I don’t normally play a whole lot of mobile games, but I did grow up playing the Pokemon trading card game. So when a new Pokemon mobile game based on the trading card game became available, I thought it would be fun to give it a look. Will this be like most mobile games I play and I only stick with it for about a week, or will this be like Fire Emblem Heroes, where I’m still playing every day?

Interestingly, the game seems to focus more on collecting new cards than it does with playing the actual card game. Right away, you get to open a booster pack of cards. Opening a pack is done with a very satisfying swipe across the top of the pack, slicing it open. Five cards will pop out, and hopefully, you’ll get a cool one. I’ve always enjoyed opening real Pokemon cards, and this does seem to scratch the same itch.

Opening packs helps you complete missions which gives you special rewards. It seems like most often, these are ways to speed up the time it takes before you can open another pack. So you open packs to earn items to let you open more packs. It’s not very deep, but I mean, if the focus is card collecting, it makes sense to just keep letting the player collect cards.

You can also show off your favorite cards. When you get duplicates, you can cash some in to get some special flare on your cards. I actually haven’t done this yet, so I’m not sure how cool it actually is. But you can also set up display cases. These have different backdrops that you can put a card in front of. I’m hoping that down the line there’s cases that can display multiple cards, like if you’d want to show off the Blastoise evolution line or something, but as of now, I only see ones for single cards.

While collecting may be the focus, you can play a simplified version of the actual trading card game. You only put twenty cards in your deck, consisting of both Pokemon and trainer cards. Pokemon do the actual battling, while trainer cards allow for special things to happen. For example, the Pokeball trainer card will grab a random Pokemon from your deck and add it to your deck.

Just like the real game, you have one active Pokemon at a time, as well as a bench. In this game, your bench only fits three other Pokemon. The active Pokemon needs energy in order to attack or retreat to the bench. Unlike the real game, where you have energy cards in your deck, you simply generate one every turn. Pokemon attacks cost different amount of energy and deal different amounts of damage, and different Pokemon have different amounts of health. Dealing enough damage to knock your opponent’s health down to zero scores you a point. Three points and you win the game.

There’s unfortunately not that much else going on in this game. You can battle both AI and actual humans, but that’s kind of it. You collect cards, you display cards, you battle cards. But I’m really not looking for much beyond that. As of right now, I’m pretty happy with what I’ve seen from the game. But to answer the question from the beginning of this post, I’m really not sure. This could be the kind of thing I spend like five minutes on a day for the rest of my life, or the kind of thing I forget about by the end of the week. Only time will tell, but it’s definitely a well made card collecting app for what it is, and a good way to play the card game.