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For the hardcore fans only, newbies need not apply - Pokémon Trading Card Game Live Quick Review

6K View2023-06-16

Pokémon TCG Live

5.3

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PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Chances are you already know your own answer to this question, but for the sake of the format of these reviews, I’ll answer the question: Play it only if you’re already an established fan of the physical Pokémon Trading Card Game or the previous digital iteration, Pokémon Trading Card Game Online. Pokémon TCG Live is a long-awaited update/replacement for the previous digital version, which was over a decade old. The new experience offers a much cleaner UI and some fun customization elements. It’s a slick package in many ways, but if you’re not already a dedicated Pokémon TCG player, you’re going to quickly run into some problems.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve spent around ten hours with Pokémon TCG Live this week. In that time, I was able to test out all of the starting decks the game offers, unlock the premium battle pass, rank up a few times, and raise my account to level 6 across around twenty games.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Presentation. The biggest change between Pokémon TCG Live and the old Pokémon Trading Card Game Online is in the look. TCG Live has a fresh user interface that’s focused on keeping things clean and easy to use over being flashy. That includes a great deck tracker that made it easy to find the cards I wanted in my ever-growing collection and generally very clear interactions during games.

• Character customization. The first thing I had to do when I loaded into Pokémon TCG Live for the first time was designing my own Pokémon trainer. The game has a surprisingly deep suite of avatar customization abilities, and I was able to create a look I was very happy with. Beyond that initial creation process, players can spend coins earned in-game to unlock more clothing options, titles, and—my personal favorite—goofy phrases that your character says via a dialogue box when entering a match or upon winning. It really goes above and beyond in letting players express themselves compared to other popular digital card games like Hearthstone or Marvel Snap.

• Variety of free starter decks. The optional tutorial for Pokémon TCG Live provided me with a basic but reliable fire deck. After that, though, I was handed a full collection of over a hundred cards, as well as ten premade starter decks. This included simple grass and fighting decks, as well as more complex but powerful options, like the metal-based Origin Forme Dialga VSTAR deck. None of these starter decks are perfect, but they at least provide a good starting point for someone jumping into the game for the first time with no other cards.

• Card crafting. One welcome addition from the old version of the game is Hearthstone-style card crafting. When you open duplicates in Pokémon TCG Live (i.e. cards you already have four copies of), the extra cards are now turned into credits, which can in turn be exchanged to craft cards of your choice. It can take a long time to earn the credits needed to craft a perfect deck. After ten hours playing and a few dozen packs opened, I have just under 5,000 credits, and crafting costs range from 40 credits for a basic common card to a hefty 2,000 credits for a “secret rare” rarity card. Still, having the option to target specific cards I needed to fill out my deck was wonderful.

WHAT SUCKS

• Strange pack unlock process. Take this for what you will coming from someone who’s spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars buying Hearthstone packs over the years, but Pokémon TCG Live’s strange anti-monetization approach to earning new packs baffled me. This game is free-to-play in the truest sense of the phrase: There’s literally no way to spend money in Pokémon TCG Live. That meant even things like unlocking the seasonal battle pass required grinding for the rare currency used to purchase the premium pass.

On the one hand, this no-microtransaction approach is laudable, especially given that a Pokémon-themed game is likely going to pull in younger kids. But as someone who’s been brain-poisoned by other free-to-play models, especially in the digital card game space, I couldn’t help but just want to purchase some bundles to help build up my collection and get competitive faster—especially since the currency used to buy packs is mostly earned through daily quests, and I was only given two per day to complete. I feel like a monster admitting this, but I really wanted to just bust open my wallet and get playing the way the game is meant to be played.

(Side note: Technically there is one way to spend real money for cards in Pokémon TCG Live: purchasing physical packs. Some physical Pokémon Trading Card Game packs include a code that can be redeemed in the digital game to receive a digital pack or even a full preconstructed deck. It’s maybe not the most efficient process, but for players who enjoy both the physical Pokémon TCG and the video game version, it’s a nice offer.)

• Massive barriers for new players. One of the unfortunate realities of basically any card game, but especially a digital one, is that the longer it’s been around, the more intimidating and difficult it is for new players to jump in. While the official launch of Pokémon TCG Live may seem like the ideal jumping-on point, that’s sadly not the case. Players who had built up a collection of cards from Pokémon Trading Card Game Online were able to transfer cards from recent sets to Live, which means even with the nice starter decks, fully new players like myself are starting from an extreme disadvantage.

• Limited tooltips. In another move that hurts the game for new players, Pokémon TCG Live doesn’t offer much in the way of tooltips explaining how card mechanics work. Simple stuff like weakness and resistance are easy enough to figure out, but when I encountered more complex cards, I often struggled to understand what exactly was going to happen with certain abilities. When a card says, “You can’t use more than 1 VSTAR Power in a game” does it mean I can literally only use the ability once per game, or that I can repeat it but can’t use any other VSTAR abilities? No clue. What does it mean when one of my cards is sent into the “Lost Zone” rather than the normal discard pile? Couldn’t tell you.

• No trading. I know, I know, most digital card games don’t allow trading. But there’s two reasons this stands out in Pokémon TCG Live. First off, it’s in the freakin’ name! It’s Pokémon Trading Card Game Live! But secondly, the previous version, Pokémon TCG Online, had a robust card trading system. Trading has seemingly been swapped out in exchange for crafting, but I wish there was room for both.

💬 Do you have what it takes to be the very best in Pokémon Trading Card Game Live, or are you folding your hand on this one? Share your thoughts in the comments below.