Yu gi oh legacy of the duelist review

All in all, I really enjoyed Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution. Even with its flaws, it’s easily the best video game in the series to date. There’s a ton to keep you busy, and I’ve easily spent 30-40 hours already just for the sake of this review. The biggest issue I have with it is that it doesn’t do enough to court players unfamiliar with the nuance and newfound complexity of the game. Things like the Forbidden and Limited List are also confusing, in that they aren’t the most recent version, but instead seem a mishmash of previous lists. But if you can look past that sort of thing, you get a lot of bang for your buck for only $39.99. If you’re a fan of the series and are eager for an excuse to dive in and test out new deck ideas, then you’ll enjoy the game. Just be ready to spend a long time grinding for the cards you need.

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When I was growing up I lived and breathed two things: Yu-Gi-Oh! and Pokémon. I'd watch cartoons, collect the cards, and — in Pokémon's case — play the video games. Yu-Gi-Oh! never really had a great video game I could go to. At least not one that could replace my physical deck of cards. The Pokémon video game and card game are completely different, whereas Yu-Gi-Oh! is mostly the same experience no matter how you play it.

I haven't collected Yu-Gi-Oh! cards in several years, and haven't watched the show in even longer. I dropped off around the middle of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's, so I'm a little unfamiliar with the new series and ruleset. Still, it'll always hold a special place in my heart. Getting to experience the series again with Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution was a treat. It's an incredible way to revisit my childhood without spending thousands and thousands on new Yu-Gi-Oh! cards (shamefully, I have probably spent well over $1,000 on my collection in real life).

Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution

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Bottom line: New and old fans alike will find something to love in Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution. Featuring several generations of the iconic series and over 150 duels from the show, there's plenty of content to keep you occupied. It's not the perfect replacement for a physical deck of cards, but it sure comes close.

To get this out of the way, I'm an old school Yu-Gi-Oh! fan. Bring me a Red Eyes Black Dragon, Pot of Greed or Rigeki any day of the week. When I was a kid you could always find me chilling out with the crew in the schoolyard, playing card games, never working too hard; but classic Yu-Gi-Oh! never taught us this - Xyz, Pendulum and Link summons - now I gotta learn 'em, hit or miss.

I totally get summoning, special summoning, sacrificing, polymerisation and so on - I even know all about the Elemental and Destiny Heroes. All of those, happy days. The issue is, as soon as it all became CARD GAMES ON MOTORCYCLES, I peaced out.

Not just from the anime, but the card game itself.

So here I am now, playing Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution was tested using PlayStation 4 code supplied by Konami. The game is out now, and is also available on Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam). Read a guide to our review scores here.

I never managed to get into actually playing the Yu-Gi-Oh card game when I was a kid - mostly because I didn’t want to put in the money to make a functional deck - but I always had a lot of fun playing video games based off the card game. In particular, I always played one of the Game Boy Advance games based on the Battle City arc from the anime, which I still constantly go back to whenever I want to get my Yu-Gi-Oh fix.

Since my frame of reference for the game was still firmly in the original generation of cards, I was worried going into Legacy of the Duelist that I would struggle to keep up with all the mechanics that had been added over the years like Synchro Summons, Xyz Summons, and Pendulum Summons. Thankfully, Legacy of the Duelist does such a good job explaining the mechanics that it wasn’t long before I was able to hop online and duel with the best of them - or at least be able to mostly handle the basics.

Cards in Yu-Gi-Oh are split up between three broad categories: monster cards that fight each other, spell cards that support monsters, and trap cards that react to your opponent’s moves. If, like me, you mainly remember the card game from the days of Yugi and his friends gathering star chips at Duelist Kingdom or locator cards in Battle City, you may be surprised to see how many new, unique mechanics have been added to the card game over the years. One of Yu-Gi-Oh’s most unique aspects, as well as its greatest strength over other trading card games, is how many different ways there are to get monster cards onto the field.

Legacy of the Duelist does an excellent job of appealing to both newcomers and longtime players alike through its story mode. In the story mode, you play through the many duels of the Yu-Gi-Oh anime from Yugi’s first duel against Joey in the classroom across all different series like GX and 5Ds all the way to the latest series, VRAINS. The very first duel of each series gives you a tutorial fight that walks through the new mechanics of that series (or the basic rules in the first series). Since every series is unlocked from the start, these opening chapters serve as an excellent introduction to every mechanic in modern Yu-Gi-Oh. After a brief cutscene catching you up to speed on what the characters are doing in each chapter, you’re given the option to either play with a deck of your own creation or a story deck filled with cards that the character you’re controlling actually had at that point in the anime.

I personally enjoyed playing mostly with the story decks since they gave an extra unique challenge to every duel, but there are downsides to this. In addition to the fact that you’ll learn pretty quick how often the main characters won their duels through blind luck, you’re also not allowed to view the story decks before starting the duel. You won’t be able to form any real strategy unless you’re intimately familiar with every duel in the anime. However, there’s still plenty of variety in the story mode duels even if you’re playing with your own custom deck - with over 200 duels in the campaign, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to come up with any single deck that can bulldoze through more than a few of them with little effort.

Story mode is far from the only draw, though. Rather than let you build your ideal deck right out of the gate, Legacy of the Duelist requires you to build a library of cards through booster packs that are purchased with in-game currency. Although this sounds like an opportunity to nickel and dime players, there are actually no microtransactions in sight; Legacy of the Duelist features no real-money transactions whatsoever. This makes you actually think creatively about building a deck out of the cards you have instead of just looking up the current best deck online, and encourages you to keep playing in order to keep earning new cards. While some may see it as grindy and long-winded, I actually really love it as a way to give a lot of longevity out of the game without forcing you to play with the same few cards over and over.

For those who prefer deck building on the fly, there is an option to play both Draft and Sealed Deck matches that give you a set of booster packs and force you to play a duel either online or offline with the cards in those packs. It’s a classic alternative game mode for trading card games that is a joy to see in an official video game, but there is a major hiccup: you cannot play Draft or Sealed Deck matches online with friends. This effectively forces both players to have put in enough time to craft a custom deck before playing together becomes a viable option. It would be nice to see this option patched in later, but since this is an updated rerelease of a three-year-old game, that’s unlikely to see any time soon.

Despite a few bumps along the way, Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution is the best Yu-Gi-Oh video game I have played in years. Opening booster packs to build your best deck out of the cards you have is the perfect simulacrum of actually playing the trading card game (unless you’d prefer to just buy the single cards you need online), and the choice to include no real-money purchases whatsoever helps mitigate the cost sink that has kept me away from the physical card game in the past. There will never be a Yu-Gi-Oh game that is quite the same as simply playing with real cards, but Legacy of the Duelist is the closest that we have ever gotten to the real thing.

Is Legacy of the Duelist a good game?

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Is Link evolution better than Legacy of the Duelist?

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