Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds: Duel Transer (Part 1)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Month

How to Play

5Ds: Duel Transer - Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3

Legacy of the Duelist - Part 1 - Part 2

You want to talk about a game that takes over the world and becomes more important than life itself? Try the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe. Or multiverse.

Left to right: Yusei, Yuya, Yugi, Yuma, Yudai (Jaden).
"Yu" can count on them to win some card games.

Yu-Gi-Oh! is an important part of my geek life. I collect the trading cards; I got over 7000 total. Yes, I am addicted and need help, but at least that money isn’t going into drugs. I watched the first season of the original anime, thanks to VHS tapes (yeah, I’m that old). The first Yu-Gi-Oh! game I reviewed was a poorly thought-out game that applied Pokémon-like type matchups to the cards, and that just didn’t work. Plus it had a self-insert hero who stole every protagonist’s story arc. My knowledge of the anime is spotty past the first series, but I’ve been keeping up with information. I had stopped collecting cards during the first series, resumed during the third; I came back when Synchro monsters were a thing. I saw the rise of Xyz, Pendulum, and now Link monsters. Those three are none of our business for now. I have also gained access to newer Yu-Gi-Oh! games on Steam; I’ll get to those later. But, most important of all…. I watch the Abridged!

In their universe, Duel Monsters went from a game for high school students to a city-wide competition, to having academies that teach how to play. Then society evolved to a point where everything gets solved with card games. Then it follows into the far future, and all technology evolves just so it can result in more impressive card game duels. And then it spread across multiple dimensions, and then it gets virtual too. The seventh series will have card games at the molecular level, you just watch. Molecules dueling with tiny cards against body viruses or something. Oops, I might give Kazuki Takahashi ideas there.

One special element of the franchise is how a new series appears when another ends - and since 5D’s, each series introduced a new card type, a new gameplay element. Since today’s game is based on the 5D’s anime, third one of six, I’ll focus on that one. This is when Synchro monsters were introduced.

Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s is the story of Yusei Fudo, who after a strange series of circumstances, becomes one of the Signers. Those are six talented duelists, each having control of a powerful Synchro Dragon-type monster card. My knowledge of the series’ mythology is limited, even with the research I’ve done, but eventually five other Signers are revealed and become valuable allies to Yusei. There’s Jack Atlas, the main rival of the protagonist; Crow Hogan, expert in the swarming Blackwing archetype; Akiza Izinski the plant champion; and Leo and Luna, awesome twins.

Unfortunately, my crash course in all things 5D’s proved to be of little use, as I soon discovered that this game had a completely original story, not even based on any sort of filler anime arc. The advantage is that it features most of the characters from the anime, from major protagonists to villains and then some. It also means that it’s non-canon, therefore we can actually play some no-name generic duelist that will steal the honors from everybody else, and I have no reason to complain!

I hadn’t played this game in a few years, so I was shocked when I saw my old save files. The main one? 450 hours. I knew I had played that game a lot, but… wow! And to think most of that time was spent making random decks, summoning impossible monsters just to see if I could, and beating up the same weak duelist six hundred times to get money so I could buy more cards!

The main menu has many options: Story Mode (for the main plot), Deck Menu (to edit your Deck or load a recipe), Free Duel (to make a duel of your own against an unlocked opponent and their Deck), Shop (to buy card packs and Deck recipes), Status (to check your progress), Options (self-explanatory), Load Data, Database and Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection. Since that last one was terminated in 2014, I won’t discuss it too much, all you need to know is that this game allowed you to play against someone else owning and playing the game. I kept losing against Six Samurai decks. That option would also let players download the latest card game banlist, since it has an effect on the game. I’ll go over the other options as I progress through the Story Mode.

"His blood begins to boil."
He should see a doctor about that.

This adventure begins on Island Ragnarok, location of the current tournament. All duelists invited received an invitation to the Duel of Legends Cup, promising a rank higher than Duel King to whoever wins the competition, along with untold wealth and power. Why “untold”? Well, the invitation never tells us, so… When the duelist (which I named Nicolas, yeah yeah, not creative I know) receives his invitation, he heads to the Tournament. All participants were also sent a Personal Digital Assistant that lets them edit their Decks, see their collection, get in contact with others, so on.

I guess I should start by saying that you create your character before the dueling starts. You have a few character models for both male and female duelists - the only difference is that each gender gets its own starter Deck. It’s not much of a difference, since players will quickly amass enough cards to make a Deck they want to play.

You can pick a face, but you can't customize a thing!

Most of the cast of 5D’s shows up on Ragnarok: Yusei, Jack, Crow, Akiza, Leo, Luna, Hunter Pace, Armstrong, Gill Randsborg, Tetsu Trudge, Mina Simington, Tensen Yanagi, Bolt Tanner, Blister, Rally Dawson, Nervin, Tank, Rathie… So many characters, and I have so few damns to give. They all make their presence known while Surtr, the holder of the tournament, explains the rules. All duelists have to scale the tower at the center of the island, named Yggdrasil (sensing a Norse theme yet?). However, to weed out the weaklings, the first duels take place at the entrance of the tower.

And yes, all duels must be done while standing perfectly still, on the ground. For some characters here today, it’s some horror scenario right there. Card games on motorcycles? Not this time!

