Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Duel Academy

"Insert "Get your game on" pun here."

-Introduction-

You crazy kids might recall a game called Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament 2005, a game that was released last year. If you know me from the board, you'd also know that I wrote a review of it around the time it came out, as I plug it any time I can bring it up.

You also might remember that the game was really bad. The annoying banlist shifted every week and banned cards that were perfectly legitimate, every opponent played pretty much the same deck, and Konami, in their infinite wisdom, decided that Yu-Gi-Oh fans would much prefer using bad common cards from the first few expansions to, well, anything people would actually use.

"Get to the point, Devilzoa," you may be saying. "Your reviews are stupid and a waste of time and you're probably ugly."

First of all, there's no need for attitude.

Second of all, you can throw the atrocities from WCT2005 out the window in this edition of Yu-Gi-Oh. You aren't playing against slightly modified variants of the same basic beatdown deck in every duel, the game doesn't restrict cards at random, and, GASP, it's actually kind of fun!

Why, you ask? Well, let's get to the review.

-Gameplay-

As in my review of WCT2005, I'm not going to bother with the actual rules of the card game. That would be pointless, since you probably already know how the game works.

This game is styled more like the Eternal Duelist Soul or World Wide Edition games, in that it's basically a series of menus, as opposed to the more RPG-ish nature of WCT2005. Strangely enough, despite the fact that I'm a big RPG fan, I kind of like this style better. It's a lot more simplistic, and you don't have to wander around random areas to find the person you want to duel.

As its title implies, this game is set in the GX storyline from Yu-Gi-Oh, which means as opposed to Yugi and his compatriots, you'll encounter the likes of Jaden, Syrus, Chazz, and so forth. Because these characters tend to play cards that are relatively new to the expansions in real life, Konami finally realized that hey, maybe we'd want to use cards that aren't outdated, and so the game goes up to around the Cybernetic Revolution expansion, though it's missing a few cards from said expansion.

As in WCT2005, winning duels grants you DP, which you then spend to buy booster packs and whatnot. You automatically start out with three different decks to use, and they actually have themes.

So do your opponent's decks, in fact. The characters all play similar decks to the ones they use on the show, which means that instead of facing the typical 1900-beatstick legion, you'll be playing against a wide variety of archetypes. There are around 1200 cards in the game, many of which haven't been released in English yet, but all these cards forced Konami to downsize in other areas, so you can only have around seven or eight decks stockpiled.

I'm a fan of beat-this-scenario style puzzles in card games, and this game has quenched my thirst, as it has exactly 100 of them to do. A few truly made me feel what I should be feeling in a beat-this-scenario puzzle: Complete and utter confusion. Of course, the trade-off is that some of them serve more as "How To Use This Particular Card" segments than beat-this-scenario puzzles, but some of them are actually quite difficult to figure out.

As in the series, you can move about in dorms and rankings. The higher ranking you are, the more people you can play. Every "Month" or so in the game, you take part in an exam to raise your rank, which is presented in the form of a simple trivia exercise, a beat-this-scenario puzzle, and a straight-up duel with emphasis placed on a certain area, such as playing a lot of Fusion monsters or using a lot of Traps.

What I like best, though, are the little touches. The game doesn't take an eternity to sort your cards out anymore, which is good for my patience. Also, the banlist isn't completely arbitrary, and is actually quite sensible in the cards it bans and restricts. It doesn't rearrange itself every week anymore, either. It stays fixed for at least a "year" or so.

And, as said before, the game has cards that you'll actually want to use. I tried to make the deck I actually use, and the final product was only off by four cards, which were easily replaced.

The AI is not without its flaws, though. As in previous installments, the computer will Magic Jammer almost any card it can, even if the card would destroy the Magic Jammer anyway. It's still easily tricked by "baiting" them into negating one Magic card and then pulling out the one you want to use, though I imagine that would be a hard flaw to counteract.

I've also seen several characters play monsters such as Hane-Hane, which is completely useless as an attacker, and try to use them to destroy my face-down monsters. Also, if you have a high-defense monster such as, say, a Gear Golem the Moving Fortress, and your opponent can't destroy it, they will never attack it ever. This is also true of monsters that can't be destroyed in battle.

