March 2021 - Gametrodon

Eximius: Seize the Frontline

Today, I am the fifth dentist.

I like Eximius, and generally speaking, I’ve enjoyed playing it. I think at $30, the price feels high, and I’d have a much easier time recommending it if it was like $10, or had some sorta bulk pack for multiple copies, because it is most definitely a game that is way better with friends. On the other hand, given what it took to get the game finished, I kind of get why they’re charging $30 for it.

My summary for this game is, “Today, I am the fifth dentist.” In my group of friends that I roped into playing the game I am the lone dissenter, the only one who enjoyed the game.

Like, the only person.

I’ve attached a video of about an hour of gameplay from a Twitch stream. I was gonna grab screencaps and stuff from the stream, but the quality at 720p felt too low. If you’re on the fence about the game, you’ll most likely get a better opinion of watching me play for a bit than from screencaps. Unfortunately, I also forgot to unmute my mic while streaming, and didn’t mute my friend, so you’ll get to listen to his lovely voice performing half a conversation.

Whoops.

My friends disliked this game enough that, at first, this article was gonna be about why you shouldn’t buy Eximius. But this is my article, and until one of my friends offers to write their own, telling you why you why they regret buying the game based off my stupid opinions, this article will remain the sole source of Gametrodon truth.

Okay, so let’s start by talking about Eximius actually is, for starters: Eximius is a combo RTS/FPS, played between two teams. There are five players to a team, with one player taking the role of the commander, with the ability to build structures, command AI troops, and get a top-down view of the battlefield, like a classic RTS. The remaining 4 are officers, with the ability to run about, shoot people, and generally cause all kinds of chaos. These other four can also have AI troops of various types assigned to them, and can give said troops fairly limited commands. (Gripe #1: I really wish you could actually order your troops to either stand in specific places or leave them somewhere to call them in later.)

You can assign general infantry troops to your officers, but you have to control special troops yourself. There are two factions in the game, AXE, and GSF, which stand for something I can’t remember, but all you really need to know is that the GSF are your typical generic future military dudes, with access to mortar and machine gun squads, infantry and engineers, and a few fairly typical vehicles. (Gripe #2: Vehicles can’t be manually controlled or ridden in by players, and have a tendency to get stuck between various things, due to questionable AI parking. On one notable occasion, I saw a tank sort of leap across the map after clipping into terrain.)

AXE, on the other hand, are more of your “future tech” faction, complete with outfits that make them look like something from Warframe, with smooth Exo-skeletons, and crisp weapons. They also get Ironguards, which for all intents and purposes you can just read as “T-1000 Terminator Units,” massive hulking exo-suits equipped with miniguns, that can just mulch 90% of unencamped infantry they come across. They have a selection of vehicles as well.

Let’s talk about one more thing before we get into why I like the game, and why my friends do not: the general structure of a game of Eximius.

There are two ways to win a game of Eximius. The first is to destroy the enemy base. This is easier said than done, because even if you’re crushing your opponent, their base is surrounded by 7-8 very high powered cannon encampments.

The second is to run your enemy out of supply points. More than likely, this is how you’ll actually win. Both teams start with a predefined amount of these points, and you take points from the enemy team by killing their units while they control less Victory Zones than you do. Different types of units are worth different amounts of supply.

In addition to the Victory Zones, there are also Resource Zones, which give either money, ammo, or power. Money is your base resource used for buying most units, with power used for buildings and other higher tier stuff. Ammo is used for activated abilities, like airstrikes, repair drones, and troop drops.

The end result of all of this is that you spend a lot of the game either holding points, trying to hold points, or pushing in to hold points. What I heard from other folks was that the game felt like Battlefield in that respect, except again, minus a lot of the polish you get on something like Battlefield. It’s not always the most thrilling thing in the universe.

And I don’t disagree with them. The hitmarkers that show up when you get shot are really subtle, and not necessarily enough to figure out where you’re being shot from. There’s also no difference between being shot with shields (HP that regenerates over time and out of combat) vs unshielded. There’s also no tracer rounds on most weapons, meaning that if an opponent is hiding in a bush, you can die before figuring out where they are.

