Yu-Gi-Oh! Destiny Board Traveler – GBA – Review – GBA – Review

Yu-Gi-Oh is the latest card dueling craze, and, while it’s been around a few years now, shows no sign of waning in popularity. Konami has released several different GBA games based on the cards system, with the latest versions featuring a blend of the basic card dueling rules with various gaming genres. Continuing this trend, Yu-Gi-Oh Destiny Board Traveler takes the cards and incorporates them into a board game.

At first glance, it seems a good idea to take a dueling card game that requires strategy and use it with a board game, where strategy can be combined with a little luck via the dice. However, sometimes what appears to be a good idea ends up not being so good in the actual implementation.

The basic premise of the game is to be the first to rack up a certain number of “star points”, in order to win the game. This is accomplished by rolling a die and moving a character around a square board in correspondence to the number of the card on the die face that is rolled. When arriving on the board space, players will summon the monster from the card face on the die, then battle with the monster on the same space. This monster could be a stray one, or could belong to another player. Each of the two players will choose to attack or defend, and the outcome is decided by the relative strengths of the two monsters in their attack and defend points. This outcome can be influenced by a random roll of special “dueling dice”, which are rolled automatically each game turn, after the monsters are summoned to the square.

On game startup, players will pick a character, then on their turn will choose six cards to be placed on their summon die. One card is designated a “star” face, and the other five are regular faces. It’s unclear to me what advantage the star face has when rolled, as I never could see any difference in gameplay when the star face was rolled during play, and the manual never says what the purpose of it is; all it says about the star face is that players will have a better chance of rolling it when they use the “soul shuffle”, a special method of rolling the summon die.

There are different boards which are unlocked as players advance. Each of these has special attributes on the corner spaces, which will add bonuses to either the player who lands on them, or to all the players indiscriminately. The other spaces are all occupied by monsters, and players will spend most of the their time dueling around the board. The strategy comes into play with trying to have as many monsters as possible on the board, so that other players will battle you for the board space, instead of the stray monsters. If you win, their monster will be added to your hand.

The learning curve is steep for those who’ve never played Yu-Gi-Oh, as there is not much background explanation of how the card game works, and the rules for the summon die and the dueling are rather complex. However, the game doesn’t take very long to learn, despite the “say what?” reaction to all the rules at first, as the basic game itself is simple; players simply have to choose the cards to go on their die each game turn, roll the die, then choose to either attack or defend. The strategy comes into play with deciding on whether to attack or defend, depending on the number of points for each mode, and the speculation of what the opponents attack and defence points may be. It’s possible to guess if the monster is a high or low level one, as the number of its level is the number of spaces moved, and of course, players can see how many spaces an opponent moves. However, sometimes a low-ranking monster can have a surprisingly high number of points, so it is just a rough guess.

Players can choose to play against the game AI, or against other players via the multi-player option. Game progress is automatically saved each time, so the characters can level up their cards. A separate game cartridge is required for each player.

The board is laid out isometrically in a square shape. The graphics are of a low quality, and the characters are somewhat pixelated. The text is really blurry and hard to read. The decorative people and items around it are of a better quality, but since the people are in the background, they’re not that easily seen, and the board is pretty bland.

While at first glance it may seem a great idea to place a card game onto a board, this game isn’t very interesting or fun to play. The boards quickly become boring, and having to shuffle through the cards each turn to place them on the die is a chore. Then, players have to endlessly click through all the choices of attack, defend, and the outcomes of the dueling die thrown by each of the three other players in single player mode.

I love a good strategy game, whether it is electronic like Heroes of Might and Magic, or is a board game like Settlers of Cataan. But sometimes what seems like a wonderful idea just doesn’t live up to its conception in reality. The first Yu-Gi-Oh GBA game, The Eternal Duelist Soul, is simply a virtual simulation of the card game, and is the best title based on the franchise. Each time Konami has tried to add different features to the basic dueling game, the game Yu-Gi-Oh suffers in consequence. Fans of Yu-Gi-Oh are better off either playing the real card game, or trying out The Eternal Duelist Soul, if they don’t already have a copy.