- Accidental Innuendo:
- By way of The Problem with Pen Island. The Pokémon Masters twitter celebrated the game's one-year anniversary with a major update, giving it the subtitle "EX" and promoting it with the Twitter hashtag #pokemonmastersex. Unfortunately, due to it being all lowercase letters, it can be misread as "Pokémon master sex" or blatantly: #PokemonMasterSex with the little Red emoji at the time still attached, breaking the floodgates to all sorts of innuendo on the tag. Since then, it's been quietly acknowledged as the "EX" hashtag is no longer used on the official accounts.
- May's Easter seasonal outfit looks a lot like the outfits for the stereotypical bunny girl outfit.
- The Rising New Year's Resolutions event has Wallace recalling that Sabrina gave him a premonition; that something "large, white, and long" would lead to his success. note
- Some of the characters' voice lines have moaning/groaning/whimpering audio that some have pointed out sound rather... suggestive. In a compilation for Volo's audio, these are followed by him crying out "Please have mercy!", which makes it even funnier.
- Americans Hate Tingle: Arc Suits were generally well received by the Japanese player base, being seen as a cool reskin of multiple beloved sync pairs with extremely powerful kits. Across the world however, Arc Suits received substantially more negative reception due to them being the focal point of the massive controversy of the game's fifth anniversary, and the West generally despises Arc Suits and considers them low-effort reskins that require more expensive resources to upgrade.
- And You Thought It Would Fail: Sync grids for 4/5 and 5/5 move levels were very controversial in the community when they were first announced back in October 2022. Many believed that this would result in many sync pairs to become unviable even at 3/5 move level (the previous limit to where a sync pair would need to be considered at their full potential) and forcing players to spend more and more candies to increase the sync pairs' move levels. As it was later revealed via subsequent updates, 5/5 move level sync grids often had the opposite effect on older sync pairs, with their 5/5 move level grids making them viable, and they are now celebrated as an essential for older pairs to be rendered viable again. It helps that the few units that started off with a 5/5 move level grid have since been power-crept to the point where having a 5/5 move level grid on them isn't a huge issue.
- Arc Fatigue: Paulo’s supposed fall as a person and being influenced by villainous teams and factions in the name of getting stronger during the villain event’s “Paulo Interludes” has been met with this, with many people complaining about how long this supposed Face–Heel Turn is being dragged out and how annoying and unsympathetic it makes Paulo look as a result. Quite a few people have declared that if Pokémon Masters is going to make Paulo a villain, they should just get it over with already. It finally happened at the end of Team Plasma's Villain Arc when Paulo snaps after his Rockruff is seemingly killed by Kyurem and Paulo's negative emotions overwhelmed Lear's Hoopa causing it to go into its Unbound form and Paulo has become a full-on Knight Templar and has decided to become "the last evil" by getting rid of all of the other evil team leaders.
- Ass Pull: In the Team Plasma Villain Arc, Ghetsis attempts to fuse his Kyurem with N's captured Zekrom. It looks like the protagonists are unable to stop it from happening, until Hilbert reveals he has a Kyurem of his own that pushes aside Ghetsis's Kyurem and fuses with Zekrom to become Kyurem Black. Said Kyurem just came out of the blue with nothing that indicates its existence and with no backstory nor any hint that Hoopa had been involved. Moreover the fact that the only way for the fusion to happen is for Kyurem owner to have the DNA Splicers, something that Hilbert's never said to have, makes the reveal become even more contrived. The only logical explanation fans have come up with is that this Kyurem is from the timeline the game was set in and is not the one Ghetsis has.
- Awesome Music: The game soundtrack features an extensive amount of remixes of nearly every battle theme from every generation. However, each remix isn't your regular remix, as each sample goes out of its way to feature brand new scores that weren't in the original tracks while still somehow retaining the spirit of what the remix is remixing. One that deserves an absolute mention is the remix
combining Lance, Steven and Cynthia's battle themes into one of the most astronomical pieces in the game. - Base-Breaking Character: Although no one argues about her gameplay performance, Lillie in her Anniversary 2024 attire became controversial as soon as she was leaked. One side claims that because she and Solgaleo are a sync pair given for free, the outfit being a simple Palette Swap was justifiable, that DeNA could have done the even lazier route by not giving her a special outfit in the first place and using her usual appearance. Another side points out that not only was the outfit an uninspiring recolour among a Fifth Anniversary already swamped with despised colour-changed pairs (the Arc Suit sync pairs) but that tolerating it would result in even more boring outfits for future years.
- Bizarro Episode: The events featuring characters from the Pokémon anime. Neither the Team Rocket Trio nor Ash seem to get the chance to talk to anyone else other than the original characters debuting in Masters, perhaps to avoid confusing them with versions they never met before. It's even made more bizarre in the episodes focusing Ash:
- Lear praises Ash by looks alone, despite the fact Lear either fights a sync pair or has done his research to deem them worthy of his attention to beat them. In fact, Lear was too gracious enough to invite Ash to his home, despite being a total stranger.
- To show off that Ash is so dependable, he ends up being the problem solver to Tina's trust issues with her Flareon, directly causing Tina to become so unreliable without his help unlike how she was presented to be otherwise in her storyline with Paulo.
- The "Blazing Battle with Ash" event has Ash solely fighting random Trainers to fight Scottie/Bettie for last. Notably, his foes are presented as brute forcers while he dishes out strategy after strategy to beat them all. Said foes don't even get to use sync moves while he uses Gigantamaxed Gengar, Mega Lucario, and Pikachu's Z-Move. The other main playable characters actually do get to watch Ash battle. However, not a single one of them even refers to him by name, and they all seem to be more interested on the Trainers he fights rather than him. Except Red, though he never talks to Ash unlike how they were shown fighting each other in the promotional trailers. Conveniently, all of the protagonists featured weren't adapted into the anime.
- Broken Base: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
- Common Knowledge: It's commonly stated that Iris is Leon's cousin, with people using this game as a reference with an image of Iris in the game stating this. In reality, the cited screenshots are a fabrication created by a Pokémon Masters player.
- Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- In the early days of the game, Olivia & Lycanroc were considered one of the best, if not the best strike sync pair, making them common in co-op battles. Because co-op battles favor Lightning Bruisers, Lycanroc was often the go-to Pokémon thanks to its powerful Stone Edge attack combined with support skills that raise its own attack, critical hit rate, and accuracy and a passive skill that raises its speed every time it lands a critical hit.
- Play a co-op battle for the Electric-type Training Event, and you're guaranteed to see at least one Hau on the field of play (probably two, or even three if you're using him yourself). You get him for free during the story mode, his support skills raise his attack, speed, and evasion, and his Discharge attack hits the entire opposing team for considerable damage. And since the entire AI team for that event is weak to Electric, a common sight is a team of three Haus all burning through their support skills as quickly as possible and then spamming Discharge until everything faints.
- Pryce is everywhere in Ice-type Training Event co-op battles for similar reasons to Hau above: he's a story mode freebie, has support skills to buff his own stats, a strong Herd-Hitting Attack (Icy Wind), and the entire enemy team is weak to his type.
