Japan OCG: July 2002
NA TCG: Late 2003
Quick rant:
The timeline for Yu-Gi-Oh! games is so fucked up. This is considered Duel Monsters Expert 7 in japan but the prior game I reviewed was considered Expert 5. Not only this, but when Expert 5 got remade in North America, it was an entirely new game just for the NA market, but the two can be considered parallels of sorts. HOWEVER, Expert 6 is a game released in Japan, but YGO: 'Stairway to the Destined Duel' exists not as the parallel to that, but as another game in all markets, considered Expert International. It feels like how Pokemon went from Red/Green to Blue and then to Yellow but in NA its just Red/Blue then Yellow but without the 'English' source code localization reasoning. I raise this issue up as going by the North American release schedule I would have actually played Stairway before this (actually I would have played Duelist of the roses, but hardware/skill issue) but when quickly charting out my play schedule I was going by the japanese release dates of some of these so my intended system going ahead is kinda fucky, rip.
In the long run it doesn't entirely matter anyway, most of these games don't translate as well onto a roadmap of the actual card game meta's history, and this game doesn't help after playing Eternal Duelist Soul.
What strategy and deckbuilding ideas I had fun formulating by the end of EDS basically never popped up throughout the quick jaunt this was. Dark Duel Stories was a game I only briefly talked about comparatively and that's because it was overall too grindy and samey for me to really want to engage with. Here, there's at least enough of a new and interesting enough premise to keep with the program until the end. Unfortunate for this game as I'll harp on for longer about how obnoxious some of the format rules and mindless the strategizing becomes.
Similar to DDS, Sacred Cards is reliant upon the format of an exactly 40 card deck with a cards being chosen on a 'deck cost' limit. Each card has a specific cost and you can only add said based on your 'duelist level', with stronger cards having higher levels and costs. The deck limit and duelist level are increased as you battle of course, but there entails the first problem, these two aren't exactly proportionally rewarded. To put this into perspective, by the 3/4ths part of the game I could fit most anything into the deck level-wise but basically nothing would fit because the deck limit was so tiny. By the end of the game I maybe had 5 cards with an attack above 1500 attack? Its not like most of this matters as a bunch of cards are given nonsense effects because the simplicity of the game doesn't mesh with the actual tcg. No flip summoning, chaining effects, spell speeds, coin flips, you can only have 5 cards in hand, even fusing is gone. Not even the mechanic from DDS/FM, just the whole concept is gone (rituals though!!!(?)).
This whole structure would mean I would have to get pretty creative to make decks by the endgame however right? Of course not, there's about 4 different variations of trap hole that are cheap as fuck for some reason, meaning if you have 3 copies of acid trap hole basically anything your opponent drops dies. There's a bunch of these cards and they just serve to clear up your opponents board while you send out 900 atk nothings to chip away their LP.
Also returning from DDS is the attribute weakness chart to varying degrees of apathy. There's a few times where matches begin with a preset field and you would want to alter your deck to suit the field and take advantage of your opponent's weakness but I considered this maybe twice.
The story follows the Duelist City arc like most things in the Duel Monsters era, but this is the first time we get to control a player going from area to area. There's nothing too special here outside of its crude animations/attempts to mirror the events of the anime. I got lost a few times trying to figure out how to progress the story.
The two saving graces that allowed me to complete this game over DDS and FM are as follows. Firstly, unlike DDS this game's structure isn't as mind-numbing, as it is fairly neat to walk around and engage with an actual story. Secondly, there's a card shop so you aren't 100% reliant on ante card rewards. This also adds to the trivialization of the game but I won't complain.
I would be easier on this game but man there wasn't a whole lot to really sink my teeth into. Hell, the Yugipedia article on the game spends a whole paragraph in its opening summary about how you can't use Winged Dragon of Ra because the game does the whole 'don't return you to the menu or let you play freely' bit and you just stay stuck on the credit screen. While I didn't feel the need to beat Forbidden Memories it had immense vibes and a lot of neat feature for the time that would have kept me busy if I had kept it longer as a kid. Once you beat Marik in this game there's nothing else to go off of, no way to just keep battling or reward. It's just a really big step down engagement-wise (also visually, this game looks really clunky) from Eternal Duelist Soul. But hey, it introduced the RPG element in the family of Yugioh games for later games to iterate on, so that's neat.
