Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2004 is not that game that the fans have been waiting for, thanks to some core problems.
If you've a card game like this before, you'll probably know that putting your own deck together is a crucial part, especially when your opponent can do so. Well, that's a point where Yu-Gi-Oh! 2004 fails to deliver. The menu's are very complex, and, sometimes, when you selected a card, you'll not even notice. The rules are exactly the same as in the real card game, but if you don't know them already, you'll going to have a hard time with this, thanks to the lack of a tutorial.
The game itself isn't very long, if you wouldn't count the many hours that you'll be spending in menu's. You can fight to a lot of the characters in the serie, and they all have their own strong and weak points. When you have the turn, there is a strict series of events that you need to do. First, you got to take a card from the deck. After that, you got to set the cards in the 10 slots on your side of the field. 5 for Monster Cards, 5 for Magic Cards. Monster Cards can be set in two different ways: the first one is the Attack Stance, so that you're Monster can attack the other Monster Cards on the opponent's side, or attack directly to cause an strict amount of damage to the other player. And then there is the Defense Stance, where you're card is put upside down, so that your opponent needs to guess if its attacking monster is strong enough to destroy the DC.
Each Monster Card has two diffferent stats, AP and DP. AP (Attack Points) are the amount of damage that a card can do to the opponent or other Monster Card, varieing from 100 to Unlimited.
A Magic Card can be set to destroy all the cards on the field or to give more defense or attack to a Monster Card.
At last, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Champ 2004 is just not exciting enough to keep you playing, and there for, it's just too dull. Plus, the menu's are just plain bad. If you want a good card video game, just get yourself The Eye of Judgment.