Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket

Anyone who actively browses app stores on mobile platforms has probably experienced enough times that apps, and games in particular, are stuffed with so many gatcha elements, misleading marketing and intentionally manipulative elements that you maintain a healthy scepticism almost no matter what you face. It's fair, it's justified, it's well-deserved.

Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket certainly doesn't avoid all the pitfalls associated with modern mobile games. There is, of course, a premium Battle Pass of sorts, which provides ongoing access to more content, and furthermore lets you unlock more content as you progress and time passes. But unlike a Battle Pass, it's not something you buy once and then run for a season, but a subscription for, oh wait, around £10 a month. It's downright insulting.

That said, DeNA and The Pokémon Company are surprisingly open about a two-week free trial that you can easily initiate and get off to a good start - they even ask you to remember to cancel 24 hours before the two-week trial ends to ensure they don't accidentally bonk you.

Fortunately, this subscription is the worst thing I can say about Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket, because beyond that, it's not only decently monetised and designed, but it's downright entertaining to play. I can understand why some of my colleagues might find it slightly depressing to see a physical card game go digital, that we're losing something tangible and obviously valuable by collecting Pokémon cards as digital images on our smartphones. I'm open to that argument, but first and foremost I see it as something additive, not necessarily transformative, meaning that this should be seen as something completely different, and at the same time I would never dream of collecting physical Pokémon cards, but getting a notification on my phone that I can open a digital pack twice a day? That's more "my speed".

And opening packs is a pretty central part of Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket. You can open a new pack every 12 hours, and right now there are a total of 226 cards to collect as part of the Genetic Apex deck - though one could easily imagine this selection expanding over time. There are five cards in each, and it's all about collecting new cards to complete your collection. Opening these packs is the central mechanic here, and it's made both as tactile and as satisfying as possible. You have to physically select a pack from a number of others, physically drag your finger across the screen to tear off the top of the wrapping, and swipe through them to see if you've got something rare. Developer DeNA has really nailed it here, and it always feels great to open a new pack. Also, the artwork on these cards is a mix of the old-school ones I opened as an 8-year-old, and the rather nice newer EX cards. The very rare ones even have separate animations that really celebrate the talented illustrators who created these iconic drawings.

Surrounding the opening of new packs, there is of course a lot of meta-progression that you can choose to participate in or not. I might as well tell it like it is; there are too many separate currencies, Pokémon-style. But as far as I can tell, you can pretty much ignore the ones you don't want to deal with and focus entirely on the aspects of Pocket you find satisfying. There are Shop Tokens, there are Hourglass, there are Tickets and there are Emblems - it's all there, but as far as I can tell, you can only buy one of these, and while it's technically possible, it's not exactly front and centre in the interface. One user even had to point it out in the comments section of this review because I simply missed it.

And to be honest, I just found it quite enjoyable to expand my collection continuously, and don't consider it to be monetised in an overly blatant way, nor disturbing in the way it's structured. In terms of how voracious it can get, Pocket doesn't exactly advertise its subscription, and as such doesn't offer ways for those more vulnerable to manipulative mechanics to spend hundreds of pounds in a moment of weakness.

Instead, you can engage in rudimentary battles against AI and other players, open packs by waiting for the timer or rushing it via Hourglass objects that you get your hands on by completing missions, and these tend to complete themselves just by you playing. That's pretty much it. As it stands, Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is extremely simple, and therefore quite enjoyable to engage with, and besides, after the first hour or so, you can easily just check in every day or two and open some packs.

That will probably change and we'll have to decide then, but for now I'm pretty happy with DeNA's work here.