The issue of complexity here is helped by Master Duel’s solo play mode. If that sounds overly wordy, just try reading a Yu-Gi-Oh! card! Link Summoning even cares about where you place monsters on the battlefield, adding a level of strategy beyond trying to remember everything in the previous sentence. Now, you can Ritual Summon, Link Summon, XYZ Summon, Synchro Summon and Pendulum Summon. When I started playing, the most complicated this got was fusion summoning using the card Polymerization. Some of these involve rules on the cards in your deck, others involve summoning from a second ‘extra’ deck. However there’s also a bevvy of Special Summons - ways of getting monsters into play while circumventing the above rule.
Since you don’t have a mana system to throttle your resources, this is important for setting the pace of play. The rules, at a glance, are that you can Normal Summon one low-level monster (1–4 stars) or Tribute Summon one high-level monster (5+ stars) per turn. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel attempts to address the first, but leaves the second completely untouched, which is a colossal hurdle for new players. The biggest problems with Yu-Gi-Oh! come down to complexity: the base mechanics and the card-level mechanics are both extremely complicated. Still, for you, this is probably a solid 8/10.Įveryone else, pull up your chair and we’ll cover this in more depth, as you’re probably looking at a 5/10 kind of game.
Issues with the economy, such as a capped wallet of free gems and failures in redeeming paid gems present bigger hurdles. If you love Yu-Gi-Oh!, you can skip to the end of this review you’ll both love this game and find its quirks frustrating, although the issues with matchmaking and clunkiness of interface may get ironed out in due course. With a bevvy of missions offering free gems (in-game cash) and a sandbox deckbuilding environment, there is a lot here for fans to love. Whether newcomers to the franchise can get anything from it, however, is another question entirely. Whatever you want to play, from cross-play games with friends to ranked tournament play, Master Duel has you covered - and it does so with a fair level of success. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel very much caters to the dyed-in-the-wool fans. The blessing, of course, is that those who are invested have found something that they love, and no matter the level of overcomplication, are there to stay. The curse is that the game is so complicated that it is virtually unapproachable for new players with limited free time, which is where the Rush Duels franchise comes in in a desperate bid to simplify proceedings, albeit with mixed results.