- Team Rainbow Rocket Giovanni & Mewtwo are commonplace for many players. A sync pair obtained from the Legendary Adventures, Mewtwo surpasses many other free sync pairs in terms of stats and its moves are incredibly powerful. One could see Giovanni being used often in co-op multiplayer battles, especially ones where the opponent is weak to Psychic type.
- For a while since the game's release, Rosa & Serperior were often considered the best of the free sync pairs, thanks to being a free 5-star (and one that you receive very early in the game), impressive bulk, and very useful support skills for the early days of the game. They even became one of the first sync pairs eligible for EX status. Unsurprisingly, it showed up often in both single player and co-op play.
- Sygna Suit Red & Charizard became a fan favorite for pretty much every kind of battle right off, due to a downright broken ability set. He and his Charizard possess a 3-bar team-hitting Heat Wave and a 4-bar single-target Blast Burn, both of which do a ton of damage and can inflict Burn, and Charizard has the speed to spam it reliably, even before you factor in Red's "My Destiny!" Trainer move that increases Charizard's Special Attack and Speed by three stages. If his attack set wasn't enough, his passives are even MORE insane, with skills that can either recover one bar of the Move Gauge or lower the sync move countdown by one with any successful attack, and most importantly, the Piercing Gaze skill that makes Charizard's attacks ALWAYS HIT. Oh, and Charizard can Mega Evolve to push his offense even higher (and gain a powerful Flare Blitz attack in the bargain, giving him a physical attack option for Pokémon with high Special Defense). Simply put, Red & Charizard were the most powerful offensive sync pairs in the game when they were released, and it's not uncommon to see three Reds at the start of any co-op battle. And then he got EX, letting his sync move hit every Pokémon on the field. And none of this is even touching on his sync grid...
- With the introduction of her sync grid, Skyla & Swanna have easily become the most popular support pair to use. In addition to being a sync pair that is obtained from the story for free, with her Trainer move "Take Flight!" she can maximize the entire team's speed and defense as well as having MP Refresh on her Potions allow her to continuously heal the entire team. With impressive bulk and abilities, its no wonder she's relied on often. Likely as a result of her usefulness, the September 2020 6☆EX poll results revealed that out of the eligible sync pairs to receive a 6☆EX upgrade, Skyla was the most voted sync pair by far, receiving 25.03% of all votes.
- Sygna Suit Leaf & Venusaur became commonplace online simply due to their sheer utility. They have the not one, but two healing skills, while also being pretty bulky themselves, allowing them to keep allies healthy for a long, long time. Their Razor Leaf move hits everyone on the battlefield, which, considering that their attacks inflict toxic poison and lower defenses, leave all the flunkies wide open for everyone to whale on.
- Finally, to round out the Pallet Town trio, Sygna Suit Blue and Blastoise mark themselves as one of the best tanking/support units in the game. Blastoise's stat spread had a heavy focus on bulk, and Blue's skillset effectively gives him the ability to potentially raise EVERY single stat to max on his own with the right setup. Even then he was considered underwhelming compared to Sygna Suit Red and Leaf... So DeNA added more grid abilities that can recover the team's HP both when Blastoise uses an attack AND when it gets attacked itself, making Blue and his team incredibly difficult to bring down.
- In terms of Lucky Skills, two stand out from the rest: Critical Strike 2 and Vigilance. A sync pair with Critical Strike 2 increases the strength of its critical hits (which, as in the main series games, ignore the opponents' defensive buffs) allowing it to consistently hit hard if its critical hit rate is raised by 3 stages. Vigilance prevents a sync pair from receiving critical hits (similarly to the Shell Armor ability in the main series games) which greatly improves the survivability of support sync pairs.
- Expect practically every Trainer in harder co-op battles to use Sygna Suit Serena & Zygarde or Sygna Suit Ethan & Lugia. Both have powerful area-of-effect attacks and as Master Fair sync pairs, they have passive skills that provide additional buffs to grant their teammates even more firepower and survivability.
- Sygna Suit Red (Thunderbolt) & Pikachu has become this in spades, to the point where people use him as their off-type sync pair of choice should they lack a third sync pair on their team to fight the enemy in co-op. This is because Red has a multitude of crazy buffs, from a Max Move that paralyses the enemy, a crazy strong Trainer move, and a Buddy Move that does massive damage to all opponents and can be used over and over with the only drawback being that it can only be used when Electric Terrain is active. But even that isn't a problem for Red, as with the correct upgrades he can set up Electric Terrain via his Max Move, and even without it Red can still set up Electric Terrain manually.
- Ash & Pikachu has become a common sight, as not only does he have a very strong base attack and note one, but two strong Trainer moves, he also has B Thunderbolt—quite possibly one of the strongest moves in the game, period. B Thunderbolt is essentially a one-time use attack that does more damage the more sections from the move gauge that it uses. The result was a move that even offtype can one-shot most opponents.
- While it technically isn't mandatory, many Battle Rally players will opt for the rather expensive Apple Cup at the final stage. It is worth noting that although the final stage is a stage derived from Ultimate Battles, the Apple Cup makes them essentially a free win, so perhaps this is a bit justified.explanation
- In late 2024, a new team emerged as the dominant team used in almost every circumstance: a Steel-type team consisting of Lillie (Anniversary 2024) & Solgaleo, Sygna Suit Lear & Gholdengo, and Arc Suit Steven & Metagross. The latter is perhaps the single best tanking unit in the game, with excellent defensive stats, in-built resistance to critical hits and multiple ways to heal themselves and their allies, and with a sync move that applies an additional layer of Steel-type rebuff to the opponents, further increasing the damage of Steel-type moves. Sygna Suit Lear & Gholdengo have powerful area-of-effect moves and has the ability to grant the entire team status immunity by using their Pasio Circle, while Lillie (Anniversary 2024) & Solgaleo have a powerful area-of-effect buddy move and can set Steel Zone to even further boost the power of Steel-type moves, as well as boasting the strongest sync nuke of the three (although it is single-target). All three sync pairs also have passive skills that make them immune to stat drops. The only real shortcoming of the team is its lack of ability to change the weather and inflict status conditions, thus facing increased difficulty in stages built around weathers and status conditions, but that does not stop the team from beating every single Ultimate Battle.
- Late 2025 saw an influx of teams that had Volo (Alt.) & Origin Forme Giratina and Neo Champion Selene & Dawn Wings Necrozma. Selene was already exceptional on her own since she's an incredible Sprint that can basically allow a Sync move to be used in two moves, her moves can hit all opponents, and her buddy move ignores passives that reduce damage, block criticals and the Enduring effect. Added with Volo's EX Ghost Zone and abilities to confuse, trap and flinch all at the same time simply by attacking in the presence of one, made the two pairs terrors that could breeze any battle if together. While the position of Support varies, the most used one tend to be Gloria (Anniversary 2025) & Cinderace, due to being exceptional healers who, if attacks are succesfull, can raise Defense and Sp. Defense of all units, heal, and apply Free Move Next to themselves. Teams including all three of them are a rather common sight, especially among Ultimate Battles.
