Good Card Game Simulator, very meh video game.
Alright, allow me to explain. I've been a fan of the card game since the earliest days. I also really like the manga. Thing is, I don't really get to play the actual card game, for a few reasons.
Money is the biggest one. I don't really want to sink dozens of bucks (minumum) into collecting cardboard until I have like one decent deck. I love the cards, the designs etc, but not that much.
Second reason is the lack of opportunity to actually play the game. I am not enough into the game to play it competitively and I am two decades too old to play the non-competitive schoolyard league like we did in the early 2000s. My local friends are not into TCGs. So yeah, nobody to play with.
So, considering there are many, many Yu-Gi-Oh video games, the choice is pretty clear. Or is it? There are really just three things I want from a Yu-Gi-Oh video game. Yet it seems really difficult to get all three at once.
Number One:
I want the game to have the actual rules. I used to play that one GBC game religiously as a kid, alongside the actual card game, but while I feel most strongly connected to the OG manga era, that game just made up new rules and I don't really care for that these days. Same for Sacred Cards et al. Each time I try to play one of these again I just get frustrated my good card gets wiped by a useless one because I forgot they added elemental weaknesses to the game for some reason.
Anyway, this game is a good adaptation of the actual card game. The story mode takes you through a tour of Yu-Gi-Oh (the anime version), starting with the OG Yugi era all the way through Vrains. Considering the actual card game rules (except the 4000LP and openly summoning in defense position) only showed up in the Battle City arc, this game actually does an admirable job of allowing you to pull off pretty much the same moves as the manga/anime protagonists did. Modern cards are used to allow for instantly summoning high-level monsters, simulating the pre-tribute era without changing the rules of the card game. Yugi's Exodia deck in the Death-T battle against Kaiba actually is built like an Exodia deck would be, adding new spells and traps focussing on stalling and drawing more cards. Of course, it is completely up to chance whether you actually get to do the famous moves, as the card pulls are randomized. Still, it's nicely done.
Multiplayer is dead and I assume everyone who played this as a digital substitute for the physical game moved on to Master Duel.
Number Two:
I want the game to have nice production values and visual presentation. This should be easy. Yu-Gi-Oh is extremely stylish. Sure, we can mock the ridiculous haircuts and odd costumes, but the clash of magic and monsters with futuristic technology is really iconic. Either of those could make for a nice design template. For example, Duel Links leans into the sci fi aesthetics and does this really well.
This game is serviceable to bad when it comes to audiovisual design. The menus are ok, but the presentation of the actual card games is like in a 2008 fan game. Bland, generic, just a few music tracks. Outside of HD card artwork, it actually looks and sounds worse than those Power of Chaos PC games from 20 years ago. And this bothers me. You could do so much with the background artwork and music from the tv shows, but the presentation of this game does nothing with it. Speaking of the tv shows, the campaign mode leads you through the story of the first 6 shows, retold visual novel style. These stories could be told beautifully in a visual novel format, but this is not it.
So the visual design of the card game arena is bland and the story it's trying to tell is told in the most boring way. Everything but the core gameplay is so horrendously half-baked that I imagine a single person was told to do that just weeks before this was released.
Number Three:
I want to satisfy my inner card-craving goblin. In other words, I want to collect cards. This game allows me to do that. You collect in-game currency from dueling and you can spend that on booster packs themed around characters. It's not always intuitively clear who gets what type of cards, but usually it's somewhat close to what they played in the story. You also seemingly can pull unlimited dupes, which makes completing card sets grindy and annoying. Duel Links has card sets with set numbers of cards total, so if you get all packs in the virtual box, you are sure to have all cards within it. Duplicates can be converted to currencies you can use to trade for other cards (from a limited, rotating pool). Duel Links is also a gacha-like game that is designed to make you spend money.
Here you can massively overspend on in-game currency just to get that last copy of the card you want. While cards of one archetype are found within the same booster, it still can be annoying to grind for a deck you want.
Uh...also Number Four: Must be casual-friendly. I have fun just playing events and the occasional ranked duel in Duel Links, but I never managed to get into Master Duel because it is PVP only, i don't have fun being stomped by people playing OTK-Solitaire and I am not committed enough to get on a competitive level.
So, in conclusion: Good core gameplay, boring presentation, acceptable card collecting. My search for a Yu-Gi-Oh video game that fully satisfies my actually fairly modest wishes continues. Still, i spent 10 bucks on it and it is more good than bad.
