How are we feeling about Pokemon Champions?

[DrampardonMe]

You know, the game that comes out in a couple weeks for Switch, Switch 2, and... phones, I think? Anyway, the 8th of April is the exact date of release.

I'm not super into competitive, but I still have fun with online battles under the right circumstances, so I might try it. Something happened to my previous SD Card which (as far as I know) made me unable to play Pokemon Scarlet (and Legends: Arceus, but yeah) and I found out YEARS LATER Pokemon Home gives you at least one box for free (Paid obviously gives more storage options, among other perks...), so it'd be a waste to not use my beloved Sandstorm team after figuring out that's all it took to recover it. Question is, how many Pokemon will be available at launch? Because it might throw a wrench in my plans if I can't use all six. Most of my other 'mons on Home aren't battle-worthy, lol

(Yeah I know they'll "add more" down the road, but speaking as a customer, I'm not sure if this is just how developers have to do it to ease their workload anymore, or if it's just Game Freak being weird)

So, uh... Anyone else at least curious about the game like I am? I hope there's a single-player mode, too, just to help refresh my battle skills before I try and go online to do everything. But then I saw some of the character designs and they were cool enough to have me invested to learn more about them. Also why haven't they been prominently featured in Western news stuff that's really bizarre to me

[Del]

looking forward to it, it'll be fun to use my own Pokémon for once instead of just stuff on Showdown, and the graphics look pretty good. a little worried about the "monitization" (although you can't pay real money explicitly for VP) and how much that'll restrict team building early on, but it's pretty promising so far I think.

phone release is going to be Later This Year™, but yeah, the Switch/2 release is the 8th, and then mobile later.
we don't know the exact roster yet, but a relatively safe guess imo would be the S/V+DLC roster, and the Z-A roster, minus all the non-fully evolved species (and the NFE part has been confirmed except for MAYBE Pikachu?).

Being battle-worthy actually barely matters, because you can just do it all in Champions, after all. there are no IVs (everything is just set as if they were max), all moves are available, and natures and EVs can just be set. the only issue you might have is the VP cost, but it sounds like we're gonna have enough to make at least one team.

I think it got confirmed there's no single player content outside of the opening tutorials though, which basically amount to "this is what a super effective move is! this is what terrain is! this is how mega evolution works!" etc.