Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Stardust Accelerator: World Championship 2009 is out and it has motorcycles! But does anybody care?
The DS installments of Yu-Gi-Oh! serve as a cheaper way to play this children’s card game – though the releases of these games have always been oddly timed (three separate DS titles were released in 2007 alone). The first came out in ’05, but at that time Yu-Gi-Oh! was still coming out on the GBA, and in fact because of the lack of 3D images for the cards, the GBA Yu-Gi-Oh! released in ’06 had more cards than the last DS release of ’07. This has been a long-running complaint of many fans of the series, myself included. Who cares about making the monsters look pretty, when the three most recent packs aren’t even in the game?
Well it would seem that Konami is finally listening to the fans. It’s been about a year and a half since the release of World Championship 2008 and the wait has been worth it. WC 2008 had 2008 cards (I know, a little too much of a coincidence). But in the latest installment we are presented with a whopping 2886 cards, an increase of over 800, which is the most of any DS release so far. I should know, I’ve played them all. The game has so many cards that some of them haven’t even been released in the TCG yet. It reminds me of the days of the GBA games, where I actually found cards I’ve never seen before and that’s where Yu-Gi-Oh! really shines, in building newer, stronger strategies with new cards.
The game is not without its downfalls of course. It seems like they used the old code, so the 3D models are still there, the game just doesn’t zoom in on them anymore, so they don’t need as much detail. And during battle, it shows a larger version of the card art, instead of the 3D model. This comes at the cost of slow-downs during the duels. To be honest the game feels sluggish, and sometimes the CPU players will stop to think for a full 10 seconds before deciding that since they have no cards in their hand, that maybe they won’t play any of the cards they don’t have. If you can get past this detriment, there’s another one waiting for you.
Unlocking all the cards is damn near impossible. I’ve had the game since release and I still don’t have them all. Granted it’s not the only game I’ve been playing, but the requirements for unlocking force you to spend hundreds of hours just trying to get all the cards. Now I don’t know about other Yu-Gi-Oh! players, but I bought the game to build decks and use them online. I recently hit the 100 hour mark, and I still have less than 80% of all the cards. This wouldn’t be so bad if cards were in the same packs as their supports. I only have about 2 mist valley monsters, making them useless to me because I don’t have the rest of them or the support they need. Packs should be redesigned so that when you want to build a deck you have the option to.
Now despite the difficulty involved in getting the cards, the game still plays great. It’s the same Yu-Gi-Oh! gameplay you know and love, and of course those random glitches on certain cards, or cards that use their OCG (original Japanese text) effects even though we’re only familiar with their TCG (translated, not always the same) effects. But those kinds of things are expected. With the addition of more than 800 new cards there are countless new options for deck builders, and plenty of new themes to build around. The online has even gotten better, giving you the option to choose whether or not to face an opponent after being given their name and face. Meaning if you just dueled someone who used an Action Replay code to beat you, you can choose not to face the cheater a second time and thus some of the risk of losing your rating for no reason is taken care of. There’s still the card of the day download, and periodic puzzle and ghost downloads released too.
The music for the game isn’t bad, but it’s really the type of game you play to your own soundtrack with your DS’s volume turned all the way down. So the graphics may not be as great as in the past, but I honestly prefer the actual card art to the 3D models myself; they look crisper and it’s nice to see the art off of its card’s background. The story mode is mediocre at best, but if you’re buying this game for the story, you might want to rethink your game-buying strategy. I sometimes think that if they skipped out on the 3D world they created for the story mode (a first for Yu-Gi-Oh! DS titles) that they could have included even more cards, but we take what we can get. Oh, did I forget to mention the motorcycles?
Well that wasn’t by accident. Yeah, they added motorcycles and there are even four racetracks, each with a race mode and a time attack mode. But honestly the controls are clunky and the whole aspect of it seems out of place. However I will say that Turbo duels are a welcome addition. The speed counters add a whole new aspect to duels. It even takes formerly unbalanced cards with no cost like Heavy Storm, and gives them a cost (your speed counters) I would love to see the developers do more with this mode in the future because it’s a fresh way to play an aging game.
A must have for any fan of the card game. Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Stardust Accelerator: World Championship 2009 is a step in the right direction for the franchise, and I hope to see more focus on the cards, and not the pretty 3D models in the future. Here’s hoping that WC 2010 has even more cards, and maybe even a shorter title.
