Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards

This is a game that I loved growing up, I still have some affection for it to this day due to how much it gives each of the cards in the database some much needed lore and personality, however this it's coupled with a campaign that's dead simple to complete even for the most casual of players.

The story is basically the battle city arc but with a self-insert as the hero rather than Yugi or joey, as such there's several key differences that I won't go over but are made specifically so that your self-insert duels every character in the arc as well as complete every plot relevant task that happens in the show. This could be forgiven if the duels were any fun which to their credit, do an amazing job at making junk cards in the real game take centre stage as all of the good beat sticks can't be used due to a deck capacity limit which prevents you from putting them in your deck. This unfortunately means that you have to slowly whittle away at your opponent’s life points with these pipsqueaks as your opponent’s decks are similarly junk in order for you to successfully stand up to them. There's a Pokémon style mechanic where certain elements can take out another, meaning a fire monster can take out a forest monster regardless of their stats, which makes tribute summoning a risky endeavour as a kuriboh has the power to win over a blue eyes in this game no matter how powerful you make your dragon. This was an annoying element in the duellist kingdom arc and is excruciating here due to the resources monsters need to be brought out only to be defeated with Pokémon logic. In other words, if I wanted to play Pokémon, I'd play Pokémon and not a game that actually requires strategy that isn't so reliant on luck. It's because of this mechanic that the spell and reap line-up is limited, sure you have staples like pot of greed and dark hole, but there's no card here that require complex mechanics such as delinquent duo or f**k forbid painful choice. Many effect monsters in the real world are now vanilla as a result of this, although some monster now have their anime effects which does balance out the ratio if vanillas to effect monsters this game has. There's also no fusion monsters here and rituals are a special divine attribute which makes ritual summoning somewhat a viable option as they're immune to the Pokémon mechanic that most of the cards adhere to.

It’s a game I have fond memories of and do occasionally revisit from time to time, however its beyond easy likely to appeal to the fans of Pokémon rather than hardcore gamers looking to get into yu-gi-oh.

Silly but I liked it well enough even though I haven't played the card game since elementary school. The gameplay deviates from the actual trading cards but it's easy to get your head around the mechanics. Lots of grinding needed though to build the ideal deck, although if you just want to cruise through the story mode you can get by with a decent build.