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Magic
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Baneful's Column
Millennium Duels Review
Millennium Duels is a video-game derived from the Yu-Gi-Oh!
Trading Card Game.
It was released in March 2014.
It is priced at $10 (U.S.) and also sells paid
downloadable content.
It is available for both Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.
I am reviewing the Xbox 360 version; I played the
game for about 20 hours.
It has been a long while since I had played a YGO
video game. I
believe World
Championship 2008 for the Nintendo DS
But as time went on the faults that have haunted the series
also came to light too.
At it's core, the game plays much like the other YGO
games (which is both good and bad) though the user interface
has been refined a bit.
Interface
Visually, the game avoids the uncanny valley and presents a
clean crisp colorful minimalist interface.
Seeing a YGO game in high-definition on a bright
big-screen television is a enjoyable first. The sound
contains ambient synthesized background music which is
pleasant, but inessential in case you want to multi-task.
I have not encountered a single bug or glitch.
The game performs and runs very well on the Xbox 360.
The online is lag-free.
Menus are easier than ever to navigate and
convenient.
There is an optional tutorial for newer players.
In duels, information about the cards abilities and stats
are readily visible making this easy for newer players.
For example, when you have monsters on the field
which are capable of being used for a Synchro Summon or XYZ
Summon, the Extra Deck will light up to remind you.
Single Player
The campaign is straightforward.
You duel against 100 characters in a linear order.
Starting in the classic Duel Monsters era, you work
your way through GX, 5D and Xexal as you face 25 characters
from each era.
You start with a basic deck that you micromanage as you win
duels and earn more cards.
There is no story or dialogue at all, basically making the
campaign a set of isolated game mechanics.
It's disappointing that there is not a unique
narrative to tie the four generations together though it's
always interesting to see the older characters incorporate
newer cards into their strategies.
If you play YGO for the meat of the duels more than the
storytelling you should not worry too much.
But the campaign did not just stagnate since older
GBA games like Eternal Duelist Soul.
It became even colder and more of a formality.
Progression
After you win a duel against each character, you receive a
pack of 10 cards as a prize.
It feels really rewarding to win a prize for your
efforts as you hope for cards that will strengthen your
deck. However,
these packs rarely contain cards of practical viability.
Due to the massive size of the card pool and the prevalence
of archetypes, you'll find that even after you've played for
hours that you won't have enough cards to build a cohesive
deck. You will
have a few cards from each archetype but never enough to
build a single specific archetype.
Frustrating moments include playing against opponents with
cards you are ill prepared to deal with.
For example, Marik's deck contained a dozen
Continuous Trap cards while I only had access to 2
Spell/Trap removal cards in my entire 40-card deck.
Initially, I tried dueling previously beaten opponents to
build up my card library.
Despite winning 10 more cards, none of the cards I
was awarded could help me out of that situation.
So the solution was to keep dueling him until luck
gives them a bad starting hand.
You can win by sheer persistence if you want to or need to.
Grinding and DLC
After 15 hours of dueling, the only competitive-grade cards
I had unlocked were Call of the Haunted and Sixth Sense.
I unlocked Black Luster Soldier – Envoy of the
Beginning, but had very few decent DARK monsters to summon
it reliably.
It takes so many hours of grinding to build even one decent
deck. Imagine
how long it will take until you're able to build several
different decks, like the deck recipe system encourages you
to do.
Paid downloadable content is offered.
You could pay $2.99 (of real-life money) to buy
different sets of ~20 cards which will be more helpful
toward building your collection than playing for an entire
day would. The
game does not tell you what you would get in these DLC
packs. I had to
search online to find out.
While slowly building up to a better deck is fun, the
progression is far too slow.
And it feels like this I.V.-drip pace was a conscious
decision to make paid content the standard.
Online Multiplayer
Online multiplayer is straightforward.
You duel against other players in ranked and unranked
matches. Voice
chat is allowed.
There are chess-like timers to ensure duelists don't
stall. Cards
activate and resolve themselves, so there is no need for
ruling disputes.
There isn't much if any thought or algorithm put into
matching players.
If your card library is small because you have not
either (a) grinded for enough hours or (b) paid for DLC, you
will still be matched against players with a wide array of
rare cards who were able to create decks that you are never
able to.
In order to have a fighting chance online, you must pay for
additional content or play for an amount of time that is not
very feasible for the average person with a full-time job.
Games like "Pokémon Stadium" (N64) give you all the content
you need to hop into a fair diverse multiplayer game
instantly.
Games like "Team Fortress 2" (PC) make additional content
helpful to have but inessential.
Millennium Duels does not account for either of these
things.
Concluding Thoughts
I've spent a lot of time going over the negatives, but there
is good to be had in this game.
The appealing presentation, large library of cards
and core game mechanics that have always made the TCG great
make it A lot of the time this game is fun.
But its merits are shared by the many other video
games in the YGO franchise.
This is not a terrible game, per se.
It just sticks with a familiar formula and does
nothing to meaningfully change it aside from purely cosmetic
revisions. In
some ways, it has been a step back (lack of a story and
questionable DLC practices).
It can be a somewhat worthwhile experience to some
people, but there are far too many caveats too consider
before it can recommended to most people.
Millennium Duels has rewarding moments, but it wittingly
pushes grinding well beyond the breaking point.
At it's core, YGO is a deep intricate satisfying
strategy game.
This adaptation of the TCG is not structured that way.
Since rewards are earned primarily by money and/or sheer
persistence, I feel like my input in this game matters very
little. This,
above all, is an unfortunate fact.
5/10
- - -
Contact:
banefulscolumn@gmail.com
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