Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 (DS) Review
Posted by Damian Sarcuni on 05.01.2007
Yu-Gi-Oh yuggoth! Spawn of cthulu commands you to spill the blood of a dozen men!
At last! My copy of Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 has arrived. Now I can finally reveal my secret and get this weight off my chest. I did not want this review because I am a Yu Gi Oh fan, or because I have any remote interest in collectable card games. No, I took this review so that I could at last share with the world, my plan to win piles of money from the casinos in various cities. I will need the help of anyone reading in order to pull this off.
Here is what we do: first, we dress up like characters from the cartoons Yu-Gi-Oh! and Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, cosplay style. Then, we travel to a nearby casino and sit at the poker and blackjack tables to play. While playing, we act in character and use the heart of the cards to gain an advantage. This means we have to declare all our moves out loud and make snide taunting comments to our dealers. “I summon royal flush, over spades!” “Bring forth the jack of diamonds, NOW!” The dealers will be so confused we’ll win every time. They will be in awe of our powers and have frozen, gaping faces while making gasping noises like on the show. “What power!” they will say. Then we cash out our chips and leave the casino as much richer gamers than we were previously. Oh such a devious trickster I am!
Yeah boy! Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about right there!
Anyway, despite the fact that our future financial security is now assured, I am still obligated to review the game itself. Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 focuses on the game of a “Duel Monsters”, the card game the show and manga are based around. There’s no storyline here, simply create a virtual avatar for yourself, set special messages, and get to dueling. Although popular characters from the show do make appearances here as computer controlled opponents, the game is more focused on an arena setting and Duel Monsters itself. It doesn’t sound like there is much depth to the game, but as fans of the series can tell you, not much else is needed.
Graphics
While I’m sure the Nintendo DS does a far better job of illustrating the Duel Monsters battle area than any portable game before it, there is simply no flash or substance to write about. Although the monsters in the game do animate, their attacks come in the form of “effect” sequences reminiscent of a turn based RPG from the old NES days. The only time the graphics truly improve is when you summon certain special monsters like the “Summoned Skull” onto the field. Even then, all you get is a brief two second animation of a monster floating to the top DS screen in glorious 3D, which then cuts back to the same old game field diagram you’ve been staring at for the past 20 minutes.
Purists could argue that the game Duel Monsters or card games in general don’t need eye candy graphics and in fact long animations and drawn out sequences would make the game slower. That may be true, but I am certain the monsters and effects in the game could at least look a little bit better than they do with a piece of hardware as powerful as the Nintendo DS. If nothing else, the sprites in the game should look like they are from Secret of Mana, not Dragon Warrior. The rest of the graphics are minor illustrations of characters and popular cards from the Yu-Gi-Oh! series, and these look fine but usually don’t animate at all either. For a DS game, this doesn’t look good at all.
Gameplay
You can’t really review Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 without reviewing the game of Duel Monsters itself, simply because that is all the game offers. There are no mini-games or even RPG elements in this game. From the moment you start, the game is all about dueling and deck building, over and over again.
Having never played Duel Monsters myself, in all the years of its existence, I wondered if Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 would be able to make me a fan of the game. Unfortunately it did, and I quickly learned all the joy and pain that goes along with being a fan of anime based card games. Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 includes 15 tutorial lessons for newbies such as I who have avoided the series up until now, and to the game’s credit these tutorials are excellent. Within a few hours I was able to understand all the strategy based concepts behind the game and I squealed in delight at the addictiveness it presented. The game of Duel Monsters is a strategic delight, and I found that even after I put the game down, my mind began racing to come up with new deck recipes and thoughts about my next play through.
Once you get past the tutorials however, the game simply pounds you into submission and does not let up. Like other card based video games, most of Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 is based off of actual card collection, meaning you have to duel to win points and grow your deck in order to challenge more powerful opponents. The problem is that the CPU controlled opponents have an absolutely ridiculous jump in skill from stage to stage, and you wind up repeating the same battle over and over again just for the sake of gaining points to collect more cards. Since card purchases are randomized (just like buying card packs in real life) you’ll probably be stuck at the beginning for a long time, losing to even the easiest of CPU controlled opponents regardless of how good or balanced your deck is. Even worse is that the CPU doesn’t just try to win duels, it draws out your demise by slowly attacking with as little damage as possible, even when it can clearly end the game with one simple command. The AI isn’t impossible to defeat, it just takes 3 days of constant play before you have the right cards to do it. I mean that literally.
