It's easy to control and is so lifelike in it's recreation of the card game, that I wouldn't be surprised if the hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fans chuck their card books and play with their DS' instead.
An amazing game, especially when you know how to play the game. The cards look sweet and the gameplay is smooth with absolutely 0% bugs. A must get for Yu-gi-oh! fans.
The game is a straight forward interface. You can duel against the computer's monsters, ghost data files, wireless-ly with friends and via the Internet. You can also shop, edit your character, play a few duel-related games and read some documentation. The game was not created to be an adventure, it was created to train and eventually compete in the championships.
Too difficult for newbies, but lacking too many cards for old-hat masters, the game finds and neatly settles into a perfect niche among newer yet established fans who like working with what they're given and/or don't necessarily have the money to buy the game's infamously costly booster packs.
The huge time investment required to make anything that resembles progress means that this is hardly the best place for newcomers to start but by stark contrast, there's no better Yu-Gi-Oh! title on the market in terms of card lists, AI and sheer longevity.
With how the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game's been progressing in terms of complexity, sometimes you just want to get back to a simpler time. This is probably the best Yu-Gi-Oh! game for that purpose.
This game is a massive time sink if you hope to 'beat' it, considering you have to beat every opponent of a tier five times to get to the next tier. Losses not included, that's at least 30 games. While this isn't an issue in terms of get more Duel Points and buying new cards, it can be if you find an opponent with a deck that's notably difficult to deal with. You don't want to waste your time dueling someone you've already beaten five times, but you might need to get more duel points to buy better cards.
One minute gripe I have is that I've gotten sick of the imperial organ music by about the tier three opponents. It's not too obnoxious or anything, but I found the survival-duel music to be significantly more catchy and upbeat. It's really unfortunate that such nice music got moved to a challenge mode, one that, depending on how well you did, may start you with the 'low life' music.
I guess there's no reason to complain about music from a nine year old Yu-Gi-Oh! game, but here we are.
Overall though, every deck you face is uniquely different (give or take a few decks), and as long as you like to card game, you'll enjoy this game. If you're looking for a DS Yu-Gi-Oh! game and are a beginner, buy/download Sprit Caller. The decks are a lot easier to beat at the beginning, and there's an infinite DP cheat.
You need to play hours and hours just to find cards that are worth being in your deck. Very little dp are earned through limited/theme/cpu duels... Buying boosters with very little chance of even using them in the long run. Can't even play the limited duels due to lack of required cards. Previous older cards have been removed. Fun for hardcore players, exhausting for casual ones.
Pokemon knockoffs are usually lost causes, especially when the series was at its prime during the DS era. But with enough attention to detail, some of these knockoffs would age a lot better than others. Some monster fight series are so enjoyable that they don't feel like rip-offs at all. And I think the Yu-Gi-Oh series is one of the best examples of that. I've recently got into the anime, and while I agree that the 4Kids Dub holds back a lot of its greatness that didn't stop from falling in love with the Duel Monsters card game and the crazy world building. Having said that, I had a pretty odd time with this game. It starts off with a sweet character creation **** that's it? Being the 2nd generation, I was guessing I was going to head into a Duel Academy themed story mode, but all I found was a CPU challenge system. And I'm not even fighting characters from the anime, just a bunch of generic monsters with decks. On top of that, the first deck I get in the game is based of Jaden Yuki's deck, mixed in with a lot of Warrior-Type monsters. This is pretty damn disappointing. No offense to GX, but Jaden's deck is pretty lackluster. I was hoping to at least have a selection of starter decks, but at the moment I'm forced to rely on uncomfortable strategies. This deck contains Elemental Hero Neos, but no Neo-Spacians to contact-fuse with. I've got the fusion monsters from season 1, but none of the monsters from season 2. If anything, this is a worse version of Yuki's deck. Well, at least the game starts you off with gift cash to buy a new deck at the store. Get ready to weep though, because to purchase new **** have to buy trading card packs with LUCK-BASED MECHANICS! Whether they're crushing your dreams of building an ultimate team or preventing 100% completion, you're in for some serious pain and suffering when these babies start to plague a possibly entertaining game. I get what the developers were going for, add some realism to the game. But you do know that trading card shops also have powerful cards on display to purchase right? There is a password system, that gives players the ability to buy specific cards. Unfortunately, you only have the option to buy copies of cards you already own. That's just annoying. As for the CPU opponents, you have the option to fight basic Free-play opponents, limitation challenges, and puzzles where you have to figure out how to defeat your opponent in one turn with the cards on display. And I must **** the developers know the meaning of an easy mode? I swear, all of these generic Duel Monster opponents use really powerful decks. Most contain banned cards despite being at level 1. The challenges are good for patient learners like myself. But most beginners would probably toss this game in the trash out of sheer frustration because of all the difficulty spikes. If I didn't watch the show or play the card game, I'd probably despise this game. As for the battle system itself, its actually really fleshed out. There's hundreds of cards available, monsters from the anime get special summoning animations, the music changes to fit the theme of both mid-victory and mid-defeat, and haven't found any glitches. Despite all the problems, this game remains addicting. After finally building my first proper Duel Monsters deck, it feels refreshing to slam my opponents with sound strategy. But I'm still quite upset with the game's structure. In order to unlock stronger opponents you have to defat all 6 of the Level 1 CPUs 5 times. That's 30 duels! And remember, if luck isn't in your favor at the shop and you're forced to rely on Mr. "Get your Game On"'s monsters...things will get repetitive real fast unless you're a true Yu-Gi-Oh fan. Why can't there be a level system where I earn new cards from defeat opponents like the Battle City tournament? Level 1, fight Chumley. Level 2 fight Syrus. Level 3, fight Chazz. How hard is that to code? Just give them pictures and text, and I would enjoy it fine! Hell, you could make stronger versions of the main characters to rematch later in the game if you're out of ideas. I mean who wants to fight Des Wombat, Winged Kuriboh, and Frostosaurus!? In Super Smash Bros games you could unlock new characters by winning enough matches, but the faster method was simply completing the adventure mode levels. Why does everything have to be so restricting!? It can take HOURS to get the actual interesting opponents. While in Smash Bros it takes a good 10 minutes to unlock a new character. It's just like a bad mobile game, you're forced to fight armies of drab side characters before you can fight the actual well-known characters. This is just as idiotic as the Duel Ghouls from season 3! I really love the Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game, but this pretty underwhelming. With the right mindset this game can be really **** this whole experience makes me pretty sad. The payoff for all my hard work isn't good enough.
SummaryFor the first time, the Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament series makes its debut on the Nintendo DS™. The official software of the 2007 Yu-Gi-Oh! World Tournament makes worldwide wireless dueling possible utilizing the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. The game includes 1,600 of the latest cards and more cards will be available for downlo...