This review was posted on 12/14/22, which I believe is relevant for live service games because who knows how the game will look at all in a year from.
Also worth bringing up, if you read my post about Master Duel, is that this will be more about PTCG Live has a client for the game, rather than the actual card game. I'll talk about the game but it's a game people have been playing for like 20 years for a reason and your opinion of the game often varies between preferences in TCG gameplay and even just the game's current meta. When I'm playing jund cat oven in MTG i think it's the best game ever made, and then when i play against flash decks I think it's the worst game ever made.
Lets start with some pros:
-It works! I've had no issues running it and significant bugs are handled and openly discussed on log in messages from developers, outside of the the player characters (more on that later) it looks perfectly serviceable for a card game. It lacks some visual and audio flash of things like MD but hey the particle effects on attacks look nice
-A remarkably good beginners experience. I played the previous PTCG online client and bounced off because all the beginners options were just complete ass. a flaw of the PTCG game imo is that the power gap between Good Decks and Piles is enormous, basically unwinnable. You played a pile of cards you got from beginning and immediately met even a medicore V pokemon and got your ass blasted. It felt like if you went into say, master duel, and your only starter options were the yugi and kaiba starter decks from the year 2000s vs Actual decks.
Live however, is remarkably generous. You get a fair amount of starter decks and they are ALL way more reflective of actual modern gameplay and deck building. Lugia Vstar is the most popular deck on ladder; a deck that is a very relevant meta threat in the actual game, because they give you most of the shell of that deck (V lugia, vstar lugia, archeops, ect) right off the bat; hell they even give I believe the entirety of the inteleon engine. The decks they give you are obviously not tournament topping lists; but they're much better, and it's way more enjoyable to learn the game with real decks rather than some dogshit pile.
This online client has it's first set rotation on the horizon, including a lot of key cards in starter decks being rotated out. I'll be very interesting to see what they plan to do with starter decks when that comes around.
-Battlepass yadayada, I'm not a huge fan of the BPs but you can get the pass entirely F2P (more on this later, its complicated), and 95% of all dailies are pretty simple and can be easily done in like 1-3 games max. I haven't completed this season BP as of writing but it seems to be roughly around a level a day just doing quests, and playing games gives you BP exp anyways. Rewards are mostly fine, there's some complete filler shit with like the cosmetics but you get cards and shit from it
-Test deck feature is fucking awesome. Most clients have bots games you can play, but none of them let you play with cards you dont own. This one does. I've spent plenty of time just trying deck lists against bots and practicing play lines; it's fun, very user friendly, and lets you see if you actually enjoy playing a deck before commiting to building it (this is very important). I wish more clients had this, but I know why it wont be the norm like how most fighting games wont let you training mode characters you don't own.
-I really like how this game does alt card art. Chase cards in sets almost always have multiple variants that you can pull from pack (and even craft!), evergreen cards just have tons of different card arts for personal swag, ect ect. Pulling a rainbow fullart of a vmax card i wanted to play, or a gold of a trainer card i use a lot honestly feels great and I think it's one of the better systems in a client for swagging out your deck. I love dropping my gold path to the peaks on people.
-I just think think the game's fun! it hits a nice inbetween in game speed of MTG and YGO for me, you still play a lot of cards during a turn often and a lot of decks are trying to turbo out a powerful option, but the way the decks go about their goal is different, ive had a lot of interesting decision making moments, matchup goals between decks feel varied, and sometimes you just ball outta control and that rules. I've only put in experience in one meta so I cant pretend I'm very knowledgeable in the game, but I've played a lot of online TCGs and if I think it's boring i'd know by now.
And the cons:
-The player icons. The previous client had these just awful flat early 2000s generic pngs for your icons, there was no pokemon soul in them, they sucked. Here comes a brand new client and... they double down on that? Now they're 3d models but they're still just generic people with the most pokemon soul being a pokemon logo on an outfit you can make them wear. The game loves to give you cosmetic outfits and coins to buy them by the bucketload and they're all just awful and feels like getting nothing. I have no idea why they committed to this visual design, instead of something more flavorful. Hell just do what other games would've done and make you pick PNGs of pokemon game/anime characters. Just awful looking.
-deck builder kinda sucks. it's not a huge deal and you get used to it but it becomes confusing when you start, say, putting in a card you run 4 of but you have 1 that's different from the rest because you got 1 dripped out gold ultraball
-The monetization/F2P of this game is my biggest issue. I say it's an issue but really it's just... incredibly strangely implemented.
For one, there's one currency for acquiring card packs (and also the premium battlepass) in this game. You get it at a SNAIL'S pace; you get one daily a day which gives you 60 funbucks, maybe you get more if you hit some level up tiers.
it costs 200 fun bucks to buy a single pack which comes with 10 crafting dust as well.
Also, you will never buy single packs because the 3 pack is just better value (becomes rougly 186 funbucks a pack, and a huge increase in 125 dust. ). Which you will also never buy because the 6 pack is even BETTER value per pack and more dust. There isn't a reason to buy the small packs, you're simply gimping yourself of funbucks which you get precious little amounts of so it's not worth wasting value on. This effectively means you can buy new cards F2P every 18~ days, give or take the game giving you some of the previously mentioned level up/BP freebies.
