The Pokémon Company released Pokémon Champions, a new free-to-play title focused exclusively on Pokémon battles, on April 8 for the Nintendo Switch. Only a day later, the developers have announced that they are currently working on fixing a series of bugs and errors that have been identified on launch, including faulty move descriptions and “incorrect genders” of Pokémon featured in the game.
Right upon the game’s release, a Gallade from the Pokémon Champions tutorials made headlines both overseas and in Japan for appearing as female, even though, canonically, all Gallade are male. For those who are not familiar with the franchise, Gallade is a Pokémon that can only evolve from a male Kirlia exposed to a Dawn Stone. With a 100% male gender ratio, this means having a female Gallade on your is pretty much impossible. While some fans took this as an opportunity to theorize about a possible “first ever female Gallade,” the gender mix-up drew much criticism on social media.
On their official website, the developers noted that “the gender markers of some Pokémon in the tutorial are incorrect,” and despite not specifying the Pokémon in question, it’s safe to assume that this is meant to address the mishap with Gallade.
Other bugs mentioned include the incorrect description of the Leech Seed status, and a bug that prevents you from selecting moves. While the actual Leech Seed status has you take damage equal to 1/8 of your maximum HP, the game’s description falsely states that you would take 1/16 of your maximum HP as damage. Though, according to the developers, the actual damage is calculated correctly in-game.
Furthermore, when you hover your cursor over Mega Evolutions while checking move descriptions during battle and then press B, you may end up getting locked out of selecting moves. According to the developers, this can be temporarily fixed in-game by opening and closing the surrender window using the “-” button.
This, and some other minor bugs are scheduled to be fixed in future updates, with the first server maintenance set to take place on April 10 from 8AM to 10AM JST.
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