Yu-Gi-Oh! Capsule Monster Coliseum
released on Nov 27, 2004
This 3D board game consists of a series of duels, which are played with cards. The game has been split up in a Campaign Mode, in which you take on all levels of the Monster Coliseum on your own, a Free Battle Mode where you play skirmish matches against enemies defeated in the campaign, and a versus mode to take on a human opponent. Before starting, you have to choose a symbol, assign parameters to it (based on monster points, action points and power points) and buy a starter kit card deck. In a typical campaign game, you start in the entrance hall, where you manage your cards and monsters. To duel, you choose one of the four areas with five levels each, and defeat the opponents. New monsters are acquired by winning the match. The turn-based duels are played as a card game. Both characters start with a deck of cards and a number of health points. When a health status reaches zero, the battle is over. You attack your opponent by summoning monsters and assigning abilities to them. Trick cards can be used to gain both offensive and defensive advantages. Before each duel, you have to pick a monster that is up for ante, and the fighting is influenced by various parameters, including the land form you are playing on.
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For some reason I have a memory of as a child of thinking that the game board environments were so beautiful and detailed lol
dando a pior nota porque eu nunca entendi como se jogava isso e me sentia burro mas por algum motivo eu sempre insistia em tentar de novo. me pergunto se hoje eu saberia jogar
eu ODIEI tanto esse jogo eu nunca mais quero ver ele não entendi nada não consegui mexer nada. LIXO
Finished 3/9/2024
And with that most of the 'Duel Monsters' era titles have been covered. The only ones left are some of the earlier game boy titles but I'll cover those last probably, for now say goodbye to Yugi on the cover here.
Between this, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre and now Unicorn Overlord- I've been sort of on a tactics binge (been also looking to check out Front Mission). Strange that not only is Yu-Gi-Oh a pillar of my tactics understanding but its probably now the 2nd largest thus far behind Fire Emblem. With the lack of innovation there is in the card game during this era of YGO, I can't say the same for the games during this era as this is another distinct tactics game for the series. I had half expected this to be similar to how Duelist of the Roses operated but here we don't have nearly as...unique of a concept, but I think something slightly more enjoyable and also surprisingly higher budget.
I was shocked opening this game up and being greeted by Gramps, fully voiced! Prior to this I don't recall there being any voice acting whatsoever in any of the console titles so I was pleasantly surprised when this game had, like, FULL voice acting. There's not much of a story this time around but seeing the characters voice out interactions throughout a battle was a nice throwback to when I watched the anime as a kid.
In addition, this game has a strong premise with regards to its tactics. The objective is the usual- you have a base from which you select and summon a number of units, defeat all of your opponents capsules or defeat the base to win. However, each match has a 'deck limit' of sorts that limits you from taking in only your strongest and generally this isn't an issue as most of the game is utilizing monsters with advantageous attributes to stomp opponents. One thing to note is that there's eight attributes but these interact moreso in two 'wheels' of sorts.
Long story short:
Water > Fire > Grass > Wind > Water
Dark > Earth > Electric > Light > Dark
This leads to some interesting match-ups later on as Light focused duelists will incorporate Earth units as well in an attempt to counter Electric units you bring out.
Units are also fairly interesting in how they move around- generally tactics games have a 'movement' skill in which they operate off a radius on the game's grid. Here it feels more like Chess than fire emblem ever did as units are locked into specific patterns of movement, most akin to Rooks and Bishops moving horizontally or diagonally. There aren't any Knight patterns but a 2-square 'leap' movement in which a unit can hop in any direction but only 2 squares away (more of a dotted O movement than an L). On top of this, units have distinct attack patterns separate from their movement patterns so a unit may have diagonal movement but horizontal attack capabilities.
There are several other variables that arise during play, certain arenas will have a gimmick that alters elements of the field over time, certain tiles give a bonus to specific types, your base that you choose at the start of the game gives a passive buff, it was a much more intriguing game than I had initially thought.
There is a lot of obfuscation that bogs down the experience, on top of being an already clunky to understand tactics game at first. Certain mechanics like Fusion and Evolution require some prior knowledge of both the card game and also some creative thinking (game FAQs). In addition certain stage elements don't really tell you what's going on. Most of it can be inferred, but for example during Tea's stage the lights of the city dim down as the clock strikes midnight- snow begins to fall and holiday music begins to play... I don't really know if this has any effect, like giving your dark monsters a boost but uhhh it was pretty cool!
