First off, and I will probably parrot this again and again, I love how companies are giving us demos again. Being able to try it out before buying is ultra consumer friendly and can cause people like me who were not interested to be more on the fence or even convinced into buying a game. I have not had the pleasure of playing Pokken Tournament before this and I have to say I was pleasant surprise. 3-D fighting games have always been hit or miss in my book but this one is shaping to be something that makes it's way into my library.
The demo of Pokken Tournament DX by The Pokémon Company and Bandai Namco Entertainment came with a tutorial and you could play 15 rounds before the demo was over. You can play single player mode or a two player mode. The available Pokemon to try out were Pickachu, Empoleon, and Charizard. You also get two support sets of Snivy and Lapras or Reshiram and Cresselia.
I found that for a fighter with simple attack inputs its surprisingly deep. You get a jump, a charge, a ranged attack, a melee, and a block. The battle is also broken up into two phases, one being field where it is a 3-D fighter and then duel phases which turns it into a 2-D and opens up a whole other list of fighting commands. This mean that the floor to this game is a little higher then most, which is not a bad thing in my opinion. Since there are a plethora of characters its going to take some time to know what attacks do what and what the popular combos are.
The combat itself reminds me of a slow Marvel vs Capcom. You are building up a charge (synergy) through attacks and you can call in help from your support for a chain attack or just to give you some room. It does add a layer to the overall battle keeping you guessing on when these will be popped and making it possible to reverse the flow of combos. I think these mechanics do a really good job of putting a damper on button mashers. This is made even more clear when I learned how to do counter moves. Its a good way of punishing predictability.
The graphics are clean and the level we were able to see has the details in the background. The attack animations are pretty cool and I really like the little mini show when you are able to pull of an ultimate. The music is okay. I do hope though in the full game you can turn off the announcer. Her voice is not something I want to hear throughout the fight.
Two player mode on the single console isn't great. When you play solo you get the camera position behind your Pokemon and in 2 player mode you still get the same camera that resulting in player 2 having a real awkward angle to play at. Not to mention your positioning controls get reversed because of it. This is made worse with some attacks from player 1 that can move the camera in a really awkward way.
The demo did do enough to keep me interested. There seems to be a leveling system, which is not active during the demo and there aren't any hints at any other game modes. I assume based on the last iteration of the game there will be a single player story. The game looks good and it might be in my wheel house to pick it up. If it wasn't for the demo I don't think I would have given this game a second look.
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