Pokémon Unite
As its genre dictates, each match in Pokémon Unite sees you teaming up with a small group of other players to try and outperform an opposing team in a small arena. You do so by defeating the wild Pokémon throughout the arena to collect their energy and earn experience points. Energy can be used to earn points for your team by dunking them into one of the goals, and experience points let the Pokémon that you control level up and unlock more powerful attacks. Better attacks mean you can take down the wild Pokémon more efficiently, but they are truly a necessity when confronting the opposing team. You'll hardly ever get a chance to score without dealing with some kind of defensive resistance, and you definitely want to take out the competition before they manage to sneak some points and gain the lead.
In order to aid you in your efforts on the field, you can also equip up to three upgradeable items. Because of their upgradability, these are a huge focus of the community's "pay-to-win" criticism. While they do give a slight advantage and cost an exuberant amount to fully upgrade, I can't say I fully agree with the complaints. I haven't invested a cent into the game, but I am still winning the majority of the matches that I compete in. If I do encounter someone who shoved a bunch of money into the game, I can generally still be confident that good teamwork would trump their investment. I haven't done any of the math to back up these claims, but my personal experience in the game thus far indicates to me that money isn't everything.
With that out of the way, my only real problem with this game comes down to my personal preferences. I'm one who likes to beat a game and move on, but the perpetual nature of titles like this inherently clash with that mindset. This led me to subconsciously choose a final goal, and once I had achieved it, I lost almost all of my interest in playing any longer. I'll probably revisit this game with friends down the road, but it's hard to imagine playing it on my own without significant in-game encouragement. That's not to say it's a bad game though. The whole experience was surprisingly fleshed out for a free Pokémon title, and with this game following Café Mix, I can only hope this upward trend continues.
