Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul Video Games

Average Rating:

You can build a main deck of up to 50 cards now, and this includes being able to add cards that you actually own via passcode (printed on bottom left-hand side of the trading cards). This should be great news to people who want to play an Exodia deck, but who can't shell out over [ ] for the 5 card set and who can scour the net for the passcodes to each individual card. I have found that this is slightly helpful with testing a deck you want/have for real-life tournament readiness. It would be the complete testing source for this purpose if the pass system would let you enter the same code more than once (to have multiple copies of unrestricted tourney-legal cards), thus enabling you to replicate your real-life deck card for card. Even with this major oversight, the card management system is easy to use and a snap for adding and removing cards.

As for the dueling, you can challenge a host of the anime's stars like Joey and Kaiba, you can enter the game's tournaments and duel other competitors, or you can link up GBAs for a vs. match. It is great to learn the different deck themes by dueling the game's AI. For instance, my ideal deck had a slight weakness to Dino decks (which was made evident when my first loss came after dueling Rex), but was a great Exodia & Dragon deck pounder (I played an experiemental beatdown/defense deck that admittedly should only be a beatdown deck). The presentation of the duel area is nice, and the menu screens are surprisingly uncluttered and easy to use to on the small GBA screen. Viewing card descriptions is a snap, but NOT at one of the most important times during a duel: chains. When a chain has been started, you can't read the descriptons of cards in order to remind yourself of what a trap/monster effect/magic card does once activated. This hinders being able to plan a link in the chain (counter) effectively. This is my main problem with Eternal Duelist Soul. Chains are the most complicated aspect of Yi Gi Oh dueling, and this should have been a no-brainer area of the game to have be smooth and exactly like the trading card game.

Most of my earlier duels have been somewhat easy, but after playing about 11 games, the duels got much harder and fun. Unlocking new booster packs through winning duels is a neat reward, even if some cards don't do anything for your deck. Another goodie includes winning susbscriptions to Yu Gi Oh! Weekly (in-game only) which comes with a booster pack. The 3 promo cards that come with the game are the icing on a Yu Gi Oh fan's cake. But since they ARE NOT TOURNAMENT LEGAL (promos made by Konami can not be used in official tournaments because they aren't made by Upperdeck), they aren't useful except for collecting.

Overall, this is a great game to have, and a great item for Yi Gi Oh fans. It would have scored a 5 if the graphics and some gameplay mechanics had been better. Even so, if you are really into Yi Gi Oh!, besides this great game I'd recommend 1. snagging a copy of the 1st US Shonen Jump to read the Yu Gi story (manga) from the very beginning (no, the US show isn't the beginning--it's really season 2) and to snag a limited edition tournament-legal variant of the Blue Eyes White Dragon card! 2. getting a hold of some of the subtitled JP anime (warning Yami Yugi is more PG-13ish in the JP version) to get some stories that the US crowd have missed and to learn about the host of other games played by the Yu Gi crew like DDM (Dungeon Dice Monsters), and 3. most importantly, keeping your eye out for the Joey and Pegasus starter decks in early 2003!