As I mentioned in my Yu-Gi-Oh review, while the show was something I was interested in, when it was possible to keep up with it at least, the card game was not something I got very far in, simply due to no one at my school knowing how to play. While stuff like the life-sized Dual Disks was cool, the confusing rules of the Duelist Kingdom arc stuffed it for everyone (not to mention fake cards everywhere). Because of that, Yu-Gi-Oh didn't stick around for me like Pokemon did, it looked like it died, for the most part, tossed aside like other games that people called Pokemon Knock-Offs.
It wasn't until relatively recently when I looked into the series again that I found out that it was not only still going, but... let's just say the barrier for entry has gotten higher... I still knew how expensive of a hobby competitive card games like that could be, even with my reasonably cheap Psychic deck back during the Pokemon Generation 5 rule sets, and that price was nothing compared to what some decks cost in Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and even Magic the Gathering. So when I found out that a game for the Switch was coming out that had not only all the released cards at the time, but also allowed you to play iconic duels from all the shows? It had my interest, though it also came with its fair share of problems.
I'll start with the presentation, as mechanically, there's not much to talk about here, as it is the current rule set for the card game. Presentation sells these games based on collectable and competitive card games, and the presentation here is fine but very basic. The cards themselves look good, and UI implementations allowing for reading the card text makes it very easy (most of the time) to learn what a card does, at least when compared to the real cards, when some cards could have font smaller then this on a smaller then normal card for the sake of trying to explain it's paragraph long rules for its abilities. The presentation is lacking in many areas, with cutscenes represented by still portraits and dialogue boxes, with no voice acting to be seen (something I would have liked to have seen for the more important duelists, because I like hearing Kaiba going "You're a third rate duelist with a forth rate deck!"... It was in the mobile game...). On top of that, the duel fields look like basic JPG files with the duel mat put on top of it. Each image looks to change out based on what series you're playing, and what arc in that series it is, rather than the context of the show (either that or I'm misremembering the Shadow realm, last I checked it didn't have a nice happy meadow that looked exactly like the one I just fought Mai Vallentine in...). The music as well is completely forgettable, though grading when it came to hearing it repeat over and over again due to the fluctuating difficulty of the game.
Due to the nature of competitive card games, the difficulty of a match is all based on the luck of the draw. This carries over into Link Evolution as well, because if you get a bad draw, you may as well surrender and try again, because recovering is easier said then done (I wish I was kidding when I said I've been slaughtered by AI in 3 turns at times because I kept drawing cards I couldn't use yet). While it's nice to get a small number of prizes even if you lose, it gets tedious constantly repeating duels just to win a match and move on, it's the main reason why I haven't gone further then Yugi getting Slyther the Sky Dragon in Battle City (which, on a side note, going back to presentation, iconic monsters get a 3 second intro animation when they're summoned, but there are numerous monsters that you'd think would get the animation (like the Egyptian God cards), that don't for some reason.). While it is fun playing with both the story winner's deck and then having a reverse match where you can play with the other characters deck, some decks are hindered by the changed rules very heavily, to the point where it's better to use one of the premade structure decks based on different mechanics. A big example of this for me was Yugi vs Bandit Keith before Battle City, where Keith's deck was a complete pushover to fight as Yugi, and impossible to use when I was playing as Keith himself, due to the anime not having the tribute summon rules at the time.
There are other parts to the presentation that I would have liked to see if they were in the game. An option to play using different rulesets would have been nice, and a good way to break up the gameplay a bit, while also giving a reason to make decks themed around rules like not needing to tribute summon monsters, or speed duelling like in the Mobile game. Going further, it would have been interesting to have other spin-off duelling styles like Team battles, Labyrinth battles and Dungeon Dice Monsters as options (can you tell I don't have much post GX experiences with Yu-Gi-Oh?). It would have helped with the presentation, as I'm happy to take a basic looking game that has a lot of features.
I struggle to call this game bad. Objectively, it does what it set out to do with no major issues. But the big problems come from it doing what it set out to do, and not really doing anything else on top of it. It looks extremely basic, like a mobile game ported to consoles, but that in itself is kind of an insult because the mobile game has a better presentation then this game. The core itself is fine for the most part but compared to other video games based off of card games, even ones like Gwent when they were mini-games in Witcher 3, It just looks and feels bland. But at least there aren't any microtransactions using real money, because, with the number of duels you'll be playing and replaying, you can easily stock up on a lot of card packs. It's fine, but could have been a lot better.
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