Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories

"So, you want to play card, huh?"

This is my First review, and I decided to do it with one of my current favorite games: Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories. This is one of those games that totally amazed me into thinking that a video game based on a card game would be so good. Here is how it gets broken down:

Story: 8/10

The story of Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories is a side story to the main storyline from the animated series. You are the prince of an Egyptian dynasty. You are a rebellious prince that has a penchant for playing cards with your friends. One night, you sneak out of the palace to play with your friends, but then get thrown into a life and death struggle to prevent the resurrection of an ancient evil. This story is all cliched, but there are enough twists and turns to entertain the player.

Gameplay: 10/10

The game plays quite fast and most matches cna end in under 10 minutes. The amount of cards available in the game is impressive. Around 720 or so cards are yours to use in the game.

The game plays like the real thing, but you can combine cards without the use of the Polymerization card. This speeds things up and you can create some pretty powerful cards from your original deck right off the bat.

Also of note you win cards off of defeated opponents which can improve the quality of your deck. There are three game types: Campaign, Free Duel and Versus. Versus is self explanitory (you play against a friend and his/her deck). Campaign is the main story, which is where you get your opponents in Free Duel. Free Duel is the other single player option where you can fight previously defeated opponents to gain star chips and more of their cards.

You also have the ability to purchace cards using the number codes on the bottom of the actual cards, but be forewarned: You can only buy one particular card once. This is a balencing issue to make sure people do no exploit the system.

Difficulty: 10/10

Make no mistake. This game is hard. Opponents often have better decks than you do, and often you wil taste defeat at the hands of your opponents. All opponents, except for one, can be defeated, but it usually takes a lot of luck or planning to pull off a victory.

Another way thi game is hard is the insane ammount of star chips (SC) you need to get some of the cards. Some are resonably priced (Like the Dark Elf at about 250 SC), while others are priced so high that you have no chance of ever getting them (999,999 SC seem a bit unreasonable for the Blue Eyes White Dragon? I think so!). This is one reason why you need to play for the cards and not buy them. It's too hard too get them otherwise.

Music/ SFX: 9/10

The tunes present in the game are quite good, especially the ones when you battle the cew from the anime. The Sound effects are good... but nothing to write home about. It would have been nice if they had the voice actors from the show to reprise their roles, but sadly they are not present.

Graphics: 7/10

The cards themselves and the character art is all superb, but the 3d models are very blocky,poorly animated and reused quite often.

overall: 9/10

Great game and it plays quite well. Buy this game and feel the power of the cards.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/26/02, Updated 05/26/02