Pokemon Battle Trozei Slides Into The e-shop: First Impressions Review

Pokemon Battle Trozei has just broken into the 3DS e-shop of North America. Priced at a relatively low $8, I decided pick it up and give the tile-swapper a spin. After about an hour of tapping pokemon heads, I begrudgingly separated from my 3DS to begin writing this brief review.

While I have never played the original Pokemon Trozei, which Battle Trozei is a sequel to, I was immediately able to engross myself in Battle Trozei's simplistic gameplay. The game presents stages in which the player must capture several opposing wild pokemon. In order to catch pokemon, the player uses the stylus to drag pokemon heads on the touch screen and match pokemon of the same species into lines of three or more. Matching heads will make them disappear and begin an attack on the wild pokemon to lower its health. Once the pokemon's health hits 0, the payer catches it. Every few seconds the player doesn't act the wild pokemon will attack the player, and lower their own health meter. If the player runs out of health, the pokemon catches them! Just kidding. The player just loses in that case, hence "Battle Trozei".

The player can start a chain by matching up heads consecutively, which will increase the damage of the attack, and the amount of points they receive. Each stage has a secret pokemon that will only appear if the player gets a certain amount of points. Matching up a line of 4 or more will give the player an opportunity to start a "Trozei Chance" where they will only need to match up 2 of the same pokemon to make them disappear. Battle Trozei also includes fundamental pokemon game mechanics such as, super effective attacks from matching heads of pokemon with a type advantage against the current wild pokemon, and unique abilities from certain pokemon that activate when they're matched up.

Unfortunately, while the gameplay is easily understood and incredibly addicting, there isn't really a lot of depth to it. The player matches up heads as quickly as possible to keep the chain going, but doesn't really receive much incentive to think about things like which pokemon head to start the chain with, despite them all having differences. No matter which head the player picks the wild pokemon is essentially a sitting duck as long as the chain keeps going. There is a multiplayer mode, but I did not get a chance to try it out.

The games visuals are decent. The graphics are colorful and easy on the eyes. While there is no 3D or particularly complex animation, those things aren't really required for a game this simple. I found the music to be pretty catchy.

All in all, despite my enjoyment of this game, I wouldn't  recommend Battle Trozei to everyone. Hardcore pokemon players may find this title lacking in content, but if you're just looking for mindless fun in short bursts, or something to play with some friends, I'd say you can't go wrong with Battle Trozei.