The Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is billed as a "casual," accessible way for people to enjoy the fun of the Pokémon Trading Card Game, regardless of where they are in the world. That said, it looks like players will also have to endure the added fun of the financial burden of the real-world Pokémon TCG if they want to be able to play the game in any serious fashion. According to one gamer's analysis posted on Reddit, however, the amount of time you'd need to invest into Pokémon Trading Card Game Pocket is anything but casual, clocking in at over two years of daily gameplay to unlock your first whole set.

The method used in the analysis was based on the likelihood of obtaining a new card needed to complete a card set in one of the two daily card draws available to non-premium players. Without optimizing gameplay using features, like the Points Shop or the Wonder Pick, both of which greatly increase the odds of drawing specific cards, players would need to play consecutively for 1843 days, opening a total of 3,687. Paying for a premium pass enables opening three packs a day, however, reducing that number to 1,229 days and resulting in a total bill of $404 for that period. It's only by making full use of the Wonder Pick and Points Shop that the total play time comes down to a little under two years, at a total of 655 days (around 1,310 packs). Upgrading to the premium pass reduces this, but will run up a total of $180 but reduce the amount of time significantly.The alternative to using the randomized pack mechanics to complete sets would be buying the cards outright, which would cost an incredible $1,200. Of course, it's a trading card game, and The Pokémon Company is planning on introducing trading to the game, which will inevitably reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a set, although it's currently unclear what form trading will take or whether it will be limited in some way.

According to the Reddit post:

TL;DR: 655 days of continuous playing, or 437 with the premium pass.

With the only method of obtaining cards being opening packs, it would take on average 3687 packs to finish your set. That is about 1843 days (more than five whole years!), or 1229 if you have the premium pass (although this would net you a bill of $404 if you had it active for this long). Alternatively, if you wanted to outright buy this set, it would cost $3,200. Clearly, this is unobtainable.

Let's put it all together! Both the point shop and the wonder picker. We can see that this takes approximately 1310 days (sic). Only about two and a half years! Or one and a half with the premium pass, costing a pretty penny of $180. Still, this is leagues better than buying the set which would cost about $1.2k. Wow!

Of course, this is also only an estimation, and it should also be noted that games are played with decks of 20 cards, so gamers should be able to play the game with a reasonable degree of fun and diversity fairly quickly after creating an account. Still, it's difficult to argue that the game in its current state doesn't rely on pay-to-win mechanics.