Had this game as my primary form of YGO interaction as a kid and without any kinda manual or idea of what i was expected to do, I didn't get too far without passwords of any kind. Most of my time was spent beating the shit out of Tristan until I got brave and decided to clear the rest of it with primarily Dark Elf and Jirai Gumo, dont remember much else strategy-wise. Nowadays trying to get through this with as little cheats as possible (added one Dark Elf, one Jirai and did Grandpa's bonus card post-battle) feels like such a chore and I really can't recommend this to anyone. Create-a-card seems like a neat gimmick but thats about all there is to diversify this from other games.
Trying to fuse monsters is a struggle, a lot of cards have their effects stripped or nerfed, the card rewards you get suck to high heaven, I don't understand the duelist level requirements for some cards (Blue Eyes is easier to include in your deck than terrible spell cards for some reason???), and much of the early battles are just a matter of getting an okay beatstick out.
When my fascination of YGO reemerged I checked out bits about the early game meta and sure enough the early game was beatdown focused- however even the few sets in the first year of the meta had some interesting card interactions and combos that you can work with so that its not just a matter of summoning your La Jinn/Summoned Skull and leaving that on the field until you win. But here you don't get to see any of those neat effects. Jinzo doesnt have his trap denial, Witch/Sangan can't search for cards, Man-Eater doesnt have his flip-destroy effect, and Jirai Gumo just breaks the game since it's high 2200 attack-no tribute isn't balanced by its coin flip effect. So on the one hand it does break some cards in fun ways but its too primitive to make for a fun simulation of the game on top of not having much 'side substance' to distract this lack of certain mechanics. As a dumb kid I ignored and didn't pay much attention to how good the effects of smaller cards could be so I didn't mind but nowadays seeing the lack of effects bugs the hell out of me, especially here. Milus Radiant is a card you get in your starting deck that can boost EARTH cards' attack by a decent 500 points and decrease WINDs' by the same amount, which would have been a neat effect to have to bolster a bit of your starting cards. Muka Muka would be an insanely funny card here, as its real effect is it gains 300 atk/def for each card in your hand, which would be insanely strong in the early game as you'd have pretty much have this 1800-2100 atk ((300 x usually 4-5 cards in hand, +MMs base atk of 600), on par with or more than other tributeless monsters) beatstick early game. But you don't really have a whole lot to play with in this regard.
Forbidden Memories I've played a bit of recently and also had as a kid, that also having some of these features missing (effects being removed entirely) but I'm wondering if it at least builds up into a more engaging game. I wouldn't mind the lack of card mechanics in DDS if it didn't clash with its inclusion of other mechanics it didnt forget to keep. For example, at least Forbidden Memories has you draw as many cards as you need to have 5 cards in your hand and you can kinda have an easier time messing with fusion combinations through that (at the cost of milling through your deck)- whereas in DDS fusing feels like a gamble if you don't have a cheat sheet up as messing one up will waste one card on the field (probably a better one at that given it survived a turn), you can't summon another monster and you've pretty much bricked if you can't draw a good card. You can also fuse two cards in your hand but if you make a pretty good fusion its probably Level 5 or higher, meaning you need to tribute a card or two to get it out on the field, and we're talking EARLY ass Yugioh. So many of your fusion results are botched-tempo 'have this level 5 card with lower attack than La Jinn or Uraby' that they're not even worth it.
Also you start with such shitheel cards its ridiculous. Thankfully the attribute weakness system (thanks early yugioh) makes it so that having the advantageous type just instakills any monster of the weaker type but you get so few cards that its hard to make sound strategies once you get to the second round of fighters where opponents' decks are better built. Rex Raptor was a pain in the ass to try and fight as his EARTH attribute monsters of around 1000-1800 atk are weak to WIND attribute monsters- which probably made up about 3 cards in my chest. Ironically, it was easier to fight and beat Kaiba than some of the one off/gag characters because of the attribute cycle.
