I wasn't going to play Pokemon TCG Pocket for long, but then I got the rarest card in my first few hours – and now I can't put it down
Nov. 12, 2024Opinion | The newest Pokemon Trading Card Game has me hooked, and I can’t tell whether it’s down to very good or very bad luck
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It should’ve been so simple. When Pokemon TCG Pocket came out, the latest in a string of attempts to translate the Pokemon card game to mobile gaming, I picked it up as a rubbernecker, a window shopper, a self-confessed casual observer. But a week later, I’m researching the meta, working out the optimized time to open packs around my sleep schedule, cursing every time the staring coin flip forces me to go first in a battle, and desperately trying to convince my editors to let me write about the game so I can write up the micropayments as a business expense.But I wasn’t supposed to get hooked. It’s all gone horribly wrong somewhere, and it’s due to the fact that I had a moment of uncharacteristic good luck on my very first day playing… and managed to get the rarest card in the game out of nowhere.
Pokemon, gold version
Did you draw the same great card as me? Find out how to use it and make your ownPokemon TCG Pocket Mewtwo ex deckhere!
Even past that lucky start, I do think Pocket is a pretty fun game – though it’s been pretty unnerving to see the pavlovian way it trains the audience to wait for new packs. Still, it’s accessible in design, presented well enough, the nostalgia isn’t excessive and the obsessive realism in the pack-opening feels somehow both endearing and a little bit intense, like somebody who’s really,reallyinto model trains.It’s also been interesting seeing how the battles differ from those in the core games. Here there’s much more of an emphasis on tactically swapping Pokemon around, dragging a critter back the moment you realize it’s doomed so you can tag in an eager and raring Machoke off the bench. When victory eventually comes for one player or another, it’s usually pretty fast how the match can go from zero-all to a sudden upset. It’s less dominos falling and more seeing whose house of cards will suddenly collapse first.
Whether it will hold attention long-term – both mine and other people’s – is probably largely down to the developers at this point. The fact that the meta seems to have already formed so tightly into four or five of what are commonly recognized as thebest decks in Pokemon TCG Pocketsuggests that a broader pool of cards will do a lot to help longevity, and I do wonder how long the appeal of hungrily watching a timer slow tick down to the next pack can actually last.Still, for now, it’s a pretty solid experience, even if it’s offering itself out in dribs and drabs a little too much for my liking. Not to mention I’ve yet to have any moment quite as fortunate as that first-day draw. If I get another gold card over the weekend though, my first response will be to go sprinting towards the local casino, life savings in hand. I can take a hint.
It’s been promised both in and out of the game, butPokemon TCG Pocket still has yet to add its most revolutionary feature.
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Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.
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