Pokemon Shuffle

Genre: Match-3 Puzzle

Players: 1, StreetPass Compatible

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND WAIT MECHANICS

Pokemon Shuffle is a free-to-play Match-3 Puzzle game released on Nintendo 3DS and mobile devices in 2015. This game could possibly be seen as a sequel in the Pokemon Trozei series, as it features similar gameplay that has players using the touchscreen to move around the faces of various Pokemon aiming to match at least 3, with the aim of scoring enough points within a move limit to beat the game’s levels.

The presentation in this game is simple, but good, using still 2D images of the various Pokemon’s faces with simple 3D backgrounds depicting various locations. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. Surprisingly, this is backed by a pretty excellent soundtrack, with catchy themes like Title Screen, Tutorial right from early on in the game.

The gameplay here is pretty good too. It takes a simple Match-3 formula like Bejeweled and adds a twist – players can use the touchscreen to swap any two pieces on the game board, not just adjacent ones. However, players will have to make use of this to maximize every move, as they are limited in how many moves they have for each of the game’s “battles”. What’s more, if they want to truly win by adding the Pokemon they’re up against to their collection, they’ll have to do so in as few moves as possible to increase their odds.

Where Pokemon Shuffle improves on the Trozei games is that this time around, you are not just ticking off boxes when you “collect” Pokemon, but instead you can actually make use of them in battles, with the Pokemon you bring with you into each battle determining which abilities you have access to. This helps a great deal to make this game feel less “mindless” than the Trozei games.

In fact, overall, I would generally consider this to be a pretty fantastic Puzzle game… except they had to go and ruin it. Pokemon Shuffle uses some really nasty, aggressive wait mechanics to push players into paying for monetization. After just a small handful of battles in the game will exhaust your supply of hearts… which you need to purchase using diamonds… which, you guessed it, are a premium currency you need to shell out real-life money for.

If it wasn’t for this issue, I would say that Pokemon Shuffle is a top-tier Puzzle game on Nintendo 3DS. Unfortunately, the aggressive monetization here adds so much frustration, that I’d advise most players to skip it. You have plenty of great Puzzle games to play on Nintendo 3DS that don’t try to sap the fun out of the game to push you into opening your wallet, play one of those instead. Heck, if you really need something with this same style of gameplay, you could always even play Pokemon Battle Trozei, though that may be depressing given how improved this game is before the monetization becomes a nuisance.

tl;dr – Pokemon Shuffle is a Match-3 Puzzle game where players use the touchscreen to line up three or more matching pokemon faces, making great matches to clear each level in as few moves as possible. This game adds much-needed depth to the formula established in the Trozei series, and it would have been a great Puzzle game if it wasn’t destroyed by the horribly aggressive monetization this game pushes on players in the form of nasty wait mechanics. Don’t put yourself through the hassle of playing this game, get something else instead.

Grade: C-

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