- Difficulty Spike: The main story mode is this. Early chapters give the players a good challenge to breeze through, but Chapter 5 onwards steep up the difficulty, and it gets harsher during Pokémon Masters League story arcs.
- Discredited Meme: The #pokemonmastersex meme was originally one of the game's most popular memes, but as the game further developed it quickly became not just annoying, but also resulted in many jokes with unfortunate implications, leading to a deluge of squicky jokes that killed most of the meme's moment (especially given how the many characters in the games were not even adults. Eventually, it soon evolved into essentially a mocking label for the community as ignorant people would simply brush over the game as "that one game with the funny hastag", killing off the meme for good.
- Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: This game's battle system is generally considered a step down from the main series games, with the occasional Scrappy Mechanic systems laying here and there, but fans love the funny dialogue and all the new characterization for old characters.
- Ensemble Dark Horse: The game's "punk girl" character became an instant hit among fans after her reveal, likely owing to her Creepy Cute design.
- Fan Nickname: Several fan terms have been produced to talk about various features or characters in the game using shorthand:
- Rosa in her Holiday 2019 attire has the nickname "Rosanta", due to her Santa Claus-esque costume.
- The very high-synergy trio of Sygna Suit Red, Sygna Suit Blue and Sygna Suit Leaf are often called the "Kantrio".
- N in his Anniversary 2021 attire is sometimes called "Niversary".
- Sygna Suit Lusamine is sometimes called "LuSSamine" or "Lusamommy", the second one due to her looking even more maternal in her gown and her curves being more emphasized in it.
- May in her Anniversary 2022 attire has the nickname "AnniMay" (which resembles the word "anime" — which she was a major character in for the Pokémon series).
- Some sync pairs are nicknamed based on the combination of the Trainer and their partner Pokémon's names. For example, "Redlax" for Red & Snorlax and "Zerena" for Syna Suit Serena & Zygarde.
- After the release of the story interlude where Paulo seemed to consider whether Team Rocket might be a good fit for him to get stronger, some fans took to calling him "Villain-kun" and "Grunt-kun".
- Accidental leaks from DeNA are usually attributed to a hypothetical employee of theirs fans call "intern-kun" — which comes from a joke that the leak was likely the work of an intern that other doesn't respect the company's rules or who is just grossly incompetent at their job.
- Gloria (Alt 2.) is often referred to as "Glora" after a typo in her Poké Fair Sync Pair Scout banner.
- Gardenia's Summer 2024 outfit was quickly called "Yarrdenia" after her pirate theming.
- The Palentine's outfits were often called "Palpatines" or "Palestines" because of jokes related to people either misreading or mistyping the word due to autocorrect. Both have fallen out of heavy use however due to certain real-world events and are generally only seen as a mistake.
- Argenta is often both as a mistake and purposely called "Argentina" due to their similar sounding names.
- Lillie in her Holiday 2024 outfit was often called "Holillie" or "Vietnam Lillie", the latter due to a her release coincided with the game's end of service in Vietnam.
- Game-Breaker: Shares a page with the other Pokémon games.
- Genius Bonus:
- All of the Anniversary units each feature a red lily in their outfit. A red lily in the language of flowers means "passion", which is what the name "Pasio" is derived from.
- The teaser for Juliana and Florian included a sandwich as part of the teaser. While the oranges and grapes at the top indicate Florian and Juliana's introductions (via showing the fruits of their home schools), the sandwich contains bell peppers, pickles, and ham. These ingredients, if applied on a sandwich in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, increases the encounter rates for Fighting, Poison and Ground-types. Given how in the story, Juliana is the one who makes sandwiches, the poster is effectively making the perfect sandwich for her Koraidon!
- Why does the 6th Anniversary sync pairs only feature the final evolutions of Fire-type starters (Charizard, Hisuian Typhlosion and Cinderace)? Because in their regional Pokedex, the final evolutions of the region's Fire-type starters are the 6th Pokemon.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- One small but noticeable part of the Masters EX player base with this is in regards to the monthly datamines that effectively give a preview to what comes the next month. Datamines are generally disliked by Japanese players of the game, as they widely believe that datamines spoil the fun of guessing what comes every month, with many Japanese players outright blocking renowned dataminers' social media accounts. In much of the rest of the world, however, datamines are a huge and borderline renowned event, out of both suspense that often builds up for an entire month between datamines, and also out of pragmatism as the datamine gives details about the upcoming sync pair scouts and gem counts so players can decide in advance if they are going to spend gems on sync pair scouts in the following month.
- Battle Rally is overall disliked by Japanese and Chinese players, as many players in Asia overall are turned away by the more complicated mechanics of Battle Rally and the inability of simply sitting back with the game's most overpowered sync pairs and winning for free gems. In the West however, Battle Rally is more divisive on the side of popular with players praising the game forcing players to switch out different teams and increasing the variety in battles, but complaining about the mode's difficulty.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- One of Emmet’s random conversations has him mention how much he looks up to Ingo, and how they make a good team. That in itself is sweet. However, come Legends Arceus, Ingo is revealed to have fallen through a time rift to Hisui, without his brother and with almost no memories.
- The introduction of "Renegade Sygna Suit" Cynthia has her aligned with Giratina, making it look like an Evil Costume Switch, but she's still as benevolent as ever. Legends Arceus features Volo; Cynthia's possible ancestor who is actually the Big Bad of the game's events, having aligned with Giratina and undergoes an Evil Costume Switch himself, although with a bright Arceus theme. Both even have a remix of Cynthia's encounter theme.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
- Ho Yay: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise.
- I Knew It!: Now has its own page.
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Although many actual and confirmed villains are found across Masters EX, many haven't drawn the ire and hatred of the community, due in large part to either Adaptational Heroism, Love to Hate or just plain old Evil Is Cool. The same can't be said for Benga, whom as soon as his appearance in the Arceus Arc where he gave a "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Lance, was widely hated due to having seemingly little repercussion from his blatantly arrogant and disrespectful behaviour, and the fact that the story treats his actions as being correct with Benga seemingly not changing for the better. Many rejoiced seeing Alder firmly prove as to why his grandson's ways were wrong as Arceus selected him for an Arc Suit over Benga.
- Just Here for Godzilla: For most fans, the biggest appeal of this game is less the gameplay itself, but the greater focus on the Pokémon trainers and the interactions between them, with even the previously blank-slate protagonists being fleshed out and given personalities of their own for the first time in the games (not counting adaptations like the anime or Adventures) (save for Red). It helps that this game features the return of various trainers that hadn't been seen since their original games, most notably the Unova trainers.note
- Low-Tier Letdown:
- 5-star sync pairs obtained from the PML story arc (Rosa & Serperior, Acerola & Palossand, Cheren & Stoutland, and Calem & Meowstic) get hit with this, due to there being no dedicated ways of raising their move level note . The only other option is to use move candies, which are always better saved for powerful sync pairs obtained from the gacha in order to save on gems, which are best used for obtaining different gacha sync pairs instead of multiple copies of the same sync pair just to raise their move level. Cheren & Stoutland are hit the hardest with this, as the other 3 still see some niche use for free-to-play strategies, even when only at move level 1, while Cheren & Stoutland's viability barely gets improved even after receiving their sync grid expansion in November 2022.
