Pokémon Legends: Z-A will have a four-player deathmatch mode

The Pokémon World Championships have just wrapped up, and as with every year, brought with it a closing ceremony that hosted quite a few announcements. Chief among them was the announcement of a brand-new multiplayer experience for Pokémon Legends: Z-A — the Z-A Battle Club.

Z-A Battle Club is essentially a free-for-all deathmatch mode — you and three other trainers are thrown into a small arena, and you have three minutes to get as many knockouts as you can. At the end of the match, whoever has the most knockouts wins. Here’s how The Pokémon Company describes it: 

The Z-A Battle Club is ready for its newest Link Battle entrants! Up to four players can take part in battles where they attempt to defeat as many of each other’s Pokémon as they can within the three-minute time limit.

When any of your Pokémon faint, you will return to your starting point and reenter the battle with all your Pokémon fully recovered. Defeating an opponent’s Pokémon earns you a point, and those points determine your ranking. Mega Power orbs, which can be collected to Mega Evolve your Pokémon, may also appear around the stage, as well as items to boost your Pokémon’s stats temporarily.

This new mode can be played privately against friends, or in a new competitive Ranked Battles ladder, where like the main game, you’ll start off at Rank Z and climb up to the ultimate Rank A. The news post announcing these new features also confirms that Link Trades – likely both online and in person via local communication – will return, much like all main series games, as well as Mystery Gift, a mainstay of the series. 

These new free-for-all battles will be using the new combat system introduced in Pokémon Legends: Z-A, which features real-time combat for the first time in the series’ history. 

Pokémon Legends: Z-A is set to be released on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 on October 16, 2025.