“Pokémon TCG Pocket” is Pokemon’s newest venture into an online trading card game client. All three major trading card games have released a new online client in the past few years, however their first attempt, “Pokemon Live”, was a disaster. The game was filled with technical issues on release, some still present today, and ended up looking like a downgrade of the previous client, “Pokémon Trading Card Game Online”. On the other hand, Pokémon Pocket looks to be built as a game to rival “Magic the Gathering: Arena” and “Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel”, and unlike those games the beginner onboarding process feels much more straightforward.
Decks are only 20 cards, a third of the real-life game, and are made up of two types of cards: Pokémon and Trainers. Pokémon are the main to deal damage your opponents’ Pokémon and push you towards your goal to knock-out three of your opponents’ Pokémon, while Trainers are support cards split up into Items, Supporters, and Fossils. Items are effects that you can use unlimited amounts of as long as you have them in your hand, Supporters are much more powerful cards, however, you can only use one Supporter card per turn, and Fossils are special trainers that are placed on field and can be evolved into Fossil Pokémon. Interestingly enough, the game removed one type of card compared to the real-life version, Energies. Energies were used as the way to power up Pokémon and allow them to attack. Now instead of using up deck space starting on the second turn of the game the turn player will generate one energy per turn from their “energy zone.”
Because of this the game’s power level is deceptively high. While games can last 10+ turns the actual length of games is closer to 5-10 minutes at most. All while lacking the ability to interact with the opponent on their turn like in Magic or Yu-Gi-Oh. However, no matter how good the actual gameplay is it doesn’t matter if it isn’t accessible or requires a lot of money to invest into.
Thankfully, the game is quite forgiving when it comes to free content. two booster packs, a randomly selected collection of cards containing five cards each, are given to player everyday and it is possible to reduce the amount of time to open booster packs through the use of fairly regularly given in-game currency. Also, Pokémon keeps it’s rarity distribution system similar to the real life game. Rarities are split in two main categories diamonds and stars. Each category is subdivided into four categories ranging form one to four diamonds/stars with diamond one being most common and star (represented by a crown) being the most rare. All cards in the pack can be found at diamond rarities while stars rarities are exclusively full art cards. Along with that their is a “wonder pick” system where you are able to look at packs other player have opened and randomly chose one card from the pack they open. Currently, the only problem with the system is the inability to get the exact card you want. There is a “pack points” system where you get five pack points for each pack you open. However, since most the cards you will want cost upwards of 70 points, they are quite slow to get and with Pokémon ex all being 500 points it takes 20 days to just be guaranteed with one ex.
I personally can not wait for the trading update in January that will add trading in the game which would get rid of my only current major problem of the game, not easily getting the specific fairly common cards I want, as long as they don’t lock it behind a paywall. Other than that the game has been a blast to play and I’m excited to see how the game deals with power creep, ban lists, and whether or not they will add set rotation.
