Seems like Canada will be the lucky ducks to play the beta for Unite first! Also, did we know Garchomp was in already? cause if not...there he is!
Nobody has mentioned anything since the beta released a couple days ago, so I'll share some thoughts from playing a few games yesterday and today. I do not play MOBAs, but the gameplay objectives seemed pretty intuitive. I picked Talonflame/Fletchling because I thought speed was good, though I tried chasing a Venusaur once and noticed that we were moving at the exact same speed, so I guess being a "speedster" is more about having dashing attacks. Every time I pulled off the same strategy of grinding in the middle and leveling up early. It worked out pretty well and from there Talonflame can ambush to kill really easily if all its moves are active. I noticed that in endgame people seem to forgo goals for fighting people or the bosses which give a point buff, though you still have to actually redeem it to count. A nice trick that you can do with an instant goal buff is to use Fly for invulnerability and drop on the opposing goal for a guaranteed dunk. The normal 10 minute battles can drag on since it's always the same map, but I suppose it could be worse and have no time limit. There are some 5 minute quick battles that have more varied maps and mechanics, like a focus on farming with double points for scoring after a teammate. This would be a nice casual mode, but this mode is only playable at certain times that aren't even visible. Other than that, something that confused me for a bit was that Lucario doesn't even spawn as Riolu. Then again, Pikachu doesn't get Pichu so maybe they don't want you to fight babies. I also noticed that there are some buttons relating to voice chat that don't seem to do anything yet. Maybe this will be another game that's compatible with the Nintendo Switch Online™ app.
This is probably part of the genre, but something I'm not used to is having to grind out games to unlock gameplay features like ranked matches, or held items, or item slots, or the ability to upgrade items, or whatever other advantages there are. I don't even think there's an option to pay to speed this up. I guess it's supposed to give players a sense of pride and accomplishment, but I always feel like I'm at a disadvantage whenever I see someone with an item I haven't unlocked through levelups. (You can't see levels but you can see equipped "battle items".) I suppose the playing field levels out when everyone's at max level, which sort of parallels the actual gameplay where you just grind at the start and at the end you can actually fight people at full power. On a related note I got the battle pass + 10 levels, just because I could. It's probably only this generous for the beta since progress doesn't transfer, but there are a few quests that give out a lot of gems/premium currency, and I didn't need other mons/skins, so I figured I may as well make the most of it while it lasts. I haven't seen any payment options yet, but I haven't been seeking them out either. For some reason they put a lot of clothes in the battle pass and shop. There's even a lottery that gives you clothes or tickets that you can use to buy exclusive clothes. Why is there so much customization in this game when you barely even see your avatar in the actual gameplay?
One thing that seemed really unpolished was all the missing text and vague information in general. Battle items are in the clothes shop for some reason and even then some descriptions are blank with the actual stats buried within menus. If I want to find out what Float Stone does, I can't just go to my items because there's no description right now. What I have to do is go to "Battle Prep" and go to "Held Items" and see that it gives 6 Attack and 24 movement speed. From these stats I learned there are physical and special stats in this game, but weren't sure what they did. At first guess I thought it was based off of melee or ranged attacks, but later I stumbled upon a Substitute doll in training mode that showed some random statistics. It shows "Basic Attack Damage" and "Move Damage" as separate numbers, so that may have been it, but I used all of my (melee) attacks with Talonflame and they all showed up as basic damage. I imagine once it actually releases, people will just have to look up what all this data means from some fan guide, including some of the more niche interactions in the game. I noticed that if Talonflame uses Brave Bird, then lands a 3rd/boosted basic attack, your other attack slot will instantly be charged. The game never told me I could do this and I probably won't pull it off consciously, but it seems to be fully intentional. There are also some references from the main games like Cramorant getting to spit Pikachu at low HP, and critical hits that just happen randomly as far as I can tell.
Overall, Pokemon Unite was not horribly unplayable but also not really that great a game. It was a novel experience for me, but walking around a map and watching animations go off is more what I expect from a single player RPG. Even with playing with what is apparently the most mobile character, I still felt like a slowpoke at times, so I can't imagine how it feels to actually play as a Slowbro or Snorlax. I don't know if I'll download it again when it actually releases.
EDIT: (2021/04/24) It's been a month and the beta has long since ended, though I did still play a bit after making this post. I don't want to double post/bump since nothing new has really happened, so you can just read this edit whenever the game actually releases and the thread comes back to life. After a while I got a bit tired of playing as Talonflame and winning/losing based on initial interactions, so I tried some other mons. After many battles I did end up leveling up to the point that I got the third item slot and upgrades, so at that point I basically had my maximum potential. You get a flat EXP boost for playing with mons you haven't used, and I think it's based on number of times as I noticed that a mon I used once still had the bonus after a while.
One thing I want to touch on more here is that a lot of the mechanics like items/moves/"abilities" are adapted from the actual games, though some seem more relevant than others. The starters had the type boost abilities, Gardevoir had Synchronize to sync whatever status ailments there are, and Cramorant had Gulp Missile as said, though it didn't really do much since its special auto attack spits out the fish anyway. Blastoise has a trick where you can rapid spin and hydro pump at the same time, but the cooldown means you can only do it once in a while. It was fun to spam in training mode though. Some of the Unite moves are cool too like Charizard has a Seismic Toss reference and they all have unique names from the ones that I was able to see.
I ended up really liking Eldegoss's healing support and survivability playstyle. It gets to the point that I was single handedly blocking a lane and never dying on defence, though having offensive support is still needed for progress and leveling, and dying can actually be useful to get rid of having maximum balls that slow your goals down. Pollen Puff is a targeted delayed projectile, but attaches itself to characters immediately so you can end up with nice AOE guaranteed damage or a healing zone. With a fully upgraded cooldown item and move upgrade, its cooldown was a mere 4.5s and with a Shell Bell I was able to slowly solo a boss with ease. There's also an AOE Cotton Guard that absorbs damage and heals. Eldegoss's unite move is not that great for killing, but it does add speed/invincibility/damage/healing and that's really all it needs. I had some great cooperation moments like finishing off Zapdos and healing my team back to full while making our way towards an instant goal, and in another game successfully fighting off a (weakened) 2v5 with Gible that allowed the top lane to proceed unhindered.
I did end up unlocking the full battle pass and all the mons because they were so cheap in the beta, but in the real app they probably won't be so charitable with the premium currency. It seems that you should focus on saving your coins for item enhancers as the main priority, as in the end I could only fully upgrade 5 of them with the gold I had.