I got another game to talk about this week (a rare occurrence, I know)! Today, it's time to DUEL. BACKGROUND:
Of all the early 2000s anime crazes that I watched on Toonami as a kid, Yu-Gi-Oh! is probably one of the very few that really stuck with me. Something about the mystical elements of the story (especially the Millennium items) really captured my imagination back then, and that's not even taking into account the wide variety of monster designs featured in the card game. As opposed to other shows of its nature (e.g. Beyblade, Crush Gear, etc.), the product Yu-Gi-Oh! was selling me wasn't just a toy, but a game, and that was way more interesting to me back then. It probably helped that, with the exception of Zoids, I didn't really care for toys that weren't Bionicle or Lego, though. In any case, the show made me want to play the game, and for a time, I did (albeit mostly with shitty fake cards, because I don't like asking my parents to buy me things). I never did end up playing the game for that long, mostly because I didn't have too many people to play against. I eventually lost interest in the game and moved on to some other distraction (as most kids do). The same went for the anime, but that was mostly because the local Cartoon Network/Toonami took 500 decades to air the new episodes. My interest in Yu-Gi-Oh! didn't resurface until college, when I learned that a small group of people on campus regularly dueled each other. While I didn't go as far as to start spending a fuckton of money on cards myself, the discovery led me to start reading up on what has changed in the game, and needless to say, I was overwhelmed. I wasn't any good at the game back when I used to play to begin with, and the added bulk of information made the prospect of relearning how to play didn't do a lot to bolster my confidence. At some point, I looked into checking out a bunch of Yu-Gi-Oh! video games to get my dueling fix, but never got around to actually buying/playing any of them. The title that fully reawakened my enthusiasm for the game was one called Legacy of the Duelist, and after watching a bunch of streams of people playing it, I was hooked all over again. As luck would have it, the game was ported to Switch, and here we are. PLOT: This game has a campaign mode where you can relive important duels from each of the anime series. The game contextualizes these duels with some written narration and character dialogue (in text form). While you can follow what's going on with no issue, it's quite obvious how abridged this retelling is, and having the foreknowledge of the actual anime helps enhance the experience. In my case, I only ever followed the original series (which features Yugi and the gang), so all the other Yu-Gi-Oh! series that followed are completely foreign to me. As such, I can only really speak about the original with a degree of certainty. The original story of Yu-Gi-Oh! is driven by Duel Monsters (that's what the game is called within the universe), and the story moves forward when key characters duel each other within this game. You follow Yugi Muto, a gifted duelist with a mystical connection to the game thanks to his Millennium Puzzle, and his friends as they are dragged about into all sorts of situations where they have to duel opposing forces to save the day or get out alive. There's a lot of lore behind the story, like the ties to ancient Egypt, the Millennium items, and more, and while that's interesting in itself, what appeals to me personally is the innate absurdity of having important shit (like the fate of humanity) be decided via a stupid card game. It's one of those stories where you question the real life logistics of the premise, laugh at the ridiculousness of it all, and then just sit back and enjoy the ride. PRESENTATION: There's not much I can really say about the visuals about this game. The UI serves its function well, with the entire play field labeled clearly, the information of individual cards are legible and easy to decipher, and the original art of the cards are somewhat preserved. I never expected a graphically impressive game, but what matters in a game like this is a clear interface with no clutter, and Legacy of the Duelist executes that well. The game does try to add its own visual flair by playing special animations when certain monsters are summoned. These are usually reserved for the iconic monsters like your Dark Magicians and Blue-Eyes White Dragons. Honestly, they don't look that impressive, and the fact that you can't turn them off or even skip them is annoying. They also made the effort to add some variety to the playing field backgrounds, which is nice. I would have appreciated the option to customize these backgrounds, but it's not really a big deal. The music is mostly unremarkable but inoffensive, but if in you're a particularly long duel, it'll probably get real repetitive. Thankfully, you can adjust the audio to your tastes and choose to mute it outright. GAMEPLAY: If you haven't already figured it out, Legacy of the Duelist is pretty much just the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game in video game form. Really not much to say there. If you're not familiar with the card game, the basic