- In general, strike sync pairs that were released with Mega Evolutions, especially if their strongest moves or passive skills are locked behind it. This is due to two reasons: the sync move base power of sync pairs with Mega Evolutions are made much weaker (unless they are an Arc Suit sync pair) than other sync pairs to seemingly balance their stat increase after Mega Evolving, while strike EX does not increase sync move base power like tech EX does, and the time used for sync moves are better given for other pairs such as EX support pairs (to further boost the entire team's damage output) or pairs with stronger sync move damage. In fast-paced game modes such as the Champion Stadium Master Mode, these sync pairs tend to be too slow to deal enough reliable damage before the opponent wipes out the whole team with their own sync moves. Fortunately, in May 2025, all sync pairs that were released with Mega Evolutions received new sync grid tiles to boost their sync move base power, allowing them to catch up with other sync pairs which higher sync move base powers.
- Some sync pairs unfortunately haven't or couldn't be saved by EX upgrades or even expanded grids:
- Grimsley & Liepard were created with a very specific niche in mind—Dark weak enemies who frequently use buffs. While there are some encounters that this falls under, most notably Cresselia from the Legendary Arena, they're rare and Liepard's base stats are too low for it to do much else. Even when their grid received an expansion, it was generally considered underwhelming and not enough to render him worth using over other sync pairs.
- Nate & Braviary are a strike sync pair that struggles to deal damage. Braviary's stats are all unusually low, with an attack stat that barely gets past 300 when fully upgraded, where most strike sync pairs have their relevant attacking stat in the upper 300s at worst, and many easily reach 400 or higher. Their sync grid is unremarkable, and doesn't do nearly enough to compensate for Braviary's low stats. Their main attacking move is Fly, which due to being a two-turn move means it takes longer for his team to charge up their sync move. With this being Nate's only sync pair for a long time until he received his Neo Champion alternate outfit and sync pair in November 2023, it stands out all the more when compared to the multiple sync pairs all the other Unova protagonists have received. Nate's sync grid expansion was eventually released in 2025... only to amount to a scant few tiles that failed to fix the core issues.
- For a long time since their debut, Steven (Anniversary 2021) & Rayquaza were the butt of jokes and had a reputation of being possibly the worst Master Fair sync pair in the entire game, primarily due to having Crippling Overspecialization towards being a sync nuker that benefits in conditions without weather (when they were released, Flying Zone did not exist yet, while weathers were the most common damage-boosting field effects at the time, rendering Steven & Rayquaza practically unable to benefit from many of the best damage multipliers in the game), and most critically, having absolutely pathetic attacking stats for a Master Fair strike sync pair even when fully upgraded (much like Nate & Braviary, their attack stats barely gets past 300 when fully upgraded at Level 150). It did not help that like other strike sync pairs that were released with Mega Evolutions, Steven (Anniversary 2021) & Rayquaza suffered from having weaker sync move base power. However, since March 2025, they have received drastic buffs, including a field EX role which enables them to cast Flying Zone upon using their own sync move to improve their damage output, and sync grid expansions that massively boost their sync move base power, allowing them to at least excel greatly in that hyper-specialised role.
- Arc Suit Lance & Dragonite are considered the worst Arc Suit sync pair, because despite still being an extremely powerful sync pair, they lack many damage multipliers, only gaining a few methods of increasing their damage output, and with a debuffing ability — lowers an opponent's Defense or Special Defense by 6 stage ranks depending on the attacking move they use — generally considered to be too overkill to be useful most of the time. In addition, his kit, which is heavily skewed towards single-target effects, has poor synergy with many sync pairs of their type, as many Dragon-Type pairs that want to abuse their Dragon Rebuff are either single-target damage dealers themselves or want to use their sync move before Arc Suit Lance & Dragonite to reach their full power, and a middling Buddy Move. Put up against other Arc Suit sync pairs that released alongside them (Arc Suit Steven & Metagross, who are widely regarded as the best tank in the game, have various debuffing abilities and actually hits back hard unlike most tanks, and Arc Suit Cynthia & Garchomp, who gained catastrophically powerful area-of-effect attacks with various means of increasing her damage output with extremely great synergy with Ground-Type sync pairs), Arc Suit Lance & Dragonite quickly found themselves in the two's shadow, not helped that Arc Suit Lance & Dragonite are also outclassed by newer Arc Suit sync pairs that were released after them in some ways.
- Of the many combinations of sync pair roles and EX roles possible, none are despised as giving support sync pairs the tech EX role. The tech EX role merely boosts the damage of the sync move, which is often considered useless on support sync pairs as many of them do very little damage to their opponents with or without the boost, and the primary purpose of using a support sync pair's sync move is to benefit from the double sync buff the support EX gives. As a result, many would often use their tech EX role cakes on other sync pairs with the tech EX role. It is not helped by the sheer number of sync pairs that are given the tech EX role that are also supports (of the 44 pairs that have the tech EX role as of September 2025, 19 of them are supports).
- Memetic Loser:
- Fans have started making memes about DeNA's tendency to sideline male protagonists of the mainline games in favor of the female, both in general and in a few specific cases. A number of these (especially in the case of Victor) have since become Discredited Memes after the characters in question received more and more sync pairs and alternate outfits.
- For context, as of the game's third anniversary in September 2022, every released female protagonist has received at least one alternate outfit except for Selene—among the boys, only Red, Ethan, Brendan, and Hilbert have any, with Red being the only boy with more than one alternate outfit. At the start of 2022, only one female protagonist, Elaine, had yet to be released, but three boys (Lucas, Chase, and Victor) were still waiting.
- For almost three years Lucas was all but forgotten—and that was insult enough even before noting his co-protagonist Dawn debuted within the game's first year and their rival Barry at launch. His longstanding absence began to demand attention when Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl came and went without Masters giving even a nod to Lucas. To DeNA's credit, he debuted at last in January 2022, with the legendary Dialga as his parner Pokémon and a big role in the Sinnoh chapter of the Villain Arc, but not before the fans noticed. It's worth noting that of the final four protagonists not yet released at the time Lucas was, he was the only one from before the seventh generation. Indeed, DeNA released both sixth generation protagonists and all four fifth generation protagonists before bothering with the fourth generation Lucas.
- Next to Barry's Piplup and Dawn's Turtwig, Chimchar would be the expected starter for Lucas—but it was already assigned to Flint. This left Lucas with no obvious partner and led to some speculation and memes that DeNA would add salt to wound by assigning him a Bidoof.note Ultimately, DeNA threw further salt into the wound by continuing to hold back Infernape from Lucas... by giving him a Torterra for his Mix scout sync pair.
