For those of you on the fence about this title because it has Pokémon splashed across the title, rest assured it's solid. Namco and Nintendo have joined hands again, and like Sm4sh, they've created a love child that molds the pros of each and diminishes any cons. Namco is the parent of Soul Caliber, and like Soul Caliber this game is multi-faceted for a fighter. When fighting there's two types of face-offs, Duel Mode where Pokémon are fixed in X and Y axis planes, and Field Mode where Pokémon fight in XYZ. The differences between both modes is large, but the gist is that Field Mode focuses on projectiles and homing in on a target, while Duel Mode is the typical weak attack, strong attack and special attack command layout seen in most fighters like SF, SC, MK and KI. Moves vary by Pokémon, and using certain moves transitions your fighters between these two modes seamlessly, called a Phase Change. On top of these two modes there's a triad between normal attacks, grab attacks, and counter attacks (leave it to Pokémon to stick another triad in the mix!). Grabs are Super Effective! against counters, counters are strong against normal attacks, and normal attacks pop you out of grabs with destructive force. At first, this won't affect fighting the weaker CPU players, but as you move up the league difficulties and fight online players, you HAVE to understand this triad or you WILL GET CURB STOMPED!!! Naturally, there's counter breaks, guard breaks, grab stops, anti aerials, and piercing attacks, so be prepared to spend a lot of time between tutorials and practice modes to learn your favorite Pokémons' move sets. Individual Pokémon differ in performance when used; for example Pikachu is quick to get in and out of skirmishes, has multiple projectiles, and caters to quick execution with hit stuns. His counter ego, Pikachu Libre is HEAVY on grabs and hit stuns, is always in the fray, and performs best by boosting his defense and attack when executing certain moves, up close and in your face. Compare this to brutes like Garchomp and Machamp, or technical devils like Gengar, and Pokkén Tournament is ANYTHING but a button smasher. The graphics are out of site. 60 fps, no lag. Every strand of hair sticks out on Lucario's face. Charizard has individual scales over its visage. When certain players use moves, the moves become incorporated in their attacks, like blue and yellow lighting sparking all over the arena and all over Pikachu's body parts when it uses Electro Ball or Thunder. Namco went all out to slather this fighter in gratuitous amounts of flair and it doesn't disappoint. The Sound is bombastic. If you get headaches from over stimuli, I suggest turning the SFX to 70% range because they're loud. Music is OK, I'd have preferred more themes from the canon like Gym Battle Gen 1, or some of the incredible tracks from XY. Also, the redundancies in voice actors can get annoying. Garchomp's in particular will make you want to strangle the Japanese voice actor who dubbed his. 5/5 out of five is too broad. I'd have given this 9.5/10. My only big criticism is this entry caters to fan favorites heavily. Pikachu, Charizard and Mewtwo are too iconic to leave out, but Gardevoir and Suicune?... That's that fan service Pokkén it's head in (see what I did there?). With 700+ Pokémon currently, a lot of subjective favorites are going to get sidestepped in favor of general ones.