I think I speak for many of us when I say that a tin of Pokémon Trading Card Game (TCG) cards in the corner of my room is not a surprising sight. So when I saw a couple of my friends playing the new Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket (TCGP) mobile game, I immediately wanted to see what it was about.
Ever since I got my first pack back in elementary school, I have been hooked on Pokémon, so I always enjoy seeing Pokémon games outside of the mainline games on the Nintendo Switch. Pokemon TCGP offers features from opening packs to fighting against friends.
Once you open the game, you are greeted with an aesthetic, white home screen that has three packs front and center. The three packs that you are greeted with on the home screen sport three iconic generation one Pokémon: Charizard, Pikachu and Mewtwo. As one would expect, the rarest cards someone could “pull” from these packs are these iconic mascots of the franchise.
The Pokémon TCGP game offers a nonmonetary way for Pokémon TCG fanatics to open up packs. Every 12 hours, you are able to open one five card pack, and there is also a feature called Pack Hourglasses that you can earn through battling and completing missions. For every 12 Pack Hourglasses, you are able to open one more card pack.
And opening packs was exactly what I started to do when I got into the game. I was lucky enough to get a Gold Charizard Ex with a 0.16 percent offering rate. Immediately, I tried to implement it into a deck. This is one of the two main aspects of the game.
This brings me to the second major aspect of Pokémon TCGP. With the variety of various cards you are able to pull from the packs, you can form a 20-card deck with your favorite cards and play against random people or your friends. The battling mechanics are a simpler version of the actual TCG and make it much easier to get into if you’ve never played the actual card game before, like me.
Overall, Pokémon TCGP is clearly a way for both Pokémon lovers and newcomers to enjoy the fun of opening Pokémon packs without having to spend exorbitant amounts of money. It is a great choice for those Pokemon fans that want to re-experience the cards they loved in their childhoods.
