Editors’ Choice Games

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket App

Review by Angie Kibiloski

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, from Creatures Inc., is a fun new card collecting and battling app that just launched last week for iOS and Android. Featuring over 200 adorable Pokémon characters to collect, both from classic generations and new exclusives, this latest edition to the franchise will keep you coming back day after day until you catch them all. Players will get to open digital foil booster packs, fill out their Pokédex, build custom decks to battle in Solo or Versus mode, complete missions, connect with friends, and more. Even as someone who never really got involved with Pokémon, I’ve been having a super fun time building my collection of cute character cards.

You’ll start your Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket journey by opening packs and building your base collection. You can open 2 packs for free each day, and trade in hourglass rewards to skip the cooldown and unlock more packs per day. Currently there are 3 types of booster packs to choose from, Pikachu, Mewtwo, and Charizard, each containing 5 random mystery cards per pack. You might snag either cards you don’t own or duplicates, but luckily you can trade several duplicates in for some cool cosmetic effects, so they aren’t wasted. You’ll also soon have the ability to trade them with your friends for a true Pokémon experience. You keep track of all your cards in your Dex, where you can sort, filter, and view their character descriptions and battle stats.

There are other ways to acquire booster packs than your daily allowance, to give you even better odds of completing your Dex. Purchasing a Premium subscription for $9.99/month will earn you one additional pack each day, as well as some other perks. You can also unlock Wonder Picks, and grab 1 of 5 cards from a pack that your friend or another random player has opened. Don’t worry, they don’t lose that card, and you can also send them a reward as a thank you. One really cool thing about the Wonder Picks is that you’ll get to collect those cards in whichever language the other player has set in their own app, so make lots of friends around the world to build your foreign language card collection.

From inside your Dex section, you can create Display Boards, Binders, and customized Decks. Display Boards are a great way to highlight your favorite cards on cool backdrops to show them off to your friends. Binders can be filled with up to 30 cards of your choice, to display your collection in fun, smaller themed sets. One of the most important things you can do in your Dex is building custom Decks to use in battle. Choose 20 of your best Pokémon and useful item cards to build decks suited to compete with other players or app-generated opponents. You’ll want to craft different decks with a variety of strengths and abilities to match against different opponents, by choosing cards with strong health, attack damage, and competitive faction types.

When you go into battle, you’ll choose Solo or Versus mode. In Solo, you can pick from any of the opponents you’ve unlocked across increasing difficulty levels. In Versus, the app will pair you with an equal level opponent or you can invite your friends for a match. When a battle starts, you’re dealt a starting hand from your deck, then place up to 4 basic Pokémon into your field of play. During each turn you’ll draw more cards, evolve your Pokémon to stronger versions of themselves, assign Energy tokens to cards, and Attack your opponent’s Pokémon. Each character has different health, attack, bonus effects, and weakness stats, so you’ll want to keep an eye on those as the battle progresses in order to choose the best one for attacking during each turn. When a Pokémon loses all its health points, it gets knocked out of play and the attacking player gets a point. Win 3 points to claim victory for that battle and earn rewards. You can play as many battles each day as you like, no cooldown required.

Aside from card collecting, battling, and deck building, there are a few more things you can do in the app. Connect with your friends using their player codes or make new friends by sending requests through the Wonder Picks or Battle menu. Earn in-game currency and useful items like hourglasses by completing daily or themed missions, and buy playable items or cosmetics in the shop. If you’re a Premium member, you’ll unlock extra missions and a bonus shopping section with even more cosmetic goodies.

The focus of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is definitely more about collecting than battling, which is great for players like me who are casually dipping our toes into Pokémon. More experienced players, or those who want really challenging battles may find this app a little more limiting. As for the Premium subscription, since full app functionality is still available for free players, and $9.99/month is a bit steep, after my 2-week trial ends I think I’ll be perfectly happy with the free areas of the app, unless one month there are some amazing Premium cosmetic items that I can’t live without. Even if you’ve never collected Pokémon in the past, if you think the characters are cute, this app is a great way to jump into the franchise, for iOS or Android. If you want more info than the app store pages provide before committing to the download, you can check out the official website too.