Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007

"Hardly world-championship material"

Yugioh WC07 is a rather large step back from WC06. Despite countless new sets separating the two games, WC07 sports a less than impressive 1600+ card-base to WC06's 3000+ while still managing to squeeze in a good number of sub-optimal vanilla monsters at the cost of excluding several tournament-worthy cards. Several useful functions found in WC06, such as the [HEART OPTIONS], have been inexplicably removed and the actual expansions have been replaced with the Konami's little “fun” packs. More puzzling, perhaps, is the removal of starter deck choices and the vastly increased difficulty in obtaining cards which really begs the question, “Is Konami trying to encourage the use of cheating devices?”

Your first twenty to thirty hours of game-play will be anything but enjoyable. The starting deck is a fairly puny E-Hero deck and the rewards from defeating opponents have greatly diminished (even more-so than the cost of packs). Konami also made the unusual choice of disabling card passwords until you've unlocked the cards via pack or trade. Given that many of the cards you'll want are limited to 1 copy anyway, this renders the password function less than useful. So instead you're forced to grind through opponents to unlock packs just to build the deck you want so you can enjoy yourself by dueling friends. Some would call this process counter-intuitive, I just call it stupid.

The graphics, like the previous DS Yugioh titles, are still garbage. Honestly, the smart choice here would've been to have just left them like WC06's—meaning just the cards. There's no need for fancy graphics which slow game-play by showing us a long summon that we're bound to see hundreds, if not thousands, of times as we play opponents. There's still no way to deactivate these graphics so a good 15% of every duel is wasted.

If you're willing to look past these flaws, wifi play is a mixed bag. In addition to players who'll disconnect on you, you have the ActionReplay crowd who use all sorts of enjoyable cheats for almost instantaneous victories. Konami seems to be policing the leader-boards, however, as suspected cheaters have been pulled from the ranks. Not everybody you encounter will be a jerk, but you're guaranteed to be cheated out of some of your ranking at one point or another.

YGO WC07 also has a few great things going for it. First of all, you have more character customization than in previous games. You're able to choose your character's face, hair & hair color, clothing (although you're stuck with an uncommonly ugly jacket for a while), duel disk, dueling quotes, and you can even designate a card in your deck to glow when you activate/summon it. Second, there's the all the downloadable content: more opponents (including other players' decks), duel puzzles, ban-lists, and cards. You're also able to port in extras from the other YGO DS games (if you have a spare DS handy) for additional opponents, clothing/duel disks, as well as the option to import an entire deck (which greatly reduces the monotony found in the early game).

For many players, WC07 will be worth getting just because it's the tournament supported version. Others will want the additional cards not found in the other games. Regardless of my criticisms, the World Championship edition is always the one game to get each year. It's traditionally the best Konami will offer and the version that most players will have. However, this year's version is heavily flawed and certainly not worth buying a DS for. Hopefully Konami will have a change of heart by next year and release a truly professional version: one where the cards aren't locked from the start, where the opponents sport decks used by SJC finalists (or, at least, something marginally competitive), with a nearly complete set of cards with exclusions at the cost of sub-opti vanillas instead of tourney-level cards, and the removal of many of those god-awful graphics. Any one of those options would be a vast improvement and benefit the players.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 04/11/07