The game was a strategy board game based on the Pokémon Trading Figure Game where players battle with figures and attempt to reach the opposing player's goal. Each figure has its own attacks and abilities; attacks are determined by spinning a wheel. In order to give the game the world's strongest AI, The Pokémon Company has partnered with HEROZ, whose app Shogi Wars is known for being able to defeat and challenge professional players.
Pokémon Duel contained the following tropes:
- Allegedly Free Game: It's your standard mobile Gacha game, with all the trappings like Power Equals Rarity, Stamina Timers and so on, though not quite as harsh as some examples in that powerful figures still have a small chance to suffer a Dice Roll Death and the Stamina Timers mostly impede you from farming the single player story mode or the Gym Battle events for extra figures. Regular League Battles or organized Room Battles don't cost any energy to play, though League Battles can reward you with figure boxes that open on a timer mechanic (Or you can unlock them quicker with gems, natch).
- And Your Reward Is Clothes: You get more masks by earning trophies from Gym Events, or as Quests rewards.
- New hairstyles can also be obtained from Gyms.
- Artificial Intelligence: Carlo and later "Another".
- Artificial Stupidity: Enemies in the early levels of Quests (and to a further extent, League "bots") rarely defend their goal points.
- Big Bad: Don Roger, up until he is defeated at the original end of the story.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: As you might expect from this sort of game, spending real money will give you more opportunities to obtain those top-tier EX Pokémon.
- Also shown in-universe with Don Roger, who bluntly makes a statement on how the trope is a staple of modern gaming.
- Cliffhanger: At the end of the sixth hotel, Carlo's memory is wiped clean after it prevents Another's security breach.
- Com Mons: Most lower rarity Pokémon.
- Cool Mask: Every contestant in the tournament is given one, including yourself.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Number 7's self-made AI had presumably killed off the former head researcher.
- Dice Roll Death: It doesn't matter how strong your figures are: get an unlucky spin and they're KO'd.
- Hold the Line: One win condition exclusive to League matches is having your opponent run out of time.
- It's All Upstairs From Here: Quests mode, where you must scale all ten hotels to win the PFG Tournament.
- Left Hanging: Quests was not further updated since May of 2016.
- Meaningful Name: Carmonte Island and Carlo both reference Monte Carlo, a tourist destination in Monaco.
- Carlo's name also alludes to the Monte Carlo method used by AI devices.
- Mythology Gag: The intro theme to the Quests is eerily similar to the Tellur Town stage theme in Pokkén Tournament.
- Older Than They Look: Nadya looks like a girl in her mid-teens, but she's actually over 30.
- Olympus Mons: EX Pokémon consist mainly of the ones from the main series, along with fully evolved starter Pokémon, and other popular third-stage evolutions.
- Permanently Missable Content: You cannot rewatch any of the cutscenes unless you start a new game. The tutorial battle is the only exception to this oddity.
- Play Every Day: Daily Missions allow the player to acquire more items by fulfilling some basic objectives, with a bigger mission available for every 10 you do. Daily Login reward events are fairly common as well.
- Plot Coupon: The hotel emblems.
- Power Equals Rarity: Boy does it ever, with a few exceptions. However, that doesn't always save EX Pokémon from a bad spin, and with proper strategy one can defeat even the biggest, baddest Olympus Mons by stalling them with a Stone Wall or Status Effects and then surrounding them with your own figures, which is an automatic KO. That said, you still have a sharply uphill battle if you're stuck with a team of Com Mons against a competent player with a team full of EX Pokémon.
- Power Glows: EX and UX figures all have some kind of radiant effect. All figures also glow a little bit after evolving in battle.
- Railroading: All of the cutscenes always follow the same route, no matter which dialogue options you choose.
- Snot Bubble: Snorlax has one.
- Songs in the Key of Panic: The background music changes to a more up-tempo song whenever a player gets one of his figures to within three spaces of his opponent's goal space.
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Spiritual Successor: To the Pokémon Trading Figure Game almost a decade after the physical TFG was discontinued. - Star Scraper: Jewel Tower.
- Super Mode: UX figures, introduced in 4.0.0, consist of the temporary Mega Evolutions. In order to use one however, you must have the regular EX Pokémon, its corresponding Plate, and the UX figure set as an evolution.
- Eventually, Mega Stone plates were removed from the in-game shop in favor of a simpler method to use the appropriate figures.
- Wham Episode: Hotel Elysium is considerably more in-depth than the first five hotels you visit:
- The owner of Elysium, Number 7, developed an AI device at a young age in order to rebel against his father. This device was Gemini, which housed Carlo and Another.
- Carlo reflects on the time it's spent with the player, wondering about the future.
- After winning against Number 7, Luca's AI (Another) decides to get its revenge by causing a power outage throughout Carmonte Island. Carlo succeeds in stopping Another's goal, but not without its memory being erased.