Written by: Bramimond
The DS installments of Yu-Gi-Oh! serve as a cheaper way to play this children’s card game – though the releases of these games have always been oddly timed (three separate DS titles were released in 2007 alone). The first came out in ’05, but at that time Yu-Gi-Oh! was still coming out on the GBA, and in fact because of the lack of 3D images for the cards, the GBA Yu-Gi-Oh! released in ’06 had more cards than the last DS release of ’07. This has been a long-running complaint of many fans of the series, myself included. Who cares about making the monsters look pretty, when the three most recent packs aren’t even in the game?
Well it would seem that Konami is finally listening to the fans. It’s been about a year and a half since the release of World Championship 2008 and the wait has been worth it. WC 2008 had 2008 cards (I know, a little too much of a coincidence). But in the latest installment we are presented with a whopping 2886 cards, an increase of over 800, which is the most of any DS release so far. I should know, I’ve played them all. The game has so many cards that some of them haven’t even been released in the TCG yet. It reminds me of the days of the GBA games, where I actually found cards I’ve never seen before and that’s where Yu-Gi-Oh! really shines, in building newer, stronger strategies with new cards.
The game is not without its downfalls of course. It seems like they used the old code, so the 3D models are still there, the game just doesn’t zoom in on them anymore, so they don’t need as much detail. And during battle, it shows a larger version of the card art, instead of the 3D model. This comes at the cost of slow-downs during the duels. To be honest the game feels sluggish, and sometimes the CPU players will stop to think for a full 10 seconds before deciding that since they have no cards in their hand, that maybe they won’t play any of the cards they don’t have. If you can get past this detriment, there’s another one waiting for you.
Unlocking all the cards is damn near impossible. I’ve had the game since release and I still don’t have them all. Granted it’s not the only game I’ve been playing, but the requirements for unlocking force you to spend hundreds of hours just trying to get all the cards. Now I don’t know about other Yu-Gi-Oh! players, but I bought the game to build decks and use them online. I recently hit the 100 hour mark, and I still have less than 80% of all the cards. This wouldn’t be so bad if cards were in the same packs as their supports. I only have about 2 mist valley monsters, making them useless to me because I don’t have the rest of them or the support they need. Packs should be redesigned so that when you want to build a deck you have the option to.
Now despite the difficulty involved in getting the cards, the game still plays great. It’s the same Yu-Gi-Oh! gameplay you know and love, and of course those random glitches on certain cards, or cards that use their OCG (original Japanese text) effects even though we’re only familiar with their TCG (translated, not always the same) effects. But those kinds of things are expected. With the addition of more than 800 new cards there are countless new options for deck builders, and plenty of new themes to build around. The online has even gotten better, giving you the option to choose whether or not to face an opponent after being given their name and face. Meaning if you just dueled someone who used an Action Replay code to beat you, you can choose not to face the cheater a second time and thus some of the risk of losing your rating for no reason is taken care of. There’s still the card of the day download, and periodic puzzle and ghost downloads released too.
The music for the game isn’t bad, but it’s really the type of game you play to your own soundtrack with your DS’s volume turned all the way down. So the graphics may not be as great as in the past, but I honestly prefer the actual card art to the 3D models myself; they look crisper and it’s nice to see the art off of its card’s background. The story mode is mediocre at best, but if you’re buying this game for the story, you might want to rethink your game-buying strategy. I sometimes think that if they skipped out on the 3D world they created for the story mode (a first for Yu-Gi-Oh! DS titles) that they could have included even more cards, but we take what we can get. Oh, did I forget to mention the motorcycles?
Well that wasn’t by accident. Yeah, they added motorcycles and there are even four racetracks, each with a race mode and a time attack mode. But honestly the controls are clunky and the whole aspect of it seems out of place. However I will say that Turbo duels are a welcome addition. The speed counters add a whole new aspect to duels. It even takes formerly unbalanced cards with no cost like Heavy Storm, and gives them a cost (your speed counters) I would love to see the developers do more with this mode in the future because it’s a fresh way to play an aging game.
A must have for any fan of the card game. Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's Stardust Accelerator: World Championship 2009 is a step in the right direction for the franchise, and I hope to see more focus on the cards, and not the pretty 3D models in the future. Here’s hoping that WC 2010 has even more cards, and maybe even a shorter title.
Written by: Bramimond
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