Yu-Gi-Oh!: World Championship 2008

If you were a Yu-Gi-Oh kid when this came out, it was a goldmine in terms of content and structure. There's a ton of Yu-Gi-Oh games out there, but a lot of them were Japan exclusives or platform exclusives, and a surprising amount didn't really touch on the actual card game that well. Moreover, Yu-Gi-Oh as a card game didn't really have the right level of variety and flexibility to make a big simulator game like this really engaging early on, with the GX era finally getting weird enough to make interesting deck strategies possible, and fun to build.

But where this game shines is in the campaign. Previous entries had been pretty barebones with everything besides the actual card game being mostly an afterthought. Some pre-built NPC decks to play against, card shop to buy new packs, online, etc. 2008 introduced a whole little fantasy setting separate from anything else, where the player could travel between little distinct worlds, and follow little side-quests with continuing character stories. I'm sure there's some rose-colored lenses here, but kid-brain thought it was really unique, open-ended, and well-paced.

Future entries opted for a way more heavy-handed approach with human characters tied into the anime plot, which is annoying and slow at best. Even the newest game in this sub-series, Legacy of the Duelist, just has recreated NPC decks from the show. World Championship 2008 had the perfect balance of interesting single-player content and progression, with just enough variety and depth in the card pool before the main Yu-Gi-Oh card game got (in my opinion) way too clunky and confusing in future years.

It's nothing special in the vast spectrum of modern TCG stuff but this was the go-to as a little kid, for sure. Given that that's the intended audience, I'd say it did a pretty good job, all told.