sadly seems like TCG pocket is probably going to be a dud (beyond the obvious "pokemon product will see some measure of success regardless of quality or merit" component that will prevent it from being an abject failure outright) given that there's no interesting gameplay to be found still. comparisons to things like yu-gi-oh duel links made in past articles feel especially misguided given the main elements that made duel links successful are nowhere to be found here beyond superficial comparisons like "they're both mobile apps".
yu-gi-oh duel links was not dumbed down yu-gi-oh, it was a curated card list from across all generations, refocused design and meta 'rules' that they maintained for quite a while with more mechanical depth added than it removes. if tcg pocket were aiming to "be" duel links in this sense, it would probably be an interesting outing worth paying attention to, but it clearly isn't and they're not really trying to hide it. tcg pocket is kind of just dumbed down pokemon tcg with some of the tcg's outsider pain points like energy cards and prize cards modified somehow, which would be novel and potentially interesting if it didn't also coincide with across the board generic, borderline ai generated card effects (or more often, utter lack thereof).
that Pidgeot is incredible and the Squirt such a good little bub 
