Yu-Gi-Oh!: Dark Duel Stories Game by Konami Reviewed by Foxlord Foxlord@aol.com Size: Unknown Save: Yes, Automaically Released: 2002 Works with: Gameboy Color and higher. **************************************************************************** Opening Snide Remarks: Funny enough, as hot as Yu-Gi-Oh! is right now I couldn't really get into it. It wasn't much fun watching a battle that lasted 20 minutes while listening to them babble on about how they were going to defeat each other. It was boring, just like this game. I sure wish Konami would have shelved this and brought us the Suikoden Card game instead. **************************************************************************** Gameplay Descripion: Yu-Gi-Oh! the card game uses a 40 card deck, the point of the game is to use your monsters, spell, and trap cards to attack your opponents monsters and to ultimately bring his life points down from 8000 to 0. You do have limitations, though. cards cost a number of points to add to your deck, so you have to make a balance of strong to weak cards in order to meet the point limit, and the card deck limit of 40 cards. as you battle opponents, and win, your point limit will increase allowing you to add more powerful cards, plus you win one card for every successful win and a card piece to make a custon card. there are 800 physical cards in this game and several thousand custom cards to get. Plus you get 3 free foil cards in every game pack! (Please note that so far only the "Legend of Blue-Eyes White Dragon" set is available here in America which is a total of 125 cards. I'm not 100% sure on how many total cards there are to this game.) I'm not going to explain all the rules, of the game. I'd fall asleep writing this, as I'm sure anyone who reads this will surely fall asleep anyways. The navigation to this game is all menus, so there is no real "gameplay". It's all revolved around playing the card game. Liked: The 3 free foil cards are pretty! =) Hated: This game is all menu driven, getting new cards is a slow boring process. **************************************************************************** Graphics Description: The only graphics in this are pictures, that's about it. Pictures of the characters you have to fight, pictures of the monsters on the cards, the only animation used is their mouths moving and their eyes blinking! and that's about it. I will say that the still-shots of the characters and the monsters are quite detailed and remain true to the cartoon, even so, they aren't that great. Hell, Beetlejuice for the Gameboy has better graphics and animation, and that game is 7+ years old. Liked: The pictures of the characters and monsters from the TV show are very detailed and stand-out. Hated: The lack of battle animation..or any real animation for that matter. **************************************************************************** Sound/Music Description: Nothing to win an award here, mostly cookie-cutter Gameboy "Blip and Bleep" sound effects. The music is better then usual Gameboy games and does vary: after you defeat your first set of opponents, you face a new set and the music changes. Liked: some of the songs are fairly decent. Hated: The sound effects, some of the songs sounded like they would put you to sleep. **************************************************************************** Play Control/Game Design: This game has no innovation to it's design at all. The whole game is made up of menus,and not even very well put together menus. Building and customizing a deck is a chore. Custom card construction is in a different spot on the menu, then deck construction. So you have to construct custom cards if you want them, then go engage an opponent in a battle just to get to the deck construction where you can take cards out and put new ones in, quite inconvienient. One option I did like was the password feature where you imput 8 numbers found on the physical cards into the game pack and you recieve electronic versions of those cards for use on the game, and there are websites out there that have all the numbers ready for you to imput =) In conclusion: This game felt like it was made very quickly, just to try and rake in money from the public. Liked: The 3 free cards included. Hated: The menus, the lack of imagination in game design. **************************************************************************** Improve: Well for starters I would add an actual quest and plot to this game, make the deck construction and card building a bit more user friendly, like adding a grid system. Include an in-game tutoral so beginners to this game won't be struggling to figure it out like myself. RIYL: Pokemon Trading Card Game, Monster Rancher Card Battle Dragonball Z: Collectable Card Game. (they are all better games, trust me) **************************************************************************** Final Words: If you are a fan of the show, then you'll get a kick out of this, I will say that it beats out playing solitaire on my Game.com as an aid for insomnia. **************************************************************************** Score Gameplay: ** Graphics: * Sound/Music: ** Play Control/Game Design: ** Personal Opinion: ** Total: 9 Final Score: 36% **************************************************************************** Currently Known Codes: Imput the numbers on the real trading cards, into the password feature and you'll recieve that card in your game for use.