There are also some cheaper pre-built structure decks, which are fun but not particularly competitive. Packs cost 100 gems each and give you eight cards per pack. Master Duel, at least up front, is surprisingly generous: Between bonuses distributed to early players, completing Solo mode without replays, and the first chunk of leveling up, you'll very quickly hit the 10,000 gem inventory maximum. As such, a lot of deck building right now is tilted towards jamming in game-breaking tech cards that are hard to respond to unless you specifically build your deck around them. This is good in that it simplifies the game, eliminating side-decking (altering your main deck between matches), but it does mean you can get blindsided by one-turn-kill decks, troll decks, or bad luck.
Rather than the traditional best-of-three format that makes up in-person and remote tournament play, Master Duels are settled with one match. Not insubstantial, but if you're only looking for solo play, this might not scratch the itch.įor PvP duels, there are casual rooms and a greyed out event mode that's coming later, but the meat of the game is the competitive ladder. In either case, expect to spend about 4-5 hours on the basics, and another 2-3 doing extra challenges and replays with custom decks. For current players, it offers cheesy-but-fun lore dumps about the cards, and a place to practice some of your new builds without risking your ladder ranking. The animated game mat filled with rotating gears, my mascot cheering me on from the sideline, the detailed renderings of iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! card art, and the intense, dramatic orchestral score can all mean only one thing: It's time to d-d-d-duel!įor new or lapsed players, Master Duel's Solo mode is an effective if somewhat laissez-faire tutorial for the game's mechanics, unafraid to let you lose while unfolding feature after feature in a path that largely mirrors the progression of the game over the past 20 years. My inner anime protagonist is resurrected every time I connect to a new match.
Am I always having fun, or am I succumbing to gacha-game psychological manipulation? Master Duel's audiovisual brilliance makes it hard to tell. The initial intoxication has worn off at this point, so I've become more skeptical of my own motivations after 2 am. I've now logged well over 100 hours in Master Duel. I live to fight again tomorrow, cheered on by a sprightly horn flourish that greets every victory. Or maybe I should go for one more duel right now? Pretty soon I've swarmed the field and Link Summoned a gigantic 5300 Attack boss monster named Accesscode Talker, which lets me wipe their board with impunity. I proceed to use my Orcust Harp Horror, one of those 20 cards I dumped, to summon a monster of my choice straight out of my deck, then I do that again with another card to bring a monster back from my graveyard. I plunk the card down, and 20 cards fall off my deck and into a hole that denotes the graveyard, with a sleek animation punctuated by the sound of shuffling cards. But it's legal in Japan, and it's legal in this game's banlist too, so I'm running it. That Grass Looks Greener sends cards from your deck to your graveyard until you and your opponent have the same number of cards left in your deck, which is so degenerate that it has been banned from competitive play in the US for many years. A lot has changed in 20-plus years of this card game's evolution, so much so that now the graveyard is basically a second hand. It's also what makes a card like That Grass Looks Greener absolutely busted. That means that as long as you've got at least one life point left and a card to get your combo going, you're still in the game. What makes Yu-Gi-Oh! unique is that there's no mana, skill points, or really any other resources other than your life points and the cards in your hand-the cards themselves are the primary resource. At its core, this is the same Yu-Gi-Oh! card game you might've played in 2004 or 2019: You summon monsters, activate spells, and spring traps to clear your opponent's board (or keep them from building one in the first place), and then attack them until they run out of life points.
0 kommentar(er)