Overall if you had the time and desire you could probably make your way through the game just fine but I don't really care despite my nostalgia/history with the game. It's just too monotonous to get good cards and maybe interacting with the create-a-card mechanic would expedite that but the parts I was getting didn't seem to do that either. Still, interesting that this would essentially be the first glimpse of a Yugioh video game to western audiences and even moreso that two days later Forbidden Memories would release in the west as a complimentary console game. As I go through these games I'm interested in seeing how these two types of games evolve and diverge from each other, as well as the base card game.
Trying to fuse monsters is a struggle, a lot of cards have their effects stripped or nerfed, the card rewards you get suck to high heaven, I don't understand the duelist level requirements for some cards (Blue Eyes is easier to include in your deck than terrible spell cards for some reason???), and much of the early battles are just a matter of getting an okay beatstick out.
When my fascination of YGO reemerged I checked out bits about the early game meta and sure enough the early game was beatdown focused- however even the few sets in the first year of the meta had some interesting card interactions and combos that you can work with so that its not just a matter of summoning your La Jinn/Summoned Skull and leaving that on the field until you win. But here you don't get to see any of those neat effects. Jinzo doesnt have his trap denial, Witch/Sangan can't search for cards, Man-Eater doesnt have his flip-destroy effect, and Jirai Gumo just breaks the game since it's high 2200 attack-no tribute isn't balanced by its coin flip effect. So on the one hand it does break some cards in fun ways but its too primitive to make for a fun simulation of the game on top of not having much 'side substance' to distract this lack of certain mechanics. As a dumb kid I ignored and didn't pay much attention to how good the effects of smaller cards could be so I didn't mind but nowadays seeing the lack of effects bugs the hell out of me, especially here. Milus Radiant is a card you get in your starting deck that can boost EARTH cards' attack by a decent 500 points and decrease WINDs' by the same amount, which would have been a neat effect to have to bolster a bit of your starting cards. Muka Muka would be an insanely funny card here, as its real effect is it gains 300 atk/def for each card in your hand, which would be insanely strong in the early game as you'd have pretty much have this 1800-2100 atk ((300 x usually 4-5 cards in hand, +MMs base atk of 600), on par with or more than other tributeless monsters) beatstick early game. But you don't really have a whole lot to play with in this regard.
Forbidden Memories I've played a bit of recently and also had as a kid, that also having some of these features missing (effects being removed entirely) but I'm wondering if it at least builds up into a more engaging game. I wouldn't mind the lack of card mechanics in DDS if it didn't clash with its inclusion of other mechanics it didnt forget to keep. For example, at least Forbidden Memories has you draw as many cards as you need to have 5 cards in your hand and you can kinda have an easier time messing with fusion combinations through that (at the cost of milling through your deck)- whereas in DDS fusing feels like a gamble if you don't have a cheat sheet up as messing one up will waste one card on the field (probably a better one at that given it survived a turn), you can't summon another monster and you've pretty much bricked if you can't draw a good card. You can also fuse two cards in your hand but if you make a pretty good fusion its probably Level 5 or higher, meaning you need to tribute a card or two to get it out on the field, and we're talking EARLY ass Yugioh. So many of your fusion results are botched-tempo 'have this level 5 card with lower attack than La Jinn or Uraby' that they're not even worth it.
Also you start with such shitheel cards its ridiculous. Thankfully the attribute weakness system (thanks early yugioh) makes it so that having the advantageous type just instakills any monster of the weaker type but you get so few cards that its hard to make sound strategies once you get to the second round of fighters where opponents' decks are better built. Rex Raptor was a pain in the ass to try and fight as his EARTH attribute monsters of around 1000-1800 atk are weak to WIND attribute monsters- which probably made up about 3 cards in my chest. Ironically, it was easier to fight and beat Kaiba than some of the one off/gag characters because of the attribute cycle.
Overall if you had the time and desire you could probably make your way through the game just fine but I don't really care despite my nostalgia/history with the game. It's just too monotonous to get good cards and maybe interacting with the create-a-card mechanic would expedite that but the parts I was getting didn't seem to do that either. Still, interesting that this would essentially be the first glimpse of a Yugioh video game to western audiences and even moreso that two days later Forbidden Memories would release in the west as a complimentary console game. As I go through these games I'm interested in seeing how these two types of games evolve and diverge from each other, as well as the base card game.