Review: Pokémon TCG Pocket – A Card Collector’s Paradise

I’ve been a fan of Pokémon for the majority of my life. I was 10 years old when the original video games came west and I got my very first Pokémon card around then as well. I attended Toys R’ Us Pokémon Leagues every Saturday as a kid, became a coach for new players, and just enjoyed everything that came with that era of the phenomenon. 

Nowadays, I’m a certified Pokémon Professor (yes, that’s a real thing you can be) and still love the franchise. But, I’ve always thought of the TCG as a long, drawn-out game and really just loved collecting more than anything. 

Pokémon TCG Pocket, dare I say, is made for me. It’s also made for my wife. Instead of focusing on battling and the real sets of cards that come out on a quarterly basis, it focuses more on collecting and streamlining the entire process for people who just don’t have the time, but still want to be included.

Opening booster packs in Pokémon TCG Pocket

Pokémon TCG Pocket, with no surprise in a TCG-based game, is comprised of two major parts: the collecting and the battling. But, whereas games like Pokémon TCG Lite (and the defunct-but-never-forgotten Pokémon Trading Card Game Online) focus on battling the most, Pokémon TCG Pocket goes the opposite route. As a big gacha mobile game player, I’m really excited to say that this game leans heavily into the gacha aspect.

Early on in the game, you’re going to realize that you get to open 5-card booster packs constantly in the game. You’re going to get a lot of hourglasses that drop the time to zero and you’re going to keep opening just an absolute metric ton of cards. Expect to have a neverending dose of serotonin while playing this.

The first set of cards in Pokémon TCG Pocket is called Genetic Apex. That’s not a set you can go buy in a Target. It’s a set designed with cards from both new and old eras, exclusive to this game. Seeing card arts from the first few sets in 1999 that have been modernized via the text for proper balancing reminds me of the old XY: Evolutions set a lot.

But, they go even further by having three different boosters that focus more on specific hits you may get. Where sets in real life just have pack art that doesn’t affect anything, you’re more likely to find specific fire-type cards in the Charizard pack over Mewtwo or Pikachu, and so on.

But, one of my favorite aspects of opening booster packs is literally opening the packs. They went a little above and beyond, even with it being so simple. Once you choose the pack art you’re opening, it gives you a carousel of that pack, which you can swipe to make it spin. It gives a nice illusion of randomness.

In addition, if you swipe the pack in front of you, you can choose to open it front-facing or card-back-facing. This gives a whole extra level of gacha surprise for fans. At that point, you trace your finger to open the top of the pack (or packs, if you’re doing 10 at a time).

Collecting in Pokémon TCG Pocket

Once you have the cards, there is actually more that you can do with them. Not only do you need more cards to build decks, but you can create binders and display boards as well to present cards you really like. Additionally, obtaining more of the same card can unlock “flair” for that particular card, which will change how they look while in battle.

Nearly everything in Pokémon TCG Pocket is customizable, including the binder covers, display board backgrounds, and what avatar you use. When building a deck, you’ll also be able to set things like the card sleeves, your flippable coin, and the playmat you’re playing on.

Once you level up some in Pokémon TCG Pocket, you’ll unlock Wonder Pick, which is a fantastic little feature that gives you a free, random card from someone’s collection. No worries: it doesn’t steal the card, but it duplicates it. You choose from 5 anonymous cards and hope you get the one you want. The amount of energy you spend on it is slow to come back, but Wonder Hourglasses can help build it back to do more Wonder Picks quickly. 

Missions are a prime way to earn things for the game. There are daily missions, as well as longer-term ones for your Card Dex and Deck. I’ll talk more about the additional Premium Missions later on, as well a my qualms with the current missions available. 

Let’s battle in Pokémon TCG Pocket

As someone who has been playing the Pokémon TCG for 25 years, I adore the streamlined version that is included in Pokémon TCG Pocket. It’s a perfect mixture of mostly classic Pokémon gameplay and more modern games like Marvel SNAP or Hearthstone.

If you don’t know how to play the mainline game, there are thousands of tutorials and how-tos out there. However, I will do my best not to use too much jargon when it comes to the physical TCG. Or, you can just download Pokémon TCG Pocket for free and hit up that tutorial.

Your decks are only 20 cards instead of the usual 60, similar to Marvel SNAP’s 12-card decks. You don’t have to worry about trying to get energy, as you’ll get one energy to use every turn automatically.

Instead of the usual 6 prize cards, you earn 3 points to win in Pokémon TCG Pocket. Defeating a Pokémon is a point. That’s it: get three knockouts of any kind on your opponent and you win the match. This can be done head-on with brute force or more strategically like attacking benched Pokémon with specific abilities on a card. 