- Lucas later returns to Memetic Loser status as his original sync pair began to become heavily powercrept. In addition, as of March 2025, Lucas remained the only male protagonist (bsides Rei, Chase and the recently released Florian) to not have a single alternate outfit, as all of his alternative sync pairs reused his original outfit. This, alongside his original sync pair being heavily power creep and receiving unsatisfactory upgrades resulted in him becoming the subject of mockery.
- Over time, players have found Brendan stuck in May's shadow. Despite being playable since launch, Brendan received no alternate outfit until he got his Sygna Suit in the Hoenn chapter of the Villain Arc in late July 2022. In contrast, since May's debut in January 2021, she's gained three more sync pairs with alternate outfits, including a Sygna Suit for the Hoenn Villain Arc at the same time as Sygna Suit Brendan—which, incidentally, left May tied with Lillie for the most alternate outfits of any playable character. It doesn't help that May owns two of the three Hoenn starters and that all of her partner Pokémon—Swampert, Lopunny, Latias, and Blaziken—can Mega Evolve, while Brendan's Sceptile couldn't until June 2023, nearly four years after his release. Thankfully, at the start of March 2025, Brendan finally got a Neo Champion outfit, solidifying his escape from being a Memetic Loser.
- Like Lucas, Victor of Pokémon Sword and Shield has also been getting a reputation for being neglected by DeNA. As of July 2022, his female counterpart Gloria has three playable sync pairs, each with a different outfit, while Victor hasn't gotten so much as a mention. However, things are starting to look better for Victor as he'll finally appear in October 2022. But like Lucas, this happened after fans started to notice his long standing absence.
- Nate. Not only are he and Braviary considered a mediocre strike sync pair by players, for a long time he was the only Unovan protagonist who did not get any alternate outfit, compared to Rosa who has a Holiday seasonal and a Special Costume with Delibird and Shaymin, Hilbert who has a Fall seasonal outfit and a Sygna Suit with Mightyena and Genesect, and Hilda who has a multitude of alternate outfits including a Special Costume, a Summer seasonal and a Sygna Suit. Not helping this perception was a scene in the Unova Villain Arc where the protagonists arrive to rescue N, where he addresses them as "Hilbert! Hilda! Rosa! And even Nate!" So when Nate got the coveted Neo Champion alternate costume announced in November 2023, you can bet there was much rejoicing.
- By May 2024, Elio earned this reputation, as at that time he remained the ONLY main character released prior to the year 2022 to whom had yet to receive an alternate unit (even Selene, the female player of Sun and Moon, whom was also a major contender for this trope, received an alternate outfit in the month prior). In fact, many rivals, Gym Leaders and side characters had received alternate costumes before Elio did, which made him into a easy target for memes joking that Elio was in immense pain and desperation for not having an alternate costume. He did eventually gain his Ultra outfit in an update in August 2024.
- Selene was unique among the female protagonists for being the only female protagonist to not receive an alternate costume by the start of 2024, despite female protagonists usually having one or two alternate costumes beforehand note , which thus caused her and Elio to be on the receiving end of jokes that they were not wanted due to the controversial nature of the Generation VII games.
- Basically any character from Pokémon Let's Go, Pikachu! and Let's Go, Eevee! gets hit with this, since Let's Go was the mainline game whose characters took the longest time to debut.note Even characters from Scarlet and Violet debuted first before any Let's Go characters debuted beforehand, which was seen especially memetically for Elaine (since she is a female protagonist, which DeNA is more likely to debut compared to male characters). It took until November 2023 for Elaine to make her debut in Masters and until February 2024 for Chase to make his debut, which caused the community to meme that DeNA was not interested in them, and even extended the meme into joking that they were not placed into the game because of concerns that they wouldn't sell well due to the divisive nature of the Let's Go games.
- The entire Hisui region has come under this label, as despite it seemingly having the same amount of appeal as the standard regions, as of March 2025 Hisui remains the region with the longest stretch of time without a new sync pair - with the most recent new one being Volo back in April of 2024. In addition, Hisui has had the least number of sync pairs and characters debuting, with only 10 sync pairs shared across five characters.
- Ash became one over time due to measures DeNA had been taking that appeared to erase Ash off the face of the game. Not only has he never rerun since his sole appearance during the game's third anniversary, but his battle theme was removed from the game, and the medals from his event no longer show up in the medal list if you did not obtain them. It is worth noting however, that there is a very real rationale for DeNA to do so.note
- Latios from the Legendary Arena has become one, because not only is Latios regarded as the easiest Legendary Arena boss, but also there is a sheer number of sync pairs (broken and not broken) that are able to solo the Latios stage (as of March 2025, there are over 400 sync pairs that can do so). Latios' Memetic Loser status only gets further cemented when his stage became the first ever Legendary Arena that can be solo'd by a single Level 1 sync pair, specifically Arc Suit Steven & Metagross.
- When Version 2.27.0 (the December 2022 update) changed the name of the Iris (Champion) & Hydreigon sync pair to Iris (Alt.) to avoid confusion with the upcoming Neo Champions, Iris (and more specifically the alternate unit) became the subject of mockery and jokes that the developers were stripping her of her champion title. Add on the fact that the unit was quickly becoming outclassed by rampant power creep and the memes only spread faster.
- Lucy solidifies herself as the Memetic Loser of the Ultimate Battle bosses because her stage is the easiest of the lot and also has the most unique clears (as of July 2024, there are over 100 unique clears with Lucy)
- Lucy's Seviper has a small HP pool for an Ultimate Battle, with only around 330,000 HP compared to the other having over half a million on average.
- The primary thing that makes Lucy so easy is her gimmick — which is to poison her opponents and raise her speed to deliver a powerful sync move. The former of the bunch is now hilariously easy to counter,note while the latter can be more manageable via dropping her speed stats or just tanking the hit and defeating her due to her low HP.
- Volo started getting this status immediately upon the 5th anniversary announcement, since Cynthia, Steven Stone, and Lance were announced to be getting Arceus-themed outfits, but Volo (who canonically did wear such an outfit he made himself in Pokémon Legends: Arceus) wasn't.
- Fans have started making memes about DeNA's tendency to sideline male protagonists of the mainline games in favor of the female, both in general and in a few specific cases. A number of these (especially in the case of Victor) have since become Discredited Memes after the characters in question received more and more sync pairs and alternate outfits.
- Memetic Mutation: Now has its own page.
- Memetic Psychopath:
- During the "Three Trainers, Three Minds" story event, Red uses some very Tough Love on his novice team by constantly defeating them himself with his Articuno while they can only cry in agony in every bout they have. Though this harsh training was meant to condition them to not worry too much about defeat, players ended up thinking Red's a vicious psychopath who shouldn't be a teacher. To be fair, Professor Oak does call out Red for this at the end of the event, who can only sheepishly smile.
- Because of Ball Guy's actions (battling various trainers suddenly, along with using Voltorb and Electrode in the process, which are infamous for exploding) there are a number of people who joke that Ball Guy is a terrorist.