idea is to summon monsters to damage your opponent's Life Points, and to keep your opponent from returning the favor. There are way too many rules to get into, so I'll leave my explanation at that. Thankfully, there is a comprehensive tutorial for beginners to play through, so if you're new to the game, there's no need to worry. You'll also have access to a How to Play menu, which has some valuable information for new players. As I've already mentioned, there is a campaign mode, and that allows you to reenact important and iconic duels throughout the various anime series in the game. This is the perfect place to learn the ropes, so you'll want to start here if you're new to the game. There's also a shitload of duels to get through in the campaign, so you won't have a shortage of content in this case. In these campaign duels, you have the option to use your own custom decks or use the canon story deck of the character you're assuming the role of. The latter is a lot more fun, in my opinion, as not only do you get to explore a variety of deck builds and strategies via this method, the whole making believe that you're x character by playing all their iconic cards is simply a lot of fun. If that's not enough bang for your buck, there's also something called the Reverse Duel. This allows you to switch the sides of the duelist, i.e. now you play the other guy. This is just as fun, if not more, as now you have the pleasure of employing the very strategies that were used against you in the original duel if you use the story deck. With Reverse Duel taken into account, the entire campaign essentially has double the content, so there's no shortage of duels to play out. In addition to the campaign duels, there are also challenge duels, which consist of special duels against specific deck builds. These are unlocked by playing through the campaign, and while you don't get the option of story decks here, the fact that there are even more deck builds for you to test your skill against is more than welcome. The payoff for winning these campaign duels and challenge duels is entirely in what you unlock afterward. When you win a single player duel, you unlock new cards (which you can use in your custom decks), deck recipes (deck builds based on the ones you just played against that you can now copy), and tokens (the in-game currency, which you spend to acquire even more cards). All these enable you to start building your own custom decks suited to your play style, so going through the single player is all the more worthwhile. In particular, the token method of acquiring cards functions much like in real life, where you buy a booster pack filled with random cards and hope for the best. In the case of this game, it's less stressful, as you earn a good amount of tokens just playing the game (even when you lose), so you can pull at your leisure with little consequence. You also have the option of spending your tokens to build a temporary deck out of specific booster packs the game provides. It's a quicker alternative to continuously pulling random booster packs hoping you get what you need, but it's for temporary use, so it's more of a short term solution if you're in need of a custom deck. While you can use your custom decks in single player, it will be of the most use in the online modes. You can face off against players in either ranked or casual matches, and in the case of the latter, you can tweak a few rules to your liking. I haven't messed around with these modes too much, but I imagine the main appeal of this game is in these modes if you're a more experienced duelist. The game does provide you with a number of default decks right off the bat, so you can use those if you want, but given how this game has a metric shit ton of cards to unlock, you might as well try and get some of them and build your own deck. In duels, the game flow is quite smooth and presents everything (e.g. turn flow, card activations, summons, battles, etc.) in a clear manner. The only thing that gets in the way of that are the constant prompts asking you if you want to activate a card effect, but given the importance of properly timing effect activations, these are a necessary annoyance. Despite how informative the game is in its presentation, it can only tell you so much, so you still have to do your fair bit of reading and pay a good amount of attention. Some turns may have a lot of shit going on (like a long chain of effect activations, for example), so if you're inattentive, you may miss out on some crucial information. VERDICT: Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution is the next best thing to playing the physical card game, thanks to its clean presentation, a plethora of cards to build decks out of, and a variety of single player and multiplayer modes to test those decks in. Whether you're a beginner with an interest in the game, a lapsed fan, or a dedicated veteran, it's a convenient way to get your duel on, so if you have a dueling itch, this is worth checking out. Here's the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/480650/YuGiOh_Legacy_of_the_Duelist/ - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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