'Pokémon TCG2' es básicamente el "Tears of the Kingdom" de estos spin-offs: el doble de grande, doble de cartas, doble de rivales a batir, y el doble de largo aproximadamente para completar.

Sin embargo, al hacer las dimensiones del juego más grandes no se ha olvidado de ir aportando nuevas mecánicas sobre la marcha, y de hacer la aventura más emocionante. Durante la primera fase, en vez de vencer a los 8 líderes de gimnasio, esta vez tenemos que ayudarles a echar al Team Great Rocket (que no es el Team Rocket en sí. No lo digo yo, lo dice Game Freak) de su terreno y recuperar las cartas que han robado. Los personajes que ya conoces del primer juego ganan un matiz de personalidad, tienen confianza en tus habilidades, te dan consejos para superar las triquiñuelas que emplean los esbirros del Team GR. Ronald, tu odioso rival en el primer juego, trabaja como espía para enviarte por correo los secretos del enemigo, qué cartas emblema utilizan para prepararte a conciencia y contrarrestarlas. La estructura abierta del primer juego se mantiene en esta primera parte, de modo que la progresión es definida por tu deck-building y tus habilidades (y suerte) en el tablero de juego. Tienes todo el tiempo del mundo para construir el mazo que quieras.

Una vez has despachado a los 4 esbirros del mapa, tendrá lugar la segunda fase del juego tras viajar a la isla del Team GR. Esta parte es mucho más lineal y desafiante, ya que habitualmente obliga a modificar el mazo para cumplir reglas especiales que cada Great Rocket exige para batirse en duelo. Y como resultado dan enfrentamientos más vibrantes y diferentes que todo lo que has visto hasta el momento; la gran variedad de cartas (y la introducción de cartas Dark con efectos especiales) contribuyen mucho a ello.

Junto con la aparición de un salón de juego, herramientas para elaborar mazos avanzados, y otros eventos secundarios, la aventura de TCG2 se sabe muy completa y exprime a la perfección las capacidades del juego de cartas que tan bien supo trasladar la primera entrega. Es un paso monumental hacia delante y una muestra de cómo pueden exprimirse las capacidades de GB Color. Es una lástima que Nintendo y The Pokémon Company abandonasen esta serie de spin-offs en pos de tener una plataforma online para duelos directos que nunca ha funcionado demasiado bien (ni sustituye una aventura single-player como tal). Tienen una gran deuda pendiente al respecto.

'Pokémon TCG2' lo tiene todo. Sería perfecto si no estuviese convencido de que la IA hace trampas cuando saca cara o cruz...

Definitely much better than the first (which I dropped after an hour or so), big part of it being the actual tcg being a lot more fun with some of the later sets being added, although that era still had some bs rng and annoying status effect. It also does a lot more with the deck building by constantly asking you to switch up your deck to play around changing rules from fight to fight, and just overall gives you a lot more cards.
Pretty solid game overall, but more recent adventure card game definitely did things better (mostly thinking about ygo stuff since pokemon tcg hasn't had anything since)

I'm still playing this, but it's currently a huge improvement over the last game. The story is only slightly better than its bare-bones predecessor, but the amount of cards and content has doubled. You start out without being able to choose your deck this time, but you can quickly change it up as the game will feed you a few decks of different types as you progress through the beginning.

This never made it over to the West because the Gameboy Advance was going to be in full swing by the time it could have been localized, but a dedicated fan has released a translation patch.

Alright let's get the most important bit out of the way. The base set TCG is DOGSHIT. And I'm not playing this up for comedy or anything, it is SO bad. Way, way, WAY too many cards have coinflip attacks that amount to "if heads your opponent can't play the game", a very clear lack of balance even to a fairly casual player, the list goes on and on. Yet I'm coming in here giving the game a really high rating, so what gives?

Well, despite being given the absolute worst lot in life - being a promotional game for such a horrible TCG - this game absolutely KILLS it. Despite admittedly having a fair few problems, barely any of them feel like they're the entire fault of the game and might not really be problems at all if not being held at the whims of base set. It exudes nothing but charm and passion in absolutely every aspect, and is even quite fun to play most of the time!