NA TCG: Late 2003
Quick rant:
The timeline for Yu-Gi-Oh! games is so fucked up. This is considered Duel Monsters Expert 7 in japan but the prior game I reviewed was considered Expert 5. Not only this, but when Expert 5 got remade in North America, it was an entirely new game just for the NA market, but the two can be considered parallels of sorts. HOWEVER, Expert 6 is a game released in Japan, but YGO: 'Stairway to the Destined Duel' exists not as the parallel to that, but as another game in all markets, considered Expert International. It feels like how Pokemon went from Red/Green to Blue and then to Yellow but in NA its just Red/Blue then Yellow but without the 'English' source code localization reasoning. I raise this issue up as going by the North American release schedule I would have actually played Stairway before this (actually I would have played Duelist of the roses, but hardware/skill issue) but when quickly charting out my play schedule I was going by the japanese release dates of some of these so my intended system going ahead is kinda fucky, rip.
In the long run it doesn't entirely matter anyway, most of these games don't translate as well onto a roadmap of the actual card game meta's history, and this game doesn't help after playing Eternal Duelist Soul.
What strategy and deckbuilding ideas I had fun formulating by the end of EDS basically never popped up throughout the quick jaunt this was. Dark Duel Stories was a game I only briefly talked about comparatively and that's because it was overall too grindy and samey for me to really want to engage with. Here, there's at least enough of a new and interesting enough premise to keep with the program until the end. Unfortunate for this game as I'll harp on for longer about how obnoxious some of the format rules and mindless the strategizing becomes.
Similar to DDS, Sacred Cards is reliant upon the format of an exactly 40 card deck with a cards being chosen on a 'deck cost' limit. Each card has a specific cost and you can only add said based on your 'duelist level', with stronger cards having higher levels and costs. The deck limit and duelist level are increased as you battle of course, but there entails the first problem, these two aren't exactly proportionally rewarded. To put this into perspective, by the 3/4ths part of the game I could fit most anything into the deck level-wise but basically nothing would fit because the deck limit was so tiny. By the end of the game I maybe had 5 cards with an attack above 1500 attack? Its not like most of this matters as a bunch of cards are given nonsense effects because the simplicity of the game doesn't mesh with the actual tcg. No flip summoning, chaining effects, spell speeds, coin flips, you can only have 5 cards in hand, even fusing is gone. Not even the mechanic from DDS/FM, just the whole concept is gone (rituals though!!!(?)).
This whole structure would mean I would have to get pretty creative to make decks by the endgame however right? Of course not, there's about 4 different variations of trap hole that are cheap as fuck for some reason, meaning if you have 3 copies of acid trap hole basically anything your opponent drops dies. There's a bunch of these cards and they just serve to clear up your opponents board while you send out 900 atk nothings to chip away their LP.
Also returning from DDS is the attribute weakness chart to varying degrees of apathy. There's a few times where matches begin with a preset field and you would want to alter your deck to suit the field and take advantage of your opponent's weakness but I considered this maybe twice.
The story follows the Duelist City arc like most things in the Duel Monsters era, but this is the first time we get to control a player going from area to area. There's nothing too special here outside of its crude animations/attempts to mirror the events of the anime. I got lost a few times trying to figure out how to progress the story.
The two saving graces that allowed me to complete this game over DDS and FM are as follows. Firstly, unlike DDS this game's structure isn't as mind-numbing, as it is fairly neat to walk around and engage with an actual story. Secondly, there's a card shop so you aren't 100% reliant on ante card rewards. This also adds to the trivialization of the game but I won't complain.
I would be easier on this game but man there wasn't a whole lot to really sink my teeth into. Hell, the Yugipedia article on the game spends a whole paragraph in its opening summary about how you can't use Winged Dragon of Ra because the game does the whole 'don't return you to the menu or let you play freely' bit and you just stay stuck on the credit screen. While I didn't feel the need to beat Forbidden Memories it had immense vibes and a lot of neat feature for the time that would have kept me busy if I had kept it longer as a kid. Once you beat Marik in this game there's nothing else to go off of, no way to just keep battling or reward. It's just a really big step down engagement-wise (also visually, this game looks really clunky) from Eternal Duelist Soul. But hey, it introduced the RPG element in the family of Yugioh games for later games to iterate on, so that's neat.