They also had issues with some of the games economy system and power division, with the commander role feeling far more impactful to then the officers. And I can’t really disagree with that either. Officers really only have the ability to run around, capture points, and shoot stuff. You can’t use extra money you get to do things like call in buildings or extra ammo, so it’s fairly easy to get to a point where you are effectively just burning cash as an officer because you can’t have more than your cap.

And on the subject of the commanding/commanders UI. It’s not great. I would mark it as passable. I suspect my friends would go with awful. It disregards a lot of standard conventions for RTS controls (No shift queuing actions,), the action bar isn’t standardized across units, (infantry has an attack move, but vehicles don’t) and it can just be a pain to use. (You can’t assign officers to control groups for example.)

So the end result if you feel the same way they do is that it’s a game where you spend a lot of time either trying to hold a given location, getting into unclear gunfights, and being shot or blown up by encamped morters half a mile away when you round a corner.

On the other hand, I actually like trying to figure out how to break defenses, hold points, and stall for time. The fact that you can have gunfights with “winners” where neither person ends up dying is interesting to me. The mechanics of death, having to buy up your loadouts each time you revive, along with being able to use AI troops as cannon fodder/distractions is neat.

The big differentiator for me is that every conflict in a round has costs associated with it. While the moment-to-moment gameplay might feel similar to other shooters, the gunfights themselves feel more meaningful in the bigger picture.

Sneaking into a back line to capture Resource Points and harass the enemy’s economy, or trying to hold a point while fairly outnumbered until resources arrive are things you can do in other games, but in Eximius they have meaningful impacts on the rest of the war taking place, instead of being separate skirmishes. Where and when you choose to take fights is just as meaningful, if not more meaningful, than winning them. It’s not another shooter where if your K/D is greater than 1, you are a credit to team.

And that’s why I like it. There are a lot of elements in the game that could be improved, but they haven’t stopped me from enjoying the gunfights, trying to be sneaky, or desperately rushing in to try to salvage a win. The game does a really good job of creating organic set pieces and exciting clutch moments, and the fact that you’re playing against other humans makes it that much more fun. When you get to the end of round, it’s possible to look back and figure out what you needed to do differently, or what you could have tried instead.

Eximius is an ambitious indie game, when all is said and done, and more importantly, I find it fun. I might not be in the majority here, and there are definitely a lot of areas that the game could either use some improvement, or some hardening. But even in its current somewhat janky state, I enjoy playing, and I’m likely to continue playing it. I do wish I had more people to play it with, but y’know. Taste is subjective.

What are we playing? – March 2021

We got up to some shit this month…

I’ve been playing a surprisingly large number of games over the last two weeks, so I figured I’d just toss out what I’ve been playing recently. Some of these might get longer writeups, some might not, as there have been a lot of duds as of late.

Here’s the run down.

Magic: Legends – TLDR: It kinda sucks.

Possibly the highest profile game that’s gonna be on this list, and also the biggest dud, in my opinion. I saw someone describe it as “More fun to watch other people play than to play yourself” and I disagree. It doesn’t seem particularly fun to play or watch.

The whole thing just seems cheap and plasticky. If nothing else, it kind of made me want to play Path of Exile again. I’ll give it credit for having exactly one interesting mechanic, in that it is an ARPG where you build a deck of cards, and after you use an ability it goes away until you get it again. In theory, this forces you to play around your hand. In reality, of the few hours I played, I didn’t really feel it.

Armello – TLDR: I wish the gameplay was as good as the collectible in-game dice.

Steam says I’ve played like 12 hours of Armello over the last few weeks, and I’m gonna be honest, I know exactly why that is. See, Armello has what I’d consider to be hands down the best digital dice that I’ve ever seen, and I want them. And the game rewards you with random lootboxes that give you dice after you play multiplayer games. So I tend to log on, try a multiplayer game, not get any super cool dice, and repeat.

