Yugioh Duel Links Review – YUGIOH ON THE GO!

JUST THIS JANUARY, AS A WAY TO START OFF THE YEAR, our favorite video game publisher Konami (most infamous as of recent for kicking out Hideo Kojima) has finally made a worldwide release of a new Yugioh Video Game! Miraculously, it's not a Pachinko or some mobile companion app nor is it some sort of GPS MONSTER COLLECTATHON THAT FIZZLES OUT IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS AFTER BECOMING THE BEST THING SINCE THREE-CHEESE PIZZA, but a full-fledged Yugioh game. Can you believe that? I'm not memeing. And the initial reception so far looks wonderful. 10 Million downloads within the few days of release is nothing to sneeze at.

JUST THIS JANUARY, AS A WAY TO START OFF THE YEAR, our favorite video game publisher Konami (most infamous as of recent for kicking out Hideo Kojima) has finally made a worldwide release of a new Yugioh Video Game! Miraculously, it's not a Pachinko or some mobile companion app nor is it some sort of GPS MONSTER COLLECTATHON THAT FIZZLES OUT IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS AFTER BECOMING THE BEST THING SINCE THREE-CHEESE PIZZA, but a full-fledged Yugioh game. Can you believe that? I'm not memeing. And the initial reception so far looks wonderful. 10 Million downloads within the few days of release is nothing to sneeze at.

THE STARTING HAND

Yugioh is an ongoing Japanese comic book series serialized in Shonen Jump. It's about hot-blooded teenagers fighting each other thru the use of cards, allowing players to cast spells at each other and to battle each others monsters. It has spawned several anime series and trading card games both digital and paperback.

Yugioh Duel Links is the next card in Konami's deck, and for my first impression, Konami dealt a good hand.

The graphics are pretty decent. When you summon a monster, that creature comes out and floats above your card as if it's what it looks like in the popular Yugioh Cartoons. Matching the graphics is a good cyber artstyle that meshes everything together quite well.

The game is also really easy to get into. Though Yugioh is known to be notoriously complicated with notoriously long card descriptions for the summon and in-field effects, Konami took the right route (I can't believe I'm praising them right now sheesh) by making sure it's casual friendly. Tutorial is short and sweet, and will help you out even if you're just a fan of the anime or new to DUELING in entirety.

There's also a Duel School system that lets you expand from the tutorial further, which will help you become as good as Yugi or Kaiba from the Anime Series. The cards themselves are from the simpler days of Yugioh and do not contain cards from the year 2010s.

The tutorials will definitely prepare you for the PvP battles where you can battle the other 10 million players online. It's your staple ranked match and casual match options. You can also watch your duel replays. Pretty cool huh?

I keep mentioning the anime if you'd notice. That's because it's one of Yugioh Duel Links' highlights, the characters. It's wonderful to hear Dan Green shouting “DARK MAGIC ATTACK!!” in front of Kaiba's face. If you're familiar with Power of Chaos for the PC (You know, that game where you duel with just one character, ALWAYS) , it feels pretty much like that, overreactions and cheesy voice acting included.

A few more snippets of positivity: Music is good, Loading times is alright, it's not Record Keepr, Konami isn't stingy on login bonuses and subscriber rewards, it's not Record Keeper, and I think I forgot to mention it's not Record Keeper. God I hate Record Keeper.

BAD DRAWS

As we keep drawing out the positive cards from our review deck, there are a few bad ones that I have been dealt with.

The voices can get annoying. Thank Osiris it can be muted.

It's a behemoth 800 plus Megabytes directly to your device. Sure memory gets larger and larger by the year but it's still a hefty baggage, considering you have more than just Clash of Clans on your phone.

The gameplay itself may be too simple. It only has the old under-powered decks and it doesn't seem like the game lends itself to a more competitive side of Yugioh unlike it's Nintendo handheld predecessors. Hardcore duelists may just scoff at this release.

At times, the game just refuses to connect. There is lag sometimes as well.

FINAL TURN!!

(For those of you who caught the Cardfight Vanguard reference: kudos)

To be honest, I tried my best to nitpick on this game's flaws, but it's a very difficult thing for me to do.

There's just so much here that's done right. Graphics, music and gameplay are all well knit together. The duels are much faster to finish since it's card games on the go. I didn't know Konami still has a ton of tricks up their sleeves.

If you're a competitive duelist, you might want to look for Hearthstone or Shadowverse for your mobile card game fix. This one's for the oldtime fans and newcomers who want to learn the basics of dueling.

It's not a really competitive game and I'll keep saying that. We will see how far Yugi can take this into the mobile world in terms of relevancy.

But for now, IT'S TIME TO D-D-D-D-DOWNLOAD Yugioh Duel Links. It's available to download for free on iOS and Android.

I give this game an 8 out of 10 star chips.