Pokemon is no stranger to the mobile game space. It’s shared various puzzle game spin-off like Pokemon Shuffle with Nintendo’s consoles. Pokemon Rumble Rush provided a bite-sized version of Pokemon Rumble. However, Pokemon is missing one thing: a gacha game.

Nintendo has already dabbled in gacha games with Fire Emblem Heroes and Dragalia Lost, but Pokemon now joins the fray with Pokemon Masters. In this collaboration with DeNA, there’s as much of a focus on Pokemon trainers as their Pokemon. Player characters and iconic gym leaders from across the series appear as “Sync Pairs” with a Pokemon that’s associated with them; for instance, Brock is partnered with his Onix and Cynthia is partnered with her Garchomp. All these characters gather on the island of Pasio, where they team up with each other to take on the Pokemon Masters League.

Instead of the typical one-or-one battles of Pokemon or any of the weird one-off battle styles used in past games, you put three Sync Pairs in a team to fight enemy teams in 3-on-3 battles. In single player, you choose the moves of all the Sync Pairs, while control is split up among players in co-op mode. As expected of Pokemon, type advantages play heavily in battles, with better type match-ups doing more damage. The game takes it a bit further by classifying Sync Pairs in roles: Strike pairs specialize in attacking, Support syncs are tankier and can buff the team and Tech syncs can inflict debuffs and status ailments on enemies. You’re encouraged to keep a team of balanced roles, while still having to keep type match-ups in mind to fight optimally.

Pokemon Masters gacha banner and rates pic.twitter.com/651GybxBSW

— Dizzy Ziddy (@dizzy_ziddy) July 25, 2019

Of course, can’t expect all the best Sync Pairs to show up at your door; it is a gacha game, after all. So far, it is pretty standard stuff that you’d expect from a gacha game. Use in-game currency to scout out Sync Pairs, with gradually higher appearance rates for higher ranked characters. Presumably, playing through the game as normal will give a few free Sync Pairs, but as of yet, it’s hard to tell how much players will have to rely on the gacha to play the game.

The game is currently available for pre-registration on iOS and Android. While official sources claim the game will come out Summer 2019, the iOS store suggests it’ll come out on August 29th. A trial version of Pokemon Masters is currently available in a few regions.

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