Pokemon Champions will not support all Pokemon at launch

Pokémon Champions is just a few weeks away, and it looks like it's poised to shake up the competitive Pokémon scene in a big way. Not only does it introduce new abilities for the Mega Pokemon introduced in Pokemon Legends: ZA, it also completely cancels IVs, changes the amount of PP that certain moves like Protect have, and more.

We should see some interesting new strategies from Pokémon Champions battles, though you shouldn't really expect weird and wonderful teams. This is because although this is a feature of the game's closest competitor, Pokemon Showdown, it will only feature fully evolved Pokemon, meaning that not every Pokemon will be supported by the game at launch.

Pokemon Champions doesn't have a Cubone, so what's the point?

This was recently confirmed by Pokemon Champions development director and game producer Masaaki Hoshino in a recent roundtable interview (thanks to GameSpot ), stating that only fully evolved Pokemon from evolutionary lines will be supported at launch, greatly limiting the game's available mons.

Hoshino later claims that they “may consider an earlier evolution” in the future, suggesting that the game could get some pretty robust post-launch support, but don't expect to dive into battle with Chansey or Rhydon at launch.

Pokemon Champions should be the stadium revival we've been waiting for

This online take on signature Pokémon battles must channel the classics.

It's a bit of an odd decision, especially since non-evolved Pokémon have been quite popular in the competitive scene in the past. The aforementioned mons like Chansey and Rhydon, as well as Dusclops and Porygon2, can hold their own against the vast majority of fully evolved Pokémon when equipped with Eviolite, and are actually preferred over their fully evolved forms on some teams.

Little Cups have been a staple for quite some time now, a tournament literally meant for under-evolved Pokemon and those on the weaker end of the power ladder. Heck, even Pikachu isn't fully evolved, so I guess that means the mascot of the entire franchise is banned from battles for now. We'll see what the full list of available Pokemon will be when the game comes out next month.