The moment many fans have been waiting over a month for is finally here: Tyranitar rampages into Pokémon UNITE as the next playable character today alongside several additional pieces of content that continue the 1st Anniversary celebration.
Tyranitar joins the game as potentially its most interesting All-Rounder in some time, bringing furious power along with moves that provide players unique ways to interact with their targets as they work to bring them down.
Not only does playing as a fully evolved Tyranitar feel just as awesome as it should, with its Sand Stream ability providing it boosted defenses for a short period of time after a move is used and damaging nearby Pokémon, Dark Pulse and Stone Edge both feel devastating, especially when you use the latter consecutively. You can also play different roles depending on which moves you choose, such as Sand Tomb giving you more mobility and ways to get close to enemies, while Ancient Power provides you more with an area of effect buff.
Unfortunately, this also marks another uptick in Pokémon cost for UNITE. Tyranitar is the first Pokémon in the game to cost 14,000 Aeos Coins instead of the previous 10,000 or 12,000, making it harder to obtain for free-to-play only players who will have to grind harder to unlock it.
Meanwhile, it still only costs 575 Aeos Gems to unlock ‘Ttar,’ something that has remained unchanged, (likely to promote the use of microtransactions, if only a little bit).
There is also a new Anniversary Bargain Shop open for the remainder of August that gives players steep discounts on Unite Licenses, Holowear, and Fashion options. This does include many of the premium Holowear sets, though you can only purchase a total of eight items from the shop and the transactions are all through Aeos Gems, meaning you will need to use the premium currency obtained through microtransactions.
This is also the end of the Summer portion of the 1st Anniversary content, which means we are now waiting to get official news on the three Pokémon being added for the next portion that starts in September… which may have already started leaking.
