only get to pick a single 'mon every time you generate a new lineup.