Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution (Part 1)

Yu-Gi-Oh! Month 2025

Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution: Part 1 – Part 2

Master Duel: Part 1

Duel Links: Part 1 – Part 2

Plenty of differences are already visible, just from
comparing the original Legacy of the Duelist
to its remake, Link Evolution.

I already did a theme month like this one, all the way back in October 2018. It’s been a hot minute since I last talked about Yu-Gi-Oh!. These games are lengthy – they all feature hundreds of duels for you to play. Time-wise, these add up fast. I spent the better part of February playing today’s game; though, what helps that I already covered this game’s predecessor back in 2018. I figured a new themed month was in order, seeing as I’ve had these three games for a while and had been waiting for the right time to cover them. Well, on February 27th, Konami released the Early Days Collection, which contains 14 games from the start of the franchise. I’m thinking of purchasing it, but I’m not sure yet. However, before I get there, I have this month’s games to cover.

There are running themes across all three entries I’m covering this month. The first is that all three games serve as good introductions to the card game, if you’re learning to play; however, all three of them approach the game from a different angle, so they offer varying experiences as a result. It’s all in the finer details. The second theme is that all three games are tied to the greater history of the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise (and its many anime series) to some extent, but once again, each of them does it differently.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution was developed by Other Ocean Emeryville, published by Konami, and was released on the Switch in 2019 and to Steam on March 24th, 2020. The previous Legacy of the Duelist (which I’ll shorten to LotD) entry came out semi-early in the existence of the fifth Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, titled Arc-V, so it featured the then-newest summoning mechanic and monster type, the Pendulums; however it was, in my opinion, a relatively bad introduction to them. It had a lower base price, instead locking bonus duels and cards behind DLCs. Link Evolution is more expensive at 39.99$ USD, but you get the full package right away. As a bonus, it was released a while into the latest mechanic, Link monsters (…which I've finally learned!), and is thus a great demonstration of what Links can do.

Base features

Poor Joey, after all these years, he's still the butt monkey
of the franchise.

We’ll start with the nitty-gritty. The main attraction in Legacy of the Duelist is the Campaign mode, in which you can duel against a few hundred different decks. The Campaign itself is split across the first six Yu-Gi-Oh! generations, AKA Duel Monsters, GX, 5D’s, ZEXAl, Arc-V and the then-latest VRAINS. Each anime campaign opens with a tutorial that teaches the latest gameplay mechanic. Being the simplest, Duel Monsters’ tutorial takes you through normal summons, sets, using Spells and Traps, attacking opposing monsters or attacking directly, using monster effects, and creating effect chains. Each following tutorial does the same with the focus card type (respectively: Fusion monsters for GX, then Synchros, Xyz, Pendulums and Links). Both the Campaign and Help & Options menus link to a Tutorial section that explains these mechanics in greater depth.

Oof, my luck isn't looking too great on this one.

After which, it’s off to the races. During an anime’s campaign, you’ll play duels in the order they happened through that anime's story. Not every duel is replicated, as some duels just can't be recreated, requiring cards or effects that don’t exist in the card game proper. You first play as that duel’s winner, the point being that you should have everything in the winner’s deck to replicate the anime's victory, provided you have a bit of luck drawing the right cards and know how to make them synergize with each other. Once you have won that duel, you unlock the next, and you get the option to play the Reverse version of the duel you won. This means that the roles get swapped and you play as the canon “loser” of that duel, and must now defeat the deck you’ve just used. The fun thing about this idea is that you’ve just seen what that deck could do – and you can now see what it could achieve, since the AI knows exactly which card relationships work best for that deck’s strategy.

As the story unravels, you meet new duelist characters; it starts with Yami Yugi and Joey, then there’s Kaiba, Weevil Underwood, Mai Valentine, Mako Tsunami, Rex Raptor, etc. When you beat an opponent in their last duel in a campaign, you unlock them in the Challenges mode, where they will generally be using much more powerful decks. They’ll often use better versions of their campaign strategies, but sometimes they’ll be showcasing card archetypes that were never seen used in any anime.

Pack contents were revised, so you CAN find newer cards
in these, all the way up to Pendulum and Link monsters.

After a duel, whether you’ve won or lost, you earn Duel Points. You spend these Duel Points in the Card Shop, where you’ll unlock new card packs as you progress. You unlock a campaign's starter card pack from playing just the first duel, so I’d recommend doing all six tutorials early on to get a leg up and access a wider pool of random cards from the get-go. The first Duel Monsters pack only costs 200 points, while every other pack costs 400.

...Whoops! Nicolas "reviews a multiplayer game too late so
there's nobody left to play with" strikes again!

Just as with the regular card game, Link Evolution follows a banlist made of cards that are too good to use in duels; the banlist is very close to the official one from April 2020, with a few necessary changes. For campaign solo play, it doesn’t matter so much; you’re just playing against the AI, so your deck can contain whatever you want. However, if you wish to try your luck in Multiplayer mode, you'll need a banlist-compliant deck that follows the rules. You might also need to bring your own friend, since this game is nearly 5 years old and its multiplayer scene is pretty much dead already. So, you could just not worry about it whatsoever.

Alternately, if you want a special experience using cards you’re not accustomed to, you can spend points in Battle Pack Mode, where your Deck will be built out of cards grabbed in Sealed Play (10 5-card packs) or draft play (picking 45 cards out of 3 rounds of pack-opening). You and your opponent are on equal footing, getting cards from the same pool; then, it’s up to the better strategist to win. That mode already existed in the original LotD, and it's left unchanged; the packs in this mode stop at the ZEXAL era.

Personal Experience: Campaign, First Half

Even the Ceremonial Duel isn't too tough, if you have some
idea of how to approach it.

