This review contains spoilers
If you don't believe I'm crazy I've completed this. Sure I didn't beat every duelist 100 times or obtained every card, but I did beat every duelist at least 5 times(including Dark Yugi) and saw the credits.
What's crazier is that this game was very successful, with tournaments where actual Japanese people played against each other. On this game. Yes that did indeed happened.
One look at this game's gameplay loop will make you say: "wtf??? How could this spawn a successful series of sequels and help the popularity of the manga and eventual physical card game?? It's extremely grindy and most of the time the game consists of play big number and win. " ...well that's a little specific but you would be right.
You can only play one card each turn and it's extremely limiting. It leads to big number = win; if you have a card with high stats and your opponent doesn't you'll win unless they have Raigeki or Black hole, and even those magic cards leave you vulnerable; remember, you can only play one card per turn. Only swords of revealing light can help you stall so you can top deck a monster with a big enough number. Good luck getting it though, as you need to grind 60 matches against the CPU... 60 sloooooow matches.
Fusions exist but unlike Forbidden Memories you can't fuse multiple cards then play the result on the same turn. To fuse you play a monster on top of another already in play. Also most fusions that are easily available to you suck ass.
Magic cards, like field spells or equips, exist but if you play Sogen you won't have a line of defense against an opponent's Summoned Demon or whatever. "Field spells" are powerful here because, unlike in the real card game, they give a 30% boost to atk and def. Equips are pretty good too, too bad you need a monster on the field already, and that means it needs to survive a turn...
You can't just leave a monster on attack position and not attack. Even if it would be advantageous, like for example: you have a Summoned Demon and your opponent has 2 Black Magicians; both have 2500 atk but you don't want to lose your monster...well too bad, your only other option is to leave it at defense mode, even if it's lower def stat (1200) will mean that you'll lose next turn.
To the game's credit it feels exactly like the very early Magic and Wizard duels in the manga... well except some weird stuff like elements and types of magic having weaknesses and resistances (that gets added in the sequel).
It's soundtrack is great (it does get repetitive... but that's inevitable thanks to the required grinding).
The art is also great, specially how it recreates manga panels. Monster design will get better on the sequels and the OCG but the spritework is still great.
...
The Yugioh manga was extremely popular and it feels like fans would eat up any adaptation of the card game. Honestly, same lmao. Looking back at the firsts sets, the actual physical card game was very lame and slow, and if you thought about it for a moment, the manga duels were also weird, convoluted and stupid at times, at least before Battle City. But it didn't matter as it was cool as fuck.
Actually playing this game, either against the CPU or against another crazy human player, feels slow and lame... but the music and art is cool and you can collect the cards that you see on the manga!
If it wasn't apparent from this review I really like yugioh. The manga is great, even at the start when it's just Dark Yugi killing criminals through shadow games. It's one of those IPs that I just like everything about it and yes, I play the modern card game to this day.
I enjoyed my time with this game thanks to being a fan, and having a strong resilience to outdated game mechanics. If you don't fulfill those 2 conditions don't play this game. It's not good. If you are curious play Dark Duel Stories or Forbidden Memories idk.
What's crazier is that this game was very successful, with tournaments where actual Japanese people played against each other. On this game. Yes that did indeed happened.
One look at this game's gameplay loop will make you say: "wtf??? How could this spawn a successful series of sequels and help the popularity of the manga and eventual physical card game?? It's extremely grindy and most of the time the game consists of play big number and win. " ...well that's a little specific but you would be right.
You can only play one card each turn and it's extremely limiting. It leads to big number = win; if you have a card with high stats and your opponent doesn't you'll win unless they have Raigeki or Black hole, and even those magic cards leave you vulnerable; remember, you can only play one card per turn. Only swords of revealing light can help you stall so you can top deck a monster with a big enough number. Good luck getting it though, as you need to grind 60 matches against the CPU... 60 sloooooow matches.
Fusions exist but unlike Forbidden Memories you can't fuse multiple cards then play the result on the same turn. To fuse you play a monster on top of another already in play. Also most fusions that are easily available to you suck ass.
Magic cards, like field spells or equips, exist but if you play Sogen you won't have a line of defense against an opponent's Summoned Demon or whatever. "Field spells" are powerful here because, unlike in the real card game, they give a 30% boost to atk and def. Equips are pretty good too, too bad you need a monster on the field already, and that means it needs to survive a turn...
You can't just leave a monster on attack position and not attack. Even if it would be advantageous, like for example: you have a Summoned Demon and your opponent has 2 Black Magicians; both have 2500 atk but you don't want to lose your monster...well too bad, your only other option is to leave it at defense mode, even if it's lower def stat (1200) will mean that you'll lose next turn.
To the game's credit it feels exactly like the very early Magic and Wizard duels in the manga... well except some weird stuff like elements and types of magic having weaknesses and resistances (that gets added in the sequel).
It's soundtrack is great (it does get repetitive... but that's inevitable thanks to the required grinding).
The art is also great, specially how it recreates manga panels. Monster design will get better on the sequels and the OCG but the spritework is still great.
...
The Yugioh manga was extremely popular and it feels like fans would eat up any adaptation of the card game. Honestly, same lmao. Looking back at the firsts sets, the actual physical card game was very lame and slow, and if you thought about it for a moment, the manga duels were also weird, convoluted and stupid at times, at least before Battle City. But it didn't matter as it was cool as fuck.
Actually playing this game, either against the CPU or against another crazy human player, feels slow and lame... but the music and art is cool and you can collect the cards that you see on the manga!
If it wasn't apparent from this review I really like yugioh. The manga is great, even at the start when it's just Dark Yugi killing criminals through shadow games. It's one of those IPs that I just like everything about it and yes, I play the modern card game to this day.
I enjoyed my time with this game thanks to being a fan, and having a strong resilience to outdated game mechanics. If you don't fulfill those 2 conditions don't play this game. It's not good. If you are curious play Dark Duel Stories or Forbidden Memories idk.