Part 1 can be read here.
Welcome
back to this long, long, LONG review of a Game Boy Advance game! I
gotta admit, I really wanted to write that review earlier. I'm gonna show the full extent of my geek past: I collected Yu-Gi-Oh
cards. I have read almost the whole first series (the one with Yugi
as the protagonist). I watched the anime until the end of the Duelist
Kingdom saga, the one that happened on an island and during which the
game's rules were still a "broken, exploitable mess".
Yeah, things were simpler back then. I mean, who would throw away Duel City for another duel through a videotape? I would! |
So,
where were we last time? Oh, right. Orange Cap Boy (which I nicknamed
Nikorasu; it's got more dignity than LEGO Brick) has just defeated
the lame-ass Esper Roba and Bakura. As he heads right, he sees that
Bonz, the zombie wannabe, has been kicked out of his graveyard. By
who, you may ask? By a Ghoul. No, not a real one, just another
lame-ass character who decided that being a villain would be fun. So
Nikorasu defeats the villain and makes him run away. Bonz rejoices
and quickly heads back to his resting place.
Now,
in the original manga, while Joey was defeating non-villainous
duelists, Yugi was taking care of the Ghouls, also known as the Rare
Hunters. Turns out that those are pretty damn powerful opponents,
even for him. In this game, what happens? Nikorasu does both. He
duels against non-threatening characters to get their Locator Cards,
and then he fights the Rare Hunters to prevent them from causing
trouble. So wait, he's stealing Joey's story arc AND Yugi's story
arc? If Orange Cap Boy wasn't already a Gary Stu by the end of Part 1
of this review, now he clearly is!
Hey! In an hour, I'll be back and YOU'll be the wimp! |
After
this small encounter with the true villains of the story, Nikorasu
duels and defeats Rex Raptor, who claimed he refused to duel anyone
with a Level under 110 (in which case, what was he doing in the Times
Rectangle, where 95% of the duelists are real losers?). Afterwards,
the player character can visit KaibaCorp, where a machine can be dueled. The machine is a bit strong for the character's level,
but it can still be defeated. It always gives a good reward, but it
can use the absurdly powerful F.G.D., a mighty Yu-Gi-Oh! card with
5,000 ATK and DEF. After this, Nikorasu can speak to someone in Times
Rectangle, and learn that the shop's owner isn't all he seems to be.
Indeed,
when Nikorasu visits the shop, it's revealed that the “Owner” was
actually Arkana, the second Ghoul met by Yugi. In the original, he
challenged the tri-color-haired boy on a dangerous game involving buzzsaws that
would literally make the loser go “footloose”, if you see what I
mean. (You don't? Urk. The loser gets his feet cut off!) This also happens in this game, but seriously, by this point
your Deck should be strong enough to beat him. Arkana is a pushover, easy
to defeat. What happened to the strong duelists of the original
series? Were they all toned down to an extreme?
...Wait,
yes, they were. Dammit. Let me get this straight. Our main character
is living the main two characters' story arcs at the same time AND
all the original opponents have become pitifully weak. Congrats,
game. (By the way, after you defeat a major member of the Ghouls, he becomes
possessed by someone in a cloak and starts mumbling stupid crap about
rare cards and power and stuff. I doubt you have to pay attention.)
I smell some plot relevance for this guy! |
So,
the adventure continues. Nikorasu can now go to the park, where the
opponents are a little stronger. An odd punk mime is standing
there... But there's also Weevil Underwood, the renowned cheater from
the series. The player character defeats Underwood's three henchmen, and then him.
The guy starts crying. Oh, by the way, he'll never admit defeat,
which means he'll always demand a rematch when you speak to him. If
you beat him once more, he lets out that Kaiba is searching for very
strong cards.
Cheaters are the real losers among the dueling losers, loser! |
Namu: Proof that not all anime characters are white. Phew, racism avoided! |
At
any moment during the game, the player character can also go to
Yugi's Grandpa's house, where he'll often meet with unexpected guests
who are ready to duel him: Joey, Yugi (not the Yami, mind you)... and
Namu, a guy whose skin is too dark to be Japanese like the others. He
won't duel you. After you meet that odd guy (if you've read the manga
or watched the anime before playing this game, you KNOW that this
character has plot relevance...), you can now head to the pier...
where you'll see Kaiba demolish a weak duelist. Oh, and further
through the pier, there's that silent punk mime puppet thing that
suddenly speaks and forces the Orange Cap Boy into a duel. He's a
little harder to defeat, as his cards are pretty good, but I'd say he
about the same level as you.
