Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories

"This game cheats!"

I don't know where the hell Yu-Gi-Oh! came from but I think the show and the games are awesome. This game is the first one I have played (other than the card game) but if this is the standard for others to come, then there is reason to be excited. But the game isn't perfect, and sometimes you'll wonder why the game programmers did some of the things they did.
Gameplay: I was skeptical at first about playing a card dueling sim. I just would rather play the card game in real life than spend my money to buy a game I already have. But the game gives what its asked for and I would say the results are satisfactory. Basically in this game, you go through three maps of opponents in progressing difficulty. You start off fighting guys lke Yugi and Joey, but eventually you start fighting people like Kaiba. The game requires you beat each person on a map 5 times before you move on. You might think this is tedious, but it is actually helpful. Every time you win or lose a battle, you gain 5 extra points to customize your deck. Your deck may seem strong at the beginning but you will be in tears if you try to use it the whole game. So if you have enough points, you can remove one of your cards and trade it in for a much stronger card. Problem is, you have to watch out for deck capacity, because if you put too many high cost cards in, the game won't let you duel. So the game teaches you it is important to win and lose. But obviously its more important to win, as you get the deck points, a card part, and a free card if you do so. The card parts add some fun to the game as you can create your own powerful card and play it on your friends.
This game isn't too hard... unless the game cheats. Usually when I say a game cheats, I am coming up with a way to blame someone other than myself for someone sucking. But this game really cheats! If you read the instructions, the manual says you can only have 1 type of card if its a powerful card, and they give you a list. Well, the game obviously never read this, because it uses cards like Change of Heart 3 TURNS IN A ROW!!! This becomes an annoyance because you can't really cheat right back. I would have to say the cheating happened about half of the time by the time I reached the last map. But thats all I can really complain about.
Story: There isn't one. Basically, you are dueling people so you can earn the right to fight the 4 Keepers of the Millenium Items. Not much to say about that.
Sound: Again, not much to say. The sound is decent for this kind of game but don't come to the game expecting Mozart out of the tiny speaker.
Graphics: The still shots of the characters are pretty good. The cards are also pretty good, and in most cases are almost identical to their real-life counterparts. The colors are a little too dark though.
Buy/rent? I would say buy it if you are an RPG fan, a sim fan, or a Yugi fan. I doubt anyone else would have much fun with this game.
Replayability: Considering you can create like 200 cards and collect 800 or so cards, you will be playing for awhile just to get all the cards. You won't spend too long on the main game, but collecting every card takes a long time. I found that was more fun than the duels themselves.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 08/14/02, Updated 08/14/02