I did this for the brillaint stars pack, because i wanted to play Arceus Duraladon. And while I was very happy to receive a gold arceus vstar from those packs, I still need 5 more Arceusi to play the deck, and was still missing the duraladon part of the deck. I cannot imagine actually going full F2P in this game; it seems impossible to actually make a standard deck before it rotates (atleast the game comes with extended right off the bat).
it's very kind that the game gives you most of the Lugia Vstar shell off the bat, but if you want to go full F2P I hope you're ready to be playing Lugia for a while because that's all you got.
There also isn't disenchanting, because lol.
So what if I want to whale? this part is particularly weird, because you cannot actually spend money in the game at all. There is no built in way of buying the funbucks. It's not an option! i don't think there's even a place for you to put your credit card in at all. So how are they making money / how is ANYONE not just playing lugia in this game?
Well, that's because the actual cards packs IRL come with digital codes that give you a pack of the same set in PTCGL.
Yeah, its like that. This game makes money by getting people to buy IRL packs. Of course, in reality this means people on the second hand market are making money.
Pokemon, more than any other TCG, is bought in bulk by people who dont give a fuck about the actual card game. It's got a lot of great card art, tons of rare variants to crack packs open for, and it's pokemon so it has huge brand loyalty. I pogged at getting a digital gold arceus vstar; imagine how hard people pog when they pull actual gold/rainbow variants?
What this means is that there's a lot of people who buy packs and don't care about the digital cards at all, but are looking to make some money back on the boxes they bought. If you have no interest in the physical game (like me), the best way to get whale in this game is to hit up ebay and buy from people who are selling cards in bulk.
And it's great value honestly! I bought a fucking 50 code pack of a set and finished my Regigigas deck for like 10 bucks. In theory that's miles cheaper than any other online client i've played.
While in theory this game is the cheapest to whale in, and it doesn't feel awful to drop 10 bucks and wait for a guy on ebay to send you some pictures to finish a deck, the F2P card gain is monstrously slow and feels impossible to make decks without dropping cash.
TL;DR
I think the actual card game is fun to play and collect cards, the client runs and works fine, and has some great QOL features I hope other games rip off (they wont), but the game's miserably slow F2P currency games makes playing this game F2P feel like a dream and if you want to play multiple decks you're going to have to either buy packs IRL and buy codes off ebay bulk sellers.
It's complicated, i'm still gonna keep playing because I'm enjoying the game, but at one point does this game start to feel like it has a subscription if i want to play more than one deck? And for people, is this game good enough for a subscription?
Also worth bringing up, if you read my post about Master Duel, is that this will be more about PTCG Live has a client for the game, rather than the actual card game. I'll talk about the game but it's a game people have been playing for like 20 years for a reason and your opinion of the game often varies between preferences in TCG gameplay and even just the game's current meta. When I'm playing jund cat oven in MTG i think it's the best game ever made, and then when i play against flash decks I think it's the worst game ever made.
Lets start with some pros:
-It works! I've had no issues running it and significant bugs are handled and openly discussed on log in messages from developers, outside of the the player characters (more on that later) it looks perfectly serviceable for a card game. It lacks some visual and audio flash of things like MD but hey the particle effects on attacks look nice
-A remarkably good beginners experience. I played the previous PTCG online client and bounced off because all the beginners options were just complete ass. a flaw of the PTCG game imo is that the power gap between Good Decks and Piles is enormous, basically unwinnable. You played a pile of cards you got from beginning and immediately met even a medicore V pokemon and got your ass blasted. It felt like if you went into say, master duel, and your only starter options were the yugi and kaiba starter decks from the year 2000s vs Actual decks.
Live however, is remarkably generous. You get a fair amount of starter decks and they are ALL way more reflective of actual modern gameplay and deck building. Lugia Vstar is the most popular deck on ladder; a deck that is a very relevant meta threat in the actual game, because they give you most of the shell of that deck (V lugia, vstar lugia, archeops, ect) right off the bat; hell they even give I believe the entirety of the inteleon engine. The decks they give you are obviously not tournament topping lists; but they're much better, and it's way more enjoyable to learn the game with real decks rather than some dogshit pile.
This online client has it's first set rotation on the horizon, including a lot of key cards in starter decks being rotated out. I'll be very interesting to see what they plan to do with starter decks when that comes around.
-Battlepass yadayada, I'm not a huge fan of the BPs but you can get the pass entirely F2P (more on this later, its complicated), and 95% of all dailies are pretty simple and can be easily done in like 1-3 games max. I haven't completed this season BP as of writing but it seems to be roughly around a level a day just doing quests, and playing games gives you BP exp anyways. Rewards are mostly fine, there's some complete filler shit with like the cosmetics but you get cards and shit from it
-Test deck feature is fucking awesome. Most clients have bots games you can play, but none of them let you play with cards you dont own. This one does. I've spent plenty of time just trying deck lists against bots and practicing play lines; it's fun, very user friendly, and lets you see if you actually enjoy playing a deck before commiting to building it (this is very important). I wish more clients had this, but I know why it wont be the norm like how most fighting games wont let you training mode characters you don't own.
