"A huge slap in the face to the fans"

When I first heard and read about this game, only one thing came to my mind. The Neo Geo Pocket version. Oh yes, that game when I had my hand grasped on it, I was happy as I can be. Being a huge fan of Capcom, SNK and card games it satisfied all my needs. However, when the game actually came out on the DS, I was left with excitement and confusion. Excited that the characters art have been re-done, making them "grown-up" than being chibi (kid like). Confused that the game's mechanics are so bad!
Even though, I still gave the game a chance. After fifty or so some wins, I came to some conclusions. For the first time in my reviews, I won't be following my other setups. I will mainly be just talking about the game and what the game actually offers and doesn't.

Alright, so when you turn on the DS and touch the screen to start, you get no intro whatsoever. Instead, you get the title of the game and it tells you to touch the screen. After doing so you are treated to some crappy music. Listen to it, it gets better...... Actually it doesn't, so just go to new game. From there, you are entitled to watch the crappy storyline unfold. Man makes machine, man makes cards, man holds tournament, OH NO! machine go crazy and take man hostage, how original and corny.

So happens a family relative is there and he needs to save this man. But you don't use this person, you use a Ash (Pokemon) slash Yugi (Yu-gi-oh) wannabe instead in his place. This character design is so ridiculously stupid, I wanted to throw the game out the window only to catch it so I can break it with my hands. What happened to the part where I can choose the characters, from either a punk looking boy, or a hot cute girl? Oh wait, that's right, that was the NeoGeo version.

SNK laughs at you more when they give you a choice to choose a face for your character. So looking through the faces, I came to a conclusion. They all look the same, with some minor changes. Like boy with cocky smile, boy with cocky smile and SUNGLASSES, or my favorite, boy with cocky smile that looks like a girl with pink hair and sunglasses. Yeah you read right, your character is a male, but they let you choose female faces. Am I missing something here?

So after you choose your face, you finally get to play cards? Nope! You go around doing more talking. You can go to train on how to play the game, which is done so poorly, I think a kid in elementary will never get it. I am actually going to try to explain it, so sit back and relax.

The cards are separated into 5 different colors. Blue, Red, Yellow, Green and colorless. Now just like all card games, each has a summon cost. Like Akuma costs three colorless and three red. Now you might be thinking this is an easy task, but it's not. First, you will need to equip your deck with cards that are colorless to cast to give you other colors. If you don't, another way SNK gets you, is to discard other cards that give the color you need. There are some cards that only give you one color while others more than one.

Now once you summon the cards you wanted, they are locked. That means, they can't do anything the first turn they land in the field. So what to do? End your turn. Now you watch the computer speed through his deck summoning cards like it was nothing. But too bad, the computer's cards are frozen too. Now it's your turn again and all your cards become free and each card gives you their respective colors to add to your color grid. You can now draw a card and summon more characters. Now, you can attack as well, but before you do and this is where the game is completely unbalance, is you have to look at how many characters you have on the field and how many the computer has. If he has more than you, you can't attack. Sure you can get in a few free hits, but guess what. Attacking causes your characters to get frozen again. So you are open for the next attack.

You might be thinking so what, I can just attack back. Sorry, wrong. The computer will overwhelm you with stronger and more cards than you can dish out. This game actually takes some thinking. If you have 5 cards and your opponent has 6, it's best not to attack and wait for it's move. When you are attacked, you will either be give the choice to defend or let the attack through. Be sure to look at your cards and the cards that are defending, if yours aren't strong enough to take it out and survive, you might want to let the damage through.

Taking some hits isn't so bad, remember, once cards are set to attack, they are frozen after. You can then plan accordingly on how to attack and what cards used to defend on the next turn. I been in matches where I was left with 200 health and the computer with 2000 and I still won. It just takes some time.

Now the game play in this game is boring as hell. You can't even move your character freely. You have to either point at a dot or move left and right with the D-pad. And when you get in front of a NPC, you either duel it or read some boring script. By the way, almost all the people you fight are clones with different hair color. Yeah good going SNK, how lazy.

The game also makes you go up floors. You can choose from Capcom or SNK side. I guess this is to screw you over for later, because the game makes you play it through twice to get the real rare cards. However, this is a problem since most people that purchased this game can't get past floor 9 due to a glitch on their second play through. Now each floor either has a store, which you have to beat the person to their senses, a trading area or a boss. Beating the boss lets you progress with the fascinating story. (Sarcasm)

Talking about the bosses, they are either super easy or super cheesy. Sometimes they will not do anything to you for every round while others will attack you with cards so strong each turn, you just lose within two turns. One thing I like about the bosses are the music in the background. It has a fast beat and it's something you can hum to. You can keep fighting the bosses over and over again once you defeated them. This way, you can rack up money to buy more cards. And I don't get SNK really. They made it so that everyone else you fight give you like almost nothing for beating them but then a lot for beating the bosses. So why couldn't they just made the bosses on each floor instead of wasting time on underlings that give me a measly 100GP that I can't do nothing with? Never mind, don't answer that.

So what is so bad besides the unbalance of game play and the glitch? What, you actually wanted more? Ok, here is one more. The translations and spellings on some cards are hilariously horrible. I rather read Japanese blind folded or talk to a cat. Its just that bad. You are reading what the card does or the history of the characters and you have to read it over and over and over again just to understand what was written. Do SNK employees have a sense of "spell check" or someone that sits there and goes "Hey, I don't think sense make much here!"

I think that covers it without spoiling too much, not that there is much to spoil in the first place. If you can rent this game, please do so, don't make the mistake like me in buying the first day it came out. To the hardcore fans of Capcom and SNK, this is a must have, but the glitch just makes it so not worth it.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 05/15/07