- Some people joke that Wally is actually secretly a villain whom just wants as much power as possible and doesn't care about his Pokemon and is on the same scale as Volo ever since he debuted in the Trainer Lodge, as Wally's lodge interactions have a number of... interesting results (Namely, the fact that Wally is the only trainer in the lodge to have Evil schemes as a topic, something not even Giovanni has, the fact that Wally has Pokémon friends as merely an interesting topic, and that Wally's only super exciting topics related to Pokémon are all based on methods to get stronger Pokémon, such as Evolution and Raising Pokémon).
- Moral Event Horizon:
- Team Break go from petty nuisances to crossing the line when they launch an all out attack on the PML in the third round simply to further their thefts. If they didn’t cross it then, they cross it during the April Fools Day event where they take over the Pokémon Center, although it's played for laughs and it's indicated that they're actually all afraid of the three sisters running the place and just give up by the next day.
- Ghetsis crosses it when he takes advantage of N’s lingering love for him, and pretends to pull a Heel–Face Turn, only to drop the ruse to try and get his hands on Zekrom.
- Most Wonderful Sound:
- The three repeating tones that mean you’re either getting a new sync pair or you’ve found a 5-star sync pair. Either way, you’re going to get something good out of it!
- The "Free Move" sound in battle, as you can use a powerful 3- or 4-bar move or utility without costing any move gauge.
- One of Gardenia's voice clips is her happily singing, "La la la la la!" in a particularly adorable way.
- Nightmare Retardant: Florian entering a parallel universe from his world would have been a terrifying case of You Can't Go Home Again with Florian made into the ultimate Woobie... if not for the fact that not only was Florian happy to jump through the ring, but he claims he can literally go back at any time he feels like it.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
- Giving expanded sync grids and EX upgrades to earlier-debuting sync pairs, as it gives them potential to catch up to newer pairs released with expanded grids, EX and more passive skills. Hilbert & Samurott is a notable example that benefited from this, as they went from "a worthless pitybreaker" to "a top tier support for physical attackers". Many pairs that were formerly considered bad by the player base, such as Glacia & Glalie, Lance & Dragonite, and Caitlin & Reuniclus have also benefited from them.
- As various pairs were released, the community began to declare that certain types were this trope as they gained various Game-Breaker units that "saved" the types.
- Ice was in a really bad situation prior to 2023, as the only good pairs it obtained prior to that date were mostly general pool or holiday seasonal pairs. Then it gained two powerful Master Fairs (Irida and Neo Champion Red) as well as a really cool (excuse the poor pun) free support in the form of Dana, and rocketed straight into the higher tiers.
- Prior to 2024, Steel was in a particularly bad spot, as it contained a lack of strong damage dealers bar Rose and Palentines Marnie. Then in only one year, with several powerful Steel units, an Arc Suit, and one of the best free units in the game later, Steel has solidified itself as the best type in the game.
- In only 6 months, two of the worst types in the game received huge bonuses: Bug (which struggled due to outdated utility and a lack of special damage dealers aside from SS Hilbert, which received two powerful Bug units in the form of Arc Suit Alder and Benga) and Ghost (Ghost did not have any good damage dealers aside from Lilie (Anniversary 2021), Sygna Suit (Renegade) Cynthia, and Special Custom Irida, the former two being over three years old at this point and the latter being a Seasonal, which often does not receive powerful attacks or updates, with Ghost returning to form after the release of Academy Morty, Variety Cynthia, and Neo Champion Selene).
- Play the Game, Skip the Story: Despite the focus on Pokémon Trainers being the main selling point of the game, as the game evolved, a number of players began to take this viewpoint, due to them seeing the story quality as declining, as well as wanting to finish the game's events as soon as possible to do other things.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- For a long time, some sync pairs with unevolved Pokémon didn't have the option of evolving their Pokémon at all, in contrast to main-series games. Due to how the unfair system works, they can come off as Scrappy Weapons to many. This has been almost completely rectified with the update on February 24, 2020, in which the Evolution Stories for every sync pair with a generic sync move, with the exception of the Player and Torchic, were released.
- The opponents' sync moves can be considered That One Attack as well. If they start theirs before you can perform yours, then your entire team of three Pokémon get attacked at once while your sync moves do only certain damage to one single Pokémon, unless you sync with a strike sync pair with EX upgrade to deal damage to all opponents. And if you're underleveled, there is a huge chance you get a Total Party Kill immediately.
- The Sync Pair Scouts in general, especially as you gradually unlock everyone and maximize their sync move level. Normally, the gacha gives out a 3-star pair 73% of the time. Combine this with the huge majority of post-launch units being 5-star and the lack of a rarity demotion system, you'll have more than enough 3-star Power Ups to boost everyone and render them common trash.
- The Scout Points system to draw a featured sync pair is very expensive, requiring 400 Scout Points, or 36,400 gems, to be previously used to get one guaranteed pick. To make matters worse, the Scout Points only count for the banner you draw from, so you cannot hoard points over time or use the Scout Points on a different banner, and you don't get enough free gems to hit the Scout Point threshold for every banner. You'll have to hoard gems for a few months or spend lots of money if you're aiming for a particular sync pair. But if that wasn't bad enough, complaints were raised even more when the high-end Arc Suit Sync Pairs were released during the game's fifth anniversary, as Arc Suit sync pairs cost a total of 500 Scout Points just to guarantee one copy.
- The Prestige system used in the sole Prestige event that has been run (in late 2020). It was a pseudo-Player-versus-Player system where to gain, points, one would have to complete battles using stamina, which would be displayed on a global leaderboard. Those with the highest score would receive massive rewards such as power-up items, gems, and even the elusive 5* general candy, which at the time was an extremely rare and exclusive item. The fatal problem was the massive buffs using Gloria & Zacian, the newly-released featured Poké Fair sync pair for the event, at higher levels gave, compared to other Steel-type sync pairs released before them, which meant that free-to-play players had no chance of scoring high in the event, and caused the event to be seen as a massive pay-to-win endeavor. Backlash from the community was so intense that this system was never used again.
- Stages that features theme locks (a term used to describe an event which gives buffs to only sync pairs of specific parameters and theme skills, such as the Sinnoh Villain Arc battles only buffing pairs with the Sinnoh theme skill) are highly despised for their difficulty, as the mechanic ensures that only pairs with the theme skills are able to clear the stage. Because the roster of pairs in a player's arsenal is now heavily dwindled due to the unbuffed pairs receiving massive stat debuffs (effectively rendering them useless), the mechanic has an extremely bad habit for turning stages into That One Level slogfests where the only option is to get crafty with your heavily debuffed sync pairs, skip the battle, or bite the bullet and pull for the intended sync pairs.
