I think overall if you wanna collect or you wanna play this is a wonderful place to start. If you have wanted to try it but the price has stopped you this makes it possible. If you want to play but don’t have friends who play there are always opponents to play against. I say try it out and have fun!
Strong meta premade decks toe the line of being prescriptive. That can easily stifle the creativity of the community. So they walk a fine line of teaching new players while giving room for the community to discover what works best in the game. And honestly so many cards have strong spots in the game
There is a lot of solo content for those who need to learn or don’t wanna play against other players. And playing these matches also give you more resources to pull new packs. But the suggested decks put players at a disadvantage in the meta. Offering good meta decks can be tricky tho.
I do wish the energy system was more predictable allowing you to more easily make multi energy decks. As it is, it feels like a unnecessary hindrance. And with dragons tied to multiple energy attacks they are relegated to the sidelines mostly. A shame for a dragon and fairy trainer like me.
The ranked mode is fairly forgiving for casual players giving you a decent amount of rewards at every level up not just the big tiers. And until ultra ball, winning just over a third of your games allows you to climb. As always nintendo makes their games fairly accessible when possible.
The game itself is fairly balanced with a wide variety of top performing decks with new contenders popping up with each set. It is snappy and quick to play a few games and even the ones you lose often feel like had the cards come out a little different or you had another turn you could have won.
I think that was a core piece of the magic early on, that the representation of these little sprites were actually fully animated lil creatures full of personality and charm. And that just continues to deliver with the card game in this new bridge they’ve built to that same rich world.
They also added immersive cards where you are taken into the world of the card and get to see the whole scene from the pokemon world perspective. It sort of does that thing that the original game does solidifying the concept that the tcg, the games, the anime, etc are part of a continuous world.
The effects and tactile feel of the cards is wonderful in this digital TCG. It feels good to choose a pack and rip it. It feels great to put a rare card down. The big moments feel big. The holos feel pretty to turn. I think they really zeroed in on what is important to focus on about the cards.
But big rares and shinies are not tradable leaving those as chases. Promos are also not tradable which feels odd and the currency puts a bottleneck on trading. There is an update coming to trading soon so we will have to see how they adjust. Hopefully it becomes smoother and easier to request cards.
When they added trading it is a little clunky but i understand that they are very careful not to ruin the card economy which can kill a TCG. You can trade and trade back just like the main games to get the card in your pokedex. This is something that wasn’t possible with pokemon go trading.
The wonder pick system allows you to get a chance at a card from a friend’s pack. It makes it even more exciting when you see a friend get a good pull because you may also get a chance at a card you were hunting for. And you give friends currency for thanking them after a wonder pick!
I saved my money for the games back then and couldn’t regularly get to a game shop for cards so i didn’t get into the craze of collecting. But now i finally can! I have completed all but two of the basic sets but have not completed all the art cards in any of the sets, which feels reasonable.
I have been playing pokemon since red and blue came out in the US, trading when possible, but mostly keeping to myself and collecting. I remember the first promotional TCG cards included in my subscription to Nintendo Power Magazine. I was always a nintendo girly and pokemon became my favorite games
I come at this from the viewpoint of a player who has never been able to square the constant cost of packs with the live of collecting trading cards of my favorite lil guys. But I rip two packs a day and have felt extremely satisfied keeping up with it at least twice a day.
I think the thing I love about this version of the game is that at the core you can rip packs and collect. At the heart of it, that is the point. You get all the cute and savage creatures. They are nostalgic. You appreciate the wealth of pokemon art and you can collect without paying money.
Beyond that, it is part of the seemingly unstoppable pokemon transmedia franchise that does well in almost everything it goes into (I’m looking at you pokemon conquest). Pokemon TCG is the bread and butter for most physical board game and TCG shops. Doing far and away more sales than other games.
Pokemon TCG Pocket has been out a while now so let’s talk about it.
On the surface it is not surprising that this game is extremely popular. It takes a physical collectible card game and adapts it to the mobile fast paced pick up gameplay. And somehow it also manages to engage collectors too.
I think this dissonance is part of what made Animal Crossing: New Horizons such a big hit with many people who don't play many games. And it makes me feel like there are such big audiences who are under served by the current market options. So what is it that will capture those new audiences?
But a gamer who is looking for challenge or quests may quickly move on to a different new experience. These games have added multiplayer to be able to build things together and share your spaces with friends. But the kinds of online play in these spaces are largely undirected without specific goals.
Cozy life sims like Animal Crossing and Stardew Valley are interesting because it goes against a lot of gamification best practices. The players who love this genre tend to understand intuitively the value of decorating, cleaning, organizing, and hanging out in the spaces they've created.
I'm sure that time sink leads to a ton of money coming their way, but the big time investment can also be a deterrent to continuing to pay to play. The free to play model of MOBAs gets around this, but there is still a significant time investment to be able to compete in the current meta.
While MOBAs have a fast game loop that hooks you in. MMOs tend to have a chat system and makes it very easy to hang out with your friends over the internet while you do parallel play or play together. Both of these genres encourage a massive amount of time in the games.
Probably worth mentioning that I have sunk a lot of time into World of Warcraft and other MMOs. They aren't really represented here, but I imagine they would either be their own category or be close to MOBAs in number of hours played.
So yeah normal games some where in the 5 - 40 hrs, Pokemon games 80-100, Online games - 200 - 300 hrs, cozy life sims 500-800 hrs, and MOBAs 1200+. There is probably something to be said about the loops of these games, but it makes sense why online is pushed so heavily in the game industry.
Interesting which games have the most time played on my switch. Most of my Pokemon games tend to be around 80 - 100 hours. Online games like Smash Ultimate and Splatoon 3 are in the 250 - 300 range. Pokemon Untie (MOBA) is 1250 hours. But Stardew Valley and Animal Crossing are 500 - 800 hours.
Hey everyone. I haven’t been on socials for a long time. I haven’t built back up my feed and following since leaving twitter but I am back and also am available for work. I will probably be posting more soon, but please reach out if you need an engineer. Art and design are a more case by case basis.
I guess i am officially over here on blue sky now… It took a while to build up a good twitter feed and i am dreading building it up over here again. Anyways I’m Aubrey, a game engineer and who loves rollerskating, fiber arts, and art. I will prolly talk about all that and game dev. Hey new friends!🧡
