"A little annoying, but enjoyable nevertheless!!!"

Okay, okay. I know I was setting myself up to get massively burned with this game, since I'm used to having ye olde reliable cheat devices on the GBA for having all the cards (so I can have nice decks early on and actually WIN). But does the DS deliver the goods in spite of the burn?

First off is the plot: Meh. Nothing new here. It actually goes up to the anime's events during the "Enter the Shadow Realm" arc. (The Big Five, Noah, and Gozaburo) I won't even rate this, since nobody really plays the games for the plot.

Graphics: WOW. I'm blown away. I'd never have expected ANY handheld YGO game to take ye olde Forbidden Memories/Duelists of the Roses approach and have little 3D monsters at the top of the screen. Having special music for the summons of key character monsters (ex.: Summoned Skull, Dark Magician, Red-Eyes, Blue-Eyes, etc.) makes it even more menacing. Too bad that unlike FM, there ain't no trace of the critters actually duking it out. The graphics ain't the best, but this is VERY early in the DS's life yet...it should improve by next year's game. 10/10, hands down.

Gameplay: Expert Rules all the way, baby!!! This is what dueling is all about. But there's a flaw: you don't have EVERY SINGLE CARD, as usual. Methinks Konami had originally intended this as a GBA project but bumped it up to the DS at the last minute. I mean, come ON...a DS card should be MORE than perfectly capable of handling the information for all the cards from the game IRL. Having to find duelists on the map uses the Touch Screen. It's a very intuitive feature, but personally, it makes things a bit slow going if you're trying to actually advance the story. If you had the patience to wait it out to find key events back in Duel Monsters 6/DM International (a.k.a. World Wide Edition)...then it won't bug you much. The real annoyance is that the AI here will usually cheap its way to victory by making your draws even more random than ever. Odds are, you're going to lose duels because you got stuck with a crappy hand that you could NOT do anything about. (Well, I sure did, anyway.) Also, there are some opponents who you NEED to have a strong deck against (Mako...) that will wipe the floor with you, because they come too early in the game for you to be able to prevent that. 7/10.

Sound: Uhh...no. Still sucks as usual, except for the alternate monster summon tune for key characters' critters. Additional tracks, please!!! 3/10

Control: The touch screen is where the REAL dueling action goes on, once you're in a duel. I must warn you: if you're expecting to double-tap a card, like you would with a mouse on a PC, then you're going to be brutally disappointed. You touch a card, then you touch the option of what you want to do with it. I dunno why Konami didn't just make a simpler double-tap option for placing cards on the field...but this DOES work as it is, with some practice. And if it bugs you that much, you don't even need to use the stylus, the d-pad and the B/A buttons will serve you just fine!!!

On the map is a different story, the stylus is pretty much a must to move the targeting sensor around, unless you LIKE cleaning your screen off all the time. ^_^ Other than that, there's nothing to say, really. 8/10

Replay Value: Hmmm. I haven't gotten that far in it yet. So far, however, I CAN say that if you're not that big on DS games yet, you should certainly rent it or borrow it first. The game kinda forces replay value on you (again...) since you can't really do some things until AFTER you've beaten the main story. Well...if you don't collect the Egyptian God Cards (which, like the crummy Duel Monsters 7: The Battlecity Legend (The Sacred Cards) and Duel Monsters 8: Reshef of Destruction, are actually PLAYABLE here) on the first run through the game - and AFAIK, the book by Prima does NOT make any notable mention of them - that would count as replay, as you'd likely have to go after them after beating the game...which would be a worthy thing if you're a fan of Saint Dragon Osiris (Slifer the Sky Dragon), heh heh heh. 9/10

Overall: Just try it out first. If you like it, then by all means get it...just be ready to have your l337 skills challenged like MAD.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/22/05