- Great introduction to the card game
- Very satisfying when it comes to opening packs
- Look at the shiny cards!
There is some sort of myth in mobile gaming that players absolutely love waiting around. Idle games, gacha mechanics, daily quests – all of these things point towards a history of people waiting until the next time something is set up, so that they can then play and use their items. Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket is another that has a lot of waiting, specifically waiting for packs to recharge so you can open them.
I absolutely love Pokemon, but I have never really gotten into the TCG. This is primarily due to the price point – it feels like something that’s going to be endlessly expensive and that I will be chasing and collecting for the rest of my life. However, Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket (though I really don’t like the name) doesn’t have you paying for hundreds of cards that you are likely going to lose or have to sort through in a binder, so I was pretty pumped.
The Cards
The game itself has several different ways to interact with it. The most exciting, to me anyway, is the simple opening of card packs. Every 12 hours, you can open one up and see what new cards are there. The entire thing feels very juicy, from the spinning around of a bunch of the same packs to the swiping to rip off the top. It’s just a fun experience. There are just a bunch of juicy movements that make everything feel satisfying. I do like that you can add Flair to the cards you like, making them look shiny or pretty, and that you can create showcases that other people can see your cards. You can even organise them into a binder!
When it comes to gaining cards, you can also randomly get one from a pack someone else has opened, for a separate currency that recharges at a slightly faster rate. I do like that it’s balanced by having packs with more rare pulls costing more of that currency, and have been using this feature to select a random card from pulls where I don’t have any of the cards in my dex. The little binder symbol shown here so that you can easily see what cards you already have from these pulls is really helpful! It feels like a lot of thought was put into everything.
The Battles
What are you going to do with cards beyond battle them?! I’ve never been into battling, I don’t like PVP and I don’t like learning complex card games. With that in mind, I wanted to complete the battles to get the currency rewarded for them. This means I do not need to actually wait around to get more cards, which is my main goal.
I do find the tutorial rounds to be easy to digest, even for someone who doesn’t want to learn, I figured out exactly how to do battles and their formats. The fact that the decks are pre-made at first and that you can auto-make decks with the actual cards you have feels very user-friendly to those who don’t want to play so seriously.
Overall 
Playing through the start of Pocket, you get so many of the different currencies, that it’s really easy to spend quite some time blasting through it. But like all games where you can level up and gain rewards for missions, I did quickly run out of missions and then tokens to spend, and then needed to either battle or wait. The waiting is what really kills me, as I want to keep opening packs and collecting!