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Yu-Gi-Oh: World Championship Tournament 2004

Score: 85%
ESRB: Everyone
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami
Media: Cart/1
Players: 1 - 2
Genre: Miscellaneous

Graphics & Sound:

As long as Konami keeps pumping out Yu-Gi-Oh! games with the same consistency they have been, I may never have to delve into the 'hard stuff' and buy a deck of cards. Yu-Gi-Oh!: World Championship Tournament 2004 takes the series back to its roots as a tournament style game. The RPG-style story found in The Sacred Cards is gone, as are the new battle mechanics found in Falsebound Kingdom (the GameCube iteration of Yu-Gi-Oh!).

There is really not much to look at in the game beyond still card art and images of characters from the show. The entire game features a brand-new interface that has a slick look to it. I especially liked the new interface for deck building. It is still not the easiest to navigate or work with, but is a little more manageable now that the card image is shadowed in the background. This helps you to easily pick out cards by their image if you can't remember the card names. The colors on the scrolling background images have been dulled and are not as distracting. The entire play area has a much cleaner look to it and is much easier to understand than the one found in The Sacred Cards. Sound is much better than in past games. All of the sounds of casting and combat remain, but the music doesn't get in the way as much. Though it is still overly repetitive and annoying, it's not as noticeable as past games.


Gameplay:

Both Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Sacred Cards and Falsebound Kingdom were interesting departures for the series, but looked better on paper than in practice. The idea of introducing an RPG element to the game is certainly a novel idea and one that could work, but the card game system -- which is the heart of the Yu-Gi-Oh! games -- were thrown out. Yu-Gi-Oh!: World Championship Tournament 2004 reintroduces the familiar rules from the card game and places them in a tournament format.

Players begin the game with a generic deck that lacks any real focus. You are then entered into a tournament where you compete against characters from the show. Victories will net you new packs of cards as well as the opportunity to advance to more challenging opponents until you earn the chance to duel with champions like Yu Gi, Pegasus and Kaiba. One of the neat things about World Championship 2004 is that each character now plays with a deck that fits their play styles and decks from the show. For example, Yu Gi's Grandpa plays with an Exodia deck while Joey's brandishes the Red-Eyes Black Dragon. These help to add a personality to duels that was not found in the other games. Varying deck styles also gives each match a different feeling and forces you to add more dimensions to your deck style. I normally go with a Spellcaster/Dark Creature beatdown deck build around the Yami enchant world card. The deck worked well against Tristan and even in some matches against Yu Gi, but killed me when facing faster decks like Mako's or Weevil's. In order to balance my deck out, I had to turn to cards I normally wouldn't look at.

World Championship 2004 also offers Two-player duels via the GBA link cable when you want to compete and trade cards with friends.


Difficulty:

By varying the deck types, the developers managed to give Yu-Gi-Oh!: World Championship Tournament 2004 both the challenge level and feel of duels from the show. Unlike Sacred Cards, every duel uses the rules from the game, which means lower-powered creatures won't be able to miraculously destroy your Magician of Dark Chaos just to add drama to the duel. Each deck type you face forces you to think about how to best use the cards in your deck and think in a combo strategy mindset (instead of the single card strategies encouraged by other games in the series). When facing Tea's deck, which focuses on giving her an ungodly amount of life points, I had to think of new ways to beat her. This led to thinking about other ways to win duels, such as causing her to run out of cards. Matches are much more challenging but with an added excitement level that keeps you playing.

Game Mechanics:

The menu and in-game interfaces are pretty easy to understand. When compared to past games, this is a good thing, but there are still a few problems. The option of importing cards from the card game into the video game has been removed. Depending on your point of view, this can be either a good thing or a bad thing. While it does help to balance the game from keeping people from importing stacks of power cards for their initial deck, it also makes finding certain cards a crapshoot. Granted, this gives you more reason to continue playing the game, the tournament structure can get a little boring after a while. Plus, the chances of actually getting just the right card are slim. The initial deck you start with does contain one of the rare 'power' cards (like a Dark Magician or Blue-Eyes White Dragon), so you can count on at least getting one of those.

While the deck creation menu looking cleaner, it still wasn't the easiest to use. Players are allowed to own up to three decks, which helps keep games fresh since you can change your deck style. An added benefit of allowing three decks is that up to three players could share the same cartridge.

Creating decks is not very easy. Sorting cards, as well as copying cards to other decks and purging decks, is handled via a menu, while the shoulder buttons allow you to place or remove cards from the deck. The issue is that you are never told that the shoulder buttons do anything. Sure this is every bit my fault as it is the designers since I tore into the game without looking at the rulebook, but can you blame me? When you consider that most of the audience for this game knows all the ins-and-outs of Yu-Gi-Oh! already, how many do you think will really give second glance to the rulebook? The system is manageable once you figure out this simple mechanic, but an on screen indicator would have helped.

Fans who were disappointed with the previous two Yu-Gi-Oh! games are sure to enjoy Yu-Gi-Oh!: World Championship Tournament 2004. The return of familiar mechanics with the added attributes of varying play and deck styles does not completely make up for the lack of story, but it helps. While I, as well as many other players, would still love to see the presentation of Sacred Cards mixed with the duel mechanics of the Tournament games, we will just have to take what we can get for now.


-Starscream, GameVortex Communications
AKA Ricky Tucker

Nintendo GameBoy Advance Yu-Gi-Oh Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel Nintendo GameCube 007: Nightfire

 
Game Vortex :: PSIllustrated