-I really like how this game does alt card art. Chase cards in sets almost always have multiple variants that you can pull from pack (and even craft!), evergreen cards just have tons of different card arts for personal swag, ect ect. Pulling a rainbow fullart of a vmax card i wanted to play, or a gold of a trainer card i use a lot honestly feels great and I think it's one of the better systems in a client for swagging out your deck. I love dropping my gold path to the peaks on people.
-I just think think the game's fun! it hits a nice inbetween in game speed of MTG and YGO for me, you still play a lot of cards during a turn often and a lot of decks are trying to turbo out a powerful option, but the way the decks go about their goal is different, ive had a lot of interesting decision making moments, matchup goals between decks feel varied, and sometimes you just ball outta control and that rules. I've only put in experience in one meta so I cant pretend I'm very knowledgeable in the game, but I've played a lot of online TCGs and if I think it's boring i'd know by now.
And the cons:
-The player icons. The previous client had these just awful flat early 2000s generic pngs for your icons, there was no pokemon soul in them, they sucked. Here comes a brand new client and... they double down on that? Now they're 3d models but they're still just generic people with the most pokemon soul being a pokemon logo on an outfit you can make them wear. The game loves to give you cosmetic outfits and coins to buy them by the bucketload and they're all just awful and feels like getting nothing. I have no idea why they committed to this visual design, instead of something more flavorful. Hell just do what other games would've done and make you pick PNGs of pokemon game/anime characters. Just awful looking.
-deck builder kinda sucks. it's not a huge deal and you get used to it but it becomes confusing when you start, say, putting in a card you run 4 of but you have 1 that's different from the rest because you got 1 dripped out gold ultraball
-The monetization/F2P of this game is my biggest issue. I say it's an issue but really it's just... incredibly strangely implemented.
For one, there's one currency for acquiring card packs (and also the premium battlepass) in this game. You get it at a SNAIL'S pace; you get one daily a day which gives you 60 funbucks, maybe you get more if you hit some level up tiers.
it costs 200 fun bucks to buy a single pack which comes with 10 crafting dust as well.
Also, you will never buy single packs because the 3 pack is just better value (becomes rougly 186 funbucks a pack, and a huge increase in 125 dust. ). Which you will also never buy because the 6 pack is even BETTER value per pack and more dust. There isn't a reason to buy the small packs, you're simply gimping yourself of funbucks which you get precious little amounts of so it's not worth wasting value on. This effectively means you can buy new cards F2P every 18~ days, give or take the game giving you some of the previously mentioned level up/BP freebies.
I did this for the brillaint stars pack, because i wanted to play Arceus Duraladon. And while I was very happy to receive a gold arceus vstar from those packs, I still need 5 more Arceusi to play the deck, and was still missing the duraladon part of the deck. I cannot imagine actually going full F2P in this game; it seems impossible to actually make a standard deck before it rotates (atleast the game comes with extended right off the bat).
it's very kind that the game gives you most of the Lugia Vstar shell off the bat, but if you want to go full F2P I hope you're ready to be playing Lugia for a while because that's all you got.
There also isn't disenchanting, because lol.
So what if I want to whale? this part is particularly weird, because you cannot actually spend money in the game at all. There is no built in way of buying the funbucks. It's not an option! i don't think there's even a place for you to put your credit card in at all. So how are they making money / how is ANYONE not just playing lugia in this game?
Well, that's because the actual cards packs IRL come with digital codes that give you a pack of the same set in PTCGL.
Yeah, its like that. This game makes money by getting people to buy IRL packs. Of course, in reality this means people on the second hand market are making money.
Pokemon, more than any other TCG, is bought in bulk by people who dont give a fuck about the actual card game. It's got a lot of great card art, tons of rare variants to crack packs open for, and it's pokemon so it has huge brand loyalty. I pogged at getting a digital gold arceus vstar; imagine how hard people pog when they pull actual gold/rainbow variants?
What this means is that there's a lot of people who buy packs and don't care about the digital cards at all, but are looking to make some money back on the boxes they bought. If you have no interest in the physical game (like me), the best way to get whale in this game is to hit up ebay and buy from people who are selling cards in bulk.
And it's great value honestly! I bought a fucking 50 code pack of a set and finished my Regigigas deck for like 10 bucks. In theory that's miles cheaper than any other online client i've played.
While in theory this game is the cheapest to whale in, and it doesn't feel awful to drop 10 bucks and wait for a guy on ebay to send you some pictures to finish a deck, the F2P card gain is monstrously slow and feels impossible to make decks without dropping cash.
TL;DR
I think the actual card game is fun to play and collect cards, the client runs and works fine, and has some great QOL features I hope other games rip off (they wont), but the game's miserably slow F2P currency games makes playing this game F2P feel like a dream and if you want to play multiple decks you're going to have to either buy packs IRL and buy codes off ebay bulk sellers.
It's complicated, i'm still gonna keep playing because I'm enjoying the game, but at one point does this game start to feel like it has a subscription if i want to play more than one deck? And for people, is this game good enough for a subscription?