Back in the late '90s and early 2000s, it felt like Yu-Gi-Oh! was seen on the playground as the game only played by the kids who wouldn’t play Pokémon. Nonetheless, the franchise has persisted for nearly as long as those popular pocket monsters, and has always maintained a passionate following. Naturally, this led to the production of many video games, but most of these releases arguably lacked that special something needed to capture what made the real card game so compelling. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is Konami's latest attempt — a free-to-play card game looking to become the Yu-Gi-Oh! game you’ve been waiting for. In many respects it pulls this off, although there are some rough edges to this release that hold it back from greatness.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is a ‘pure’ digital card game in the same way that Legends of Runeterra or Hearthstone are—there’s no real story nor is there an RPG-like ‘game around the game’ to help anchor the deckbuilding in a more concrete universe. It’s just a bunch of menus and a lot of cards to sort through, and in this regard it’s everything you could’ve hoped for if you’re the kind of player who really likes to cut to the chase and get into the weeds of learning an incredibly in-depth game.
That depth is perhaps the main sticking point of this release, so let’s just jump right into that negative before getting to the positive. Simply put, Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is a rough game to contend with if you’re a newcomer who doesn’t already know what you're doing. There’s a veritable mountain of rules and concepts to learn, and you’re certainly not going to pick any of it up without spending quite a bit of time crawling through online wiki databases and YouTube videos. An early in-game tutorial does a somewhat decent job of giving you a crash course in the basics of a match, and subsequent single player campaigns help to build on this with piloting specific decks, but there is a considerable amount of extra knowledge you need to acquire before you can reasonably hope to stand a chance against real world foes.
Many of the higher level cards come with novellas in their descriptions laying out the trigger conditions and obscure talents of that card, and it can be exceedingly confusing to begin building a knowledge base of how to use them effectively when there are so many terms that are never explained but sound extraordinarily important. Even once you understand the cards better, knowing how to effectively use them in tandem with each other to get the best performance really requires you to do your homework. A number of our matches online were thus spent watching the fireworks as our foes methodically managed to somehow continuously play, summon, and destroy cards en masse until dropping a bomb that wiped us out in one turn. Not every battle went this way—we even won several of them—but there’s a pervasive sense that the new player experience in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel could use quite a bit of work.
If you can get past that enormous barrier to entry, however, Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has a lot to love. The main draw of the experience here is, of course, the online matchmaking, which just pairs you with someone that’s (hopefully) at your skill level and has you battle it out in a one-and-done duel. If you win, you move up a little bit in your rank and get more experience points, which grant you both more crystals to spend in the shop and more levels unlocked in the battle pass. It’s a simple system, sure, but very effective in keeping you locked into the loop of spending your winnings on crafting and pulling cards so you can go back in to win more battles and thus win more rewards.
If you’re not much into competitive multiplayer, however, there’s not nearly as much content to parse. Those abovementioned tutorials act as interesting introductions to lore and give you a thorough understanding of specific cards or decks, but it doesn’t take too long to chop through these ‘Gates’ and be left wanting more. Of course, there’s no reason to believe that Konami won’t be adding more content to this section over time, but it feels a little underwhelming if you’re the kind of player who would rather keep to themselves.
If you want to even remotely stand a chance online, you’re going to have to invest your limited resources in building a proper deck and this is perhaps where the most divisive element of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel comes in. We’re happy to report that the card shop doesn’t feel like it’s too pay-to-win, but bear in mind that this is also a fresh game and that developers are usually a lot more generous with the free in-game currency on a new release like this. At any rate, you spend crystals to buy card packs, and you acquire more crystals by either paying for them with real money or earning them through winning duels and completing simple daily missions. There are a lot of potential card packs to pull from, and rare cards in a pack will usually further unlock ‘Secret Packs’ that are built around those cards, but with the caveat that they disappear within 24 hours. Of course, this is where Konami is twisting the knife, because if you really want to take advantage of the increased chance of getting the cards in those limited time secret packs, you’re probably going to have to either play a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel in the next day or shell out the cash to shore up your crystals enough.
Luckily, cards aren’t added to your collection only by random gacha pulls, as you can go into the deck editor and destroy unwanted or extra cards and use those resources to craft any card that you want. It takes a fair amount of planning and commitment to a specific deck given that your resources here are quite limited, but it can be satisfying to slowly put together a deck that you understand and know will be fairly competitive when you go online. All of this is to say, we’re rather pleased at how Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel continuously finds ways to give you more cards over time without absolutely showering you with them, but we can also see this very quickly turning into an enormous money and time sink if Konami starts being stingier with the crystals or starts meddling with pricing.
