The last thing I needed was for Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket to be good. But here we are! It’s a cracker, and annoyingly, worryingly, compulsively so. Over the past week or two since The Pokémon Company unleashed this fearsome dopamine machine onto the world, I’ve been hard pressed to put it down, filling erstwhile empty moments during tooth brushing, kettle boiling and, erm, definitely not working with just one more quick game.
Pokémon TCG Pocket reviewDeveloper: Creatures Inc, DeNaPublisher: The Pokémon CompanyPlatform: Played on iOSAvailability: Out now on iOS and Android
A central question here, of course, is how TCG Pocket balances its worst instincts – its reliance on loot boxes, and all the patently compulsive effects they surface in its players – with a sense of health, balance and, crucially, actual intrinsic fun. The surprising answer is: quite well, actually.
Nevertheless, Pokémon TCG Pocket undoubtedly sets itself up as a game centred around obtaining and opening booster packs – at least at first. On starting the game for the first time, you’ll be given a guided tour of the pack opening experience, plied with in-game resources for opening more, and then sent on your way through a twisting nebula of objectives, incentives and rewards. At the time of writing, there are 226 unique cards (plus around 14 additional “promo” cards) available, split across three choices of pack (one each themed after Charizard, Mewtwo, and Pikachu) and all together making up the game’s first expansion. Each booster pack contains just five cards – reduced from the 10 you get in real-world Pokémon boosters, in part because there are no energy cards to pad things out here.
Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is Available Now! Watch on YouTube
Your ability to open packs meanwhile is governed by a 12-hour timer, which you can accelerate with an in-game currency called Pack Hourglasses, and given the level of rarity of different cards – and the scarcity of packs – that means collecting ’em all is going to take a very, very long time. One player ran the numbers and suggested completing the entire expansion without paying anything would take something between approximately 500 and 1100 days of consecutive play on average, depending on what in-game rewards and mechanics you factor into the equation. Either way: that is a very long time.