The gameplay loop is pretty similar to the original, but after clearing enough of your home island, you get to head off to GR Island, which is the real meat of the game. Over here, most of the duelists throw in their own extra rules to change the game up a bit. A lot of the standard ones are simple ones that just force you to change up your deck, but the leaders have rules that play to their advantage more explicitly - one particular example I remember is a rule that causes the energy of defeated cards to go back into your hands instead of getting discarded, and their deck has a lot of energy removals to try to keep you starved while holding an endless amount of their own. It plays with a lot of ideas and it's a really cool concept in itself, though being forced to swap your deck around can be a bit annoying when you don't have any particularly exciting cards of that type to build around.

As well as Base Set, this game introduces the Team Rocket and Vending sets as well. It's definitely a marked improvement over the original because even though there's still a huge saturation of RNG-centred cards, lots of the new cards have really cute mechanics to build around. Even though I played through a lot of the game with a decently-built Do The Wave deck, I had a lot of fun messing around with lots of the Dark cards in particular since those ones really embody the weird batshit creativity of these earlier competitive games. Despite there being cards and archetypes that are clearly better than others, the game is never hard enough to where it feels like it necessitates a strong meta deck. You can go wild experimenting with the weird stuff, and as long as your decks have a strong enough backbone you can get away with all sorts of dumb funny decks. It's kind of a goldmine for messing around with weird bullshit, much more than the original, and I think that's a big part of what made thhis game so compelling to me. That said, you still are limited by which cards you get from booster packs (the game does try to add a way to reliably get certain cards, but it's a bit arcane and doesn't seem all that helpful), and while I like it for the sense of progression and not being able to just meta deck right at the start, it can get a bit stifling when you don't quite have the cards you need to make something work.

The charm of this game is what really elevates it, though. The original already went WAY harder than it had any right to be with its super detailed and accurate card art recreations and absolutely crazy soundtrack. While this game reuses pretty much all the original's assets, they used that to go to TOWN on all the new details in this one. Entire new soundtrack on top of the old one, with way more attention put into the overworld tracks? Yep! Ability to change the skin of your coin, with every boss using a different, unlockable, coin of their own? Sure, why not? Even more detail put into the character designs, with all the trainers getting happy and sad portraits to react to the game state? Of course! Unexpectedly charming writing and some cute overworld cutscenes? Hell yeah!

I hold so much love for this game, despite being based on the worst game known to mankind and despite the few little quirks of its own. Even though I've written so much, I feel like I can't really express just how passionate I am about it. But it's a little bittersweet, you know? There would have been so much potential for a TCG3 based on a better, more modern version of the game. But as long as they have their outlet in PTCGO that they can monetise the shit out of, there's no reason for another one of them to exist. So close to perfection, but it'll never have its chance to get there.

Until about two weeks ago I didn't even know this game existed.

I played a lot of the first game on my Game Boy Pocket and after my recent Nuzlocke run I fancied something else Pokémon that I knew wasn't as long or intense.

One google rabbit hole later and I discover that actually Japan got a sequel but it never made it outside of there, I think to myself "I might be able to play it untranslated, I'll give it a go" and thank my lucky stars I didn't have to.

It's a real shame this never did make it out of Japan officially because overall it's really quite good and a much better package than the first.
You have a much vaster pool of cards, the AI and/or the opponents decks seem much more competitive and there's twice as many locations and more than twice as many opponents to face.

What starts as a smart sequel reusing many many assets ends up becoming so much more.
The addition opponents who require you to fulfil certain deck requirements also means you're much more likely to experiment and this along with some additional rules with other opponents means there is a lot more variation.

The card game itself is unfortunately not the best, whilst I won't review the current state of that TCG I will say that it has all the problems from today plus a ton more from being a game in it's first years.
Things like coin flips, which there are a lot of, make games feel too based in variance and can cause frustration when the inevitable is being delayed.
A tip I would give is save often, because unlike a real game of cards you cannot scoop if you can see the writing on the wall (and nor will the opponent) and this can turn a fun session into a tiresome chore.

If like me though, you like Pokémon and you like card games - together or separately I'd encourage you to give it a shot.
It's got some great to terrible art but it's all so joyous.
It just makes me hope that maybe one day a third game will appear on the Switch for us all to enjoy.