Pokemon Trading Card Game

"To say that I get some joy out of depriving those pompous pudgies the happiness of ripping me off on my cards is an understatement."

Nintendo has proven time and time again that it's a nefarious organization capable of doing some wicked deeds. This one takes the cake. Pokemon cards are practically cheap pieces of cardboard with a picture printed on them. If you're lucky, you'll find one with aluminum foil stapled on it to give it a pseudo glow. Funny part is these little pieces of cardboard aren't cheap. In fact, they're downright expensive. If you've ever bothered to read the instruction manual that comes in every Pokemon TCG starter deck, then you've probably seen their little disclaimer message in one of the front pages.

“These cards are meant to be fun, not to be stored in vaults like precious artwork”.

So what happens when you follow their advice and decide to have fun with them? They crease. They bend. They fray. And worst of all, they smudge. So you've followed their advice and taken your cards to the local card tournament, gotten a bit of gum and other particles on them. Nothing big, they still look decent enough. And then you take them to a collector, only to have the pompous pudgy tell you that you're cards are worthless, worn to the extreme. All that money – gone.

Always looking to make a quick buck, Nintendo finally got around to making a game that solves that problem and more. Featuring every card from the original TCG to Fossil, The Pokemon Trading Card Game manages to put together a solid assortment of card battling fun that allows fans of Pokemon cards to get there binging out without having to pay a high price and winding up with nothing to show for it but a sorry stack of beat up cards.

For trainers in the world of Pokemon TCG, though, that's commonplace. When the game begins, the player is given a choice of three decks, each focusing on one of the three basic elements – fire, water, and grass. Every deck gives the player a basic mixture of cards to choose from, while making sure that the difficulty curve doesn't become too steep before the player has a chance to get into a style that he or she prefers. After you've managed to get a couple of battles under your belt (the battles available at the lab are easy, but they're basically the only tutorial that you'll be getting due to Nintendo's idiocy), a big world map of ten locations greets you. Take a wild guess of what's located at eight of those. Gyms.

Like in many other Pokemon games, gyms serve as the primary area in which you can test the skills you've learned over the course of the game. Each focuses on a primary deck type (such as fire, water), while making the trainers within use a particular strategy (fast strategies, or ones that take time to set up). For the most part, gyms are practically the only place that Nintendo gives you the opportunity to battle in, so if you can't handle the opponents within, you might as well pick another one for the time being. After fighting a couple of trainers, the player can attempt the gym leader. In laymen's terms, he's the big kukupa of the establishment. If you manage to beat him or her, great. Now go out and beat the other seven while you're at it.

If you thought that beating them would be a piece of cake, however, than you're sadly mistaken. Fighting trainers is fun and all, but what really makes whipping them worthwhile is the prizes that you receive once you've taken them out. Upon winning, a booster pack is awarded to the player. Packs vary by gym, but if you see the trainers using a particular strategy in any given place, then you know that the cards you'll be getting will be something along those lines (hint, spam the gym that give out cards that fit your strategy). Probably what makes The Pokemon Trading Card Game as interesting as it is is the wide varieties of strategies that any given player can employ. Do you like to wear opponents out over time, or go for a quick KO? Do you like to use fire types in your cards to scorch the glutinous maximus, or do you prefer rock solid ground types for defense? With as many choices as there are, the possibilities are immense. Word to the wise, though, don't think that putting together a six type deck is going to cut it.

As many people know, Pokemon cards come in sixteen to seventeen different types (give or take your generation). Each type trumps another, with every Pokemon falling into one of those individual categories. So a deck filled with every type to trump every type would make you invincible, right? Wrong. For every attack you try to pull, it's going to take energies, and since every Pokemon requires energies of a particular type depending on the attack, you can't afford to stuff 50 energies into a 60 card deck (unlike in real life, the judge can tell if you're cheating). That's why it becomes priority to make the most out of the limited stuffing room you have. And that's exactly why you have to make sure you adopt a strategy early this way half way through the game you don't wind up switching and forcing yourself to get all the cards you need for your new strategy (unless you were an idiot in the beginning, at which point I'd recommend scratching your deck and starting over. The game is unforgiving in the second half, so you can't afford to be dawdling on thinking you can make it).

For all the focus Nintendo took on the card battling, though, they still managed to do a decent job on the graphics and music. The game is lively and upbeat, complimenting itself with a wide array of color schemes and pixel movement to keep players awake as they're making it through the battles. Almost every attack in the game is fully animated with pixels, and for a GBC game, the cards look as good as they were going to get. And that's not saying much. Outside of battle, the game is still colorful, albeit somewhat duller than most would have expected considering what they did with the battles. To compensate for this, most of the music is decent enough on the ears to keep a possible player from turning off the volume. Granted, it is repetitive, and it can get annoying quickly if you're not one for the pseudo pixel rock that they used, bit it gets the job done.

Even with all of these good points, the game still has its problems. You know how I talked about having access to a big world map that sports ten locations? Eight of those are gyms, with the other two being a sorry excuse for the Pokemon League and a house where some geek is willing to trade you cards. To make matters worse, you don't even get to travel to them – you simply point and click your way and wind up in the hall. And get this, 95% of the darn game is spent in card battles. Can you smell repetition? Heck yeah. For all it's worth, they also slaughtered the game in terms of difficulty fluctuations. The first half of the game is back and forth on some clowny merry-go-round of easy bunnies, while the other half introduces you to a nightmare of card battling complimented by unfair coin tosses and opponents that seemingly always get the right draws at the right time. Do you smell set-up? Yep.

So yeah, the game definitely has its fair share of problems, but let's not forget the true meaning of why you should even think about spending your hard earned money on it in the first place – to play with the cards. This is probably one of the best outlets that you'll ever find for Pokemon card battling, and it has a good habit of providing the challenge necessary to make the game worthwhile for even a hardcore vet. Quick warning, though. Stay far away if you can't take the repetition of constant battling. The game doesn't offer much else than that. For everyone else, however, get ready for some card slinging fun.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 06/13/07