Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Spirit Caller

"A good but thin TCG game"

I recently picked this game up in a bargain bin for $20 since the 2007 game in this series had already come out. I always wanted to have a decent TCG-style game for my DS and since they will never make one for Magic: The Gathering, the Yu-Gi-Oh! series is really still the best option there (it's too bad Marvel and SNK vs. Capcom didn't work out very well). While it may be a bit embarrassing to pick up this title associated with an anime that is best left to age 13-and-unders, don't let that turn you off from this title entirely.

Gameplay: 8/10

The gameplay consists mainly of participating in duels with students on the Duel Academy island. All controls in the game can be done seamlessly with the d-pad and buttons or with the stylus. By moving a radar icon around any of the five parts of the island, you can find your opponents and challenge them, though you will not know whom you have found unless it is someone you have already challenged enough times to have registered on your in-game PDA. The dueling game is a very faithful recreation of the card game, and while in the beginning the game is very easy, decks become more difficult and more creative as you move on to fight harder opponents. Beating opponents earns you Duel Points, which you can trade for five-card booster packs to enhance your deck, as well as EXP which causes you to gain "School Levels".

So the game progresses in a day-to-night pattern, forcing you to sleep when the day comes to an end, and certain things (such as the card store) are only available during certain times of day. As you play and explore the island, you will activate events that trigger story progression, causing you to have to explore the island in certain ways in order to proceed. These events unlock new packs for purchase and can cause other things to happen, but they will only occur if your School Level is high enough, meaning you can't just blaze through the story without doing some significant duelling first.

The A.I. in this game is not to be trifled with either. In the GBA titles there were some tricks you could do to easily fool computer duelists into making mistakes, but the duelists in this game play the game well and don't consistently make stupid, rookie mistakes, so this game is much more satisfying to play over previous games that have made you go, "Why the heck did it do that?"

Also worth mentioning is the level of character customization available. You can combine a face and a hair style to generate a Yu-Gi-Oh! style persona the way you'd like, and by beating specific opponents multiple times, you can unlock new costumes and duel disks and titles. This is a change from previous titles where only basic name and maybe avatar customization is available, and should prove fun for fans of the series who have their own idea of what the best character would be.

There is also a nice puzzle mode involving having to beat an opponent in a single turn using pre-set cards, forcing you to use the right cards in the right order in order to have the desired effect. This can be a fun way to learn the game's mechanics and it can really be a brain-teaser to get the harder ones right, but can seem very daunting when you have a whole field full of cards to understand and consider, especially since there are many "red herrings", cards you don't actually need to use to beat the puzzle that are simply there to throw you off.

This said, sometimes the game can get to be a real grind, especially at the beginning where the better characters will refuse to duel you until you progress further. Most of the really good and useful cards are rare and it'll take a while to unlock them, which can be frustrating if you want to have a great deck for playing online.

Also, while the puzzle mode is nice and the main game is well-polished, I can't help but feel the game is a bit thin. The number of duelists available leaves some variety to be desired, there aren't any other gameplay modes to be heard of, there's no single-cart multiplayer, these and many other things that could've been make the game feel like there could've been so much more. Visiting areas you don't need to simply results in a single "nobody's here" message, and the storyline is very linear. It simply feels like there are no details, like the basic game has been created and there's none of that pizazz that makes a game feel well-rounded. This may be a bit silly of a complaint since it's easy to get sucked into the game and end up spending hours with it on end, but it still makes you wish a little bit more time had been spent on rounding out the experience.

Also, the story sucks, it's based strictly off of the second show, so obviously it's going to, but it doesn't really matter.

Graphics: 7/10

The 3D graphics in the game are nice considering the DS hardware they're on. The top screen shows the field and all of the cards in 3D, and also displays 3D models of all the monsters in the game, a nice dynamic change in look compared to previous GBA titles where everything was flat. The style in the game is consistent and looks like it was pulled right out of the anime, and characters react when things go right or wrong. The cards are well represented, and the battlefield changes depending on where you're dueling. There's not much else that could be done graphics-wise but there's nothing special here either. The Yu-Gi-Oh! GX style, however, is more embarassing and less exciting than the style from the original show, however.

Sound: 6/10

This is one of the areas where the game really could've been improved. The game's sound effects seem like they're the same ones that've been used since the GBA titles, and there is only one set of music that can be heard while dueling. The music changes a bit during a duel, getting more tense when you're losing and getting happy when you're winning, but the music isn't very good or exciting and it gets very repetitive. This game could've done well to include more songs so that the music doesn't get so annoying, especially if they could've simply used some of the better in-duel music from the two shows (the music is one of the saving graces of the first show). It would've been nice to have an option to turn the music off but the sound effects on. Eventually you'll want to have some music that gets you jazzed up on headphones while you play instead of listening to the game's sound. There's no voice acting, but that's actually a big plus.

Multiplayer: 9/10

This game really sings when you take it online. Duelling the decks that have been created for you to be able to fight is fine, but when you get through the game and get a really good deck, you'll want to face off against other people who've made their decks to win. Go online on your computer and find people to trade friend codes with, or simply use the game's matching system to find a random opponent. If you've got a friend with this game, by some chance, you will have a lot of fun trading and battling, for sure. This extra level of competition and the excitement of battling a real person online adds a lot of fun to the game and a lot of replay value. This is the feature that really makes the DS games stand out from the GBA titles.

Replay Value: 10/10

There are a ridiculous number of unlockables, hidden cards and items, and other things to get in this game. With over 1400 cards, the collection value of the game will have you hooked for months. The replay value really makes this game worth the purchase, you won't get sick of this game unless you get sick of the card game itself, and if you do, won't you be much happier you spent about $20 on this instead of hundreds on real cards? If you're a fan of TCGs, you'll find enough new strategies and combos as you play to experiment with and mull over that the game will last you a long time. It's really easy to spend a lot of time tweaking your deck to make it perfect, and pondering over what cards should go in and which should be tossed.

Overall: 8/10

This game is more than worth it for the $20 I spent on it. If you're a hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! enthusiast, you might want to go with the mildly more expensive and apparently somewhat better Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007, but if not, pick this up instead and save yourself some cash, it's just as good for most of us. Since you can transfer cards straight from this game to 2007, you might want to pick this game up first for cheap, play through it and get an awesome deck, and then pick up 2007 when it's price goes down in a while and transfer your cards over to the new game in order to get a head start on it. If you like TCG at all there's no reason not to pick this game up for the price it's currently going for and if you've got a kid who's into Yu-Gi-Oh! GX then they'll go nuts over this (and you'll probably sneak in a few duels while they're asleep).

Oh, and don't bother renting this game. You won't get enough out of it, the game really only picks up in value once you've gotten further into it.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/06/07