Fun to play and easy to learn
If you like the real life trading card game or want to learn how to play it, then this game is definitely for you!
The game starts off teaching you how to play the Pokemon card game and does a good job at it.
The cards from this game only go through series 1 and the jungle series. I think the fossil set was in here because it has Aerodactyl and Kabutops. I don't remember seeing the fossil Magmar though. It also has it's own special cards.
The game works the same as the RPG series, but it has cards instead. You have 8 different club leaders that you have to beat. You get the medallions from them and when you have all 8, you battle the final 4 which is the equivalent of the Elite 4 in the RPG series.
You can battle anyone as many times as you want. Every time you beat someone, they give you booster packs so you can make or modify your decks and make them better. You can battle over a link cable against another person which is fun.
The game is very simple and you can easily keep playing until you have 99 of every card. The minimum time it would take to beat the game would be 7 hours assuming you never lose and know how to build good decks. 1 strategy that is useful in this game is that if you need energy cards, find the energy card you need more of and keep battling people inside that particular club (need more fire energy, battle people in the fire club).
This game is definitely worth the $10 I spent on it. I actually got 2 of them so me and my friends can each make our own decks and battle them.
You do not really need to know any Japanese at all to play this game, almost everything is picture based and helps the player frequently if you try to do things you are not supposed to do like attach more than one energy per turn. This game will link with an American game just fine.
