While not giving back the sense of adventure and the unbridled collecting of the games that make up the main series of Game Freak, Pokémon Masters can represent an excellent pastime for those who are never satisfied with struggles between Pocket Monsters: production can indeed entertain with a story long-lived and a fair amount of content.
Extremely underrated gem - If you're a Pokemon fan, you're definitely missing out. Give it another try if you were turned off by the awful launch. Fully F2P friendly. I've typed out a full review but I'm getting 404'd for some reason.
We really like the concept and the gameplay, but it’s lacking content. We’re sure this will change soon, so keep an eye on it, since it has all the ingredients to end up being a must-have for Pokémon fans.
If you’re a fan of the franchise, you’ll get a kick out of seeing your favourite Pokémon and trainers in such stunning detail. The writing is also a joy, providing a genuinely engaging story that we didn’t feel the need to skip. Core Pokémon RPG fans will find the battle system too easy, with little challenge. Heck, even gacha RPG fans might find the poor AI baffling, as their Pokémon don’t use the elemental strengths to their advantage often.
Pokémon Masters lacks ambition and dedication in an interesting mobile game, with a traditional Pokémon flavor. However, it's not enough when we speak about one of the biggest videogames franchises. Only for fans.
Despite graphical sparkle, the lack of depth and vapid gacha mechanics rob the game of both charm and longevity, leaving the long slog only to those obsessed with completing their trainer roster despite the crushing tedium.
El juego esta muy bien pero tiene fallos de optimización, con un móvil que tiene octacore 2'20GHz y 4 GB de RAM y que tenga que bajar los gráficos y aún así va a corto rendimiento, me da entender que falta un pulimento de optimización, dar tiempo para que lo mejoren con actualizaciones es lo mejor.
I suppose anyone who already played this kind of game (gacha) might've enjoyed the initial generous drop ratings for certain items and units, but honestly the game was always so barren of any content it barely would make a difference for your enjoyment of the game.
The gameplay always felt so repetitive and dull in the easy parts (most of it mostly left to the auto button), while the hardest parts of the game were just boring grinding the same endurance tests of your units over and over again. Even worse when it was coop required, with close to zero communication capabilities available in online gameplays. You can't write to your allies, you can't talk to your allies, you can only send images with short action texts like "Defend" or "Attack".
Speaking of fights, the Enemies are pretty much HP sponges. Difficulty in this game is dictated by how much damage you can dish against those HP sponges. If you have heavy hitters like Red, then you don't even need to worry about weaknesses or any sort of strategy at all. That's how unbalanced this game is.
I mentioned repetitive content, by the way. Unfortunately, that's every single mode of this game in a nutshell. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
To fix this problem, DeNA is doing only one change: implement a stamina bar to limit the amount of times you can play certain modes. I need say no more.
By now you probably already understand this game is pretty bad as far as gameplay goes, but maybe you might say: I'm playing for the characters, not the gameplay! (I would know, I thought that way once)
If you're playing for the characters, then I have bad news for you: characterization in this game ranges from terrible to nonexistent for the most part. They either just drop some lore facts for certain characters without anything particuraly new, give them generic ultrafriendly personalities or allow limited interactions between them if any at all. Most characters only get one special event related to them in their "A Day With..." segment, while others might get evolution events where they face short battles against some other trainer for bland reasons.
Maybe now you will say: but I play the game for the Pokémon! Not only are the Pokémon in this game more simplified mechanically-wise than the original games, but quite often most are inviable to play with outside of a select few. If you have favorites that aren't one of the mons given focus by this game, then get ready to forget them if you want to be able to win fights and advance in the gameplay modes like Battle Villa. Most mons will be useless even if you up your mons to the max level, activate their grids (when they have grids!) and get all the items(gears and cookies) to upgrade them.
As far as interacting with your Pokémon, I'm afraid to say there is close to nothing for that. Pokémon are pretty much lifeless in this game, as the focus is (supposedly) on the trainers who barely get any content themselves.
I finally woke up after close to one year waiting for actual content and meaningful changes. I finally realized this game's main problem is DeNA itself. By a mix of bad decisions and sheer incompetence, they managed to disappoint and degrade the potential of what could've been a game capable of rivaling even juggernauts like GO.. The potential was there, but DeNA made all the wrong choices with their game events and gameplay design. Now Masters is effectively forgotten by more than 90% of its initial playerbase. It is not the worst game ever even if my score might make you think that way, but truth be told: as a Pokémon gacha, it should be doing far better than this. One of the most valuable franchises in the world cannot possibly have a charmless mess like Masters as its gacha.
My recommendation to anyone who might've finished reading this or just want me to go straight to the point: go play another game and keep waiting for the day a good Pokémon gacha will be made, because it is yet to happen.
SummaryGet ready for a whole new take on Pokémon battles as you team up with famous Trainers from throughout the history of Pokémon in Pokémon Masters. This mobile game is a collaboration between The Pokémon Company and DeNA Co., Ltd., and it gives longtime fans an opportunity to reunite with Gym Leaders and Champions from previous Pokémon vide...