Lastly while leveling your units is imperative, you get units after battle based off what your opponent owns on top of Grandpa updating his shop roster after you beating each set of five duelists (with some shadow drops I never quite understood). It's important to note that the units you have early on can be useful later on, even if just to fill in gaps and use as cannon fodder as permadeath is not a factor here- thank god. The issue isnt really these cannon fodder but its moreso the mid units that land in a weird limbo where I can't tell if they've been powercreeped out by the new capsules or if I haven't put in the effort to make it good. In my playthrough I ran a Water base and used a number of water units in the start- namely Root Water. This would be my highest level unit for most the game but its usefulness waned as I couldn't find a good place to evolve it into High Tide Gyojin until the last couple of maps. Certainly once it evolved it was actually still comparable to most of the late game units but its just that weird predicament of not really knowing whats 'good' for your point in the game- leading to me buying a lot of new, but untrained units that might not have been all that necessary with proper planning.
Overall I was fairly surprised with how much I enjoyed this over Duelist of the Roses, and nearly most of the other Yugioh titles. While DotR might offer something more akin to a 'card-tactics fusion', Capsule Monster Coliseum feels more balanced and properly structured as a tactics title overall. Played this on my Steam Deck and while there were a few visual issues, especially with certain portraits- many of the stages look pretty great, the fully voiced dialogue is well appreciated and the music is pretty good overall. The thing that kinda tipped this over Duelist of the Roses was thinking about how I left off that game not having gone through Kaiba's (Rosenkreuz) route. Despite this, finishing CMC I found myself more likely to restart my progress and retackle prior stages with a better understanding, or hell try out a playthrough with a different, more useful base 'attribute'. I clocked in around 15 hours by the end, with a few half hours lost due to shoddy attempts so honestly for a tactics game as quick and as neat as this I can't be too upset by some perplexities in its mechanics. I'm glad that one of Konami's experiments to the YGO gaming formula paid off as well, just kind of a shame this also happens to be one of the last of its ilk.
And with that most of the 'Duel Monsters' era titles have been covered. The only ones left are some of the earlier game boy titles but I'll cover those last probably, for now say goodbye to Yugi on the cover here.
Between this, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre and now Unicorn Overlord- I've been sort of on a tactics binge (been also looking to check out Front Mission). Strange that not only is Yu-Gi-Oh a pillar of my tactics understanding but its probably now the 2nd largest thus far behind Fire Emblem. With the lack of innovation there is in the card game during this era of YGO, I can't say the same for the games during this era as this is another distinct tactics game for the series. I had half expected this to be similar to how Duelist of the Roses operated but here we don't have nearly as...unique of a concept, but I think something slightly more enjoyable and also surprisingly higher budget.
I was shocked opening this game up and being greeted by Gramps, fully voiced! Prior to this I don't recall there being any voice acting whatsoever in any of the console titles so I was pleasantly surprised when this game had, like, FULL voice acting. There's not much of a story this time around but seeing the characters voice out interactions throughout a battle was a nice throwback to when I watched the anime as a kid.
In addition, this game has a strong premise with regards to its tactics. The objective is the usual- you have a base from which you select and summon a number of units, defeat all of your opponents capsules or defeat the base to win. However, each match has a 'deck limit' of sorts that limits you from taking in only your strongest and generally this isn't an issue as most of the game is utilizing monsters with advantageous attributes to stomp opponents. One thing to note is that there's eight attributes but these interact moreso in two 'wheels' of sorts.
Long story short:
Water > Fire > Grass > Wind > Water
Dark > Earth > Electric > Light > Dark
This leads to some interesting match-ups later on as Light focused duelists will incorporate Earth units as well in an attempt to counter Electric units you bring out.
Units are also fairly interesting in how they move around- generally tactics games have a 'movement' skill in which they operate off a radius on the game's grid. Here it feels more like Chess than fire emblem ever did as units are locked into specific patterns of movement, most akin to Rooks and Bishops moving horizontally or diagonally. There aren't any Knight patterns but a 2-square 'leap' movement in which a unit can hop in any direction but only 2 squares away (more of a dotted O movement than an L). On top of this, units have distinct attack patterns separate from their movement patterns so a unit may have diagonal movement but horizontal attack capabilities.
There are several other variables that arise during play, certain arenas will have a gimmick that alters elements of the field over time, certain tiles give a bonus to specific types, your base that you choose at the start of the game gives a passive buff, it was a much more intriguing game than I had initially thought.
