Only the most die-hard Yu-Gi-Oh fan could possibly forgive the myriad problems in this mediocre strategy game.
(-) your starter deck isn't strong enough to complete even the first battle; a lazy un-interactive and overly long tutorial doesn't sum anything up especially well; somehow complicates what used to be a simple and fun card game; no visual flair whatsoever unless you get off to checker-boards
Honestly at first I picked this game up at Gamestop with absolutely no clue why I was about to buy it. I hadn't planned in advance to get the game, and it was severely outside my nature as far as my purchasing habits. As morbidly as an impulse buyer I am, still I was amazed that I wanted to bring this home, and had no slight idea why. There was some unconscious, very deeply hidden motivation, that I couldn't grasp upon and I was nothing but completely confused. But then it dawned on me. Nostalgia. I remembered earlier years back when Yu-Gi-Oh was significant, playing with my sibling the trading card game used to be fun and exciting. It even influenced me to make paper cut cards of monsters on my own which were build entirely from the foundation of Yu-Gi-Oh. And I also remembered how awesome the show used to be. Watching that paranoid and emotional little Yugi kid with the weird hair-do turn into some phantom thing, the ignorant and loud Joey who couldn't be number one if he tried, and the beautiful yet rough Tea always had a charm to her. Maybe what I had in mind was I wanted a minute to relive the memories that I remembered, and seeing the game for only seven dollars, what could possibly go wrong?
The game starts you in a story mode that takes place in the mid-eval ages, where you choose the red or white rose to determine if you duel for good or evil respectively. From then, you must fight a succession of 8 different recognizable characters from the show as AI controlled opponents. But the weird thing is there is no voice acting whatsoever, so your experience with these characters is cut pretty short to a small picture and text.
And any preteen Yu-Gi-Oh fan would be likely to jump at the very first opponent to duel for the win, and it's very likely that they're going to lose. This is because even know you get the chance to choose among one of three decks, none of these decks are strong enough to even battle the first player. In order to strengthen your deck, you must battle a less challenging computer opponent and get brand new additions to your deck that way. Why the game is set up like this not even a therapist could answer, and more than anything seems like a way to either make loyal Yu-Gi-Oh fans question their loyalties or cause new comers to sprint and repel away from anything remotely related to Yu-Gi-Oh for the rest of their life.
And all this is made even worse by the significant changes to the once simple, once fun standard way of dueling. Ever heard of that certain mantra, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Well that's certainly evident here, because the traditional life points, rows of monster and rows of magics or traps worked so well back then, and the usual game actually had some staying power and could be some guilty pleasure now to this day and age. But instead the developers went all out to make the game needlessly complicated. The entire battle arena is now down through a grid, with multiple directions that can be moved through by monsters. And also a leader monster that carries the life points. Though this may sound like an effort to increase the strategy of the game, it doesn't help that situation and just makes the game nearly unplayable to anyone who isn't a schizophrenic Yu-Gi-Oh fan who hasn't left their home since Y2K. All these esoteric rules are too numerous and unnecessary, and it's hard to determine just why they felt the need to change it up.
And if none of that makes sense to you, it's good to know the game feels your pain and attempts to teach you all the "basics" through a lengthy and un-interactive tutorial. Seriously. The whole thing is a forty-five minute show of in-game footage and text at the bottom of the screen describing the rules in the most tedious way imaginable, and it's very likely your attention span will wane after the first five minutes. Because even though they cover different rules such as special terrain, leader card attributes, and special abilities, everything still seems to blend together, and the result is a tired and unconventional lecture. You don't even have the pleasure of pressing the X button to pass each point, and you can't fast forward if you miss something and want to return to it later either.
Giving the game's credit where it is due, you'll see over 800 different weird looking monster cards if you for some reason decide to stick to the game. Some of these are recognizable like the Celtic Guardian, Blue Eyes White Dragon, and some are fairly new like the Fire Pegasus. You can also merge two cards together to form a new card, but only the most knowledgeable Yu-Gi-Oh fan would get a benefit there because there are only so many possible combinations and most of others just won't work. But even the manual says you can type in a cheat to get better cards, which serves as little more than a short breath of fresh air after suffocating for another three hours.
I wouldn't feel right bumping this game down for it's deficiency of graphics, but some more effort could have been used as this looks very similar to the first game on the first Playstation, which I don't care if you're a loyal fan or not, you'll probably be disappointed. You'll be seeing the same checker-board throughout all your play sessions, and only 3D monsters leaping out from your cards are there to break up the pattern just a bit. Also there are attack sequences where the monsters interact with each other, but very often these are repetitive, they are overly long and they hinder the pacing of the game. And on top of it all they only look a small margin better than the same 3D sequences on the Playstation 1 version, a red flag saying not enough effort came to producing this title. Most of the PS2's hardware capabilities are left unused here, and you would think by reading the back of the box's text "A New Yu-Gi-Oh! for a new Generation" that they would have changed or improved on something, but there just isn't much improvement to be found here.
Only the most die-hard Yu-Gi-Oh fan could possibly forgive the myriad problems in this mediocre strategy game. It's true you'll see some of the admirable cast from the anime as well as an abundance of weird looking monsters, but that's where the game's strengths come to a screeching halt. The tutorial isn't very user-friendly, your starter deck is too weak to compete against the first opponent, graphics don't suffice, and the simple game we used to love has been changed too much for its own good. I would still hesitate to recommend this to most Yu-Gi-Oh fans for it is a dud in the series of video games if my comparison to the superior PS1 edition is an indication, and to any potential new comers there simply isn't a worst place to start than Duelests of the Roses. Don't say I didn't warn you.