Pokémon Champions: Free-to-Play, Free-to-Delete

Pokémon, free, on the Switch 2 — sounds like a no-brainer, right? That's exactly what I thought when I saw this pop up. The screenshots gave me strong Pokémon Stadium vibes, and nostalgia alone had me smashing that download button faster than a Pikachu on a Magikarp. Fired it up, got hit with some genuinely vibrant loading screens, slick graphics — the presentation out of the gate is clean. The game lets you know it's free-to-play with optional purchases. Standard stuff. Terms and conditions, privacy notice, yeah yeah, let's go. And then we hit the character selection screen.

Things went south. Very south, very quickly.

I'm staring at a lineup of characters that all look like they're stuck in some bizarre tween limbo. Soft facial features, ambiguous styles, trendy hair — and I genuinely could not tell which characters were supposed to be male and which were female. Look, one of the most basic joys of character creation in any game is trying to make someone that looks roughly like you. That's not a controversial ask. That's been a staple of gaming since forever. So I pick the one that I think might be a boy and move on to hair selection. The default hair? Long, swirling, flowing all over the place — very feminine. Alright, let's browse the options. Every single one looked like it could belong to anyone. Edgy shaved sides with long tops, weird bob cuts, long curly styles — where's a simple short cut? A shaved head? Something that says "yeah, this is clearly a dude"? It was nowhere to be found.

Now, I've watched this slow drift happening across the Pokémon franchise for a while. The character creators have been getting progressively more androgynous with each entry. Pokémon Legends: Z-A pushed it further than ever, but at least in that game, you could still clearly distinguish male from female options. You pick male, it looks male, you move on with your life. Pokémon Champions threw that last shred of distinction right out the window. It was so blatantly obvious what they were doing that I closed the game and deleted it on the spot. Didn't even make it to an actual battle.

This is a free-to-play game, and free games are overwhelmingly targeted at kids. That's what really gets under my skin here. I'm a grown man — I can roll my eyes and move on. But this kind of deliberate gender ambiguity being pushed on children through one of the most beloved and trusted franchises in gaming history? That's not progressive. That's an agenda, and it's being delivered through a Trojan Horse shaped like a Poké Ball. Kids deserve to just be kids and enjoy a Pokémon game without being quietly nudged into questioning things they shouldn't have to think about yet.

It's honestly wild that we've hit this point with Pokémon of all franchises. I just gave the re-re-re-release of Pokémon FireRed a perfect 10 the other week because that game understands what made Pokémon magical in the first place — simplicity, adventure, fun. Champions couldn't even get past the character select screen without fumbling the bag. I didn't score a single battle, didn't catch a single Pokémon, didn't explore a single area. The game wouldn't even let me feel like me before it started, and that's a fundamental failure. Woke to the absolute max. Who would've guessed that Pokémon would be the franchise to finally hit rock bottom?