The overall Pokémon franchise has never shied away from finding new and creative ways to let these animals hurt one another in violent confrontation, which makes the fact that it’s taken this long for a MOBA to happen almost odd. Weren’t these a big deal, like, five years ago? Hasn’t the moment passed by now? The answer appears to be that you can hush up, here’s your Pokémon Unite so you can have all your monsters face off against one another in an arena, you’ll take it and you’ll like it.
The game is available now on the Nintendo Switch, with the mobile version intended to launch in September. Cross-play functionality is intended right from the start, so you can swap between devices as needed while retaining progress across all platforms. And yes, the game is free-to-play, so if you want to start smashing creeps with Pikachu you can do that right now. (Assuming you own a Switch, anyhow.)
