Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force

"The epitome of what a Yu-Gi-Oh game should be"

Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force, the first installment of the Yu-Gi-Oh! series on the PSP, is a great example of how Yu-Gi-Oh! games should be done. Though some installments on handheld weren't that great (such as a large handful of the games on GBA), Konami really got it right this time, including not just card dueling, but other elements to create an enjoyable game.

GAMEPLAY
The game is a Yu-Gi-Oh! card game, but also has an RPG element. You get a character, who you name whatever you want, and you're put in Duel Academy. You go from place to place and duel people to earn Duel Points (DP). The Duel Points you earn go towards buying more cards to improve your deck. You walk around an area and talk to people, and move from place to place, with time advancing 15 minutes between each time you leave an area.

The places stay true to the Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Anime, with many parts of Duel Academy including the classroom, store and the individual class dorm room. As far as class goes, you go into class at 8:00 AM and leave at 4:00 P.M., and the rest of the time, starting at 6:45 AM and going as late as 12:00 PM, can be spent doing whatever you want. A neat feature is that you can advance time whenever you want, so if you want to end a day early, you can go on ahead.

Another neat feature is that on Sundays its Tag Duel day. You get a partner, but the partner is based on your relationships with the characters. The seven main characters from the Anime (Jaden, Syrus, Chumley, Bastion, Alexis, Chazz and Zane) can be your partner based on your relationship with them. You can get your relationship up by having good conversations with them, giving them sandwiches, and winning a duel. The relationship system is very well done, as choosing different topics with different people makes the conversation either bad or good. Also, you can give characters sandwiches. Certain sandwiches will only be good for certain characters, so you need to know which character likes what. Whoever you build the best relationship with teams up with you for Tag Duels at the end of the week. This adds another interesting element, as you can build your deck to have a style that will compliment your partner, I.E., if you team with Bastion, who has an Earth deck, you can also make an Earth-based deck, giving an advantage to not only your monsters, but your partner's as well. By interacting with certain characters, you can plan ahead to duel day and make your deck to have a stronger team.

Other than the seven main characters, there are other characters from the Anime, such as the teachers and other minor students. The rest of the characters are miscellaneous NPCs, who all have a name and their own deck. The characters are (usually) stronger or weaker depending on their rank (An Obelisk is usually harder to defeat than a Slifer, with a Ra somewhere in between). The amount of Duel Points is usually reflected in who you beat -an Obelisk pays more Duel Points than a Ra or Slifer. In addition, you get more Duel Points in bonuses, depending on certain factors. One good thing is that winning a duel always earns you enough Duel Points to buy a 100 DP pack, whereas in other games winning a duel didn't always guarantee enough DP for a pack. Most packs are 100 DP, with some of them costing 150, and some of them being 300. There's even one that cost over 5,700! One downside, though, is that the password cards are now "rentals", that you can only have three of, and take a big chunk of your DP winnings. While some people like the discouragement of password machines, some who have a hard time finding cards that may be Super Rare or Ultra Rare may find themselves frustrated.

For the later part of the game, you get to choose your partner altogether. You can literally choose any partner in the game that's accessible, though you will have to team with some characters to unlock certain things. The great thing about this is that there's over 100 duelists, so no matter what your deck theme, chances are there's another duelist with the same theme to team up with. There's a lot of tag dueling in the later half of the game, so you'll want to practice making several decks and picking the right partner.

As far as the dueling goes, it's standard card duels, like the other games. As far as the cards go, they look like the real thing. Some cards do have animation, mostly the major cards used by the main characters in the Anime. These animations are quite nice, though many might want to turn them off (see the Graphics section for more info).

SOUND
The sound is nothing too special. There isn't voice acting or anything, which would've add a little something to the game, but isn't absolutely necessary. Otherwise it's just background music that's nothing special. However, there is a nice sounding song that plays when you're in a winning situation in a duel, which is very nice to hear and sounds good.

GRAPHICS
Very good graphics. Not super fancy, but not poor graphics that would make you think the developers were just being lazy. The cards look like real cards, and the character models look like they should. One thing that is impressive, is the character images that are on during the duel, that show the characters actually dueling. Also, when the main duelist uses a major card that they use in the Anime (such as Zane's Cyber End Dragon), a real animation of the card will appear. Unfortunately, these animations have a price- they make the duels longer than they should be, so many people will probably want to turn them off, but they are still quite a nice graphical effect. The characters in the over world are nicely done, big-headed sprites, and when you talk to the characters from the Anime, a full image of them appears during your conversation, looking like they do in the Anime. Not only that, but each character has many different facial expressions for what they're talking about. A lot of attention was paid to detail here, and it shows.

REPLYABILITY/EXTRAS
There is quite a good amount of things to do other than beating the game. Trying to collect all the cards in the game is something that the perfectionists will love to achieve, and players will enjoy making new decks with the tons of cards in the game. A good amount of replayability, especially if you really like dueling and would be willing to duel a lot.

OVERALL
Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force is one of the most enjoyable PSP games I've played and probably my favorite Yu-Gi-Oh! game. With nice graphics, good music, a full over world and well-done characters, Tag Force shows that the Yu-Gi-Oh! series has come a long way from picking a character and having a duel with incorrect rules on the GBC. This is what a Yu-Gi-Oh! game should be. The only downside is that you'll probably end up hooked on it!

DEFINITELY RECOMMENDED

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/11/06, Updated 04/13/07