For anyone wondering why I haven’t talked about any Armello mechanics, it’s because I can’t say that I love the game itself. It feels really random, and also seems to have a massive kingmaker problem in the late game, which ends up being pretty unsatisfying.

Eximius: Seize the Frontline – TLDR: I like it. None of my friends do.

I like Eximius, and my friends don’t, and more on that when I do the full writeup on the game. But yeah: it’s an RTS/FPS hybrid that’s kind of janky, and maybe doesn’t have a lot of the polish it needs. But I still like it.

Move or Die – TLDR: It also sucks.

On the one hand, I think Move Or Die is garbage. On the other hand, it cost three dollars, and friend bought it for me, and said friend was in the group of folks that I convinced to drop $30 on a indie FPS/RTS hybrid shooter which they did not like. So yeah. We played Move or Die for an hour. I don’t think it’s very fun.

Legion TD 2 – TLDR: $20 Warcraft 3 Mod, but I like it.

I just keep playing this game. A “campaign” mode just got added, but given what campaigns have been in other games, calling it a “single player tutorial” seems more accurate, or maybe a “challenge mode vs the AI.” Legion TD 2 is sorta like Dota for me, I just play it, enjoy it, and it’s purely on the moment to moment decisions you make in game, nothing else.

Shovel Knight: King of Cards– TLDR: It’s the best. And $10.

Easily the most fun game on this list. I feel like King Knight might have the best controls and movement of all the characters in the Shovel Knight series, but that might just be me. This mode also has a card game, with collectible cards that you can win, and unlock. So… yeah. If you want to know more about Shovel Knight in general, you can read our writeup here. But King of Cards is just great, and honestly might get its own article in the future at some point.

That’s all for now. If you’ve been playing something interesting you think we should check out, feel free to hit us up on Twitter, or more likely given that anyone reading this blog knows us personally, hit us up on Discord.

Shovel Knight – Treasure Trove

Shovel Knight isn’t a frosted brick.

Ed Note: This writeup is based on finishing the Plague Knight and Shovel Knight campaigns. In the time since then, I’ve finished the rest, and they’re also all great, but things like the King of Cards Joustus minigame and such aren’t talked about in this review.

Shovel Knight is great.

The sentence above pretty much sums up my opinions on Shovel Knight, and part of me is really tempted to just leave it at that. The other part of me thinks that a little more explanation is needed. The problem with said extra explanation is that I’ve been having a really hard time trying to put my finger on why Shovel Knight is so good.

Yes, Queen Knight. Normally it would be King Knight. The game has gender swap options which I turned on for this save file, along with custom pronouns that aren’t linked to the selected body type. I don’t think I have anything valuable to say on this feature, as I’m the most cis straight white wonderbread looking motherfucker you’ll ever meet, but it’s cool to see that it’s there.

Okay, so while I stall for time on that, let’s talk briefly about what Shovel Knight actually is: it’s a platformer styled like the platformers of yore. The game itself has a structure similar to Mega Man, where you’re given a set of levels to pick from, and need to clear them all to continue to the next set of levels.

There are some optional mini side levels, and also some enemies that show up and roam on the map, kinda like Hammer Bros from Super Mario. The levels themselves are all pretty varied, with each one having a general theme, and about 3 or so different mechanics regarding the platforming itself. At the end of each level, you’ll fight a boss: an enemy knight and member of the Order of No Quarter. Levels also have hidden treasure, relics, and other good stuff in them.

These GIFs are way more laggy than the game is. Shovel Knight actually runs silkily smooth, and I never experienced any slowdown while playing. At least the GIFs give a good look at the style and palette of the game, I guess. Honestly not sure if I should keep them.

This is just for the Shovel Knight and Plague Knight campaigns, by the way. It looks like the Specter Knight campaign is like a separate sort of thing? And King of Cards has an entire extra board game that you can play? This game has a lot of stuff in it…

Oh, right, I’m still supposed to be writing a review. Well, through the magic of “writing,” in the time between the block of text above, and this one, I went back and played a bunch more to try to put my finger on why the game is so much much fun, and I think a lot of it comes down to movement.

