Competitive Pokémon has been a long-standing trend in the franchise, having started all the way back in August of 2009. Each year, various tournaments are held from Japan to the U.S., all ranging in size and caliber. As the tournament season starts, new “metas” and strategies develop where Pokémon trainers can more effectively win battles. However, strategies often fail to include older Pokémon, as those more recently released were made with the strategies of years past in mind. A great example is the addition of strong Fire-Type Pokémon to the competitive circuit to fight against the terror of Shedinja. Shedinja has an ability that allows them to be unaffected by any moves that are not super effective against them, the only ones being Fire, Flying, Dark, Ghost, and Rock-Type moves. Clearly, adding Fire-Type Pokémon to the game would help reduce their usage, and thus stop their reign of terror. However, some older Pokémon are so good, so uncounterable, and so stupendous, that they become mainstays in the competitive spotlight, with new workarounds and counters to them being developed each generation. What happens, though, if a Pokémon is more than “Uncounterable?” More than “good?” What happens when a throwaway Pokémon, only sewn into the game by a thread, becomes a game-breaking monstrosity? Well, we’ll have to rewind a little bit to get the full picture.
The year was 2020, and a new DLC to Pokémon’s most recent installment, Sword & Shield, had just been released. The Isle of Armor, as it was called, featured a few new Pokémon, the most prominent among these being a brand-new Legendary. Kubfu is a Fighting-Type Pokémon, resembling a small cub with Grey and White accents. Urshifu are not very strong on their own and must be trained over time to unleash their full potential. In the “Climax” of the DLC, the player must take Kubfu up through one of the two “Towers of Dueling Fists” either the Dark or Water-Type tower, in order to evolve into its final form, Urshifu. Urshifu is the product of a trainer’s love, effort, and training; it all culminates in a far more powerful threat than the competitive circuit could have anticipated.
Both of Urshifu’s forms, Single-Strike and Rapid-Strike, are gained through the Dark and Water-Type towers, respectively, and have unique individual strengths. While Single-Strike Urshifu fires off just one blow, unleashing all its power with a single attack, Rapid-Strike Urshifu fires off a barrage of attacks, aiming to weaken its opponent with its volley of blows. Though Single-Strike Urshifu can have its uses in certain levels of play, the Dark-Fighting typing and Single-Hitting signature move both become its downfall, as it quickly falls into obscurity in comparison with its Water-Fighting counterpart. Rapid-Strike Urshifu, on the other hand, is an absolute beast, sporting amazing attributes in almost every category. Its amazing typing combination, being Water-Fighting, allows it to take half damage from Fire, Water, Ice, and Steel attacks, while maintaining great type advantages against Fire, Ground, and Rock types, all of which are widely prevalent in and on the competitive circuit. Being Water-typed, it also benefits from “Rain Teams,” doing more damage when other Pokémon have induced the “Rain” weather condition. Its amazing signature move, “Flowing Fists” hits 3 times in a row, dealing massive amounts of Water-Type damage, which can often kill Type-Disadvantaged Pokémon in one turn. Additionally, each successful landing of this move is a “Critical Hit,” which not only deals more damage, but ignores any and all boosts to the opponent’s defense, ensuring that not only is the attack devastating, but entirely ignorant of any “Setting-Up” the opponent had attempted. However, all these amazing qualities pale in comparison to the signature ability shared by both forms. Before we can delve into that though, we must discuss the most useful move in all of competitive Pokémon – Protect.
All of competitive Pokémon are based on a turn system, with the order of each Pokémon’s turn being decided based on their speed stats – faster Pokémon act first. With 4 Pokémon on the field, speed is often the deciding factor between winning and losing, as whoever can knock out all 6 of the opponent’s Pokémon first wins. However, some moves have what is called “Priority” which allows them to move first regardless of any Pokémon’s speed stats. One move which has priority is “Protect,” which, instead of taking a turn to deal damage, set up hazards, or do some otherwise Offense-Based action, the move instead prevents all incoming damage, preventing the Pokémon from losing any health. Almost every Pokémon that can run this move does, as it not only adds a level of safety to your plays that would be absent without it but also makes the game more strategy-based compared to being strictly skill-based, as one must be careful with how and when they use the move if they want to eventually beat their rival. This move is what the entire game’s style of play is based on, as the added level of strategy adds space for nuance and planning. Essentially, the game is only playable, enjoyable, malleable, workable, and fun with this kind of safeguard in place – thus, if this kind of safeguard were to be removed or manipulated in some way, that would be wrong right? Illegal? Unfair? Not cool? Well, Urshifu spits in the face of “Protect” with its Signature Ability – Unseen Fist.
“Unseen Fist is the signature Ability of Urshifu. When using a contact move, Pokémon with Unseen Fist ignore protection moves in effect for their targets.”
– Bulbapedia: The leading (community-driven) encyclopedia for Pokémon.
I want you to take note of that word – ignore. Not “Does less damage to,” “Has a chance to ignore,” or even “Ignores if ‘X’.” Instead, Urshifu just ignores the fundamental concept of the game, breaking the entire essence of competition in half. Urshifu is not just a strong Pokémon, Urshifu is the strong Pokémon, making the move and idea of “Protect” entirely useless. This overwhelming positive, in tandem with all the other perks, makes Urshifu, in both the Rapid and Single Strike forms, broken. With amazing typing (Rapid-Strike Form), strong moves (Both Forms), broken abilities (Both Forms), and the ability to play well off of its own team while entirely disregarding the other team’s strategizing, Urshifu is more than a menace, they’re a monster.
Now, the Pokémon Company has had a long history of making newer Pokémon unfairly powerful in comparison – nearly every Legendary of every game has immediately stolen the Competitive spotlight, or been banned from it, on account of how powerful it is. This concept is known as “Power Creep” as games can’t keep releasing new content without adding some extra OOMPH to make customers want to buy into it. If the company were to release the same caliber of Pokémon over and over and over and over again, nobody would want to play anymore as there would be no incentive to. So, a little bit of Power Creep every now and then is entirely fair. However, this should only be done to such a degree – a Pokémon can be stronger than usual, have flashier moves, better typing, and whatever else – however, when it goes as far as to completely invalidate those that came before it, that’s when issues arise. Urshifu perfectly exemplifies that issue, making certain Pokémon obsolete as they are no longer up to snuff without some way to defend themselves.
So, now we can only sit and wait to see what happens. Maybe the Pokémon Company fully bans Urshifu, keeping him out of every future tournament. The problem with this, though, is that not only is the company pretending that nothing happened, merely skipping over their big mistake without having learned from it, but additionally, those who paid for the Isle of Armor DLC are given the short end of the stick, losing (essentially) half of the $30 they spent on the expansion because what they gained from it was too good. The other option for the company is creating some kind of counter-pick to Urshifu – perhaps a Pokémon with the “Super Duper Protect” Ability, which means any time it protects, its actions are unaffected by “Unseen Fist.” However, this creates the same problem as Urshifu did, now invalidating everything that Urshifu had been able to do – rendering their amazing niche useless. Thus, as it stands, there is no real clear-cut solution as to what must be done in order to ensure the longevity of the competitive circuit. We as fans can only hope that there is a civil, moral, and logical way by which this menacing malevolent monster can be defeated. Till then, we lie in desperation, hoping any of us can survive the onslaught that is…URSHIFU!