I’ve noticed that a lot of cards were changed dramatically to fit this style of gameplay, including text on cards or HP levels. I really don’t mind the changes, but it’s worth noting for veteran players.

You can battle online or “Solo”, which is just against the computer. You can earn rewards for completing challenges in Solo. Also, make sure you do every tutorial Guide, not just the initial six that the main tutorial requires. You earn actual, useful Trainer cards and a rental deck for completing everything.

Speaking of decks, you can earn rental preconstructed decks that’ll include cards you may not already own, but you only get 10 free battles from them. But, once you build up your collection enough, there’s an Auto-deck functionality that will intelligently build a 20-card deck from your collection. It works really well and I’ve got a killer Psychic-type deck that I take online now. Earning more cards, you can set it to auto-build again and adjust each time. It’s great.

If you’re battling, there’s also an auto-battle function, similar to other gacha games out there. It’s not perfect but it plays fairly well if your hands are full or you’re just trying to get through a match without scooping. 

It’s free to play, so of course there is monetization

As with most free-to-play games out there, you’re going to see ways that the developers want to make some money off of you. The monetization in Pokémon TCG Pocket comes in two forms: Poké Gold and the Premium Pass. 

Poké Gold is just a special currency that be used to help speed things up or fill in gaps of free currency you may be missing. It’s almost unnecessary at all, honestly, unless you somehow didn’t get enough booster packs for free. But, if you do opt to go that route, get the bundles to earn some promotional goodies, like coins, playmats, and card sleeves along with it.

The Premium Pass, on the other hand, actually is well worth the price for people who plan to play more than a little. Not only does it offer Premium Missions, but it also unlocks a special Shop that offers Premium-only promo cards and items.

The initial Premium Shop offers goodies like a Promo Pikachu card that is only available there, as well as a full set of Mewtwo-based customizables. The only downside is that it’s really easy to max out your premium membership quickly if you play heavily.

This means that there just aren’t enough missions in the game to be sustainable on a constant basis, even paying for a Premium Pass. But, casual players likely won’t hit that glass ceiling as easily.

You’ll get a 2-week free trial before it charges you $9.99 for a monthly sub, which is cancelable before the end of the 2 weeks. You likely could probably get everything in that short span, if you try hard enough. After only one day of play in Pokémon TCG Pocket, I’m nearly done already.

An additional note that I should talk about is that if you plan to use multiple accounts with a single credit card, don’t. You can use the same card for multiple accounts without issue, but you only get one trial per credit/debit card on Android, it seems. We learned that the hard way and my wife didn’t get the free trial.

Coziness and Cons

This game, for me, nearly got a perfect cozy score. If we did half scores, it’d likely be a 9.5. Pokémon TCG Pocket is a huge rush of constant serotonin hits. The battling is so easy and sleek that I don’t feel like it is stressful in any way. And the collecting aspect is just top-notch.

The only thing knocking it down is that I’m a veteran fan of the franchise and it was easy for me to breeze through the tutorials on the majority of Pokémon TCG Pocket. But, my wife, a relative newbie to the culture and game, brought up that the info dumping was really difficult to parse at times. It’s not a deal breaker, but she definitely had to sit and read every little detail and it’s really easy to lose info when there’s that much.

As mentioned, missions are another aspect of Pokémon TCG Pocket that needs to be addressed. There just aren’t enough. Other DeNA Pokémon games, such as Pokémon  Masters EX, have hundreds of missions to get through that I still haven’t completed years later. I feel like I’m going to finish the game entirely in a matter of weeks at this rate.

Something we also both encountered on the first evening that the game was released was that the game crashed a handful of times for both of us. It’d happen at weird times with no warning. But, the game either would just freeze or turn into a blinking mess that’ll hurt your eyes from flashing lights. Yes, that’s an epilepsy warning.

I’m sure the game will get some hotfixes and updates over time. But, just beware that it does crash every so often for now and those blinking lights suck.

Final Verdict

I adore Pokémon TCG Pocket. It’s such a good game with great potential. I hope Pokémon and DeNA build it up to be a tentpole for the franchise. 

Aside from the crashing and lack of missions, the gameplay is a constant dopamine machine. The collecting and presentation aspect is supreme and the battling is actually great for quick matches for people who don’t have the time to do anything drawn out anymore.

Newbies to the franchise should expect a lot of info. But, it’s not a difficult game to learn by any stretch.

Pokémon TCG Pocket is free to play on Android and iOS devices. If you choose to get that Premium Pass, you can get a 2-week trial before you pay $9.99 monthly for it.

While you’re here thinking about Pokémon, you might not know that Pokémon Legends Z-A is currently in development. However, you might actually want to check out our preview of TCG Shop Simulator, which allows you to own a local card shop that sells games not unlike this very Pokémon Trading Card Game.