Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale, game exclusively for Nintendo Switch protagonist of the review today, is a chapter that aims to upset partially the very famous card game of Konami to offer the public something capable of thrilling both fans and new recruits. Unfortunately, however, the goal set by the team was sensationally missed and the entire production turned out to be like a bitter disappointment, especially considering what the now endless series of Yu Gi Oh branded games he knew how to give us. In a nutshell, and as the title suggests, yet another disappointment, especially for fans of the game.
Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale is a half-successful game
When are we disappointed in something? Surely not in front of a product, strictly speaking of video games, which we know a priori will be mediocre and therefore does not leave us confused when it is confirmed. On Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale instead we had high expectations, when we started playing it for this review, because after years of disappointing chapters we were finally hoping for the turning point. Above all because of the way of dueling different from the usual, the real selling point of this chapter, which never before could be said that “the cards on the table” are changing. So let’s start from the peculiar mechanics of this Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel, that is the Rush Duel himself.
Usually, in a duel of Yu-Gi-Oh classic, among the basic rules there is the ability to carry out a single and single normal evocation, evocation by positioning or evocation by tribute in turn. Another classic rule is the presence, between the various phases of the shift, also of the Main Phase 2 (i.e. the one after the Battle Phase) if you want to play other cards on the basis (or not) of what happened during the Battle Phase. These two rules in the Rush Duel are completely abolished! There is no limit to normal summons, just as there no longer exists Main Phase 2 (canceled together with the Stand By Phase). Being able to do all the normal evocations that one wants is not, however, the only novelty in depth, since the second is the change of fishing mechanics. Usually each player, at the beginning of their turn, draws a card from the top of the deck and places it in their hand, while in Rush Duel at the beginning of their turn you draw cards from the top of the deck until you have 5. You will then have guessed that it is better to summon and place on the field as many cards as possible during your turn, because the fewer cards you will have in your hand at its end, the more cards you will draw in the next one.
This stimulus given to the player considerably raises the pace of duels, which as a first advantage therefore have that of being able to avoid any risk of “brick“, A technical term used when a deck literally jams, significantly slowing down obtaining useful cards. The new draw and summon mechanics also make them less necessary texture papers, that is, those that usually were used to spin the deck, therefore having to put much less to be able to concentrate rather on the offensive monster cards. Not that the magic and trap cards or the support monsters are now useless, on the contrary, but as mentioned it will no longer be necessary to put too many of them. In conclusion, an intelligent, fresh reinterpretation that makes classic duels much more fluid. To avoid balance problems, it was also opted for Yu Gi Oh Duel grid Links, therefore with solo 3 monster card zones and 3 magic and trap card zones. This keeps the pace high without risking armies of uncontrollable monsters. Unfortunately, however, precisely taking into account the great goodness of the work done on the main game mechanics, we were sadly disappointed by the rest of the game.
Definitely revisable progression and technical sector
If the gameplay is certainly the main merit, probably the only one, the technical sector and progression from Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale they are instead painful notes in this review, and not even a little. Let’s start by saying that this time too, as in all the latest chapters of Yu Gi Oh games (except perhaps Duel Links), the quality of life it is heavily mediocre. By quality of life we mean everything that goes from game menu to the hud up to even just the navigability of the map where NPCs compete and progress in the main missions. Some problems are purely technical, such as a game map that has an amateur gaming quality as well as optimization. It is really hard to believe that a console like Nintendo Switch, which quietly holds The Witcher 3 and Doom Eternal albeit with some compromise, it cannot run a setting like this at least at a stable 30 fps, yet inexplicably jerky. Other problems are just of concept, and to make it clear that we mean we do a couple of examples.
When an opponent summons a monster on the field, or activates a spell or trap card, we are rightly allowed see the details. To do this, we are asked if we want to see them or not with a small text box with options “yes” or “no”. Nothing strange so far, just a pity that everything becomes particularly annoying when, after reading the info of the card in question, again asked if we want to read it, having to go to “no” with the lever and give another confirmation. Especially in the first 10/15 hours of play, when there are many cards that we want to read because we do not know them, it is really frustrating having to untangle all these pop-ups. Even if you want to deactivate them, you would have the problem of missing key effects and having to go and see them manually while the opposing NPC plays, which is impossible because if an opponent continues the turn, the description window of the card is closed. It was much better in the chapters of Tag Force on PSP, which placed the details of the cards on the left, whose text was navigable with the analog stick, never really breaking the rhythm of the game.
The second example might seem like bullshit, but at the end of the day care of sound design it would also serve this purpose. Whenever the game informs us of one new key feature, or one anything important, together with the text box that gives us this info you hear the sound of a little bell, to be honest enough bothersome. There are situations where these notifications arrive in bursts, especially at the beginning when you unlock many parts of the menu all together, and then you hear this spam of the aforementioned bell over and over. We honestly got to the point of change the console, funny to say but true, until we made sure that the “worst” was over. There would be so many other things to say, like the revisable menu management or the total uselessness of the interminable sequence of dialogues in some stages, however, if we listed them all in detail, we would only talk about the quality of life.
Closing with the progression, Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale it doesn’t shine in that respect either, although it’s not the worst side of this review either. Let’s say that if the gameplay is the high point And the quality of life the lowest point, the progression is somewhere in between but it is still enough mediocre. Because? Simple, because for many hours everything we “earn” from the game is totally useless. Unlike, in this case too, a mandatory comparison of the chapters Tag Force for PSP or even alone some of those for Nintendo DS, where is the starting deck it was quite mediocre and easily improved, in Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale is really broken. Or rather, the very first version we will have (that of the tutorial to be clear) is actually mediocre but finished the tutorial we will immediately have the revised and corrected version. Without going too much into the merits of the individual cards, it is enough to know that as a deck it has all you could ask for with gameplay like this. Lots of good monsters, some very good monsters, one really great signature monster, and magic and trap cards one stronger than the other. If you just make a couple of grafts to prop, it becomes a very good deck.
The problem is precisely this, if the player has a strong deck to the point of scorching everything in front of him, and if there is no competitive circuit like on Duel Links that pushes to grind NPCs to farm cards from the meta, you no longer want to continue playing. If we then add, at the end, that after relatively few days from the release it takes 14 research attempts to find any online opponent (if not 25 for one of your level) then the recipe for the deceased game even before birth is ready. This is why we have not talked about online despite of Yu Gi Oh Rush Duel Dawn of the Battle Royale we are doing the review after opening the servers; nobody plays it and therefore it is impossible for us to evaluate it properly. Surely it would amuse the fans a lot, because the gameplay as mentioned above shines and not a little, but everything else is not working properly. Yet another misstep, yet another disappointment for the fans. Although perhaps not insufficient, this last game of Konami on the franchise could be the last attempt to do something with Yu Gi Oh at the videogame level on consoles, and it’s a shame.
#Rush #Duel #Review #disappointment