IT’S TIME TO DU-DU-DU-DUEL!
Almost everyone who grew up with the internet or anime in the 2000s knows something about Yu-Gi-Oh, Exodia and that meme phrase above were the ones for me. It wasn’t until now that I wanted to start watching and playing this series for the first time, there’s one problem… The TCG (Trading Card Game) is already 22 years old and next month will be the 26th anniversary of the Japanese version, OCG (Official Card Game), this means that there is a lot of power creep (and high prices) in these cards thanks to Konami. I went to Master Duel so I could find out what I was getting myself into and people kicked my ass in 1-2 turns every time with super long combos, even they were playing on my own turn!
Synchro, XyZ, Pendulum, Fusion, Ritual… There were a ton of card types to choose from and think up combos with but the most incredible thing was that apparently the most well-known cards like Exodia, Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Red-Eyes Black Dragon weren’t that viable on their own since a long time ago and with now more than 10,000 different cards to choose from it wasn’t getting easy to know what was good and what was bad… So the best idea I had to avoid learning about all that at the beginning was to play one of the oldest DCGs (Digital Card Games) in the series, more exactly the first one to have real TCG rules and that was…
Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul
Originally known as Yu☆Gi☆Oh Duel Monsters 5 Expert 1, this was the 5th installment in the series, so how could this be the first game to use the TCG rules? Well, that’s because the other 4 + Forbidden Memories (Duel Monsters spin-off) had more or less made up rules, the first games were made before the actual OCG so they had to come up with something with the things shown in the Manga and Toei's short anime and after that they stuck with those ones for a while until 2002 (2001 in Japan!).
As you can expect the game is pretty simple; you will see these menus a lot because these are all what the
Besides the deck editor to add/remove cards from you deck, there is also a password system in the menu with the purpose to be able to enter the codes from the lower part of your real cards into the game so you can have them here, think of it as a kind of official cheat system but unlike that idea of ‘‘cheats’’ this one only gives you 1 copy of the card you added, so if you want let’s say… 3 Blue-Eyes White Dragon, then
And finally we have the ‘‘Calendar’’ which is a real copy of our calendar, idk how they made this since as far as I know the GBA can’t have something like this; you start on 2001 tho so you will have to duel a lot, a real lot if you want to reach 2025 since 1 day means 1 duel battle. Every Tuesday you will receive the Weekly Yu-Gi-Oh! Magazine that gives you 5 cards and every month you will receive the Monthly version that has again 5 cards but this time those are rare ones, these 2 magazines are good at the start but after a few months it will be like ‘'yeah, whatever’’.
Every 2 weeks you will have a Weekend
Okay, so we have our 40 cards ready, right? Then we go to the campaign and we found 5 duelist that are relatively easily, this is what we call the Tier 1 and there are 5 tiers in this game, every one with with 5 duelists except the last one who has only 4 but 3 of those are secret ones and you need to unlock them with certain steps if you want to fight them.
I'd say that Anzu and Honda are the easiest ones while Yugi and Bakura are in 3rd and 2nd spot respectively, obviously Jounouchi being the hardest from this tier because of his Red-Eyes Black Dragon and RNG dice cards. But how can you progress from this tier you ask? For that you need to beat each duelist 2 times, then for 2nd tier is 3 times, 3rd tier is 4 times and finally 4th tier is 5 times. Until the 3rd tier the game is fun and more or less normal/easy, you will gain new booster packs for beating a certain times certain characters, like for example Yugi 20 times for the Blue-Eyes Booster Pack or Jounouchi 20 times for the Exodia Booster Pack, this is a lot of duels and time, I know.Honestly
Another example, I opened a lot of Dark Magician packs early on as it's one of the 3 you have available at the time, but I never got a Dark Magician Girl until the end of the game randomly, but funnily I get 3 Dark Magicians in that process, these are more than the ones I needed as I only had 1 in my deck for the entire game.
But oh wel…
Enough talking about booster packs for now, I should explain how the battle system works here since not a lot of people have played Yu-Gi-Oh! before like it was for me some weeks ago. When you select a duelist to fight, you have to do a rock/paper/scissors mini-game (just select 1 and if you draw, then you choose again and again) so we can go to the next step, the winner chooses if they start playing on the first or second turn. Which turn is better? That depends on the duelist you are fighting but more importantly which type of deck (playstyle) YOU are playing.
Then the duel starts…
Mom… How do I play this..?
(Can skip if you know how to play the TCG)
Mom… How do I play this..?
(Can skip if you know how to play the TCG)
Let’s say we start first; you and the opponent have 5 cards on their hands and in each turn that duelist who is going to play gains a new card, this also happens at the start of the match, so you draw 1 card and now you have 6. All of these are chosen completely randomly from your deck so you better start having good luck otherwise starting first or second will not matter later.
Okay, so in your turn you can set a card on your side of the field.
- Orange cards counts as monsters but this time they have effects, this are known as Effect Monsters and same as the yellow ones, you can normal summon only 1 per turn (you can’t 1 yellow and 1 orange in the same turn).