A few other glaring flaws are present in the AI, (This actually happened: Syrus suiciding his Harpie Girl into my Ancient Gear Beast, despite the fact that Gear Beast is much stronger and he would have no reason to do this.) but they don't come up that often.

Many of the AI decks are quite bad, too. Zane and Chazz in particular have horrible decks, which is odd, considering how they're supposedly some of the better players in the anime. Despite the fact that Zane's deck is based around the Cyber Dragon monster in both the game and the show, I have yet to see him use a Cyber Dragon or any of its fused forms on me.

There's also quite a lot of glitches. There's an infinite burn glitch involving Stealth Bird, the card Burst Stream of Destruction can be activated without the monster that you're supposed to have on the field in order to activate it, and several times over the course of the game I played Smashing Ground, occasionally having it not do anything, or worse, destroy my monsters, even though the card clearly states that it only targets your opponent's. Card of Sanctity has a completely different effect from its actual text. The list goes on and on.

It's entertaining in some parts, but the fact is, the glitches are incredibly prominent and bog the game down considerably.

Gameplay: 6/10

-Controls-

Good from what I can see. You use A to select, B to cancel, and the D-Pad moves the cursor. It's kind of hard to screw that up. Sometimes, however, I've found myself making moves I don't actually want to make. I blame that on the controls, disregarding the fact that it's really probably because I'm an idiot.

Controls: 8/10

-Story-

You go to the Duel Academy featured in the GX series with the hopes of becoming King of Games. And you accomplish this by...wait for it...dueling everybody.

Not exactly Tolkien-worthy, but a game that's basically about playing cards doesn't really need to have a good plotline. At some places, it loosely follows the plot of the anime series.

But as it stands, if you want an epic, enthralling quest packed with murder, betrayal, and giant robots (because giant robots can make any story better), you'll probably feel ripped off. As there isn't really much of a story to speak of at all, I'm going to give this section...

NA/10

-Graphics-

Konami actually tried with the backgrounds this time around. When a field magic card is played, the background shifts to the image on the card. The card images look, as always, just like the real thing. The location backgrounds are good, (I particularly like the academy exterior at sunset) and the character portraits are very nicely done, even though Chazz looks a little bit too psycho.

It's also a nice touch that if a character attacks you directly, an image of them striking a pose occasionally displays itself on the screen for a minute. This also happens if they lose via a direct attack. Kind of makes you feel like you're playing an episode of the show.

And they actually have a font I can read now. Hurrah.

Graphics: 9/10

-Sound-

The sounds are your generic beeps and crashes and so forth, as usual.

The music is an awesome supply of fast-paced hard rock that's sure to get you air-guitaring. On a completely unrelated note, I was listening to the Guilty Gear soundtrack during most of the time I was playing this game.

It's a known fact that GBA games that aren't RPGs tend to have bland sound effects and bad music, and this is, of course, no exception.

Sound: 2/10

-Playing and Replaying-

If you're up to it, you have 1200 cards to collect, 100 puzzles to solve, and billions of duels to win in order to do so. This game could take months to finish properly, assuming you don't move on to something else and forget about it. It'd be a decent game to take on a long car ride, though.

No replayability, from what I can see. I haven't actually beaten the game yet, but if the other games are anything to go by, you probably don't get much once you beat it. So there's not much reason to give it a second go.

Game Length: 9/10

Replay Value: 2/10

-Buy or Rent?-

If you could rent it, I wouldn't recommend it, since you probably wouldn't be able to get much done in the rental period. Your best bet is to just buy it, and if you're disappointed, you can probably get your money back by selling the (okay) promos to a card shop.

THE FINAL TALLY OF AWESOMENESS

Gameplay: 6/10
Controls: 8/10
Story: NA/10
Graphics: 9/10
Sound: 2/10
Game Length: 9/10
Replay Value: 2/10

FINAL SCORE ZOMG: 6/10 (Not an average)

In closing, if you own a GBA and ABSOLUTELY MUST HAVE a Yu-Gi-Oh game, this one is probably your best bet. Provided you can handle the glitches.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/21/06