After years of exploitative Yu-Gi-
Oh! gacha games, buggy efforts at
multiplayer, and anime tie-ins that
were fun but more targeted at kids,
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has dragged
the card game into the free-to-play
PvP age far more
elegantly than anyone
could have expected.
The learning curve
will be rather steep for
any newcomers and
there isn’t really much
of an offering outside
of the competitive
ladder mode (though
this seems likely to change in the
near future). But despite all that, it’s
still one of the best digital card
games available today.
For new or lapsed players, Solo
mode is an effective 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 Yu-Gi-Oh!
card game over the past 20 years. The
meat of the game is the competitiveladder. Rather than the traditional
best-of-three format that makes up
in-person and remote Yu-Gi-Oh!
tournament play, these duels are
settled with one match. This
obviously simplifies things, but it
does mean you can get
blindsided by one-turn-
kill decks, troll decks,
or bad luck – as such, a
lot of deck building
right now is tilted
towards jamming in
game-breaking tech
cards that are too hard
to respond to unless
you specifically build your deck
around countering them.
The biggest problem is that, while
Master Duel feels very fast compared
to fan-run simulators like EDOPro
and Dueling Book – which used to be
all we had – Yu-Gi-Oh! is still an
inherently slow game, made slower
by the online experience. You have
400+ seconds for each player’s turn
initially, and you get most of it back
with each new turn. With Yu-Gi-Oh!’s complexity, it can’t be helped,
but it makes for long matches.
If you come to accept the
over-the-top card game that
Yu-Gi-Oh! is, however, Master Duel
has some of the finest production
flourishes I’ve ever seen in a
competitive deck building game. The
animations can drag out the already
slow turns a bit, but they’re so
entertaining that I have yet to turn
them off. Special praise has to also
be given to the spectacular
orchestral soundtrack.POT OF GREED
Free-to-play CCGs are, at best, an
exercise in friendly extortion. Master
Duel, at least up front, is surprisingly
generous, and it is possible to build a
competitive deck for free, although
it’ll require planning.
One thing the game doesn’t
explain very well is that whenever
you open a pack with a Super or
Ultra rare card, you unlock a ‘secret
pack’ containing all the cards from its
archetype. From there, you can then
open packs to build a deck focused
on your strategy, but the pack is only
available for 24 hours. While being
able to focus on cards you want to
unlock is great, the time limit feels
like an unnecessary and arbitrary
restriction to pressure players to shellY
u-Gi-Oh! at one point was nearly as ubiquitous as
Pokémon, but what was once a simple collectible card
game where you’d summon one monster and set a
couple traps now regularly involves ten minute turns.
It’s extremely complicated, but the basic appeal of TCGs
remains: the agony and ecstasy at the intersection of skill and luck.DUEL INTENTIONS
YU-GI-OH! MASTER DUEL brings the legendary card game into the esports age
By Donald BorensteinSpecial praise
has to be given
to the
spectacular
soundtrackNEED TO KNOW
WHAT IS IT?
A way to play the
Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG online
EXPECT TO PAY
Free-to-play
DEVELOPER
Konami Digital
Entertainment
PUBLISHER
In-house
REVIEWED ON
Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB,
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X,
32GB RAM
MULTIPLAYER
Yes
LINK
bit.ly/3uQm5apDECK THE HALLS Our top picks for decks you can work towards for free
ELDLICH
A trap-heavy control
deck centred around the
powerful Eldlich, the
Golden Lord, this deck
grinds the game to a halt,
running multiple
floodgates.VIRTUAL WORLD
An affordable deck that
can flood the field quickly
and build into multiple
powerful boss Synchro
and XYZ monsters,
including True King of All
Calamities.SKY STRIKER
A deck focused on quick
link summons and
powerful spells, Sky
Striker is a deck that
chips away at your
opponent, while using its
power to access traps.PHANTOM KNIGHTS
Phantom Knights use a
lot of graveyard effects
to extend plays and build
into XYZ monsters,
breaking your opponent’s
board and in some builds
even shutting them out.MEGALITH
A deck that you can build
with very little gem
investment thanks to the
Megalith solo chapter.
Megaliths summon on
your opponent’s turn to
disrupt their board.INVOKED SHADDOLL
DOGMATIKA
A deck that has thrived in
multiple formats in the
paper card game, this
blend of three archetypes
uses fusion monsters to
limit summons.Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel
REVIEW