Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

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

Moving on to the second of three Yu-Gi-Oh! games this month. This one has the weakest relation to the anime, but is without a doubt the closest to being up-to-date with the cards and the mechanics, and therefore the best official simulator to play if you want to learn the game on a nearly professional level.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, developed/published by KONAMI and released to Steam and several other platforms on January 18th, 2022, has celebrated its 3rd anniversary. This free game has evolved a lot in three years, adding new modes from time to time to keep things fresh. Whereas Legacy of the Duelist was much more focused on single-player, Master Duel is tailor-made for PvP. Once again, the devil is in the details, so let’s jump in.

The new coat of paint

Since multiplayer is the focus here, the main mode is simply titled Duel, and pits you against a human opponent. The game is free, so it utilizes a free-to-play system that’s thankfully lenient: The special currency here is Gems, which you can buy with real money. Those Gems can be used to buy card packs, structure decks and cosmetics. However, if you’re willing to put in the work, you can gather plenty of Gems on your own by playing duels, completing daily and lifetime missions, logging in every day, and you can even get some during special events.

There is indeed a solo mode, and I’ll discuss it, but the main draw is the multiplayer aspect. It’s only by playing against other people that you’ll get the better rewards; also, most missions only progress when you play in Ranked Mode or in Events. Nope, not in Casual.

Oof, I can feel the heat in this place.

Wellp, that looks pretty definitive on their end.

If the previous game I covered this month looked fine, this one kicks it up a notch. The playing field is super-detailed. You’re accompanied by your own Mate, a Yu-Gi-Oh! creature that stands by the side of the board and which you can make react to what’s going on. These can be purchased with Gems; you can also buy new board styles, new card sleeves, new Mate stands, icons & frames, wallpapers and card cases. One fun gimmick this time is seeing a player’s board crackle as they lose enough Life Points; at 0, it breaks for good. It’ll be fine for the next duel, no worries; it’s just a neat effect.

In Duel Mode, you can freely duel in a Team Battle, use a Duel Room, or do a casual match where the banlist is conveniently ignored; or you can jump into ranked duels right away and climb up the ranks. KONAMI regularly opens special duel events such as Festivals, often based on a theme or a specific mechanic of the card game; so that’s another thing to try out if you feel like it.

Good cards? Eh, they're fine.

Not sure why I tried playing the "professional" Yu-Gi-Oh!
game with a Red-Eyes deck. Maybe I'm a masochist.

You get cards from packs. There’s a few normal packs, and then tons of Secret Packs that are themed around specific archetypes, and which you unlock by finding a card from its archetypes in a pack, or by crafting one such card yourself. In the Deck menu, you can get rid of cards you don’t want by dismantling them. Each card has one of four rarities: Normal, Rare, Super Rare or Ultra Rare. Dismantling a card gives back 10 Craft Points of that card’s rarity; then, you can spend 30 points on a card you want of that rarity to add it to your collection right away, instead of hoping you find it at random. You can earn shards by playing through PvP duels thanks to the Duel Pass (which goes up to Level 50), with better rewards if you also buy the Pass’s Gold version in the shop (which stops at Level 100).

I don't need more of that one, it's just for the sake of example.

The system isn’t perfect, but it can allow you to build something alright with limited means and some dedication. Just don’t think about collecting all the cards, it really isn’t the game for that. Using real money for Gems will only give you a bigger collection faster, and while that IS an advantage in Yu-Gi-Oh!, ultimately you will be fine if you have a deck in mind and can figure out early what you want to craft. (You can save cards as Favorites in Deck-building mode to keep track of those.)

Ranked Play also includes a Proficiency Test, with quizzes to learn the game and challenges to complete in PvP duels.

This game has cool summon animations too!
And they're short and not annoying! Nice!

Solo

As I said, Solo Mode is not the focus here, but it does exist if you want to try it. It allows you to try your decks against an AI, a test drive before going out into Ranked to duel other human players. Master Duel has few connections to the anime series, aside from ace monsters getting special summon animations when they hit the field (and those will play only once per duel – takes notes, LotD!). Instead, Solo Mode is split into “gates”, with each gate exploring the lore behind a specific archetype.

The World Chalice - a Sci-Fi/Fantasy Epic so great,
it takes four Gates to tell the whole story.

