I couldn’t care less about Pokémon Masters EX when it released in 2019. That was when The Pokémon Company started to aggressively expand to mobile, one year after releasing Pokémon Quest and launching Pokémon Rumble Rush the same year.
I felt I was beyond those games. I had been playing Pokémon since Red and Blue and felt like these casual apps were made to sell the franchise to new people. For years, I didn’t even know what Masters EX was about, let alone that it was a gacha. My anti-mobile bias now reminds me of the Diablo Immortal backlash, since, as a long-time Pokémon player, I didn’t want to use my phone because I had the Nintendo 3DS and Switch anyway.
But six years later, I decided to give Pokémon Masters EX a try. In late July, I had just finished playing Jeanne d’Arc and wanted to try a game in the franchise I had never played, preferably a free one, and I decided it was time to test this one. How had I never played a game that had been lasting so long and was part of my favorite franchise ever?
I need some of these mechanics in mainline Pokémon games
A few days in, I realized it’s a gacha game like any other, but with Pokémon trainers. You use these trainers and their Pokémon (or sync pairs) to complete missions, and more of them join your roster as you get new ones at random through free or paid Scouts, which is like opening surprise boxes.
You make trios of sync pairs to battle against other trios of computer trainers—until this point, the fact that triple battles ever existed in Pokémon Black and White had been completely erased from my mind. Then, it’s all about the usual gacha grind: get stronger sync pairs, upgrade them, beat harder content, upgrade characters with the materials you just got, and beat even harder content. Repeat until you’re bored.
Pokémon Masters EX still got me hooked. Making a strong trio relies heavily on synergy mechanics that would make sense in the mainline games, like Tyranitar, Lycanroc, and Coalossal boosting one another because they’re all Rock-type Pokémon, or Brock, Blue, and Misty getting higher attack because they’re all from the Kanto region. I would love to see this synergy mechanic in a future generation of Pokémon as secondary abilities exclusive to double battles, even if in a casual game mode.
Triple battles in Pokémon Masters EX are balanced, which was a huge surprise. They work because battles are slower than in the mainline games. While you can burst a Pokémon in doubles of Scarlet and Violet with a coordinated attack, it’s really hard to do so in a single turn of triples in Masters EX. Pokémon stats are set so that both sides use dozens of moves per battle, and it doesn’t get boring because of its mix of real-time and turn-based strategy. Most fights don’t take more than two minutes to clear.
Most content isn’t time-restricted by Stamina, a mechanic that limits how much you can play certain missions per day. Most events have several difficulty levels, which allow you to play cool fights versus Legendary Pokémon early on. I’ve already defeated Moltres and Raikou in Normal difficulty in Legendary Arena after only 10 days of play, which felt impressive since I don’t have lots of six-star units and can’t use Skill Gear yet. Now I want to clear harder content, so I’m hooked by the grind and optimization loop.
This loop, colored by hundreds of Pokémon characters I’ve grown up playing with, makes the game more meaningful to me than gachas like Zenless Zone Zero and Solo Leveling: Arise.
But the game always reminds me it’s a gacha
Pokémon Masters EX is a cash grab. It has all the features of a cash-grabbing mobile game, like Stamina, sync pair Scouts exclusive to paid currency, and difficulty spikes like Champion Stadium that make you want to spend money instead of slowly grinding. But the game has no PvP, so there’s no competitive pressure to put money into it.
It’s a lot of information early on, too.
Pokémon Masters EX has 234 Trainers I can sync with, and all the 155 unique items in my bag can be used to upgrade them. If I want more sync pairs, I can choose to Scout from one of the 18 active banners, 10 of them with free gems. I already own 36 sync pairs without spending money, and each sync pair has up to five passive skills, five theme skills, four moves, and three lucky skills. To play with these pairs, I have to choose a mission from 13 co-op EX Challenges, seven events, seven training areas, four story arcs, three side areas, or two Champion stadiums. Each sync pair can receive upgrades to their level, level cap, potential, move level, EX role, sync grid, lucky skills, and super-awakening.
And I’m not even talking about the Lodge and content I haven’t unlocked yet, like the Battle Rally and Pasio Towers.
While the auto-battle and auto-optimize buttons skip the mess early on and hopefully set up a strong team for you, I feel they’re also Pokémon Masters EX admitting it’s too complex for new players to handle.
It’s really hard for a beginner to choose which banner to Scout for, so it’s better to just go with whatever character or Pokémon you like the most, like I did rolling for Silver and his shiny Tyranitar.
In the end, Pokémon Masters EX is Pokémon All-Stars in gacha format. It’s likely not a great experience as anyone’s first Pokémon game because of all the limiting gacha mechanics. Since its roster has every interesting Pokémon character from the mainline games, it’s much more fun if you already know who all these trainers are talking to you.
If you’re a gacha but not a Pokémon fan, you’re probably used to learning to like random characters you’ve never heard about before, so I think it’s worth your time. The game is quite generous to free-to-play players.
As for myself, I know I’ll probably get tired of Pokémon Masters EX when I reach the endgame and have to farm items instead of having them overflowing from my bag like I do now, so I’ll enjoy my time being a noob for the next couple of weeks.