Deck creation is a bit overwhelming and looks complicated at first, but it really isn’t. A quick glance at one page in the instruction booklet and you will know enough to assemble your deck, using a simple drag and drop method on the DS touch screen. Both in deck editing and in battle, you can check the stats and details of a card simply by highlighting it and pushing the L or R buttons. As far as the battle speed, there is a mixed bag here. While the game does calculate everything for you and move through most moves and combos quickly, it also runs a constant check for possible counters. The game does this repeating the same menu box over and over again, asking if you would like to use a counter. If you don’t have a card that can counter, the game asks if you would like to check the field, which is mindless considering you can pretty much check the field at any time during normal play. This is minor annoyance but one that appears from beginning to end game, and definitely should have been removed.
Sound
The music in Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 runs a bit similar to the graphics. Although many of the musical themes in the game are somewhat catchy, the overall quality is sorely lacking. Yes, the themes that play while a duel is close to being won or lost are strikingly close to those from the Yu-Gi-Oh! TV series, but they are too repetitive for a game of this length. Several tracks seem out of place as well. Hearing pipe organ music in the background while having a friendly duel against Kuriboh seems way out of place to me.
The sound bytes in the game are decent. It’s amusing to play a “skyscraper” card and hear the ambience of an entire city in the background, complete with car horns. I would’ve liked if they had put a few monster roars and noises into the game as well, and this is also lacking. The game advertises that you can voice chat with your friends using the DS wifi and microphone, but since most of my friends would shun me if they found out I was playing Yu-Gi-Oh! I was unable to test out the sound quality. From an online play standpoint, you can’t voice chat with just anyone, such as random opponents.
Lasting Appeal
As I mentioned before, it takes a pretty long time to collect even halfway decent cards the standard way. At the same time, you can unlock most of the cards in the game using passwords in a few seconds. This is probably best for duelists who are already experienced and don’t have time to re-collect their favorite deck recipes in entirety, but it also sucks most of the challenge right out of the game. Regardless, between free duel and puzzle duel modes as well as unlocking cards and avatar customization, you will have your hands on Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 for quite awhile, and as I have already said, it’s hard to avoid picking the game up constantly.
However, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 is supposed to be all about online play. This is the official game of the 2007 Yu-Gi-Oh! world tournament (whenever and wherever that is…) so it stands to reason that this arena based game would focus on human opponents battling each other. Sadly, this is where the game fails in the worst way. While going online was personally a pleasurable experience, a brief glance at some Yu-Gi-Oh! fan based message boards revealed rampant complaints of opponents disconnecting while losing duels with no repercussions whatsoever.
Even worse, there was also a treasure trove of cheating players, able to summon more than one monster during a turn as well as a host of other cheats and hacks. According to the internet grapevine, I was lucky to have a pleasant online duel at all, and it’s sad that the very mode the game was intended to focus on has to be so utterly flawed that it ruins the gaming experience for most players.
Fun Factor
Despite suffering from a lackluster package and some serious rotten apples in the fan base, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 is really hard to put down. With over 1600 cards in the game and fully updated card packs, testing out new deck recipes alone makes the game appealing. Building up your deck from scratch, while frustrating, long and annoying, also gives a good sense of accomplishment. This is especially true for newbies like me.
In fact, players who are new to the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! are probably the ones who will benefit from this game the most. If you’ve always been curious about the game of Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 will suck you in and never let you go. Much like a bad relationship you can’t seem to get out of, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 will find some new way to piss you off every time you pick it up, and you’ll just keep coming back for more.
The 411
I truly wanted to give Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 a higher score, but the game is lacking in key areas. Simply saying that fans of the series will enjoy it and others should avoid it is just not accurate. The game has depth and is absolutely great for new players. But at its core, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 has nothing else to offer except the Duel Monsters card game itself. While that alone is a lot of fun, this package needed far more bells and whistles to round out the experience.
