So yeah, this is my attempt to start up reviews of video games since I'm really more of a gamer than an anime fan anyway. I'd been thinking about doing this for a while but I didn't really just wanna get on here and gush about Portal 2 and now I think I found a game that I'll be able to discuss critically. A couple things here to note that'll probably be different from later reviews. 1) I didn't completely finish this game - I got an ending to a story and a credit roll, but not much else. 2) Like my anime reviews, expect a generally optimistic look, but not here. I didn't really care for this game too much.
I want to lead off by saying I really like Yu-Gi-Oh. I love the anime for the most part - GX got tiresome and Zexal looks pretty gawdawful, but the original and 5D's are pretty good. I played the game for years; I met a lot of my recent friends through the local tournaments, was pretty good if I do say so myself, and would probably still be playing if interest hadn't died out. And if you hadn't guessed from the fact I even considered this game, I generally like the video games. There have been a couple disastrous flops, like Destiny Board Traveler and Wheelie Breakers, but I've liked most of them that I've played. I've generally stuck with the DS World Championship series and hadn't tried Tag Force until now, so I wanted to see which is the better series.
So when I started up the story mode and got a bit of a scene about an upcoming tag duel tournament while mentioning the in-show WRGP tournament. Ok, skipping the older 5D's story, but that's ok - we can't keep covering that over and over. After a bit of chit-chat, the real game starts... and that's it. I'm just dropped in a world with no real direction other than "go get people to partner up with you." And this is my first and perhaps biggest complaint with this game - there's no focus. This mode is misnamed. It's not a story mode, it's a sandbox mode. But you see, good sandbox games like perhaps Infamous have a general plot that arches over everything in addition to the freedom and side missions. Sure there's the WTGP or whatever, but that wasn't even brought up again until I filled up some random NPC's first heart. Other than that, it's all just aimless character interaction.
I quickly worked out (without much help from the game) that the general goal is to fill up people's hearts so that they'll partner up to tag duel with you and see short little events. There's 2 ways to do this: dueling (of course) or a mixture of annoying and boring "conversation" mini-games and giving them gifts. Here's where you pick your poison - you either get slow (and boring by extension), or just plain boring. Dueling them fills up a bit of their heart (assuming they're not in a bad mood...) but it's really small and you'd have to duel the same person over and over to fill a heart. On the other hand, once you can manage a decent flow of money, you can buy lost of gifts and spam conversations while giving gifts to both increase happiness and refill conversation chances per day. But then, I'm just spending all my time doing boring minigames and not dueling!
I heard you could go faster if you build a Reversal quiz deck for fast dueling, but this leads into another problem, a fatal one for a Yugioh game - getting new cards is A PAIN IN THE ASS. To be clear, money is not terribly hard to get in this game. After dueling for a long time I managed to throw together a half-decent Gladiator Beast deck according to advice and dueling a certain opponent was able to rake in DP. However, the cards are split into tons of packs and the odds of getting the cards you need seem very slim. The major problem here is the password system. In the WC games, the passwords cost money but they make getting the cards you need simple. In TF however, passwords let you rent cards, and while its free you can only have so many at a time depending on level I assume. I'm level 21 and I can only rent 3!
I have a couple other problems to mention before I move on. First off, as the name and previous paragraphs imply, there's a large emphasis on tag dueling. This is my least favorite part of any Yugioh game, because the AI is usually dumb and you spend half the duel not doing anything. There's enough single dueling options that I can forgive it though. Loading times are a pain as well since the game loads all the time. An install helps a reasonable amount, but it's disabled whenever the system goes into sleep mode (this may be a system problem but I've never encountered it before). It's also lacking any fun side things like duel puzzles or theme duels found in other games. It has challenges similar to theme duels but they're easy to forget about in a tab of a ranking screen in a submenu.
I will say some good things about this game in fairness. Deck editing is much easier in this game, particularly due to a text search option that makes it a lot easier to search for certain support cards. In addition, the selection is great and I particularly like the inclusion of anime only cards since it gives you the option to play with these great cards that could never be released in the real game. The animations for certain monsters are actually impressive and fun to watch at first, and they can be turned off or skipped if you get bored of them.
The faults far outweigh the good though, and this is the first game in years I've considered trading back in (the last was Shadow the Hedgehog, so yeah, it's been a long time...). For my money, the WC series will always be the better choice and I look forward to the upcoming release. However, if you really like Tag Duels and want nothing but lots and lots of dueling from your Yugioh game, or if you only have a PSP and feel a dueling itch, it may be worth your time.
That's my first game review! I'm currently playing Hotel Dusk, so maybe I'll get a review of that out later, or maybe I'll dip into my towering backlog. I hope someone likes this and I'd appreciate any feedback!
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