I Hate Fighting the Venusaur EX Card in Pokemon TCG Pocket

Pokemon TCGP Logo, from tcgpocket.pokemon.com


In the time since my last post, my little sister has convinced me to start playing Nintendo’s Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket app– an app that lets you collect virtual Pokemon cards and battle it out against friends, strangers, and bots in battles with a simplified version of the card game rules. As of writing this post, I’ve managed to collect 293 total cards by opening Booster Packs– a loot-box-style method of obtaining cards. Each pack contains five random cards, and you can open up to two of these packs a day for free (or more, if you’re willing to spend in-game or real-world currency). 

Now, cards in Pokemon have a sort of balance to them. Pokemon have a certain amount of health, and attacks that can do a certain amount of damage, given that a Pokemon has a certain amount of energy. Some of these attacks come with additional effects, conditions, or drawbacks– this is where strategy becomes important. Your deck of cards has to have a balance of cards that can attack with low energy, cards that can do massive damage, and cards with effects. 


Unless, apparently, you’re playing with Venusaur Ex. 


Venusaur EX, aka my most hated enemy. From pokemon-zone.com


For starters, this guy has 190 health– for the uninitiated, that is A Lot Of Health. Most attacks tend to do somewhere between 30-60 damage, so it’ll take on average four turns to reduce Venusaur EX to zero. That is, of course, given that any of your own Pokemon can survive against him for more than one turn. Venusaur EX’s second attack, called Giant Bloom, can do a whopping 100 damage– enough to knock out a majority of basic and stage-one Pokemon in just one hit. And on top of that, the attack has the side effect of healing 30 damage from Venusaur EX. Most cards, when they have an attack that powerful, come with the stipulation that you discard energy, take damage yourself, or flip a coin to see if you hit. Only Venusaur EX (at least so far) has an attack that strong that also heals damage! That is so incredibly unbalanced. Who designed this card? 


There’s an event currently ongoing in-game, where you can fight against a computer that uses a deck built entirely around Venusaur EX. I have fought this thing so, so many times. I use a fire-type deck to do additional damage (grass-types like Venusaur EX take extra damage from fire-type Pokemon), I use the strongest cards at my disposal, I’ve tried again and again over the past week– and in all that time, I’ve managed to win only 8 times! 


I promise you, I’m not just gamer-angry that I keep losing (that’s only part of it). I simply feel like the Giant Bloom attack and Venusaur EX as a whole are incredibly poorly designed, unbalanced cards. I absolutely hate going up against it in battle…


…but I kind of can’t wait until I own one myself.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Splatoon 3: Grandfest Results Breakdown and Retrospective

Image
What’s most important to you? The past, the present, or the future?   That’s the question that Splatoon 3 asked its global playerbase over this past weekend’s Grand Festival (the biggest Splatfest ever)– and boy howdy, did the Splatoon players have a definitive answer. Team Past won in a solid victory, with Team Present sitting in a comfortable second place. Team Future, though they fought well, ended up squarely in last. Event-exclusive title screen says whaaaat. For those unfamiliar with the Splatoon franchise (think C.O.D. but with less bullets and more… cod ), a Splatfest is a weekend-long event that occurs nearly every month, where all the game’s players divide into 3 teams based on their responses to a prompt question, such as What would you bring to a deserted island? or What’s the best kind of chocolate? Each team is led by one of the three idols from Deep Cut, the game’s main band and emcees. Over the course of the weekend, the teams battle it out to decide once and fo...
Read more

The Twenty-Sided Tavern: an Off-Broadway Review

Image
  This weekend I had the good fortune of venturing into Manhattan to see Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern off-Broadway for the second time. Twenty-Sided Tavern is essentially a largely improvised stage-play version of Dungeons and Dragons , a game which I’ve been an avid player of since middle school. Twenty-Sided Tavern is the most unique show I’ve seen– the plot and characters are different every night, and no two shows are the same. Nearly everything in the show is affected by audience participation and dice rolls.  Playbill with the set in the background. Photo: Me The show presents itself as a typical D&D adventure, and the basic premise is the same each night: a mysterious energy called Havoc is sowing chaos throughout the land, and a group of three adventurers– one warrior, one mage, and one trickster– are chosen by a wizard to help put a stop to it. But that’s where the similarities end between shows. The actions the characters take, the succe...
Read more

At Least 700 Things You Could Buy Instead of the $700 Playstation5 Pro

Image
This just about sums it up. Generated by me using imgflip.com            Sony’s newest home console system, the PS5 Pro , was announced back in September. It’s currently being advertised as an all-around better Playstation 5. And, from a hardware perspective, I’ll award Sony some points. The PS5 Pro claims an upgraded GPU, more advanced ray-tracing, and AI-powered image upscaling when compared with the regular PS5, as well as the ability to graphically upscale older PS4 and PS5 games. But Sony felt the need to upgrade something else along with the hardware.            The price.  Now of course, a more advanced piece of hardware will come with a more ‘advanced’ cost. The Nintendo Switch Lite , for example, retails for $100 less than a regular Switch , and an OLED model retails for $50 more. But the PS5 was already $450 for a digital-only version , and $500 for one that could read actual discs . But the PS5 Pro is pl...
Read more