See, everything about Shovel Knight is pretty great. The music is banging, the art feels incredibly fitting and clean, the story is simple but really good, but to me, a lot of those elements are just window dressing. That doesn’t mean they’re not important, but they’re the frosting on top. Even if you frost a brick, it’s still a brick.

But Shovel Knight isn’t a brick because the art, music, and story are all built on top of a solid core of movement, and equally importantly, levels and areas that utilize that movement effectively. Bouncing from enemy to enemy, digging up piles of treasure, and dodging and reflecting projectiles all feels fun and responsive. And the levels are all laid out in ways to give you both tricky platforming challenges, and satisfying instances of pulling them off.

Okay, so unrelated: if this game had come out in like the 2000’s, would tons of folks have Knightsonas on their Deviant Art pages, instead of “X The Hedgehog” sonic recolors? It’s interesting to think about. Like, the game provides built in sprites, recolors, etc, for each of the characters in the game. And the gender swaps mean that you could make just about any Knightsona you’d want.

And this is the cake under Shovel Knight’s frosting. It’s not particularly flashy or obvious, but it’s the base of everything else in the game. It’s what makes the boss fights fun and enjoyable instead of slogs, it’s what makes the platforming fun instead of frustrating, and it’s what makes it so that when you fail, you want to go again.

And, dear reader, let me let you in on a little secret: I called Shovel Knight a bit of a throwback up above, but I’m not sure that’s entirely honest, and that’s to Shovel Knight’s credit. While the game mimics the style of older games, it doesn’t copy their mistakes. There is no traditional game over, and while dying makes you lose money, you can always try to get it back. You can reset levels if things go too incredibly wrong and you end up strapped for cash. The game’s hidden items are purchasable with the gold you find if you’re unable to actually discover them in the level they’re located in, albeit at a slightly higher price.

This, I think, is the best thing I can say about Shovel Knight. It embodies the heart and feeling of those older games, without committing their sins. It mimics their style, without aping it, or being a cheap copy. And it manages to stand out and be joyful to play in a genre with countless competitors.

To just play through the base game won’t take you very long, but it has a lot of potential for speed running, mastery, and secret hunting. Personally, if you think you might like the game I’d suggest buying the Treasure Trove edition, which has all the campaigns and such in it. If you want to try it cheaper, you can buy the base game for $15.

Shovel Knight is six years old at this point, making me perhaps the last person to write a review of it. But I hope I’m not the last person to play it, because it deserves a lot more than that.

P.S. Okay, still thinking about the idea of Knightsonas. I kinda love the idea of an alternate universe where instead of people wearing fursuits, we have an entire subculture of folks who dress up in a pixel art style heavy plate mail and helms, with ridiculous weapons.

Kunai

It is a video game that you can play, and some of the art is good. This is the end of the nice things I can say about Kunai.

I don’t love Kunai. I wouldn’t recommend it. But I played 8 hours of it, so I’ll be damned if I’m not going to try to get a review out of it. And yes, that was enough to finish the game.

Okay, so this bothers me even after finishing the game: are the helmets just made to look like monitors? Why do robots and humans look so similar in this game?

If I was asked to summarize Kunai in a sentence, it would be something like “Kunai is fine.” That wouldn’t be entirely accurate, though, because if I tried to make it longer, it would be something like “Kunai is on average fine, or slightly mediocre.” The key word there is average, because there are a few areas of the game that take advantage of Kunai’s strongest point: the expressive and expansive movement of the player character, Tabby.

See, Kunai is a platformer/roguelike, or at least that’s what it wants to be. It never quite feels like that, though. When you revisit zones, it’s because you’re required to backtrack through them. There are no items that you find that aren’t clearly in the main story path. Many of the zones feel fairly linear, and don’t actually require much exploring.

