Game Soul: A Disappointing Pack of Video Game Trading Cards

If you’ve been following along lately we just got a new package of sealed boxes in the mail. One of those was compelling enough that I decided to open it right away, ignoring the pile of sealed boxes I already have in the cabinet over there. Anyway, I reviewed the box and set here, time to open some packs and see what these cards are like.

The packs feel like the others I’ve received from AliExpress, kind of cheap but still good enough to be something you might find in a store. The box came with a promo card, usually you get something like that when you buy an entire box. Let’s open that first and see what we get.

I’m not sure if this is a special type of card, or a printing error — but this is literally a piece of cardboard with some black and white ink on it. There is no coating, no foiling, not even any color. I’m guessing this treatment is somehow special as it is the promo card, but still this card will not last very long even sleeved. I think this is depicting a fighter from King of the Fighters maybe? Anyway this is both impressive and not impressive at the same time, let’s open the real pack.

The pack contained 5 cards, 2 Rs an SSR and a SR – the 5th card is also an R but on the back is information about the redemption program from this set, or maybe it is a winning card? I couldn’t really translate it well due to the font, but even if it is a winner – nobody would ever redeem this for me, even if it was still a running program.

Anyway… the first two R cards are characters from Dynasty Warriors and Starcraft. The backs are just de-saturated versions of the fronts, that’s pretty cheap, I was hoping for at least a brief bio of who the characters are. I know the Starcraft lady of course, but not this Dynasty Warriors person. The fronts are pretty basic frame art over what I think is taken from existing promotional materials for that game maybe? This does not look like art drawn for this set, the styles are totally different. At least these cards are coated and have some foiling on them, very basic, but they are just the R cards.

Next up is the SSR card, this looks much nicer, with some cool rainbow foil, a really neat almost 3d shattered glass background effect and a light texturing over the entire card. The design is also nicer as to the frame and even the back looks a little nicer – although still the same art. This is clearly just art taken from the original IP, nothing new for this set it seems. This character somebody from Persona 3.

Now this card is nice looking! Not just because of the anime lady on it, the foil treatment is really good. The background has a rainbow pattern foil to it that shines so nicely in the light. The whole thing kind of looks 3d again due to the motion blur from the chosen artwork. This character is from a game I had never heard of called Pretty Derby.

And finally the last card seems to be one of those informational cards you tend to get in sets like these. So the pack will say “5 cards”, but only 4 are really set cards – the last is just an advertisement of some kind. In this case, only the back is like that, the front otherwise looks exactly like the other 2 R cards I saw earlier. This is Megaman of course, it’s much brighter, but again that just shows there isn’t really any consistent art style to these.

Alright so now that I’ve opened a few packs, what do I think? Well I paid 20$ for this, about 1 dollar a pack or 20 cents a card. That seems expensive for this product, given it’s just repackaged IP artwork with some foil treatment over it. Still the characters are cool, and some of the foil looks really nice, I’ll keep opening them but I wouldn’t recommend you buy a box unless you’ve seen something you can’t live without here.