I had already done part of the work on this game when I got it, so I sped through the remainder of the campaign across February. I had to play several hours a day to do it. I did not 100% the game, but I'm roughly 3/4ths through, with some duels left to play in the last three series. When I played this game’s predecessor, I rarely used anything else than my custom deck to speed through everything, and when a duel still gave me too much trouble, I busted out an Exodia deck that’s unlocked early on and almost always guaranteed an easy win.

Sometimes, you're the one who's lucky, and it's the
opponent who cannot draw the cards to beat yours.

This time around, I’m using a different philosophy; the Story Decks should all be decent, right? Otherwise, they wouldn’t be the deck you’re offered to play with. Well… in theory, you can win every duel using the deck provided. In practice, several of those decks require you to figure out the synergies on your own. Not to mention, you need a bit of luck to draw exactly the cards you need to pull off the required combos. It’s especially annoying with decks that lack effects that search the combo pieces you need from your deck (and that’s if you know what you should look for), and decks that lack effective removal (meaning, cards with effects that destroy/remove from the field bothersome monsters or backrow – meaning Spell and Trap cards).

This is not my original failure, this is during the recorded
playthrough I did for these screenshots. My sole monster
will not survive, I cannot summon the monster in my hand,
AND all three Spell Cards require Toon World on the field.
Fuck!

On several occasions, I lost due to sheer dumb lack of luck; not drawing the most important cards, never getting some way to easily add them to the hand, or straight-up bricking (a term which means that you have no way to play any card in your hand at that moment, therefore you’re stuck). One example that sticks out in my memory is the one duel Pegasus Crawford, “creator of Duel Monsters” and an early villain of the first anime, partakes in during the GX campaign. His deck focuses on Toon monsters, several of which require the specific Spell card Toon World on the field (or Toon Kingdom, which changes its name to Toon World when activated). Well, not only did I never draw Kingdom, I also never drew a single Toon that COULD be summoned without it, AND all the Spells and Traps in my hand required a Toon monster on the field. tl;dr I was fucked.

See, these decks are based off the duels taking place in the anime; but obviously, those duels were scripted and these characters always draw the exact card they need at the right moment. Y’know, “The Heart of the Cards” crap Yami Yugi goes on about. But unlike those characters, a player is far more subject to the whims of luck.

Thankfully, a lot of 5Ds-era decks make it easy to bring out
both Tuners and non-Tuners to ease Synchro Summons.

A lot of my examples of that issue come from the GX era, since it’s the first arc I finished in February – however, the 5Ds campaign also had plenty of examples. 5Ds is the era of Synchros, a type of monster that must be summoned using both a Tuner monster (an ability written on the card) and a non-Tuner, both on the field. Well, it’s all too easy to have a hand with either nothing but non-Tuner monsters… or a hand with nothing but Tuners. Yep, been there, seen that. (Hell, I’ve played an entire game set in the 5Ds era before, I know that deal all too well.)

Personal Experience: Campaign, Second Half

Alright, which one am I gonna bring out.
...Which one will I BE ABLE to bring out, rather.

It felt as though every campaign was tougher than the last. Guess it doesn’t help that the focus summon types only get more generic over time. Xyz monsters are the focus of the ZEXAL campaign and are easy to bring out; all you need is two (or more) monsters of the same Level to bring out an Xyz monster of that rank. Good, but much like Jaden Yuki’s armada of Fusion monsters or Yusei Fudo’s group of Synchros, sometimes the tricky part is figuring out which Xyz monster to summon among those you’re able to bring out at a given moment. In that regard, even if you do have luck with card draws and your opponent doesn’t break your combos too much, there’s still an innate puzzle element forcing you to read your Extra Deck cards thoroughly to make sure you use them right (or, alternately, figure out which ones to summon, and against what). Of course, this still requires bringing out the damn monsters to the field in the first place!

Before the new ruleset, you could summon as many Pendulum
monsters from the Extra Deck as you wanted. Now, with the
Link rules, you can only bring one. You're grossly limited.

It's even more difficult when Pendulum Monsters are thrown in during the following Arc-V campaign. Pendulums are an infamously complicated mechanic involving Pendulum monsters with two different effects depending on whether they’re being used as monsters or as Spell cards. Oh, and destroyed Pendulum monsters are sent to the Extra Deck. As if to further complicate everything, we’re also dealing with new rules caused by the existence of Link monsters and the Extra Monster Zones; instead of being constantly able to bring out any number of face-up Pendulum monsters from your Extra Deck, you can now only bring one of those out and onto the Extra Monster Zone (if it’s empty), or solely in a regular Monster Zone a Link monster points to. Except, y’know, that campaign is set before Link monsters were a thing, and the anime's duels followed the rules of its time... which differ from the new rules.

Confused? I’m still trying to make sense of it all myself. These duels are tough. It’s extremely easy to misplay just because you don’t know how to make the cards interact with each other and with the Pendulum mechanic.

You better learn quick how your cards synergize if you
want to have a chance at victory!

Perhaps worst of it all is the VRAINS campaign, home of Yusaku Fujiki and the Link monsters. Those tend to be extremely versatile, with many having basic requirements. As a result, Extra Decks in this campaign are packed with Link monsters, so it’s a puzzle to figure out the right sequence of monsters to summon, or which synergies are required to fight off the opposing deck in any capacity. I struggled so badly in early duels against Rokkets or Altergeists that even my custom User Deck couldn't beat them! You have too many options, and it’s very easy to make a mistake by bringing out the wrong monster for the situation. And sometimes, the only way to figure it out is to play the same duel over, and over, and over, until you finally figure it out (or get lucky against the AI, which has better chances of happening).

Phew… I’ll see if I can finish these soon. In the meantime, I have more to say, so I’ll continue in Part 2.