What Kunai does do well are your actual movement options. Between the titular Kunai, a late game dash, rockets, SMGs that can be used to gun float, and otherwise just fairly solid controls, Tabby is a lot of fun to run around with. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t play into this as strongly as it could, and many of game’s zones either don’t take advantage of it, or feel like they actively punish it. Moving too quickly gets you killed, and outside of one area, you never really get to just ricochet around.

Zen Mountains, one of the few really good areas in the game, has lots of small platforms and big open areas to jump around in.

There simply isn’t anything that Kunai does that I haven’t seen other games do better. It would be easier to recommend Kunai if the sum of its parts was greater than its whole, or if it collected a bunch of different mechanics into a game for the first time. But there are other games that take everything Kunai does, story, exploration, movement, art, music, and knock it out of the park, whereas Kunai just limps along. Like, if you want to play an expansive indie metroidvania, just go play Hollow Knight. The gameplay is much better, the game is longer, and Hollow Knight actually has a good story.

Speaking of which, let’s talk about the story briefly: Kunai has a story, but it feels rushed and incomplete. There are plot points that feel straight up skipped over, for example a relationship with the villain that’s hinted at, but almost completely ignored the entire game. Nothing ever comes together or makes sense.

We’re part of a rebellion against something, but it’s not clear what we’re rebelling against? Or why? Or why the villain is doing any of this? It’s frustrating because much like Tabby’s movement, the game sets up a very interesting-looking situation, only to never quite utilize it fully.

Swinging your sword to bounce bullets back at an enemy is cool… but gets boring kinda quick.

The game feels like it had heavy cuts to its intended gameplay. For example, there’s a bit where you help power up a giant mech. You put in the power core, see it turn on and… all it does is fly you to a new area, where you do a gauntlet of enemies, then fight the final boss. It’s an incredible letdown.

I feel bad for tearing into Kunai this much, but the only reason I have so much to complain about is because the game feels like it has untapped potential. There’s a fantastic movement system handicapped and hamstrung by mediocre zones and levels. There’s a story that starts out interesting, kneecapped by too little explanation in some parts, and far, far too much in others. Combined, the game just isn’t satisfying to play, and can actually be rather frustrating.

I hope the game makes back its development budget. I hope TurtleBlaze gets to make a second game that doesn’t feel as rushed. There’s a lot of potential here, and a few things that are done quite right.

But there aren’t enough of them for me to recommend this game. If this review didn’t turn you off, you can find Kunai on Steam, and on a few other consoles.

Ed Note: Images are taken from the Steam Store Page. I just don’t have anything really valuable to add with screenshots of this game to be honest.

The Pokemon Card Kerfuffle

Right now, something very interesting is happening. So what am I talking about? Is it the global pandemic? The fact that we’re finally making progress with immunizations? The massive change in working remote or working from home? Or perhaps it’s the new presidental administration.

Well, no. Those things are all happening, but I’m talking about the fact that the cost of buying sealed packages of Pokemon cards has almost doubled or trippled in price. In this writing/video/whatever, I’m going to talk about why I think that is, and why I think a lot of people have the wrong idea. For those already familar with the Pokemon Trading Card Game, or TCG as it’s often shortened to, skip ahead a bit to the reasons. For everyone else, I want to provide a little bit of quick background.

Background on the Pokemon Trading Card Game
Pokemon, for those who might not know is a global media franchise that started as a video game, and at this point has branched out into almost every conceivable product you could imagine. In terms of popularity, Pokemon is often quoted as the most profitable franchise in the world, above things like Star Wars, or Marvel, or Micky Mouse.

The Pokemon Trading Card Game is a collectible card game. For the purpose of this discussion, it’s not important to know too much about it, except for two brief things.