- The weather mechanics in this game have been watered down in two aspects compared to the mainline and Mystery Dungeon games. Fire-type and Water-type attacks are not weakened in Rain or Sunny weather and this is not mentioned anywhere in the game. note Anyone who attempts to nerf the opponent's Fire-/Water-type attacks and sync moves in particular in a similar attempt to the mainline games will be let down by this. Ice-type Pokémon are not immune to damage from hail unless they have a passive skill to make them immune to hail damage; similarly, Rock-, Steel- and Ground-type Pokémon are not immune to damage from sandstorm, also not explained in the game, unless they have a passive skill to make them immune to sandstorm damage.
- The interaction mechanic from the Trainer Lodge is panned for its random, RNG-based system by which when interactions with a Trainer end, as interactions can end extremely early, with no regard for percentage of the Trainer's interest — there are reports of player's interactions ending at 95% interest.
- There is one stage that every Battle Rally player fears — a stage with Field/Sprint as its roles. The reason for this is simple: it is the hardest sync pair role combination to obtain. Only four free Field/Sprint pairs exist, and two of them, Lillie (Anniversary 2024) & Solgaleo and the two Rosa (Academy) units were only obtainable from limited time events, and the other pair, Ilima, is a spotlight whom was only added to the free ticket roster in September 2025. As a result, these stages leave players generally unable to reap the full rewards, not helped by the fact that across every possible Battle Rally seed, Field/Sprint is the most common combination, with 37 instances of this combination appearing.
- Superawakening quickly gained a large amount of vitriol due to just how expensive the upgrades were — to fully Superawaken a sync pair and obtain their special passive skill, players would be required to obtain five Superawakening candies to do so — each candy can only be obtained from pulling heavily on sync pair scouts or using precious 5-star move candies (mercifully, the cookies are exchanged for either universal candies or for candies of the pair's role), with each pair requiring a maximum of nine candies (which could take up to a literal year to save up) and which cannot be obtained by simply pulling more of the pair, for a passive that was often rather middling for the amount of investment, and in the case of some pairs was outright useless (such as Poppy & Tinkaton, Lucas & Dialga, and Iris (Alt.) & Hydreigon). At the very least, this also means the passives are 100% optional and only provide simple improvements.
- Pasio Academy was greatly hyped up, but upon release was met with poor reception and anger, and is often regarded as a failure on the same level as the Arc Suit fiasco that happened the previous year. This was because of various problems:
- The Academy Events use bonuses to get more rewards for having featured pairs to incentivize players to pull for them. However, the gimmick of the Academy is that all accumulated rewards get reset upon starting a new run, so players with the luck or gems to spare for the Academy pairs would instead gain even stronger units from the result, which instantly lobbied accusations of the game being pay-to-win again.
- Not only that, but luck also played a huge deal in getting the best rewards, as there was a high degree of luck involved with almost everything, from getting specific sync orbs to getting stages that give a lot of sync orbs. Notoriously, there exist multiple gambling stages where a player can get either 30 (a useless reward) or 450 of a specific orb... that might not even be the orb type they wanted, and with only 10 stages to hope to get good draws from, it can be rather rare to keep up a lucky streak, and a single bad draw can ruin a run.
- No problem, just continue to play the game and grind for a good run, just like the old days? This is prevented as playing this game mode requires stamina, heavily restricting how much players can replay it and when they can do so. Going through one run of the Academy costs large amounts of stamina—at worst, enough to require an entire day before a new run can be attempted. While subsequent academy runs have offered Stamina tickets from logins, these do not add up to much assistance if a player wants to grind further and further for their perfect grid.
- Unlike every other battle in the game, upon losing a midterm/final exam, players do not get to repeat the stage, do not get back any spent stamina, and lose out on the rewards. Not only does this result in a waste of time and stamina, but it also occurs if the app closes down or crashes in the middle of an exam battle or even during a courtyard conversation, something that is very often out of the user's control.
- While the sync grid for the Academy pairs was designed with a high degree of versatility in mind, the pair's poor base stats and heavy reliance on RNG means that getting the desired setup is not easy. And if you suddenly want to change your Academy pair's grid? Not possible unless you get lucky in a rerun and get enough orbs to do the desired grid swaps. And once the event finishes, the final grid is set in stone for each player with no possibility to change it, meaning that the final grid has to be decided before the player stops touching the game mode.
- In addition, Academy pairs are restricted from Battle Rally while an Academy is in progress. Except that Academy instantly starts if you enter the event to begin with, meaning that accidentally tapping the banner will trap your sync pairs and force you to finish the Academy event to use them again in Rally.
- Self-Fanservice: Like many popular games, Pokémon is a magnet for this, and the preponderance of Palette Swaps has just given artists more to draw.
- Rosa being a free five-star sync pair, as well as her "thinking" pose becoming a Memetic Mutation, became the number one target for Rule 34 artists once more after her debut in her home game. Once again, her curves are greatly exaggerated.
- Hilda also gets this too, helped by being the female protagonist in Black and White.
- Sidetracked By The Golden Saucer: The Photo Mode update immediately became this to players wanting to fully mess around with characters doing unthinkable stuff.
- Tainted by the Preview:
- Lusamine's presentation alongside her children, both in the animated trailer and in the preview for the "Family Ties" Story Event, made people strongly concerned that the game would disregard Lusamine's actions as an antagonist, particularly her abusive ones. Once the aforementioned Story Event came out, though, Lusamine's past is not only fully acknowledged, but, while repentant, she still struggles with some of her worst tendencies and is called out when she exhibits them, which made the event much better received.
- Similar to "Family Ties", the lead-up to the "Father or Foe" Legendary Event saw many fearing that Ghetsis would be redeemed despite the character's portrayal as a remorseless monster in every incarnation. To the fandom's relief, the Event not only maintained Ghetsis as such, but also doubled down on his worst traits, ultimately making it one of the most well received Story Events to come out.
- The 5th anniversary announcement of Arc Suit sync pairs (aka giving the characters an Arceus-inspired outfit) for Cynthia, Lance, and Steven Stone, plus a bonus free pair for Lillie was met with a very poor reaction from the community the moment it was announced. Criticisms levied against the idea include the Champions' outfits only receiving a color change with minor embellishments to match their theming, the fact that Lillie's outfit is a complete Palette Swap of her Anniversary 2021 outfit, the fact that none of Champions' partners are changed to new Pokémon, that Arc Suit sync pairs require an entirely new collectible to upgrade them (as the existing candies apparently being unusable on them), and that it requires 500 Scout Points to guarantee a copy of an Arc Suit sync pair — a hundred more than the already infamous 400 Scout Point limit and requiring more gems to get them, combined with significantly reduced odds of actually obtaining them. Ultimately, while the bonus Lillie pair evolved to become more popular due to it being free, the Arc Suits still remain largely disliked.
- Tear Jerker: Paulo's slow downfall throughout the Villain arc culminating in him snapping after Rockruff is seemingly killed and taking control of Hoopa Unbound and Team Break. To make matters worse, the whole powerlessness thing is something he's been obsessed with his entire life.
- That One Level: Now has its own page.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
- Before the game had even officially been released, fans of Gardenia were in complaint that her design was altered to cover more of her midriff. Whether this was intentional censoring or not is unclear.
