Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom

"What an odd, odd, odd, ODD game."

As with most Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, I was extremely excited when I first saw the previews for this game (in Japanese) last year. ''Imagine!'' I thought. ''Finally, they've animated the amazing card-battling system that they've used in all of their GB and GBA games, all my favorite characters are going to be playable, and this thing looks great!''

And it does look great...sometimes.

And it is the card-battling system...sort-of.

And all of the characters are there...uh...mostly.

By now, you probably know that this game, unlike every previous Nintendo game for this property, has nothing whatsoever to do with the card game. Sure, the characters are the same, and the monsters are the same, and even the stats for the monsters (at level 1) are taken straight from the cards, but this is NOT a card game. This is actually a war simulation game...

...uh...

......kind of.

I guess I'd call this a war simulation game for people who don't like war simulation games, or maybe a Yu-Gi-Oh! game for people who don't like the Yu-Gi-Oh games. Although I love the Yu-Gi-Oh game, and I still find myself enjoying this game. Here are some specifics.

Gameplay - 6/10: This game differs from the other Yu-Gi-Oh! titles in that there actually is some semblance of a tutorial..ish...thing that takes place when you start a new game. Also, I found the controls to be slightly more intuitive than they are in the other games. (Until I got used to the system, which is a constant throughout all the other games) As with most games, there are some good elements of gameplay, some bad elements of gameplay, and some elements of gameplay that aren't figured out until way too late in the game, because they're never explained. There are essentially two modes of play in this game - ''planning'' and ''action,'' and two options within each of those.

During the ''planning'' mode, you can create and edit the teams of Yu-Gi-Oh! monsters that you want to assign to the characters, (you can control up to 8 characters, with 3 monsters each) the items they hold, the order they go in, things like that. Also, you can save your game (more on this later) and change your gaming options. (stereo, ''switch'' mode, those things.)

During the ''action'' mode, you have two sub-modes, the movement stage and the battle stage. During the movement stage, you command your mini-armies of characters (with their monsters) to move about a poorly-detailed and always similar landscape, attempting to take over towns from the enemy. You can also equip the towns in your control with tactical devices like healers and cannons, and you can purchase items if there is a trader in that town. If one of the characters encounters an enemy (en route, at an enemy town, or if your town is attacked)then the game shifts to battle stage, which plays exactly like any basic turn-based RPG, except that the turn-order appears to be completely random, rather than based on statistics.

The gameplay during the Planning stage is very easy to control, as is the gameplay during the battle portion of the Action stage, but things get hairy during the movement portion of the action stage, because the game's camera resets itself to where the ''action'' is (a battle or a conversation) and often this moves the camera AWAY from something you were trying to do, leaving you unable to command your teams properly. Because of this, I am docking 4 points.


Story - 3/10: This story...um...

(trying not to bash...)

...okay, it's not very good. It plays similarly to the current storyarc on the Saturday Morning cartoon, but with a few lame and predictable twists, and the dialogue is a little intelligence-insulting at times. My ''3'' is generous.

Graphics/Sound - 5/10: The graphics are completely unimportant during the planning phase, and they seem to have realized that. They also seem to have put no work whatsoever into the landscapes for the movement phase, which means that the battle phase must look great, right?! Well, yes and no. The graphics are excellent, the monsters are incredibly detailed, and even the oft-repeated attack animations are well done, but the camera angle stays wide when a monster is attacked, leaving you unable to appreciate the fine detail 95% of the time. The only time you can actually get a close-up shot of a monster is when your opponent only has one left on his/her side of the field, and you target it. And even then, it's covered by a gigantic ''Y'' A'' or ''X.'' Had they done the camera in a fashion more similar to the Pokemon Stadium games, this would have been an easy 9 or 10. Instead, we're left wanting more detail...detail which they could have easily given us. Oh...the sound goes relatively unnoticed, which is good for this type of game

Play Time/Replayability - 2/10: I am adding two points for the fact that you can play the game (with entirely different plots) as either Kaiba or Yugi, giving you essentially two completely different games...which still play absolutely identically to each other. However, those two points barely make up for the 10 I had taken away because of this game's extremely stupid SAVE function. You see, you can't save during a mission (the ''action'' phase.)

Follow me here.

This game plays like a traditional RPG, so monsters get experience for each battle they face, right? Right. In order to get strong monsters, you need to have many, many battles, right? Right. And this game was built in such a way that prevents saving during the battle phase, right? Right. So in order to actually build a strong team, you need to devote hours upon hours of UNINTERUPTED time to this stupid game, right? Right. I hate when games make saving hard. I will never understand why they make saving hard. I have lost out on a lot of things that I think might have happened in my game (seeing and/or catching new monsters) because I was rushing through it so that I could save. In addition, there have been many times that I've realized after at least a half-hour of playing that this particular mission was going to take longer than I had assumed, and I had to shut the game off, and re-do everything I had already done when I got back to the game. This is extremely poor judgement on Konami's part, and very, very, VERY frustrating.

Final Recommendation - 4/10: And still...despite all of this...I like this game. My score is based more on potential than anything else. This could have been an amazing game. Instead, it's an average game. But it is fun to play despite all its untapped potential, and all the bad decisions Konami made when creating it, and the next time I find myself with a great many consecutive hours to kill, I may get around to beating the darn thing.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 12/01/03