The first is that cards are released in “Sets”. You can think of them like seasons of a TV show. Each set has a specific number of different cards in it, at various rarities. The second thing to know is that a single “Set” may contain multiple copies of cards that are mechanically identical, which is to say when used as part of game, they function exactly the same, but they have different artwork. Here’s an example, with a card named Charizard V. The first image is the normal version, the second is the full art version. The full art version is much rarer. Finally, there’s a shiny version, the one that’s black. It’s actually from a different set, but we’ll talk about that later. The key point here is that from a gameplay standpoint, all of these cards are identical, and there is no in game advantage to using one over the other.

And finally, a little bit of background on pricing. Generally speaking, a Pack of Pokemon Cards retails at $4.00 MSRP(Mass Suggested Retail Price, IE, what a Target/Walmart will sell the product for on release.) for a single booster. A booster box, a collection of 36 boosters, retails at about $140 dollars, but generally speaking, when a set releases, it’s not hard to find a booster box for $90 to $100 dollars on either eBay or Amazon. There are also Fat Packs. These tend to retail at $30 to $40, and contain 10 booster packs.

One other quick thing to note: Buying products at MSRP for those of us who are ~~addicts~~ enthusiasts is fairly rare. We usually have connections, either with stores, or online distributors that, as mentioned above, sell below MSRP.

End of Background

All right, so with that background out of the way, lets get into the current state of things, by looking at how much booster boxes cost for several of the last few sets of cards.

Name	Price – USD
Battle Styles (Not released at time of writing)	$147 eBay, $160 Amazon
Vivid Voltage	$197 eBay, $208 Amazon
Rebel Clash	$150 eBay, 190 Amazon
Darkness Ablaze	$172 eBay, $180 Amazon
Sword and Shield	$200 eBay, $190 Amazon

Keep in mind, these are all products with an MSRP of $140, and that generally speaking only ever cost $80-$90 dollars in reality.

Now, people who already follow the scene might notice something missing here, and I’ll get to that in a moment.

Name	Price – USD
Shining Fates Fat Pack (10 Packs)	$100 to $150 eBay, $123 Amazon
Champions Path Fat Pack (10 Packs)	$100 on Amazon, $95 on eBay

Now for anyone who plays the Pokemon Trading card game, I’d like to make a brief note: I bought a playset of all non-reprint cards in Champions Path. It cost me $133. That’s 4 copies of every single card in the set, that hadn’t printed before.

So, whats going on here? Why are these booster packs so expensive? What happened?

And for anyone who thinks “Well, thats just capitalism” here’s the offical statement from pokemon.com. So clearly, they’re not in love with this either.

Ed Note: And why would they be? As they’re the publisher/distributor, they don’t make extra money if the price people are willing to pay goes up, if they’re not the one setting the price.

I have two general guesses here, one for the first set of cards, and one for the second. They overlap a bit, but lets start with the ones above.

So, lets talk about the dates here. While the official announcement on the site has been updated since then, articles about the announcement start showing up on Feb 11th.

So why is this date important? Well, because Feb 11th is the day right before the start of Chinese New Year.

For anyone who hasn’t had things manufactured in China, Chinese New Year is effectively a full shutdown period. And this year, it won’t be over until Febuary 22nd. It’s a public holiday, and a very big one, and you can expect factory shutdowns for approximately two weeks. So, what that actually means is that factories will likely be shutdown until February 26th, the day I’m writing this article.

Now, despite what we might believe, even global megacorporation’s are limited by the laws of reality, including the fact that if you want to ship this stuff via boat from China where it’s printed, to the rest of the world, you’re going to be looking at a timeline of about 3 months.

With this info, we can start to make some guesses about what’s going on here, and to make some predictions involving future timelines. But before we get into that, lets talk about three more parts of this perfect storm.

Charizard, Coronavirus, and the 25th Anniversary

This year is the 25th Anniversary of the Pokemon Franchise. As part of this, there’s been a general marketing push with things like a Post-Malone concert, Katy Perry, and other things that I think might have pushed Pokemon a little bit more into the limelight then it might have been otherwise. I don’t think it would have been hugely noticed if it wasn’t for the fact that we’re all stuck at home, with no ability to go anywhere or do anything. But a large portion of this push has probally pulled up a bit of nostalgia.