- The changes in battle mechanics, like every Pokémon only having one type and one weakness, the inability to learn any new moves besides the four assigned to each sync pair, and the different evolution system which requires farming specific materials, have completely turned off some fans of the main series games.
- As of July 2020 a massive update brought about a number of changes, the most egregious being the implementation of a new Stamina system, which hinders players from being able to play missions as often as they would like... unless they spend gems to replenish it. Most players call the new feature out as a blatant cash grab, especially since the game only now included stamina, an entire year after its release.
- The 2.27.0 version update in December 2022 changed the name of Iris (Champion) (paired with Hydreigon) to Iris (Alt.), likely to avoid confusion with the upcoming Neo Champions that were released with the update (which were named <character name> (Champion) ). This change was not received well by players, as they interpreted it as devaluing and removing the identity of the Champion alternate sync pair.
- Every Villain Event featured a Twitter rally to go alongside it, which included various goodies like candy coins, 5-star tickets, and most importantly, gems. The importance of the gems was such that when the Galar Villain Arc rally occurred, the community was outraged and boycotted the rally, as the rally did not feature gems and mostly featured items considered useless by many players, veteran and new alike. The boycott actually reached the point where despite the other rallies being finished within one or two days, the Galar VA rally notably remains the first and only of the rallies to outright fail to reach its final target, with only around 19,000 retweets compared to the 20,000 required.
- Players were not pleased when the January 2024 rerun of the "Gather Up! Dream Duo!" event removed most of the gems from the mission rewards, giving 5-Star Scout Tickets in their place, as the latter can only be used for a chance at units in the general pool and don't help at all with getting any of the limited units.
- The announcement that the Arc Suit sync pairs would require a 500 Scout Point limit to hit pity was received extremely negatively with the player base, since it required an even heavier investment into these characters than normal, which led to players attempting to protest against the changes.
- Battle Rally's favourability with the player base took an extremely sour turn in September 2024 when the stage was updated with new battles. The problem is, the new Area 10 stages included many of the new Ultimate Battles, many of which suffer from requiring extremely specific sync pair combinations to beat it... which often are not favourable for a Battle Rally run trying to min-max as many points as possible. Even worse, some stages (like Noland's) can't even be cheesed by the Apple Cup, forcing players to either fight in easier stages and lose points or suffer with a nigh-impossible stage as they don't have the gimmicks to counter it at all.
- Before the game had even officially been released, fans of Gardenia were in complaint that her design was altered to cover more of her midriff
- They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
- Early chapters in the game’s story mode set up a mystery of Team Break’s masks having the ability to mind control their hosts, leading to the question of who’s making them and for what purpose. After Lear is introduced, however, this plot thread is dropped with the mind control aspect of Team Break being quietly ignored by the rest of the story. All subsequent appearances of Team Break depict them as nothing more than a leaderless group of thugs who cause mischief just because, much to the disappointment of fans.
- The events featuring the anime characters have them solely interact with the original characters, instead of interacting with the established cast. Imagine what it would have been like if the Team Rocket Trio encountered the other villains, or Ash spoke with the game universe's version of his companions from the show, or just straight up interacting with Trainer Red himself given that it's possible to have both of them appear on-screen at once, contradicting the idea that Ash can't exist where Red does and vice versa. Should Ash appear on the same screen in the lobby as Blue, Red and Leaf, none of them will comment on it or make attempts to converse. Granted, Red is grown up and does manage to look more like Ash's other older brother, but Blue almost entirely still resembles Gary. Even during the "Blazing Battle with Ash" event in September 2022, where there are other main playable characters, including Red, to watch Ash battle, none of them talk to Ash directly.
- Underused Game Mechanic:
- The Bingo Cards, which provide several useful resources for every square and bingo line filled as well as a big prize for filling the entire one. After completing all four basic ones, the function can go unused for months on end, only having new cards for very special events such as the anniversaries. It wasn't much of a surprise when it was announced that Bingo Cards would be removed from the game in July 2025.
- Co-op mode as a whole. These days, hardly anyone plays these game modes, likely due to an overall shift away from co-op activities since the game's rebranding into Pokémon Masters EX, and the poor reception to earlier co-op events. Even the most commonly done co-op stages (Type Gear challenges and the Pokémon Masters Day co-op gauntlets) are mostly played for their rewards, while the original primary co-op features (story mode and EX Plaza, which were originally a feature intended to allow the player to slowly grind out materials for Type Gears with other players) are devoid of all player activity. It says a lot when the co-op story mode hasn't even been updated to contain all the chapters, only going up to Chapter 27 (which released in November 2020).
- Unexpected Character: Now has its own page.
- Unintentionally Sympathetic: Paulo's decision to use the power of Hoopa to "eliminate all evil" is meant to be seen as Paulo falling victim to He Who Fights Monster and becoming Drunk on the Dark Side. However, given most of the villains in the series have no remorse for their actions and have evaded any punishment no matter the police's efforts, many argue Paulo's desire to enact vigilante justice is both understandable and rather responsible. The latter point is bolstered by Lear and everybody else seemingly content to allow the villains to roam Pasio freely and continue their plans to their heart's content.
- Win Back the Crowd:
- The game's trailers were met with praise from fans who felt disillusioned with the direction of Pokémon since the shift to 3D, with many praising the game's Continuity Cavalcade nature and more stylized visual direction.
- The Mix Sync Pair Scout was heavily despised before release due to being the game's first implementation of a premium unit (that is - a unit that could only be obtained via premium currency), as the Mix Scout seemed to only be a generic scout banner designed to siphon even more money from the player base. Then when the scout actually released, it was then discovered that it actually also contained every non-master fair limited unit in its pull chances as well, and opinions on it instantly did a 180. While it's still not greatly liked, compared to the complete vitriol it was subjected to prior to this point, it's safe to say it successfully invoked the trope.
- WTH, Costuming Department?:
- Summer Lyra's outfit is for the most part adorable. However, the ruffled socks with ribbons tying them make them resemble trash bags or candy wrappers.
- Sygna Suit Wally's outfit was criticised as his use of shorts in the outfit was considered a jarring change compared to the more gentlemanly, formal nature of the rest of the outfit.
- Sygna Suit Nemona's outfit was criticized since its data-mining to be generic and unfitting (looking more like a traditional Japanese robe or a cheerleader's outfit).
- As soon as the Arc Suit sync pairs were revealed, fans criticized them heavily for being a Palette Swap of Cynthia, Steven Stone, and Lance's regular outfits with a few embellishments. Lillie (Anniversary 2024) was also criticized like this, as her outfit was a Palette Swap of her Anniversary 2021 outfit.
- Once May (Champion)'s outfit was datamined, fans began to criticise how her EX outfit looked like a Palette Swap of Sygna Suit Dawn's outfit due to their similar colours.
- When Brendan (Academy) was revealed, many fans criticized the design due to Brendan keeping his hat in the design, which didn't blend well into the default academy uniform that Brendan was wearing.
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