Pokémon Unite, a new free-to-play game, now has an official trailer.

"Pokemon Unite"'s logo, courtesy of Mewtwo.
Since when did pokeballs fly on their own? Oh, wait, Mewtwo is at it again, isn’t he?

Basics

June 24, 2020 seems to be Game Trailer Day, and Pokémon Unite is no exception. IGN has released what appears to be an announcement trailer for the game. It’s…a bit disappointing actually. For starters, it’s only 54 seconds long. But the most important part is that the actual Pokémon Unite part doesn’t show up until well over halfway into the video. I mean seriously, the actual relevant content lasts only 22 seconds. Everything else is just buildup.

AKA: League of Legends: Pokémon Edition.

Because the actual trailer for Pokémon Unite is so short, there’s really not much to talk about. The gameplay seems to be more or less identical to League of Legends, which makes sense since both games are multiplayer online battle arena games. The format for each battle seems to be 5 vs. 5, which is a bit odd considering the traditional limit is 6 Pokémon per trainer. I don’t know why each player in Pokémon Unite is limited to 5 Pokémon, and the trailer doesn’t explain. All those 22 seconds show is a Pokémon version of League of Legends, really.

When Pokémon goes the "League of Legends" route.
League of Legends-style arena, check. League of Legends-style spawn/capture points, also check.

What’s most troubling though is the fact that Pokémon Unite is being published by Tencent Games. For those of you who may not know: Tencent is a very large Chinese gaming company who are notorious for filling their games with microtransactions. I don’t know about you, but I’m not certain about playing a Pokémon game with microtransactions in it. I recognize that microtransactions are the only way for a free-to-play game to generate any revenue, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

"Pokemon Unite"'s problem in a nutshell.
Microtransactions: they ruin love and games alike.

Conclusion

At first, I was excited by the prospect of a new Pokémon game. Then I saw the underwhelming trailer. Then I found out it was a freemium League of Legends-type game. And then, I looked further and discovered that it’s being published by Tencent: a company that insists on putting microtransactions into every game it owns/publishes.

A diagram of my interest in "Pokémon Unite".
Insert nail, add hammer.

Yeah, suffice it to say, unless something radical happens with Pokémon Unite or new info arrives in the future that changes my mind, my interest in the game is now effectively dead. I think I’ll just transfer my interest to the New Pokémon Snap game. It seems like a much better game overall.

Source: YouTube