More Multi-Battles
What Pokemon Can Learn From Digimon Story
Throughout the series, Pokemon has gradually introduced spins to its classic formula. From rotating battles to aerial ones, the original one-on-one style has been mixed up in recent iterations of Pokemon. However, these different battle styles are greatly outnumbered by the number of standard battles the player fights, and including more two-on-two and three-on-three fights would benefit Pokemon.
In the Digimon Story games, all battles feature up to three of the player’s Digimon, which adds more variety to battles, and more depth. Comparatively, one-on-one battles rely on swapping out Pokemon for different types the moment players find themselves at a disadvantage. At the very least, we’d like to see more double battle encounters that don’t rely on the gimmick of encounter a duo of trainers. There’s no reason that double battles can’t happen more often when facing off against another single trainer, and hopefully the next game in the series will incorporate double battles more frequently. Even the competitive scene adopted doubles as its primary mode of play, and that has to mean something.
Having more than one monster fighting at a time is a great way to make battles feel like more of a team effort. Rather than a changing series of one-on-one match-ups, larger brawls better give the sense of a dynamic, cooperative team strategically trying to outdo their adversaries. Having three on the battlefield at any given time also makes using more of the roster easier. When you have three Digimon on the battlefield, it’s easy to have one of them serve a niche role, even if that Digimon doesn’t have much use in the “meta” otherwise. On the other hand, standard, one-on-one Pokemon battles almost require that every Pokemon on a team is capable on their own, which limits the number of viable Pokemon.
