amphibious_ReViews

I remember my mind being blown when Pokémon Shuffle was announced. It didn't look like anything super special, especially since I already owned Battle Trozei , which seemed very similar. However, this was the first major free title that I had heard of from the franchise, and getting a Pokémon game for free was more than enough to get me hyped. Upon release, I played the 3DS version of Shuffle until I was sick of it. I had a lot of fun at first, but it eventually got to the point that it seemed nearly impossible to progress without caving to the microtransactions, so I moved on. Now, over half a decade later, I was ready to play it again, but I took advantage of the convenience of the mobile phone version this time. Pokémon Shuffle is a pretty vanilla match-3 puzzle game. There are Pokémon elements implemented that tie it especially well to the sixth-generation games, but nothing that particularly makes it stand out. The general structure of the game is built around defeating

When I first heard about Pokémon Café Mix , I thought that it looked like a cute little game, but was probably just another Pokémon Shuffle . For context, Shuffle was an early free-to-play Pokémon puzzle game that was heavily pay-to-win, making it a pretty disappointing title. However, I'm a sucker for free, so I thought I may as well try  Café Mix , despite my low expectations. After playing it, I think it may be the most enjoyable free Pokémon game after Go ! The puzzle format is a physics-based gimmick-oriented icon-matching game. Put simply, it's Tsum Tsum meets Candy Crush . I found this game to be so delightful because the puzzles are structured in such a way that they provide a challenge, but are never unfair. As of this review, I'm almost 200 stages in without having used a single power-up, save for the one required in a training stage. For contrast, after a few dozen levels in Shuffle , I was using more than one paid item per stage. Café Mix is also absolutely