As for its presentation, Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel manages to satisfy, although the current build available at launch is greatly let down by its performance. Card art is nicely detailed and the animations and effects that play—especially when someone slaps down a high level monster—can make for quite the colorful spectacle. It is simply a card game at the end of the day, so there’s perhaps only so much you can expect out of the visuals, but we were rather impressed at how much energy all the sound effects and animations add to the experience.
What we weren’t impressed by was the awful performance on display, which is downright disappointing. Upon booting up the game for the first time, we were greeted by a message that basically told us the game will crash and that it’s being looked into. The message certainly didn’t lie, as there were a few instances where a sudden shutdown forced us to have to restart and try to remember where we were in the deck we were building. Beyond this, every time the game moves screens or menus, there’s a substantial few moments of lag where everything on screen almost freezes while you can just about hear the game wheezing. We’re confident the worst of these issues will be ironed out in the coming weeks post-launch, but just be warned that the Switch is probably that worst platform to play Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel on at the time of writing.
Conclusion
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is an odd game to recommend. Those of you who have never played before may want to check it out—it’s free after all—but even at that lowest of prices the barrier to entry is so great that it can feel like getting stuck into this one isn’t really worth the effort it would take. Those of you who have a longer history with Yu-Gi-Oh! will have a much better time getting into it and climbing the ranks, but then you were probably going to play this game regardless of reviews. At any rate, Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has all the foundations of a potentially great online card-battler, and though it has its issues — at least at launch — it’s definitely worth checking out if you've got the fortitude to stick with it.
Comments (40)
Yeah switch version performance is so bad. I hope they fix it. Just like Bomberman Online.
@JokerCK The other YGO game on Switch, Legacy of the Duelist also runs pretty bad with constant crashes. Hasn't been fixed.
You may have to change the subheading. The competitive Yu Gi Oh playerbase will go rabid if you leave it as is.
I got bored by the mandatory tutorial
@Fizza It actually confused me, as there is a pretty prominent meme about "no one knowing what Pot of Greed does"...and i wasn't sure if they got it wrong on purpose...
Pot of greed is usually banned in Player vs. Player these days.
As someone that goes to tournaments once in a while and is a fan on the anime, I'm having quite some fun with my Monarch deck. But hope they'll add more modes so there are duels for starter decks against starter decks, instead of only rabked where you can be destroyed by the best decks in the game at any moment
I'm confused. What does Pot of Greed do again?
Longtime player here--of course Yugioh has changed since y'all played it 15 years ago! It does take a solid time investment to learn what all the new cards do and how to follow/stop your opponent's "endless" turns. It's a more mentally demanding than the days of Pot of Greed and Trap Hole.
It was a big mistake for them to launch Master Duel without an alternative PvP format to help acclimate old fans. Plus the game's slow speed & animations make those long turns take five times longer than IRL (where better regulations have banned many of these combo decks). I'd encourage returning players not to be too scared off at first!
@Phantom_R I've actually gotten addicted to watching competitive Yu Gi Oh videos on Youtube, specifically JWittz and Duel Logs, over the last month! In short: don't understand it at all, don't really want to but still fascinating as all hell though (the card art is gorgeous as well, on every card I've seen).
I went through the most basic part of the tutorial (Summoning/Setting Monsters, Attacking, Traps and Spells), and was absolutely floored by how little that prepared me for the real. duel I immediately jumped into. This card game is dense when you account for all of the various methods of summoning monsters.
The only reason i'd play this is for the nostalgia from the original anime
How can a game like this suffer from bad performance. It’s not that technical surely.
Yugioh is an extremely complicated game. I came back to the game in 2018 and I still get confused about the under the hood stuff sometimes. Konami's even given up on including a rule book in structure decks it's so long. I feel like learning by having a friend teach you is nearly mandatory. I'm not surprised Konami's failing in their tutorial
Have not had any crashes in the game at all, just had communication errors sometimes
@jarvismp It's modern day Konami we're talking about...
@Einherjar @Domino @Fizza
The subtitle is a reference to this video:
https://youtu.be/AUnPN385wLI
Anyways I'm totally smitten with Master Duel. I was pretty burned out on the game before but the format changes, fair free to play model, and quick matchmaking have me totally addicted. Ten dollars invested and my favorite deck is already at its most competitive.
I also love that Konami is taking steps to give Yugioh an identity outside of the anime. Anyone who was going to be drawn into the game from the anime is already here, I'm glad they're taking a new approach
@MetaRyan Ahh, gotcha, thank you!
@MetaRyan I see, thank you!
It’s only “generous” because the limited free resources are very front loaded. You can make a few decks right out the gate, but once that well has been emptied it gets slow again like any typical Gacha unless you become a whale
Anyway TCG Yugioh heavily changed since
many people probably remember. The high level meta shifted on hoping you are turn 1 and can play single player solitaire so you got layers of omnigates and hand traps in 5 min+ turns ready so player 2 can’t play.
