Oh
YES! This is the final Game Boy Advance game in
my collection! I've kept the best – and the worst! – for last!
Hell yeah, this is gonna be one awesome review, I tell ya!
First
off, a little history. You all know the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise, right?
It's that bunch of losers playing a card game against other losers. ...Okay, I'm a little harsh. It's the story of that guy, Yugi, who
assembles the legendary Millenium Puzzle, an artifact from the
Egyptian era. This puzzle contains the spirit of a Pharaoh who
strangely looks like him, and that second Yugi (named Yami Yugi for
the sake of having a name) takes over Yugi's body whenever his host
is in danger. Did I mention that Yami enacts revenge by challenging
his enemies in dangerous games? At first it was all sorts of games, but by the ninth book in the manga it became pretty much strictly a card game: “Magic and Wizards” as the manga called it, or “Duel Monsters”
as the anime called it, to be precise. The card game was renamed
Yu-Gi-Oh later, as an homage to the series.
BTW, gonna ruin it right now; the second Yugi leaves at the end. ...Ha! |
One
major arc of the series was Duel City, which spawned from Books 17 to
31 of the manga, had one of the most awesome villains in the entire
franchise, and was overall a lot of fun. Yugi's rival Kaiba settled a whole card game tournament in Domino City, where most main
characters live. Kaiba's plan is to get his hands on three God cards
that would make him the King of Games. However, two of those are in
the hands of an evil organization called the Ghouls, who... do their
terrorism... through card games. Hey, I said it was hammy and weird,
you knew what to expect! Of course, Yugi and his Yami join the
tournament, along with their friend Joey, not a half-bad player
himself. In this arc, Yugi deals with the evil Ghouls, which are
cheating bastards, while Joey meets many previously-seen duelists who
aren't half-bad either. Guess what? Both make it to the final 8. Also
guess who defeats the leader of the Ghouls in the tournament's
finale? Why, Yami Yugi of course!
Phew, that was a long story recap. Can't wait to see it made into a game.
Phew, that was a long story recap. Can't wait to see it made into a game.
Who
do we get to play? Yugi? Joey?
...A
nobody wearing an orange cap and shirt. What the Hell, really?
Ready
to see me make a complete geek of myself in front of all of you? Well, wait no more, here it is! This is Yu-Gi-Oh! The
Sacred Cards, a game so great it's awesome in some aspects, and so bad
it's good in other aspects!
So,
we're getting introduced to our protagonist, [Insert Name Here]. For
the sake of using less words, I'll call him... Nikorasu. Hey, the
names are weird in this series, I gotta follow the trend. So,
Nikorasu is visited by none other than Yugi and Joey, and they tell him about Duel City. Clearly, the player character is also
participating. Oh, by the way, this intro establishes that the main
character, who doesn't even exist in the original material, is
friends with Yugi and co.
Writing
tip number 1. If you make an Original Character and make him an
instant friend or ally to the heroes, this is the first signal that
your character is a Mary Sue or a Gary Stu. Being a fiction writer
sometimes, I know the Mary Sue traits, and I try to use them the
least possible, compared to some *urgh* lesser forms of fanfiction that go
for those traits as soon as the character appears.
Like here.
Like here.
Not everyone, Joey. Go get a haircut, your hair is blocking your vision. |
So,
there's a lot of cheap duelists around the Times Rectangle, and they
can all be defeated damn easily (seriously, their decks would
suck now, but they would have sucked even back when the card game
wasn't complicated, and that was in 2003, long before XYZ and Synchro
monsters!). Another thing that must be noted in this game: It works
with some sort of experience points system. Yep, this is like an RPG.
When you defeat lesser duelists, you get a tiny amount of EXP. When
you defeat plot-relevant duelists, you get more EXP. To note, while
the game does calculate your Level based on your number of experience
points, the Level is almost irrelevant to your progress. In fact, the Experience, also known as Deck Capacity, is more relevant to the gameplay, for reasons you'll see a little later.