And this brings us Charizard. Charizard is a large fire dragon Pokemon. It tends to be one of the more visible and identifiable members of the franchise, and it also has the interesting distinction of being one of, if not, the most valuable mass market card ever available. Currently, base set shadow-less Charizard’s go for $5000 to $10000. And perfect ones can go for over $200,000. And currently, many of these sets that have just released feature Charizard’s new form, Charizard VMAX. This is the first time this Pokemon has been featured on a card.

And finally, we have coronavirus. Parents are staying home from work, and trying to entertain kids. Large numbers of people are on unemployment or furloughed, looking desperately for anything they can use to get a bit of extra money or scrape by. And we’ve had a wave of publicity about how profitable scalping can be recently with things like graphics cards and game consoles.

Oh, and one more thing.

Most Pokemon Cards are effectively worthless.

You won’t hear most collectors say this, and you won’t hear it brought up often, but it’s a simple fact that should be acknowledged. When you buy a sealed pack of Pokemon cards, odds are that the price of buying the cards in the booster pack are lower then the price of buying the cards individually. Even for the most recent sets, commanding ridiculous prices, the common/uncommon/rare cards in those sets go for 5 to 20 cents. It’s why I was able to buy a full playset of these cards for $133. The only cards worth over a few dollars are the hyper-rares, cards that present in less then 1-3 sealed packs, and of those, only the full arts and alt arts are really worth cash, and those tend to be present at about 1 in 36 rates, and NOT EVEN ALL OF THOSE ARE EXPENSIVE.

Buying sealed Pokemon Cards is a gamble, and statistically you will not get your value back. For kids, to whom every card is special, this isn’t a huge problem. For adults, who can just buy the cards they want, this shouldn’t be a problem, unless you really like gambling, and opening boosters.

Which a lot of folks do.

Lets put these pieces together, and see what happened.

So here’s what I think might have actually happened, based on the things I’ve laid out above. From this point onward, we’re venturing into purely speculation. Pretty much everything I’ve put above is a verifiable fact, and I’m more then happy to fix them if folks find errors.

Coronavirus and Shipping Delays result is less cards being generally available then usual, in addition to smaller game stores suffering heavily from the lack of foot traffic, leading to less orders of product in general.
Hype around the 25th anniversary of Pokemon leads to a higher level of brand awareness, along with the fairly lucrative scalping that we’ve seen previously last year and this year.
A set of cards is printed at a very high rarity, of a Pokemon with a history of being fairly collectible, and commanding obscenely high prices, and knowledge of this begins to leak out.
The incredibly low rate of actually getting this card leads to everyone involved who wants the card, from scalpers to collectors buying up as much of the product as possible for a chance of getting it.
This becomes public knowledge, and now even folks who weren’t interested are getting involved in the hype, or trying to get stuff before it sells out. Effectively, what we saw with toilet paper before.
The simple realities of production in China, combined with Chinese New Year, international lockdowns, and all of the above means that there is no easy way to rapidly increase supply of product on a quick timescale.

So where does that leave us? Well, I started writing this article on the 26th, and it’s now the 15th. The prices of most sealed products show no sign of slowing down. And the simple reality of what it takes to manufacture more cards mean that we’re still likely several months out from increased supply. If we assume that TPCI (The Pokemon Company International) decided to try to increase supply as of the date that they made the official announcement of being aware that consumers were being hit by shortages, they still wouldn’t have started production until 2/26.

And since boats can only go so fast, we likely won’t see any difference in supply for at least the next three months, meaning that speculation, hoarding, and other junk will likely continue until June/July, as just having something showing up at port doesn’t mean it’s available to buy.

This is my personal theory. I don’t think YouTube personalities opening cards, or folks posting on Twitter caused this. I think it’s a combo of a heavily impacted supply chain, hype, and chaos.

So until that time, enjoy, and buy singles if you’re gonna buy at all.