Time to beat down some Krawlers.

Sometimes, the introduction retells the story behind that archetype, as there’s a treasure trove of stories behind the card game. Groups coexisting at specific eras, waging wars against each other, or sometimes striking unlikely alliances. There is a new anime coming out that’s specifically about the archetypes. Other times, when there’s little plot, the intro will merely present the core monsters in that deck. Examples of archetypes whose gates I’ve played through include Monarchs, Elementsabers, Megalith, Gem-Knight, Gladiator Beasts, Karakuri and Digital Bugs, and there’s something like 28 more waiting – and some gates are even split into further chapters, due to the complexity of their lore!

My odds aren't looking great... better luck next time maybe.

Duels in this mode are defined by a Star level from 1 to 5, used to define the difficulty of that duel. Level 1 is always a tutorial, so you can’t lose. Levels 2 and 3 can be tricky, but outside of major bad luck you can pull through. Level 4 is tough but can be manageable, but a misplay and you’re pretty much done. And a Level 5 duel? You need to have an answer to every trick thrown at you. You might even need for the CPU to make bad draws on their side if you want to have a chance of winning.

Uh oh. In that reality, Weevil wins.

There is, however, a slight connection to the anime series; you can unlock series of duels known as the SP Deck Challenges, in which you play duels inspired by famous ones from the anime, but with decks upgraded for the modern day. As an example, the first duel of the first category, based on the very first anime series, is a redo of Yami Yugi VS Weevil Underwood. You play a deck that’s heavy on Gaia the Fierce Knight and Curse of Dragon, two cards that have become archetypea; while “Weevil”'s deck is packed with tricks to make big insects come out fast, as well as an extra deck featuring Xyz and Link insect-type monsters.

Most Gates only split off once, too.

My one issue with the Solo gates is that, for some reason, most of them split off and the tougher duels must be unlocked by paying Attribute Stones, which are earned by finishing duels in other gates. I don’t see the point in locking duels away. Another thing of note, every duel should be finished both with the loaner deck and a custom deck of your making, since there are different rewards for each – this encourages you to build decks that can fend off whichever mechanic the opposing CPU deck runs on.

Nitty-gritty

Chances are that I'll never be good enough to run frequently
into the higher echelon Decks of Ranked Mode.

Here's the tough part where I discuss what sets Master Duel apart from the other games, in the finer details. For starters, duels are never played in a match, “best 2 out of 3” format, so the deck creator does away with the Side Deck. You can’t put cards on the side to swap into your deck in case you run into opponents with strategies you’re not prepared to play against.

The best-of-1 format invites exaggeration; since players prepare for any possibility, you can end up encountering decks that are packed with generic solutions to various issues. This also leads to a proliferation of decks that are difficult to counter if you don’t know you’re facing them, like anything designed to win a duel very quickly – infamous One-Turn Kill decks that wouldn’t survive in a match once their adversary knows what they’re up against.

Sometimes, you have no synergy in your hand, but you still
have the right cards to mess someone up.

One advantage of Master Duel is that it regularly updates, and is just a few months behind the physical card game in terms of releases. This means that KONAMI got to see which of those newer cards became problematic in tournaments, so they can use that knowledge to pre-emptively ban cards from ranked online play. They can freely create new banlists for specific events, like a list banning anti-Synchro cards that would otherwise be abused in a Synchro-themed festival, as an example. However, it means that whatever deck or archetype is breaking the meta in the real world will be breaking the meta in this simulator soon enough, as we’ve already seen. (Ask a Yu-Gi-Oh! professional about Tearlaments. Or Floowandereeze.)

Few cards haven’t made the jump to Master Duel; those that haven’t tend to have unconventional or “weird” effects, or are infamous for causing loops or gameplay issues. Any card whose artwork was drawn by Kazuki Takahashi is absent; If you wanted to use “Blue-Eyes Alternative Ultimate Dragon”, too bad. Also missing are “Spellbinding Circle” (due to the hexagram), “Mooyan Curry” (that card sucks anyway), and “Elemental HERO Air Neos” (…that card’s lack of availability is a meme by now).

See that 2 on the top left? Yep, you can use two of that
friggin' thing in your Deck. OCG Banlist means
"Maxx "C" Format".

