Developer
Konami

Released: January 8, 2008
Genre: Strategy
Players: 1-2
5
5
5
5
5.0

Supported Features

If you have never played Yu-Gi-Oh and just have to find out or if you’re a huge fan then you may want to take a look at the newest game from Konami with the cards. There is really not much difference at all in this newest version of the dueling monster card game other than a different world you wander around in between matches that really does not add up to anything.

The cards are monsters that attack, spells or traps that cause damage or help you attack or heal your monsters. The whole game for the Yu-Gi-Oh monster card duels has a lot of rules that are not that tough and the computer game allows you to concentrate on the dueling and strategy of playing against your computer opponent or against a friend.

The entire game of Yu-Gi-Oh GX: The Beginning of Destiny has a main objective of finding a partner from the Dueling Academy to pair with for the big Tag Team Tournament. This tournament is the main dueling session of the game but you can do a lot of dueling before that as you search for someone to join you in the tournament.

As the name of the tournament suggests you have a tag team and have to have a partner to join so you go to the Dueling Academy not only to learn how to play Yu-Gi-Oh but to search for a teammate. The dueling is done with a deck of monster cards on a predetermined surface that shows all the cards and the dueling setup that is the same for all the duels.

There is no confusion or hard to understand concepts and once you have played a couple of duels and understand the gameplay and turns it becomes pretty easy. The strategy comes in which monsters to use and what to do to gain an advantage but the important thing is the main Yu-Gi-Oh dueling has not changed since the game was introduced years ago.

The main duel and reasons leading up to any duel are pretty inconsequential if you look at the game from a stand point that there is two parts to this entire game: duels and the events leading up to duels. Duels can be done by simply walking up to a character and in the context menu that comes up when near another character pressing duel.

You can also talk with them and find out a little information or a bit of what is going on at that particular time in the gaming by pressing the talk item. At any time in the Dueling Academy you are doing something like going to class or odd assignments that either gets you to have to talk to others or gives you some practice at dueling.

The entire game revolves around the dueling and all three games of Yu-Gi-Oh that I have played on the PS3/PS2, the PSP and the GameBoy version are basically the same. You have the duels with the decks of cards that are a basic card game with plenty of rules and kind of different with its monsters attacking and strategy depending on your style of gameplay.

The time in between duels makes up the other portion of the game and is actually pretty inconsequential to the actual gameplay as it really adds nothing to the game. There is some reason to roam around and talk to people but the games failure to advance until you have talked to others makes for just tedious gameplay.

The beginning of The Battle of Destiny is a great example of this, you enter the academy after talking to the schools headmaster and go to your first class. There is a teacher at the back of class with several students milling about before class starts. Class will start once you have talked to several people in class but you cannot duel them as you do not have enough time before class. When you have talked to a few fellow students class will begin and you have your first tutorial on Yu-Gi-Oh dueling.

These small objective tasks before getting on to the next portion of the between dueling fill in makes for a boring experience and only adds tedium to the time between duels. Neither games I have played amount to much in the grand scheme of a generally enjoyable game and this next installment of Yu-Gi-Oh has done nothing different since the game started years ago.

The main dueling stage of the game looks decent but there is not much to the game overall so there is not much in the way of graphics. The cards you use look decent as well with small cartoon pictures of the monsters, spells and other things but they are only so big so don’t have much room for art.

The game is playable and that is the major thing, but as far as graphics there is not much here and what is here works fine. They have added animations and anime cartoons to the dueling especially when you get up into the tournament but this seems so much like a fill in just like the Pokémon cartoons years ago.

The characters stand across from each other with those silly card holders and light show effects go off as they duel. It just adds nothing to the gameplay but it looks okay from a technical standpoint.

You do wander around and have plenty of opportunities to get more cards at the shop at the Academy and do some talking but all the wandering around the academy is incidental to dueling. If the dueling is not good the game is a waste but thankfully the dueling is about average or maybe a little better.

The AI does a decent job of playing the right cards and interspersing the correct traps and magic to make your task of winning a bit hard. The Academy portion of the game is more of a boring repetition of time between dueling and gives not even minor thrills to your day.