Overall 9.4 Graphics 7 Sound 6.5 Addictive 9.5 Story 7 Depth 7 Difficulty 8
7.5
The last Pokemon TCG video game... sadly EX Palen
In the late 90s, the craze for the Trading Card Games started, with Yu-Gi-Oh! and Magic The Gathering leading the revolution that not long after would sweep the world. A ton of animes, mangas and collectible card games were released in the following years, as well as video games inspired in them or creating their own new concept. Even famous sagas like Dragon Ball have attempted to create a TCG of their own, demonstrating the big potential these games have.
Seeing this great potential, Nintendo boarded the ship of the TCGs. Their bet was a TCG revolving around Pokemon, in a time where the first generation was still fresh and the anime started airing. Even though it had these two hard competitors, the TCG managed to become a strong bet in the Pokemon merchandising even to this day, with an ever expanding car pool as new generations of Pokemon land.
This second version, however, never saw the light outside Japan. What you have here is the best attempt at an English translation of said game.
GRAPHICS: 7
Nothing to be surprised about. It keeps the level of graphics seen in the main games of the time, and the in-battle animations are very developed for its time. The only flaw is that the cards are missing a little bit of details. If Nintendo bothers to give the cards different colors according to their type, why does the game ignore said colors? The rating could have been much higher without this error.
SOUND: 5
Probably the worst aspect in the game. I’ve played other games even in the preceding Game Boy that had a better quality sound. The music sounds canned, and the in-game sounds could be of a better quality too. Even then, the rating has to be positive for the huge pool of sounds the game offers and the varied soundtrack. Wouldn’t be fair if I ignored these two facts.
ADDICTIVENESS: 9
Has someone ever played a TCG that isn’t addictive? Be it opening up to try all available strategies, to collect all cards or whatever goal you have in mind, you keep playing over and over to achieve it.
STORY: 6
Much like in the main games, an evil group plans on taking over the world by using Pokemon. You must travel around the “region”, or I shall better say the island, and defeat the “Gym Leaders” to get stronger and reinforce your deck to fight and defeat said evil group.
In my opinion, a little tweak to it could have been done to make the story somewhat unique and different from other games. For example, in Digimon Digital Card Battle, a new boss was created to make the game’s storyline unique while at the same time repeating many things from the first two anime series. Couldn’t we get something like this in this game and not making simply a port of Gold, Silver and Yellow but changing Pokemon for cards that represent them?
DEPTH: 6
It’s not as deep as the main games, lacking many unnecessary fights needed to level up your Pokemon, as they now are mere cards. Since all you need is battle certain opponents and keep expanding your card pool, there is no need for routes from location to location, wild Pokemon to battle or anything, it’s basically the leaders and the evil team to battle, leaving room for little more. I don’t understand how this game lacked more depth when it was released after Gold and Silver.
DIFFICULTY: 8
The game’s rules aren’t that difficult to learn, but playing can be such a pain. It’s not as easy as in the main games to exploit the weaknesses of the opponents, as in this game some types are combined under the same symbol: Normal, Flying and Dragon all share the same symbol, as do Fighting and Ground, Water and Ice, Grass and Poison and Psychic and Ghost. This means that a deck focusing on the Green symbol can include both Grass and Poison Pokemon, which work entirely different in-game. Not to mention that the legendary Pokemon cards don’t even have a weakness to start with, making it even harder to beat them.
OVERALL: 7.5
Not a bad attempt to a card game, based on how recent the Pokemon phenomenon was back then, the second generation having barely seen the light of day. Sadly, this game was never ported outside Japan, and to this date, remains the last ever Pokemon TCG video game released, even though the TCG is still running.
POSITIVE
-Loyal to the TCG. Other games, like in the Yu-Gi-Oh! series, have attempted to tweak the game’s original rules in several occasions. It’s nice to see this game remained loyal to the rules used in real life. A set of rules that is still in use, as the game has only expanded the card pool and variety but left the rules untouched, something that not even Yu-Gi-Oh! can claim.
-Card pool. Having a card pool of over 400 cards back then was on par with any contemporary Yu-Gi-Oh! Game, a franchise that solely focuses on its TCG, and that has a very interesting meaning.
NEGATIVE
-Canned sound. Really, really annoying. Try Kirby’s Dream Land 2 for the Game Boy, and you will see, and hear, how the sound is of far much better quality. And we’re not only talking about a somewhat older system, we’re talking about a game six years older than this one, and that’s a huge gap.
-Unoriginal storyline. Even more if you consider the evil group still calls itself similar to Team Rocket. Nothing in this storyline is actually unique to the game, everything is just a name change of sorts.
Graphics 7 Sound 5 Addictive 9 Story 6 Depth 6 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 4.4/5
Submitted: 08-23-15
Review Replies: 0
9.8
Pokemon trading card game 2 (completely enlish translated) feargarr
It overall is a really good game especially if you are like me and love Pokémon. This game seems to start off right were the first one left off and has just about all the same cards as the fist one and new dark Pokémon cards and all the card that you would fine in the R booster packs. Well like I said before it starts off that you have just won the legendary Pokémon cards and out of the blue an new team (witch is noting more than the Team Rocket we all know and love) attack and still all the cards from all the clubs and your cards alone with them, and its your job to get those cards back and in doing so bring down this new threat. Given that you can fine all the card to do it you can make all the same deck you made in the fist one and save them to a new very handy computer that your character has on his person at all time and recreate it as long as you have the cards to do so witch really come in handy case there are some people in the game that flat out refuse to duel you if your deck doesn't have 4 of a certain card or only one kind of energy in it. So the game is constantly forcing you to use diffident cards and you go out and obtain new cards and learn new combos with those card keeping the game new and fresh. With the mix from the old cards and the new one you can really make some really good deck that can do some really broken stuff but note that the game also know how to use the new and old to do the same thing and I found myself learning from the game from time to time. Well like the first one after betting the boss of an element (color) they award you with a new coin but you can now use in dueling witch are also needed to access new Ares with new rules of dueling. Unlike other ones I have played this is completely translated but there is one card I found that just has no name, I know the card to be gamble but when you obtain it has no name and show as a blank in the deck builder but other than it not having a name everything else seems to be in place. There was one place in the game were I needed to have four of one card in my deck to duel this guy and I only had three needless to say I had to go back and duel and lot of people to get more packs before I ever got the card I was looking for. The game is pretty straightforward with no real puzzle other than making a new deck that fix within the guidelines of someone you need to bet to progress the story. In closing I would like to give you a tip on making decks. After I obtain dark dragonairs I use them in most all of the other decks I made just changed the energy and the other Pokémon in the decks case with them being colorless and making it easy to get evolution cards to hand they really came in handy.
Graphics 7 Sound 8 Addictive 10 Story 8 Depth 8 Difficulty 8
Review Rating: 4.4/5
Submitted: 03-08-13
Review Replies: 1