The biggest issue with Master Duel? If you’re on this side of the world and grabbing the free game to prepare for local tournaments, you’re at a disadvantage. Most of the Master Duel banlist is inspired by the OCG, rather than the TCG. For those unaware, the Yu-Gi-Oh! physical game is known as the Official Card Game (OCG) in Asia, and as the Trading Card Game (TCG) everywhere else; while it’s the same game, barring some cards that only exist in one or the other, the list of cards that are forbidden (cannot be used in a deck), limited (can only use 1 at most) or semi-limited (can only use 2 at most) differs between the two, depending on which cards were overused or deemed problematic in tournaments.

The most cited example is “Maxx “C””, a card that’s forbidden in the TCG but you can have two of it in your deck in both the OCG and Master Duel. It can be discarded at the start of a turn, and during that turn, any time the opponent special summons, you draw a card. Either the opponent slows down on special summons, putting them at a disadvantage, or they don’t, and the one who discarded the “C” gets plenty of cards in their hand.

Great, I unlocked a bunch of packs, and I'm all out of Gems.

As for the shop… I do love that we can craft cards ourselves (provided we have the Craft Points to do so), because the shop is complicated. The always-available packs have card pools that are too large, so your odds of finding what you want are tiny; and when you do find a secret card pack (usually by finding an important card from an archetype in a pack, or crafting one in the shop), you gain access to that pack for only one day. And if it’s a pack you unlocked through a random pull, you might not even know which archetypes it represents!

This is entirely too many Normal monsters for the meta.

Even worse may be the Legacy Pack, a special one you can only pull from by earning Tickets during Solo Mode and in other situations. The reward consists of only two cards per Ticket, and those cards are from the bygone eras of Yu-Gi-Oh!, meaning they frequently suuuuuuuuuck. Oh, some can be useful, but aside from a few exceptions, they tend to be outmatched by the newer cards. It’s a letdown of a reward, and the even STUPIDER thing is that you can’t even dismantle those things for Craft Points! Why the Hell not? Most of those cards are of Normal rarity anyway! It’s to the point where some players don’t even open Legacy Packs, because they don’t see the point and don’t want their collection clogged with crap.

Final words

Oh hey, I got lucky this time.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is the best game for those who like to dive directly at the deep end of the pool when it comes to complex games. It’s got the steepest learning curve, because it’s the most advanced and up-to-date simulator, the one with the mechanics working closest to the regular game (LotD: Link Evolution had oddities due to its time of creation, and Duel Links is a whole separate format). As a result, it’s the best one if you want the experience closest to the game proper. Sure, it’s got its free-to-play system, but its mission and crafting system allow you to craft the deck you want relatively quickly, provided you know what you want.

Duels in this game can get really tough. Beyond the focus
on PvP, Solo Mode genuinely feels like a preparation for the
actual difficulty of the game, as you're bound to encounter it.

Master Duel offers a ton of options: A solo mode to discover archetypes and try out your own decks against an AI, a classic Ranked Mode divided into seasons, a casual dueling room, and regular themed events to try out. New cards are added only a few months after they’ve come out in the real world, so its competitive scene is very close to what you’d see in tournaments. Since it’s an online game, its list for forbidden and limited cards can be updated at a much higher frequency, thus reflecting the meta a lot better  That is, of course, if you don’t mind the banlist looking closer to the OCG side of things, nor that all duels are solely in a “best of 1” format forcing you into designing your deck in a more specific way.

So many Duel Mates... so many customization options you
are encouraged to spend hard-earned Gems on, when you
should spend those Gems on packs...

This simulator offers a ton of customization options – most of them locked behind Gems, which you can buy or earn through missions. Plenty of customization options can also be earned during events, at the end of Solo gates, and so on. The pack system in the shop is a bit annoying, but it can be dealt with.

There’s a couple more annoyances here and there, but no matter – in general, Master Duel is great. I’m personally more the type to learn gradually, hence why I felt more at ease in other games that explain mechanics over time. But I know not everyone has that learning pattern, and some prefer to go all-in from the start – in which case this simulator is the perfect jump-in point.

Next week: Probably my favorite game of the three, one I had been itching to FINALLY review, and the one that’s both the most complete in one way and the least representative in another way! Phew.