How are my Chanseys?
The last thing I needed was forPokemon Trading Card Game Pocketto be good.
But here we are!
It’s a cracker, and annoyingly, worryingly, compulsively so.
The surprising answer is: quite well, actually.
Either way: that is a very long time.
Here’s an example.
Open a pack and you get some cards.
The new cards fill out your Pokedex, while any duplicates are automatically kept in storage.
This is not the end of the pack-opening sequence, however.
With each opened pack, you also get a small amount ofanotherresource, called Pack Points.
These can be used in exchange for effectively ‘buying’ a specific card outright.
That’s not all!
And round and round it goes.
If you’re beginning to glaze over at all that, I don’t blame you.
But there is a point to all this.
Sticking to the good bits for a minute longer, though, I’m a fan of Wonder Picks.
This is yet another side mechanic of sorts that helps you flesh out your collection.
Which makes their cards eligible for Wonder Pick inclusion.
But by mobile standards, and indeed other live service standards, there are things that could be worse.
And it is worth talking about those battles.
They’re quite brilliant, as much as some hardcore TCG players may wince at reading as much.
But the real impact here is another change: the cards themselves.
That and your once-a-turn standard energy lets you restock your Mewtwo perpetually, for highly effective results.
And then, naturally and brilliantly, counters start to appear from off-meta picks.
Every powerful strategy has its downsides.
Knowing the strategy is openly chaotic makes it fun when things go wrong, rather than hugely frustrating.
As does, crucially, the snappy pacing of the games themselves.
Of course, there are yet more metagame mechanics woven in here.
Yes, it feeds into all these other loops.
And gosh, there are a lot of loops.
Pokemon TCG Pocket accessibility options
Volume sliders for effects and background music.
Reminder toggles for energy and supporter cards in battle.
The same goes for the cards themselves and how they relate to real-world card-collecting.
Eurogamer sourced its own copy of Pokemon TCG Pocket for this review.