There is a lot of obfuscation that bogs down the experience, on top of being an already clunky to understand tactics game at first. Certain mechanics like Fusion and Evolution require some prior knowledge of both the card game and also some creative thinking (game FAQs). In addition certain stage elements don't really tell you what's going on. Most of it can be inferred, but for example during Tea's stage the lights of the city dim down as the clock strikes midnight- snow begins to fall and holiday music begins to play... I don't really know if this has any effect, like giving your dark monsters a boost but uhhh it was pretty cool!
Lastly while leveling your units is imperative, you get units after battle based off what your opponent owns on top of Grandpa updating his shop roster after you beating each set of five duelists (with some shadow drops I never quite understood). It's important to note that the units you have early on can be useful later on, even if just to fill in gaps and use as cannon fodder as permadeath is not a factor here- thank god. The issue isnt really these cannon fodder but its moreso the mid units that land in a weird limbo where I can't tell if they've been powercreeped out by the new capsules or if I haven't put in the effort to make it good. In my playthrough I ran a Water base and used a number of water units in the start- namely Root Water. This would be my highest level unit for most the game but its usefulness waned as I couldn't find a good place to evolve it into High Tide Gyojin until the last couple of maps. Certainly once it evolved it was actually still comparable to most of the late game units but its just that weird predicament of not really knowing whats 'good' for your point in the game- leading to me buying a lot of new, but untrained units that might not have been all that necessary with proper planning.
Overall I was fairly surprised with how much I enjoyed this over Duelist of the Roses, and nearly most of the other Yugioh titles. While DotR might offer something more akin to a 'card-tactics fusion', Capsule Monster Coliseum feels more balanced and properly structured as a tactics title overall. Played this on my Steam Deck and while there were a few visual issues, especially with certain portraits- many of the stages look pretty great, the fully voiced dialogue is well appreciated and the music is pretty good overall. The thing that kinda tipped this over Duelist of the Roses was thinking about how I left off that game not having gone through Kaiba's (Rosenkreuz) route. Despite this, finishing CMC I found myself more likely to restart my progress and retackle prior stages with a better understanding, or hell try out a playthrough with a different, more useful base 'attribute'. I clocked in around 15 hours by the end, with a few half hours lost due to shoddy attempts so honestly for a tactics game as quick and as neat as this I can't be too upset by some perplexities in its mechanics. I'm glad that one of Konami's experiments to the YGO gaming formula paid off as well, just kind of a shame this also happens to be one of the last of its ilk.
Es un juego sumamente interesante aunque desconectado por completo del juego fisico mas alla de los personajes. Es una pena que no tengo un port, ya que podrian darle una IA mas competente para que el modo de un solo jugador no se volviese aburrido despues de un tiempo.
Xadrez incrivelmente bom, porém o jogo foi rushado no desenvolvimento, é fácil de quebrar o jogo no início do New Game, balanceamento de monstros e símbolos bem mal feito, é como se não tivesse testado absolutamente nada, o game possui coisas descartadas que estão escondidas no CD mas não foram utilizadas, por exemplo:
1 - Monstros secretos.
2 - Diálogos onde os personagens adversários fariam uma fusão e evolução no decorrer da partida.
O jogo não tem desafio nenhum após você entender e buildar seu monster deck, e os monstros da CPU iniciam no LV1, você não enfrenta nenhum monstro acima disso no decorrer da campanha, é os problemas de um jogo rushado, no entanto, um brasileiro conseguiu modar o jogo possibilitando reajustar o balanceamento de símbolos e monstros, tornando o jogo mais difícil e divertido do que a versão original, e é claro, os monstros que estavam escondidos no CD são jogáveis no mod.
Link do vídeo do Libra Mod para quem se interessar:
https://youtu.be/GCTZuH3xAGc?si=IXHJwqknXegzq8fG
1 - Monstros secretos.
2 - Diálogos onde os personagens adversários fariam uma fusão e evolução no decorrer da partida.
O jogo não tem desafio nenhum após você entender e buildar seu monster deck, e os monstros da CPU iniciam no LV1, você não enfrenta nenhum monstro acima disso no decorrer da campanha, é os problemas de um jogo rushado, no entanto, um brasileiro conseguiu modar o jogo possibilitando reajustar o balanceamento de símbolos e monstros, tornando o jogo mais difícil e divertido do que a versão original, e é claro, os monstros que estavam escondidos no CD são jogáveis no mod.
Link do vídeo do Libra Mod para quem se interessar:
https://youtu.be/GCTZuH3xAGc?si=IXHJwqknXegzq8fG