Yesterday, a new trailer was released for the upcoming mobile Pokémon game being developed by DeNA, Pokémon Masters. The trailer revealed new information about the gameplay mechanics, as well as seeing the return of some classic characters from the Pokémon games.
Pokémon Masters starts the player off as a trainer in a region known as the Pasio Region. In this region, every trainer has one Pokémon that acts as their partner in a relationship known as a Sync Pair. Your goal as a Pokémon Trainer is to become the champion of the Pokémon Master League. In order to do this, the player must battle many trainers and unlock new chapters in the game. In battles, players will have 3v3 matches in which you have three Pokémon Trainers on each side, each with their own Pokémon. The player can order the trainers to perform various tasks, such as ordering the various Pokémon, or using unique skills to heal or raise the stats of the Pokémon on the field. Each pokémon will have one type and one weakness, unlike in mainstream games, so dual type Pokémon don’t exist in this game. Each Pokémon move has a cooldown period so players are left to decide how they want to fight, what moves they want to save for another time, and which Pokémon are going to do what. The game will also include a co-op mode that will be available later in the game.
According to an article on Gamespot, the game will not have a large focus on microtransactions and will instead be mostly gameplay and story driven. This means that players won’t need to fork over large amounts of cash in order to try their hand at the gacha system in the game. For those who don’t know, a gacha system is similar to a roulette in that you pay money in order to acquire a certain type of item that you can then trade in for a chance to win big. This system means that even those who don’t have a lot of money will have a chance to win a character that they enjoy, however, this also means that people with more money will have more opportunities to try their hand at getting the character that they want. Within Pokémon Masters, players can get more powerful and rare trainers through the gacha system using gems that they can either purchase with real money, or with effort through completing missions in the game.
Pokémon Masters will be released this Summer of 2019 on the IOS and the Android, but the exact release date is currently unknown.