This Game is perfict for who wants it...........
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The other day, I was flipping through the channels, and I stopped on a colorful cartoon show. I am a huge anime fan, and the stuff on the TV rarely appeals to me; yet this show was well drawn and intrigued me. That’s when I found out it was the Yu-Gi-Oh show, and I let out a moan. But I decided to give it a chance, and I’m ashamed to admit, I really liked it. The idea of a living card game is awesome; the characters where cool, and the monsters where even cooler! So when I saw a PS2 game coming out in the Yu-Gi-Oh universe, I jumped on the chance to play it. My experience left me bewildered and more than a little disappointed. Let me explain.
The premise of the game is this: you are called back from the present time to the 15th century, in order to take part in the War of the Roses (if some of you can remember from history class, this bloody feud war actually took place!). Yugi plays the part of Henry Tudor, the rightful heir to the throne, and Seto Kaiba plays Charles Rosenkreuz, the leader of the resistance trying to take over England. Their are 16 rose cars in all, and each side has 8 of them. Your job is to recover all 16 of the cards. Sound weird? Don’t worry, not much else happens story wise, so you can leave most of that behind. All you have to do is pick a side, and it’s on to getting you butt kicked! More on that later.
The game plays somewhat like the TV show, with some differences. I am not a Yu-Gi-Oh expert by any means, so I’m going to explain how this game works (please bear with me Yu-Gi-Oh fans!). Basically there are two types of "cards" that will come into play: Creature cards, who have and attack value, defense value, and sometimes special abilities; and Spell cards, which can do anything from boosting the power of certain creatures to trapping a creature for a number of turns. Each side has a leader, which does all the summoning of creatures and spells. You with me? The point of every match is simple: defeat the opponent. There are several ways to do this, but the easiest way is to take al their power or to make it so that they can no longer summon any more creature spells. This all takes place on a square shaped board, sectioned off in to smaller squares, in which you creatures and spells move and are cast. Hopefully you get the gist of the game. There should be a lot of room for creatively, both in deck making as well as actually playing, but there isn’t. You get stuck choosing from 1 of 3 very underpowered decks, none of which you can use to win at the start of the game. Now mark my words: you cannot win even the first story match with the deck you are given. I played 12 matches in a row, and the farthest I got my opponents life down was 2900(considering they start with 4000, that’s pretty bad.) I got so desperate that I committed the cardinal sin: I got on the Internet to find some way to at least play this game! I found out that you can play a custom duel from the main menu, in which you can win more cards to add to your deck. Even so, this game is still all but impossible. I am 23, so I can not imagine what a younger kid (the target audience for this game, mind you) could have figured this out! I must say, if you can get past the initial frustration, the game gets a little more fun. Everytime you defeat an opponent, you randomly receive 3 cards from their graveyard. Its very satifying when you get one of their better cards, but it doesn't happen often
Ok, let me move on. The graphics of this game are great, but get old fast. You can watch each of your battles pan out in real time, but the fact that a normal match has 20-30 battles, these take forever, and I suggest turning the battles on abbreviated mode (check the in-game options). Other than the monsters fighting, the game is drab and boring. Don’t get me wrong, some of the graphics of this game rocks; but most of the time, you see the same boring board over and over, and over…. The music wears on and on, and since you’ll fight the same opponent many times before beating them, you will get tired of it. The game did keep bringing me back for more, which I guess is a good thing, but it was more of a pride thing than actually being fun. I just could not understand how I could lose some many matches, and actually jumped up and down when I won my first Story Mode match!
Bottom line: unless you love Yu-Gi-Oh, stay away from this game. I have been told that the GBA game is much better, and I think I’ll go try that. This game has so much potential, and yet tapped none of it! If they would have at least made your starting deck somewhat of a match for your opponents, or allowed you to create your own deck, I would be loving this game. I was hoping to make a deck and have some fun, but instead, I just threw a tantrum and got mad! Darn it!