- Green cards were known as Magic Cards but thanks to Wizards of the Coasts, they demanded Konami to change the name since it was too similar to well... Their Magic the Gathering cards, so nowadays they are known as Spell Cards. These cards have good or bad effects on you or your opponent, they do not count as monsters, they are just cards with passive effects.
- Pink cards are known as Trap Cards, they are pretty similar to Spell Cards but the difference is that they activate when something happens on the field because your opponent did something or because of you, they also have bad or good effects.
- Purple cards are known as Fusion Cards and they are the last ones, these counts as monsters but you need to do certain steps to summon them, luckily if you fill everything you can play summon them in the same turn as any other monster you already put in the field, so think of them as a powerful extra monster.
If you see the field, you can notice that on your side there are 10 card slots to put into. In the top line you can only summon monsters while in the down line there goes only the Spell and Trap cards, so we can have a maximum of 5 spell/traps and 5 monsters active.
- On the right row you have your Deck that says how many cards are left there (if you or you opponent reach 0 then that person lose), above that is the Graveyard, that’s where the cards of each players goes to and if something happens again to those cards while being there then they go to the above slot and they can’t be played again for the whole match.
- On the left row you have your Fusion Deck, that’s where your fusion cards are waiting for and above that there goes the Terrain / Field Cards, this ones are activated spell cards that affect both fields with effects like for example +300 ATK to Light Type monsters.
- In the middle you can see both life bars with each remaining Life Points (LP), both players always start with 8000 points which can be a lot at first but as you progress more that will not be a lot.
· In that same section it’s shown the acronym D (Draw) for drawing cards, S (Standby Phase) so if the are effects, they can occur before playing, M1 (Main Phase 1) so the duelist can summon any cards on the field, B (Battle) to attack with your face-up monsters, M2 (Main Phase 2) for if you want to summon any card that you didn’t in the first main phase for whatever reason, E (End) means that the turn is over.
Now with the last for the field, when you summon a monster you can select it to be face-down or face-up, think of this like:
· Face-Down / Horizontal = Defense Mode
· Face-Up / Vertical = Attack Mode
- Since the position will depend on the ATK and DEF points of the card, if you have 400 DEF then that’s all
- When you summon the monster for the first time in face-down you will see the reversal of the card, this means that the other player can’t see which card that is and if the card is flipped an effect can occur if the card description says so (Flip).
- Certain spell / trap cards also have the effect Continuous, this means that while on the field they will be active until they are destroyed, others have a certain limit of turns but they say so in the description.
- Monster cards also have levels that are shown in the form of stars on the upper right part of the card, this is pretty easy to understand. 1 to 4 level cards can be summoned normally, 5 to 6 need a tribute of 1 already in the field (tribute meaning to sacrifice) and everything higher than 7 needs 2 tributes to be able to summon them.
And the last but not least for cards is that monster cards have archetypes like [Beast-Warrior], [Spellcaster], [Machine], etc. This doesn't matter much here besides some good synergies with some few cards but it’s good to say it now, I know that in the future this matters a lot more.
Heaven or Hell? Duel 1!
LET’S ROCK!
As you climb the bodies of your defeated enemies with the basics already learned, opening new packs and upgrading your deck with better cards, you reach the infamous 3rd tier of duelists of the game. Here the following opponents will crush you until you quit the game or find a way to surpass them. Like surely you have already realized I’m skipping the 2nd tier because while duelists there are different to each other like in the 1st one, they are also as easy/normal so there is not much point to talk about them besides that they will try to put some terrain cards to have extra ATK/DEF points but that will benefit you too if you have their same element/archetype (usually by coincidence) and others will try to upgrade their monsters via special summons but if you are fast enough to kill them before it or if you have some spells / trap cards like Raigeki or Mirror Force to destroy their monsters, they are cooked like we casually say.LET’S ROCK!
But here, oh man… Let’s start with the basic of all, they are going to cheat you in the face right in the first duel, not joking around, any face-down card that you summon on the field with the hope that it serves as some sort of bait, it will not work anymore. The AI will know which ATK and DEF points that card has and will not attack it if they know that they can’t win that clash, luckily they still fall for effects, so if you have a monster with an effect like ‘‘destroy the sucker that attack this card’’ they will not think about it, they just will see the ATK/DEF points, that’s it.
And second, starting from here to the end of the game most duelists will have pretty much the same cards always, like for example this ones: Penguin Soldier, Raigeki, Mirror Force, Man-Eater Bug, Dark Elf, Monster Reborn, Wall of Illusion, Gemini Elf and Magic Jammer. There will be some specific duelists with things like Exodia, Blue-Eyes or Dark Magician but the first one you almost will never encounter it if you have luck or finish more or less fast while the other 2 are just the big monster fusions they will have.
But what about defense monsters? Well… Without effects honestly they are not that great, maybe if you have one with big defense then it can help you to resist some turns since the enemy will not attack you but if they draw a Raigeki or Penguin Soldier then it’s over for that little tank of yours, unless…
Joey, your deck is filled with nothing but monster cards!
