YMMV / Pokemon Master Trainer

• Awesome Art: Both Master Trainer and Master Trainer 2 feature some gorgeously detailed maps of the Kanto and Johto regions along with some very pretty and colorful artwork on the various cards and chips. The fact that Master Trainer 3 abandoned this in favor of a smaller, blander and more generic game board is often mentioned as one of the major reasons it sucked compared to the first two.
• Contested Sequel: While nobody is gonna go up to bat for the much reviled Master Trainer 3, the second game in the series is a bit of a different story. Though many fans love it for fixing several of the most glaring flaws of the original game while retaining and even improving upon the great artwork (item cards are now in full color) and adding a ton of new content, other fans are much more divided and still see the first game as superior. Games in Master Trainer 2 no longer take hours to finish, and some of the new features and mechanics are indeed fun, but they also bring a new assortment of problems like rapidly snowballing game imbalance in favor of players who get off to a good start and various new game breaking rules that are perceived as unfair. Ultimately, it largely comes down to whether a player prefers the hardcore challenge and longer gameplay of the first entry or the improved mechanics and extra content introduced in the second.
• Game-Breaker: The Time Machine card from the first entry is infamous for turning the entire game on its head. All it does is force a reroll of the dice, but in a game where dice rolls account for 90% of the gameplay this is absolutely devastating. Being forced to reroll on high level Pokémon captures is one thing, but woe and misery to the poor sorry bastard who has to face this card during the final showdown. This one card can straight up ruin friendships if played at the right (or wrong) time and can completely screw over anyone even if they'd played perfectly up to that point. Time Machine was ultimately considered to be so broken that it was straight up removed from any sequel games.
  • The Trade Pokémon card is similarly despised for its ability to completely ruin a player's lineup and take their best critter in exchange for a pathetically weak replacement. While its not nearly as loathed as Time Machine it still gets a lot of hate for stealing hard won Pokémon with no real drawback for the person who plays it. This one card was likely the main reason for the trade mechanics revamp in the second game to make trading more fair.
  • Not all of the starter Pokémon were created equal in the first game and which one players began with mattered quite a deal since they came in three separate tiers. Both Squirtle and Charmander are tier 1, having 4 attack strength and 5 power points each as well as the ability to evolve twice. Bulbasaur is a slightly weaker tier 2, sharing the same advantages as its two buddies except for having only 4 power points instead of 5. Lastly, the game includes Pikachu, Meowth and Clefairy as tier 3 starters. Unlike the original three starters each of the Pokémon in this tier have drastically reduced potential due to all of them only having 3 attack strength, 3 power points and only evolving once. Needless to say, this gives a huge opening boost to players that start with the three top tier Pokémon (especially Squirtle and Charmander) and makes it harder for lower tier trainers to catch up. This is likely one of the many reasons power and attack strength values were combined in the sequel.
• That One Boss: Gary Motherfucking Oak. None of the potential final bosses are easy but Gary's high power and bonuses make him nearly unbeatable. To put into perspective how tough he is: the player who challenges him can have a perfect Pokémon setup, perfect support, perfect luck... and still lose. As a single foe he's dangerous... but with the possibility of opponents using cards like Time Machine to force rerolls in his favor he becomes nearly impossible to win against.