Bonz! Where are you, stupid loser? You'll hit the ground! |
Look at how sucky the Deck is! Even the strong ones suck! |
Then
again, in the manga, Joey went around collecting the Locator Cards
from normal duelists. Wait, does that mean you're sorta playing his
part of the story? It seems so, doesn't it?
..Looks like you're stealing this guy's storyline. Maybe he deserved it. Maybe not. We'll never know. |
Writing
tip number 2: If your Original Character literally takes the place of
another character in the series, then it's a spot stealer. That's not
just bad, that's wrong on so many levels of fiction. It's like saying
“Hey, my character is better than one of the real characters, look
I'm using mine instead of theirs!” even if your character is as
bland as salt-less butter on white bread. As is the case here. Orange Cap Boy
is defined only by his flashy attire and his inability to speak
unless he's making a choice. He has no personality, only plot
relevance for his game, and even then it seems like he's thrown into
it all of a sudden. He still somehow carries through until he defeats
all of his enemies. I call it the “Pokémon's Red” Syndrome. Kind
of a designated protagonist. I can understand for most games, but for
Yu-Gi-Oh? I would be less annoyed if he wasn't taking the spot and
duels of Joey Wheeler.
How foolish of YOU! ...Loser. |
Bakura's mugshot. Taken from Spriters Resource. ...Yeah, weird haircuts is the norm here. |
But here's my problem with the system in this. I mentioned earlier that
you had a Level that increased as you won duels, right? Well, all
cards are rated according to Level. In your Deck, you can only use
cards whose Level is equal to or lower than yours. This really restricts
the amount of cards you can put in your deck at the beginning, and
even by the end of the game you might have to do a hundred more duels
before you can play the highest-level card, which isn't even a good
one technically.
Yeah, 20 Cost for the Dark Magician, a very strong card... Something's wrong here. Hey, its stats should be 2500/2100! |
-The
weaker the cards, the lowest their Level; that goes with their number
of Stars but also with the total if you add the Attack and Defense
stats of each.
-There
is pretty much no distinction for monster cards with effects. They're
maybe a few levels higher, but your starting deck already has effect
monsters, so many are available from the start.
-The cards with higher Levels are overall better cards with higher stats for their Attack and Defense.
-Weak
5+ Stars monsters will have a very low cost, but the better they get
the higher their cost will be.
-If
a monster has high Attack but very low Defense, its cost will be
higher. If it has high Defense but very low Attack, its cost will
also be higher.
-The
people who thought that system up were stupid.
But
again, that's all speculation. It gets worse. Do you remember when I
talked about Experience points? Well, those aren't just “Experience”, they're also Deck Capacity.
They also define the strength of the cards you can put in your Deck. See, in this
game, your Deck can only hold 40 cards, no less, no more. As a
result, you must select 40 cards from your collection, and every
card's Level required for you to use it is also its Cost in your
Deck. You cannot exceed your amount of Deck Capacity when you're
building your Deck. As a result, you may be tempted to use cards with
a high Cost but wind up with crappy ones to fill the remaining spots.
This
sucks. This way the game works is awful, because you cannot use some
cards until you reach their Level, and even then their Cost really
decreases their usefulness. Like I said, many cards with higher Cost
just happen to have one stat better than the other, and that's it. So
is it really worth it? This system sucks, but I do admit that in the
game, it makes a bit of sense. Your character grows in strength,
becomes better at the game as he duels... but that's because he can
now access cards he couldn't use before, so that idea of “becoming
stronger because you duel” gets replaced by “becoming stronger
because you got better cards to replace your crappy ones”, which just isn't as cool. That's
also why you start off by defeating lame duelists, and then as your
Deck's strength increases you can go on to fight stronger opponents.
But
you know what? It sucks, but it's also kind of fun. It makes little
sense, but this series makes little sense. So, it's
faithful to the source material, in a way. I played
through this game a lot of times. And therefore, I think that I must
do it justice. Which is why this review will continue for three more parts. You heard that right: the first
four-part review I'll have ever written.
Tune
in next time, which will be... this Monday!
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