Still speechless? ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...Ah, shut up. |
What
do I hate about this duel? In the original story, after Yami Yugi
defeated this character, he earned the first God Card, whose effects
are so devastating they can literally harm the opponent players. Wait, is that
possible with the Duel Disks? I can already imagine Kaiba telling me
“Of course! Don't you know anything about science?” with a
horrible pseudo-German accent. Science in the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe is
just the same as their way to deal with problems. Over-the-top,
ridiculous, and totally centered around card games. Anyway, what sucks is that you do NOT get the God Card during this duel, and the Mime does not use it in his Deck either, which means that he's a lot easier to defeat. Listen: In the original series, he was so difficult to defeat that Yami Yugi only won thanks to a technicality! (The rule that says that you lose when you run out of cards to draw.)
Oh yeah, sometimes the monsters apepar as sprites here too. |
I hope so! We'll "sea" who's the best between us two! |
I
hate to say it, but I'm just not feeling for these characters in this
setting. Oh, don't worry, I would like to. But I only feel for them
in the manga or the anime, because that's where they belong. Here,
their spot gets stolen by a nobody who's supposed to represent the
player. Kids, remember: Yami Yugi has defeated psychopaths in
dangerous games, he's put his life at risk, he's saved the world, but
you're still better than him! Even if your character has as much
personality as an elementary school's cafeteria food!
Stupid Ghouls! Robes are impractical to walk and duel with! |
Many locations
have Ghouls scattered around them at this point in the game. You have to defeat every. Single.
One of them. Good luck with that! They use Shadow decks. As in,
literal Shadow decks. What? Shadow isn't a Type nor an Attribute in
the card game? Well, here, it freaking is.
(Warning:
Extreme Geek Moment Incoming.)
SHADOW ATTRIBUTE! LOOK AT THE BOTTOM! DAMMIT! |
HOW IS THAT A DIVINE MONSTER? |
...My sarcasm known no limits.
You
thought this wasn't insulting enough to the original game? Well, it
gets worse. Due to cartridge limitations (or maybe because the
developers thought the gamers were idiots), most cards have been
changed. Over the 900 cards in this game, there's maybe 1 or 2% that
are “original cards”. Some of the others are changed beyond recognition.
If you expected to play a faithful version of the card game, you've
been tricked. Also, the effects are all weird; many monsters who
would have had effects in the original game have lost their effect
now, while other monsters who didn't have effects originally now have
effects. Try to make sense of that. Oh wait, that's not all. Fusion
monsters were entirely removed from the game, and the way Ritual
Summons work is very different as well. For a Ritual Monster, you now
need to have one monster in particular on the field and then be able
to sacrifice one or more other monsters. And if your Duelist Level is
over 255, you can Summon them without having to do any of that.
Now that's what I call messing around with the formula.
Oh,
also due to “cartridge limitations” (I say that because I don't
feel right insulting video game developers directly), most card
effects are pretty darn similar, many being almost copy-pastes of
others. Many effects are simplified to an extreme. Field Spells will
increase the right monsters' ATK and DEF, not by a set amount, but by
a percentage. All other effects that increase or decrease ATK and DEF
do so... by 500, every time, while in the original cards the amounts
were much more diverse. But here, no 100, no 200, no 300, no 400, no
600, no 700, no 800, no 900, no 1,000... 500. Every. Single. Time.
Like
that makes sense with the original game.
There's
more key differences between this and the original card game: You can
only use a monster's effect on the turn that it is summoned; Trap
Cards can only be used during the opponent's turn, not during yours;
there's practically no special summons; you can discard cards from
your hand, or send any cards from your Field to the Graveyard
directly, at any moment during your turn; you can Tribute monsters
at any moment as well, which gets confusing since you can do it
even if you don't have a Level 5+ monster in your hand nor an effect
that requires a Tribute. And honestly, those are the worst ones I
can think off the top of my head. Still, that's quite a few, huh?
It's
almost as if the game was simplified for newbie players, so they can
learn the basics. But there's the problem; since the cards are
different in many cases AND the effects are different in other cases
AND the gameplay is too different from the original card game, it's
not a good tool to learn how to play with the real cards. Therefore, it even fails in its "simple for newbies" description.
(Extreme
Geek Moment Over.)
See?
This game is really unfaithful to the source material in both
possible ways: In its representation of the manga, turning into some
sort of self-insert fanfic, and in its representation of the card
game it is freaking based on! ...Oh wait, that's right, it's too
early to give my final thoughts. We still got the second half of the
game to beat! Tune in this Friday!
By the way, never forget:
By the way, never forget:
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