It’s been a meme for awhile that if you just play “traditional” Yugioh aka “I set a monster card and put two cards facedown” is akin to a surrender
Would a newcomer be better off playing Rush Duel instead of Master Duel?
@Quarth Oh yeah! As you were folks.
So look, I get the idea of reviewing games is not to set an objective standard, but I have to wonder:
How so you justify the fact that you CRAP ALL OVER every FTP game that allows you to use real world money to gain a competitive advantage, to the point where you give some games 5/6 ratings even though you say they are fantastic JUST because they let you do that, while this game gets a 7 despite "paying money to get a competitive advantage" being the CORE GAMEPLAY MECHANIC?
How's that work?
Imagine being a publisher and being so devoid of scruples that you would shamelessly releasing a game in such a poor state - so poor, in fact, that they felt that it necessary to include a crash warning at boot-up.
I mean, how the hell as a devoper do you make a game that is so clearly broken that you need to do that? Where is their pride?
I get that it's free-to-play, but I don't think that justifies releasing a game that is guaranteed to crash. And if that would be the publisher's defense, then - imo - it's not a very good one. It's embarrassing.
Since they definitely know about the problem, it be true that the game really will run better in time, though their "we're looking into it" part of the warning message doesn't exactly inspire much in the way of confidence.
But Pot of Greed only lets you draw 2 cards.
@jarvismp Sorry?
I am a bit of a fan of some Yu-gi-oh video games. Particularly the DS games and the Switch release of Legacy (which I 100%'d). This game seemed to be okay for a free to play version. However, as you are indicating, the dev may get stingier later on in the game's lifespan and it's performance is poor. Mine has crashed already once when I was in an advantageous position with a strategy going. That's actually soul-destroying when playing a Yu-gi-oh video game.
Thought it's perfectly fine and does a decent job I'm tempted to give it a 6. And this is coming from someone who will most likely sink a lot of time into it. The performance .....
I dunno, online multiplayer card games...I always had a terrible time with them. I could never tell if someone was hacking or what...and they would always throw the most powerful cards at me all at once.
Anyways, I only know like...the first generation or two of the Yugioh cards. After that I stopped playing it a long time ago, so I know nothing about all these new types. I started playing Legacy again, though...so maybe after that and I figure out how the new stuff works, then maybe I'll try this game.
I don't play yugioh online after I dueled someone who had a "stalling" deck that plays Final Countdown, so the entire duel was just me trying to do just one thing and failing over and over, that's no fun.
I prefer the games with a story, I've been playing Nightmare Troubadour, it's quite fun and the cards are easy to understand since it's the same ones you see from the anime.
Duel Transer is also quite good, dueling is a bit slow, but you get used to it and has a great amount of cards from (arguably) the best eras of yugioh. You can still play online, with a friend at least, using the wiimmfi server.
I'd honestly prefer to play this on a tablet. Hopefully the mobile release is soon.
I was a big fan of duel links but I may be out of my depth with the full yugioh experience.
@Quarth Sorry - I just meant as you were in terms of it being a Konami game. That explains the quality although still really bad that a simple game can look and perform so bad. There is a lot of laziness coming in with some Switch games now.
@HeadPirate it's a more fun game?
That's way too many summoning gimmicks for my likening. Yes, I started having a bit more fun when I created an updated version of my deck from the Duel Monsters era (Magicians) but same criticism always happens, people take 10 mins to summon and summon and summon new monsters through monster effects and suffer no real consequences like reduced LP and still have a full hand after summoning an army or something with 5000+ attack. And this is only their first turn.
I get the summoning gimmicks, I just think they break the game and making it boring. Time was you at least had a fighting chance to win against a strong deck, now you get shot in the chest if you try.
@Domino Actually I think Pot of Greed let's you search out a monster.
But no one knows exactly what pot of Greed does
Yeah uh... I kinda stop being into yugioh after 5D’s so I don’t know what the newer summon mechanics are.
(The heck are xyz monsters and xyz summon?)
For pro players this is perfect, its really not made for casuals fans at all so i think those finding it hard well tough luck. I'm pretty shocked i was able to complete my Hero deck without spending a penny though, while the free gems do dry up they do give you enough to make any deck of your choice.
A lagging, freezing, crashing, pay-to-win game gets a "7"?
I've been playing on PC and it's fine but the UI is not very responsive and the single player content is terrible. For a free to play game it's top notch though, literally the best card game in the market in my opinion. Even without paying a dime you are going to have a lot of enjoyment here if you like YGO. Even getting very good cards is quite easy.
I’m addicted to this game.
It runs great on my potato laptop, Steam Deck, iPad and iPhone but sadly not on Switch.
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