Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Tag Force
March 8,2007 - The whole slew Yu-Gi-Oh card games that have been being released always seem to be games that are more for those that are already waist-deep in the card game to begin with. Noobs generally cannot get a good briefing on how the game works and its many intricacies that have captured people all around the globe for years now. With the new Yu-Gi-Oh GX anime that is continuing things where the series’ star Yugi has left off, in the capable hands of Jaden Yuki and his friends and rivals at an academy precisely built to find and nurture the best players in the world. The new series serves for fertile ground to introduce many new players with the aspect of going to school and learning the game. Does Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force follow through on the potential to make for the perfect Yu-Gi-Oh game that newcomers and veterans alike can enjoy?

The story mode is surprisingly devoid of an actual story. You’re just the new transfer student at the Duel Academy and you’re given a brief intro for how things work in the game before being tossed out to the wolves. What’s nice is that class sessions—that take up half of your day—actually teach the fundamentals of the game that’ll be instrumental in growing as a player and beating classmates. Just lunging headfirst into duels without some knowledge of the rules of the game is just going to result in losing 99% of the time. The other keys to growing as a player is to win duels, get money, and buy cards to keep evolving your deck into a stronger deck with which to defeat classmates. There’s no getting around the game if you cannot do that. There is some multiplayer to the game, but why play this in multiplayer instead of playing the actual card game? The game is better suited for single-player fun than that of multiplayer.

You can face pretty much anyone at anytime, though you never have an idea of your opponent’s skill until after you get your ass handed to you the first time. It’s not exactly a good thing to find out a generic looking kid has a strong deck that can easily take advantage of your weaknesses. There also needs to be a way to pause the battle at anytime, as things can happen quickly enough that you’ll often wonder what just happened. There are opportunities to pause the game if you’re impatiently pushing buttons in the hope of moving the game along, but it’s not the ideal solution.

Outside of battle and class, you’re free to explore the island and fight anyone you see, but it tends to turn into a tedious affair as the time move very, very slowly. It only progresses when you move between areas or go to class, so you can essentially spend an hour fighting the seven kids in that area and it’ll still the same time it was when you first got to that area. The easy solution is to just either go to class before it starts to jump to that day’s lesson or go back to your room and sleep to advance in time or end the day. It’s tiring when you first notice that you’ve got 90 days left until the end of that chapter of the story with such a slow-moving clock. You’re going to put a lot of time into this game whether you planned to do that or not. There’s no way to get around it.

Graphically, it’s a mixed bag here. During battle, everything looks sharp, from the 3D cel-shaded cut-scenes of your opponent drawing cards, to the look of the battle interface. It’s just a nice game to look at in that regard. Once you’re out, the environments are isometric and everybody—those who aren’t main characters—are just clones with different colored hair. The environments are decently detailed, but they’re generally small and cramped. Moving between areas is kind of a pain, as load times don’t really reflect the game’s graphical prowess. The menu system is quite atrocious, as it’s just so tedious to edit your deck or do any of the other important tasks.

The game manages to provide some decent battle music, changing as the momentum changes during the game. Classroom sessions are just atrocious to your ears as classical music fills up these sessions, almost making a quick muting an important task for the game. Battle sound effects are rather nice to make it sound like you’re actually playing with real cards. Overall, the music here is just as forgettable as you’d expect the music in a card game to be.

The requirements for Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force deserving consideration for a purchase are your dedication and/or interest in the card game. Those that couldn’t care less will continue to move onto the next game while those who’ve been turned off by the need for experience in most of the previous game very well could find a lot to like here. It’s a good way for beginners to cheaply get some experience with the game and learn the rules of the game. Veterans will like the huge amount of cards to collect and the freedom to explore and pick their own battles. It does enough justice for the license to appeal to noobs and the elite alike.

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