I consider myself to be
pretty knowledgeable when it comes to card games. I played Magic for a long
time; I’ve played Pokemon, and even still have about 1000 cards from back in the
day when I played Spellfire and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. Well, I will
admit that I did not understand Yu-Gi-Oh when I first tried to play it with my 9
year old, and it took him tutoring me for a couple of hours to try and figure
out the first couple of video games that came out based on it. Well, I do have a
much better understanding of it, so I was ready for Konami when they released
their newest Yu-Gi-Oh title named The Falsebound Kingdom (TFK from now on for
laziness reasons) for GameCube … only to have them completely change it up on
me.
TFK revolves around Yu-Gi
and his buddies as they are invited to try out a new VR monster battle game
called “The Kingdom”. As they begin the simulation, they realize that it was a
setup and find themselves as what are known as “marshals” (duelists) in a land
that is being crushed under harsh tyranny by an uncaring ruler. Players can
select from one of two totally different storylines … one being Yi-Gi and the
other Kaiba … as they journey across the land liberating territories, trying to
reunite, and ultimately get to the end and find their way back into their own
world once more.
As I stated in the beginning
of the review, Konami completely turned a 360 on me with this title since it
doesn’t follow the standard card battle strategy that anyone who has played a
Yu-Gi title will be used to. Instead, it follows more of an RPG based or turn
based strategy format as players pick their marshals, and assign each of them up
to three monsters to fight with either in towns or out in open areas. The menu
is used to move marshals and their monsters around the maps or to check opposing
faction creatures that may be incoming to try and claim a city or meet an
opposing force.
Once two armies have met on
the battlefield or an occupied city gets attacked, the screen changes to battle
screen in which each monster gets a turn to attack an opposing creature, defend
itself, or run away … and this continues for a set amount of turns (the one who
scored the most damage wins) or until the entire opposing army has been wiped
out. If you lose a monster, you can always go in and keep fighting, even if the
turn ended during the last round.
One thing that TFK does is
add an RPG style system to the monsters. As they fight, they will level up and
gain access to more strengths like hit points or new attacks that they can use
in battle. In addition, they can be interchanged, so monsters that you find
along the way through defeating certain enemies or meeting up with a random
monster along the way to a city or whatnot can be rotated into the fray if you
choose to do so.
Realistically, this style of
gameplay might be good for someone who was like me and didn’t understand the
whole Yu-Gi-Oh concept or how the game was played, but fans of the card game
will probably be disappointed in this style. First off, part of the card game
fun even in video game format is the strategy behind trying to put together your
own decks and trying them out against opponents to see how good you really are
in your creativity or whatever. Instead, this title seems to be more based on
who has the best monsters or who can gang up the hardest when it all comes down
to it, and quickly becomes a multitude of rounds of just back and forth hitting
until someone wins.
Secondly, the game pace
seems extremely slow due to the overall element of the game. Since you only have
access to three monsters per marshal, only having a couple of marshals tends to
get really dull as you sit for a number of minutes just waiting or them to get
from point A to point B. Also, battles just don’t seem to get very exciting,
since monsters that you have level up as they go … and many times it doesn’t
make much sense to rotate them out with a newer but lower level monster since
the majority of the battles go to whoever can take down the most hit points
first. When it’s all said and done, it just doesn’t come close to the original
style of deck building and combat.
Graphically, TFK looks OK,
and contains some pretty neat spell effects and some pretty nifty monster
animation. Unfortunately, the backgrounds tend to get repetitive pretty quickly,
and the overall color scheme and layout seem a little dull … just like the
action in the game. The sound to TFK also was just right around the decent mark,
and the music tends to just take up some background space and doesn’t really do
a lot to add to the overall game.
For people who may be
interested in what Yu-Gi-Oh is all about but just don’t understand the card
game, this could be a much easier way to play. Unfortunately, the game tends to
get repetitive and pretty dull pretty quickly regardless of whose story you play
with, and fans of the card game will more than likely be pretty disappointed
overall despite getting to see some of their favorite monsters once again on the
console gaming screen. I highly recommend chalking TFK up as a weekend rental if
you want to check it out, and stick to the card game if you are craving some Yu-Gi-Oh
action.
Gameplay: 6.0
While there are
some neat monsters to play around with, and there is the ability to customize
your three monster army, the overall game pace is very slow and really doesn’t
work well for the card based gameplay (reminded me a little of the disappointed
feeling I had with MTG : Battlegrounds for PSX). Even though there are two
different storylines to go through, I don’t see myself going back and playing
through the second one anytime soon.
Graphics: 6.1
There are some
neat character still shots and neat monster animations / spell effects, but the
overall backgrounds and most of what you will see while you play tends to get
repetitive and is pretty basic looking when it all comes down to it.
Sound: 6.4
The music to TFK
really just adds a little background noise to listen to, and the monster and
spell effects weren’t too bad, but pretty plain overall.
Difficulty: Medium
The game is
pretty easy to figure out, and players should be able to mix and match their
army, march out against a foe, or do whatever with a pretty minimal learning
curve. Battles tend to just go to who has the strongest monsters vs. elemental
placement or whatever, so the key is to keep on leveling up.
Concept: 5.8
While I see that
the developers were trying to give something new to the gaming fans who enjoy
Yu-Gi, this kind of game really doesn’t work for a card game since players
really don’t have the same amount of strategic options at hand like they do when
designing their own decks nor will they probably like the slow pace of the game.
Overall: 5.9
While a lot of
the Yu-Gi-Oh games that have come out could probably be considered as “similar
to the one that came out before it”, TFK unfortunately takes a step in the wrong
direction by trying to take the popular card game and turn it into a turn based
style RPG kind of format. Whether a Yu-Gi fan or not, I would highly recommend
trying this out as a rental only. If you like it, great … but it will save you
some aggravation in the end of you don’t.
