Pokémon Sword & Shield is changing fundamental parts of the journey to become a Champion. The Galar region has its own set of rules for the Pokémon League, which involves a tournament against the best Pokémon Trainers in the region, rather than endlessly facing off against the Elite Four.

The addition of the Champion Cup tournament in Pokémon Sword & Shield has the potential for some amazing moments, as it will give the Pokémon video games their first true tournament arc. The old rules have been thrown out of the window and its time for players to face the possibility of being truly defeated on their Pokémon journey.

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The Elite Four Is No More - It's All About The Champion Cup

The road to becoming a Champion in the Pokémon video games has been almost identical since the days of Pokémon Red & Blue. The player travels the region and defeats the eight Gym Leaders, which will earn them a shot at the Elite Four. Once the Elite Four have been defeated, the player earns the right to challenge the Champion.

Pokémon Sword & Shield will be doing away with the concept of the Elite Four. The Galar region uses a different set of rules for its Pokémon League. Defeating the eight Gym Leaders will guarantee the player a spot in the Champion Cup, which is a tournament against the other Pokémon Trainers in the region who have also collected eight Gym Badges. The person who wins the Champion Cup will earn a right to challenge the reigning Champion to a battle.

The player will need to compete in a tournament for the first time as part of the story in a Pokémon video game. Pokémon Black 2 & White 2 had an optional World Tournament mode and the online modes in previous Pokémon games have had tournaments, but the Champion Cup will be an integral part of the story.

The Tournament Arc Is A Staple Of Anime & Manga

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The tournament arc is a popular trope in shonen anime and manga series. The series that is most famous for its tournaments is Dragon Ball, which had several World Martial Arts Tournaments throughout the run of its series, leading up to the multidimensional Tournament of Power in Dragon Ball Super. 

A lot of anime and manga included their own tournament arcs, and these provided some of the most memorable moments in each series, such as the Dark Tournament in Yu Yu Hakusho, the Chunin Exam in Naruto, Battle City in Yu-Gi-Oh!, the Hunter Exam in Hunter X Hunter, the Corrida Colosseum tournament in One Piece, and the U. A. Sports Festival in My Hero Academia, just to name a few.

The competitive nature of Pokémon battling means that the Pokémon video games are ripe for tournaments, yet the games have always eschewed them in favor of battles that can be repeated if the player loses. The same cannot be said for the Pokémon anime, which has used tournament arcs since the beginning.

The Pokémon Anime Has Been Using Tournaments For Years

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The creators of the Pokémon anime had no idea that the series would be running for so long, so they had the freedom to tinker with the formula and make things more exciting than they are in the video games, which is why the Pokémon Leagues work differently in the anime.

In the Pokémon anime, winning the eight Gym Badges gives the Pokémon Trainer to right to enter the local Pokémon League Conference, which is a single-elimination tournament involving the best trainers in the region. The number of Pokémon that the trainer can use is limited in the first few rounds and a full team generally isn't used until the final battle. Ash Ketchum has competed in seven of these tournaments to date, and he finally won the Manalo Conference in the Alola region earlier this year.

The Champion Cup in Pokémon Sword & Shield functions in a similar manner to how the Pokémon Leagues in the anime have been running since the beginning.

How Will The Tournament Arc Work In A Pokémon Video Game?

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One of the big questions about the Champion Cup is how it will function in a game where the player has the capacity to lose?

The previous Pokémon games allowed the player to challenge the Elite Four and the Champion as many times as they wanted to, with no repercussions for failure outside of losing money. How will the game deal with the possibility of the player losing in a single-elimination tournament? Will it take the Dragon Quest VII: Fragments of the Forgotten Past approach and pretend it was all a dream while letting the player keep the experience points they had earned from the battle?

The true nature of the Champion Cup is still sketchy as of the time of writing, and it's unclear how it will work in the game. There are a lot of storyline possibilities for a tournament arc in a mainline Pokémon video game, and it will be interesting to see what ideas Game Freak will use and how the other characters in the game will perform when forced to face each other in the ring.

Pokémon Sword & Shield will be released for the Nintendo Switch on November 15, 2019.

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