It's impossible to move very fast at the beginning.

Now we get into the most annoying aspect of the game: The maps. Instead of freely moving to duel people around, we must play along to an unexpected board game system. You can only move from a hexagon to the next by paying AP (Action Points), which you obtain by rolling an AP roulette. It starts with values of 1 to 4 AP, but it increases to roll from 5 to 9 when you reach a level divisible by 10, and also increases as you go up the floors in the Story Mode. There is indeed an Experience and Level system in here, and you gain experience each time you defeat a duelist.

Ah, okay, just because it's you, Leo.
Show me that famed Signer strength.

Thanks for telling me! It's like twisting the knife in.

Each time you reach an item or a duelist, you’re stopped to get the item (or participate to a duel). You can’t back down from a duel, and the only way to skip a duelist is to move around them, which isn’t always possible. There are also various types of tiles: The normal ones that cost only one AP, but there are also some that cost three, to slow you down (since using more AP means you can't move as quickly, and need to reload AP more often). Then there are Stop tiles that use up all of your AP when you walk on them. Later floors have tiles that break and can’t be walked on if too many turns have passed (a turn is a roll of the AP roulette). Some special tiles will reveal a hidden duelist to defeat. There are items on the field that disappear after the AP roulette has been spun a certain amount of times. Then there are various lock hexagons, which can only be opened if you own the correct key for them (usually obtained from a duelist in the room). Similar, nastier locks require you to own a very precise card in your collection, or it won’t unlock - behind those, there are usually stronger duelists and bigger rewards as well. Thankfully, once you have the card, those locks disappear forever. You benefit from coming back to earlier zones after you’ve gained a lot of levels, since the larger amount of AP points gained per roll means you move faster around the board, and can thus reach some items faster.

These ? tiles only reveal what they contain when you
walk up to them. Could be nothing; could be a duelist.
Could be extra Action Points or a card.
Or it could be a trap.

These boards are no shortage of headaches, especially since later levels LOVE to mess with you, either by making the place into a maze or forcing choices. The player’s level doesn’t increase nearly fast enough, either, so re-exploration of previous areas is recommended. Thankfully, as you go up in Levels, the rewards in points to buy card packs grow bigger, and thus so become your deck options. The worst part is the fact that the tiles are hexagons. The player character will by default move to the lower of the two hexagons whenever moving to the left or to the right of the tile they’re standing on, so you have to press Up plus the direction if you want to go upwards. Some characters standing on tiles may also hide what’s on the tiles behind them. And like I said, it’s impossible to get everything on every floor on your first try, so if a particular level was a pain in the ass to go through, well, tough!

Which takes me to another issue with the game, though you could argue it’s a problem with every Yu-Gi-Oh game out there that has a Story Mode. Each duel is a roadblock, which can be pretty easy to beat out of the way. But as per normal in game progression, duelists get tougher over time. Opponents get better decks and strategies that are harder to bypass, frequently building from archetypes. You’re also supposed to progress, getting access to cards in order to construct decks with mechanics that combat the opponents' decks. Most games also allow the player to unlock or buy deck recipes that can be used to defeat newer opponents, if you realize a previous duelist had just the perfect strategy to use against your current roadblock.

There are three issues here.

Also, the number of usable cards may become
overwhelming.

• One, if you have access to deck recipes, most games won’t let you load them as your deck unless you own all the cards they contain (and enough copies, for the cards that appear multiple times). It’s the case in Duel Transer. You need to use that good deck? You need to own all the cards.
• Two, you tend to unlock booster packs in-game as you progress, so you do get a wider variety of cards over time. But even then, you can end up without the cards that will help you against the current duelist blocking your way. The booster packs still give cards at random, so it’s entirely possible that you never get the card you need, nor find the pack that contains that card in its list. Also makes it difficult, until very late in the game, to actually collect all the cards to be able to load a deck recipe.
• Three: Disregarding both previous points, in order to beat a tough enemy, you need to know how to counter them. It means you need to know what the opponent is doing. You need decent knowledge of the card game, its archetypes, strategies and effects. Without that knowledge, you might not know which cards work best. Part of the fun of a Yu-Gi-Oh! video game is to discover new strategies by battling duelists with interesting decks, but you still need to be able to beat the CPUs to progress. Sites like the Yu-Gi-Oh! Wikipedia were necessary for me in order to beat this game. I had to look up archetypes and the best way to defeat them. If you don’t know enough about the card game, start reading; this game, released in 2010, has over 4,000 different cards. And the actual game’s still growing!

(Four, unofficial issue: As I just said, Duel Transer is very outdated when compared to today’s game, so if you’re used to the newer gameplay mechanics, it’ll take some time to adapt to what it was like back in those days. Got a favorite recent archetype? Forget it. Love an old archetype that got new support recently? If that support came out in 2011 or later, you can’t get those cards in Duel Transer!)

Hm... Not a lot of packs early on. It's kind of cheap for the
only card shop on the island to block most of its packs from
being bought by duelists on the low levels of the Tournament.

Jesus, is it 2,000 words already? Wow. I think I’ve been through most of my critiques of the game already in this part, so I guess Part 2 will cover more of the plot. See you then.