Pokemon Masters is the latest Pokemon app released by Dena Co. The game takes place on the Pasio Island where you are challenged to take on the Pokemon Master League (or PML as known in the game). The question is, will this game reach the same heights as Pokemon Go?

I have to answer that with a resounding no. This game follows the common trend of 'free to play' mobile games filled with hidden microtransactions. I'm not against these personally and would even buy a few if the game was good enough. However, after the first couple of hours playing Pokemon Masters, I've already decided this game isn't one of the ones I'm willing to spend money on.

The gameplay is very different from other pokemon games. Instead of catching pokemon, you are tasked with collecting 'sync trainers' who have their own specialist pokemon. As an example, Brock specialises in Onix. The sync trainers are based on gym leaders, elite 4 members and even rivals from previous games. For example, Barry from the Sinnoh region who uses Piplup. The game does feature an evolution mechanic in it, so you can evolve Barry's Piplup into an Empoleon.

The main problem I have with the game is a lack of an engaging storyline. As I mentioned before, you are gearing up to take on the PML. However instead of exploring the game map and clearing gyms you just follow the game's story through a series of 'missions' which is another word for a series of bland textboxes for you to scroll through. The missions are categorised as either 'story' or 'battle'. The story missions do not contain much meat, they are basically just creating excuses to recruit a new sync trainer to your team. As for battling, this was also a disappointment.

The battle system consists of a 3 vs 3 battle between your sync trainers and another team of sync trainers. Instead of a turn based battle system like we're used to, the battle operates continuously with an energy bar dictating when you can use a move. Your movepool sucks in this game though. Each pokemon can only learn 2 moves and they're mainly monotype moves. Additionally, all pokemon have a single weakness. There is no strategy in this game, just send out the sync trainers whose pokemon types match your opponents weaknesses. I have also heard from watching a guide to this game, that once you get far enough in the story you don't even need to swap out sync trainers since you gain a core group that's too powerful to be countered.

The battle system also features an overpowered 'sync move' (which I guess is analogous to Z-moves) that you can use after a certain amount of moves have been used. This move will raise the stats of your entire team and deal heavy damage. So essentially you are racing to use your sync moves before the opponent. Overall, the battle system, which should be the main focus of a Pokemon game, lacks soul. If you thought 5 moveslot syndrome was annoying, wait until you see the 2 monotype moveslot syndrome in Pokemon Masters.

One final thing that irritated me in the battle missions was the ability for the opponent to swap out pokemon after they faint. What were they thinking? Switching pokemon is an essential part of strategy which they removed in Pokemon Masters. Since you are only limited to 3 pokemon in a battle and the opponent could have 6, this seems like a highly artificial way to increase the difficulty of the game. If they wanted to make a difficult pokemon game, they needed to add more strategic options like diverse move pools, switching pokemon in battles, more pokemon weaknesses. I really shouldn't need to say this since these are features present in existing Pokemon games.

Now for the icing on the mouldy cake that should've been binned months ago, the microtransactions. As is the case in most mobile games there is an intermediate currency system called 'gems'. You can either gain gems for free or purchase them. Gems can be used to 'scout' for sync trainers which is actually one of EA's infamous surprise mechanics in disguise. It's essentially a loot box system, with RNG dictating which trainer you unlock from each scout. If I'm going to give credit somewhere, they actually post the odds of unlocking every trainer so you at least understand the true odds of unlocking the trainers you really want. For those curious, the 5 star trainers is 1.4%. Not all mobile games are this generous with information. However, the real kicker is that this game differentiates between paid gems and unpaid gems. Unpaid gems are sometimes banned from certain purchases like the 'Celebration Rally' offer which guarantees a 5 star trainer.

My final verdict is a 4/10. This game is dull, lacks strategy and is clear that they are only interested in selling their gems instead of making an enjoyable game. They chose to add unfair mechanics to artificially raise the difficulty of the game instead of making balanced mechanics with progressively smarter AIs that will challenge you towards the end of the game.