Yeah! That's it! If we can’t beat them only by pure strength and they will not attack our high defense face-down cards then we have to play dirty like them, first it’s time to change our deck; replace the weak/medium ATK type monsters for high defense ones and start adding spells and traps so we can attack them passively without destroying a single enemy monster card in the field, like a poison effect in a RPG.
Some changes here and there and this time we’ll have a chance, they will be still kicking our ass from time to time until we have better cards but if we go first against Malik and we beat him 4 times, then a new pack will be unlocked and this one will help us with our deck. Now Rare Hunter is easy because he has an Exodia deck so is not a problem to beat him before he does the special summon, the other 3; Arkana, Strings, Umbra and Lunis (this 2 are together) will fall with patience, especially if you try not to summon every monster you have on the field and try to save some in your hand.
After beating all 5 a new pack will be unlocked and god if this one is good, with this one I got the Ultimate Blue-Eyes fusion that combined with Cyber-Stein that you surely gained before from the Garoozis pack for beating the 2nd tier, you can summon it as an effect for exchanging 5000 LP from your life points instead that for having 3 Blue-Eyes on your side of the field, this is risky? Yes, but for hard times we need hard solutions and this is one of them, with that combo the duelists will fall in 2-3 turns if you have luck with the cards, if not then in around 5 turns with the passive damage of this deck.
- Morphing Jar and Needle Worm will send cards from your opponent's deck and field to the graveyard, so use those two with Magical Thorn and you'll do a lot of damage directly to those LPs for every card that goes from their hand to the graveyard.
- Horn of the Unicorn will help you through the whole game with those extra 700 ATK points so you can resist a lot more, plus every time it goes to the graveyard, comes again to your hand in the next turn.
- Chain Energy is another key card for this build, it will deal directly 500 damage points to the LPs for every card that the enemy summons on the field. You can combine it with Swords of Revealing Light so the enemy is unable to attack you for 3 turns, but after 2 turns use Giant Trunade to return it to your hand so you can use it again without being destroyed by the end of its effect.
Honestly this was the best I could come up with without using the password system, without farming for hours and with the cards I had. The 4th tier was pretty much the same as the 3rd one with the exceptions that Yami Yugi don’t do anything for some weird reason, so he’s the easiest duelist in the whole game, Kaiba also uses the Cyber-Stein + Blue-Eyes fusion combo (this is how I learned about it) and Yami Bakura is a bit hard just because of luck. For Kaiba the best strat is defeating him before he can summon Cyber-Stein, there is not any secret strat honestly, it’s as basic as that and if he does it, then pray for a Raigeki or just surrender and try again.
After beating those 3 + Shadi and Ishizu, the final boss will be unlocked and… It’s so easy that I want to cry, it's just super weak compared to the duelists from tier 3 and even tier 4. Like I say before there is also 3 secret duelist from this tier but if I wanted to do 2 of them, then I would have to play another 120 duels waiting to November for the duelist cup event or having all the cards of the game with me so I can unlock Grandpa, which obviously I didn’t, not only because I didn’t want to but also because there is no way you can see how much progress with the cards you have, like a percentage or something… The thing that yes I did was using the password system so I could get Toon World and thanks to that unlock Pegasus, which was a joke boss fight too, people say that he can read what you do but the 3rd and 4th tier already does that lol.
End of the duel
We are right at the end of the article and as you can see I didn’t talk anything about the story and I even spoiled the duelists a bit, why? Because there is not really a story here, after choosing your deck you just drop right into the menu and start fighting, all the story text that is here are from some very few event from the calendar and before + after you beat a duelist, that’s all the story that we have. This for sure was a game for someone who only wanted to play the cards without expending too much money or for someone who already readed the manga or watched the anime.
The japanese version is pretty much the same just with the artwork for the packs being different and the one for some cards too. This wasn’t a bad experience just a bit wacky at times with all that cheating and not too many different decks for the duelists of the second half of the game, I spent around 35 hours in it and it was very slow at times, you can hold the R button right before the match until you enter the field, so this way you can have a permanent speed boost for that duel alone but that’s it, after some hours I didn’t want to listen to the same battle track again and again, so I just put my own music.
For being the first actual TCG video game in the series it was pretty decent, newbie-friendly and good at times I have to say, let’s see next time again for some more duels!
Pros
- + Fun gameplay
- + Easy to understand
- + Seto Kaiba
Cons
- - Bad card drop rate
- - Slow gameplay at times
- - AI poorly made
- - No story
7
Gameplay
It's what you can expect, the good old TCG experience in video game format, it can be quite fun at times when the AI doesn't try to cheat you into a harder duel.
7
Graphics
The card illustrations are nice, but the on-move background of the duel field can make you feel dizzy if you look at it too much.
1
Story
There is no story, there are only some character texts before and after the duel.
4
Sound
The few tracks here are not bad, but they get old pretty fast
4
Replayability
I could see some replayability here with the random cards you can get from booster packs. But honestly, after you beat the game, you most likely won't want to play it again.
7
out of 10
Overall
Good for learning the basics of the Yu-Gi-Oh! card game or if you want to come back to the old Duel Monsters era days when duels were longer than 1 turn, there are probably better Yugi games than this one nowadays, but it's pretty decent for being one of the first ones.
Last edited:
