Yu-Gi-Oh! Online Duel Challenges – Get Ready!!!

The stage for a great new era for Yu-Gi-Oh! has been set in 2007. With Yu-Gi-Oh! Online Duel Evolution providing new content every month and the recent release of Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007, we can see a deliberate effort to bring the game to different types of gamers, not just the hardcore TCG players and Neutral Ground hobbits. I love how the online community for YGOO is evolving. There’s something for everyone. If you want free, cheesy duels, you can find one of many interest groups out there that do webcam duels but, if you want the complete events and community, there is no better choice than Yu-Gi-Oh! Online; yeah, I may be a bit biased because I just so happen to play the game and love every last bit of it!

With the coming Gunslinger events on Yu-Gi-Oh! Online May 18th and 19th it’s time to prepare! Tricky’s Magic and The Tricky are the cards to be awarded for 6-win and 7-win streaks, accordingly. If you are unfamiliar with how Duelist Trial and Gunslinger work, it’s simple: Duelist Trial awards you a rank depending on how many wins you get whereas Gunslinger is all about survival, or how long you can win without losing. In Gunslinger, the longer you last, the better the cards you get after each battle. If you lose lots of battle during the Gunslinger event, expect to get many copies of the same card. No worries – chances are you can trade them with some newbie later on!

Shonen Jump features the original unstoppable duelists of the Yu-Gi-Oh! universe. Years later, who would come out on top? We vote for Yugi.

 

Oh shizzle, Gunslinger is around the corner… It’s time to duel!

As I mentioned in my first-look review of Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007, the new Yu-Gi-Oh! game for the DS provides great training for duelists, especially if you want to be careful about how much DP you use when playing online. With YGO WC 2K7 you can duel anyone around the world via Wi-Fi, play against various computer players and unique duel styles in Free Duel mode, or take on one of many special Duel Challenges. We’re going to get into those challenges so keep reading – very important stuff coming! ;o)

Another thing I touched upon was how the game has great tools for filtering and querying/searching through your decks and trunks. There are now extended descriptors on each card which show if they are part of a special set such as the popular E-Hero or Toon series. Here are some of the other descriptors that will make deck building easier than ever for seasoned duelists:

– Special Summon
– Cannot perform Normal Summon
– Pierce
– Spirit
– Cannot be destoryed
– LV Monsters
– Hand Destruction
– Deck Destruction
– Cancel out Effect
– Spell Counter
– Recover cards from Graveyard

As if that wasn’t enough, if you find a card that you like, you can create simple combos by querying for related cards and seeing everything at-a-glance or in full detail, depending on what you prefer. For new[er] duelists, all this information can be very overwhelming but, believe me, you’ll get a feel for it all after you experiment some – just don’t be afraid of losing!

While we’re talking about the new Yu-Gi-Oh! for Nintendo DS, I want to say that there were a few things I forgot to mention on my dislikes, which is what kept me from awarding a near-perfect score… While I do not mind the lack of a storyline, the game does feel aimless at first since it’s just a bunch of game modes that seemingly have no progression. There are hidden ceilings at each level so, depending on your completion rate of all game modes, other levels and game modes get unlocked. It’s annoying at first but then you get more excited about playing more. My other qualm is regarding how they handled deck building in this one. You have the shop, which is key, but there are no weekly boosters like in the previous games. You don’t get the post-match booster pack either, which I got used to. Speaking of which, there’s not even a calendar or system clock in-game so you feel as if you are almost just drifting along.

 

Back to training and preparation for the major dueling events coming up, I find that the DS game is better at providing tutorials and helping you diversify your skills and deck builds. The online play is really cool but you don’t get too much variety on competitive levels. Everyone, for the most part, is really good whereas, on Yu-Gi-Oh! Online, you have more of a chance to be able to counter certain decks and find some more novice or intermediate duelists. As opposed to Yu-Gi-Oh! Online Duel Evolution, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 is catering more to the hardcore Yu-Gi-Oh! fans and players so that explains that.

Since online play may not be the best way to train, I recommend taking on the many themed duels, limited duels, and duel puzzles in the game. All these things help you develop a variety of techniques while exposing you to different deck builds. When you play human players, you definitely see less variety since most people seem to be using the same cookie-cutter recipes, sadly. Here is a look at how these things can help…

Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 – Key Modes for Training

• Tutorial – Even advanced duelists sometimes need to get back to the basics and revisit the fundamentals. This is a topical area that has some helpful interactive tutorials for duelists of all levels, really. Each lesson starts off with some definitions and concepts, a walk-through, a practice duel, then a review session. The review sessions are neat because they actually test you by asking some questions. I know, it sounds like school, but it is actually pretty cool. Some duelists I have known could probably stand to learn from the area on chains because I can’t tell you how many people botch up spell/trap card timing and do their own take on the rules when dueling outside of tournies. LOL
• Glossary – For the newer players, this should be square one; after all, if the jargon eludes you, the mechanics definitely will. The beauty of Yu-Gi-Oh! is the complexity comes in when strategy is considered but the mechanics are simple enough that any strategic gamer should pick it up fairly quickly.
• Limited Duel – I love this area because I’ve known many so-called “good” duelists that sucked when they had to use a new deck (a’la “open pack” duels). Limited duels force you to edit your deck and adjust your strategy. The duels make you do things such as not use spell cards or not be able to normal summon monsters. It changes the dynamics of a duel completely. In these duels, once you complete them, you get some nice DP bonuses.
• Theme Duel – Theme Duels are like the limited duels but they are more objective-based. They have goals such as “inflict X amount of damage” or “use this many spell cards.” Like Limited Duels, you get DP bonuses and get to use your own custom-tailored decks. You can replay Theme Duels as much as you want as you receive higher grades, scores, and, ultimately, DP bonuses the better you perform. In that regards, the goals are actually minimums so try to reach further and challenge yourself as much as possible. This mode rules because it shows you how not to rely on certain strategies. One-trick dogs and cookie-cutter duelists will have a very tough time here.
• Duel Puzzle – The duel puzzles make things a lot more trickier. You are dropped into specific scenarios where you must think on your toes or fail miserably. Typically, the puzzles are all about defeating a duelist in one turn by carefully combining your cards. Be careful: sometimes, not all cards will be used to win so plan carefully. This mode really helps you look at a scenario from various angles, figuring out potential outcomes on-the-fly. If you tend to brain fart during duels, this is a good place to start your training as it raises your analytical skills, awareness, and focus by leaps and bounds.
• Free Duel – I saved this mode for last because, really, training-wise it may not be the best place to start. What constant dueling does well is build up experience, of course, and help you see how consitently your deck is effective, which will shed some light on deck balance and draw optimization. Free Duel, however, does not take you out of your comfort zone as much as the other play modes. You will face different types of decks, of course, but the “shock value” is not there as much. What you will see is variety in the types of decks: destruction, burn, mill, beatdown, spell, trap, gamble, chaos, dark, light, e-hero, etc. etc. Definitely a good place to go but not your only training place!

As you can see, Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 is definitely packed with some killer content. We saw some of this stuff in previous installments but this game is truly complete, sans the story and fluff, of course. As I dig into the game more, I find myself revisiting some old blog ideas so expect much more strategy and deck-building tips in the future. Card Showcase and Duel School will definitely be built upon. In our school, we’ll review some of the concepts behind the Duel Challenges in YGO WC 2K7 so that should be fun. Let us know what else interests you guys! We get really giddy when we learn that our readers have improved their game and found our unique perspective helpful so we will definitely keep working on getting that content to you guys!

If you miss this month’s Yu-Gi-Oh! Online Duelist Trial and Gunslinger events, don’t worry: Konami seems to be making them much more frequent. You can expect new events on the weekends of each second and third week of the month. That has been the trend so far: around the 15th of each month, tons of events take place. In the United States, these events take place at weird hours on Friday and Saturday, typically, so check the official Yu-Gi-Oh! Online site at the beginning of each month so you do not miss out on any cool promotions and events.

On a completely different note, I have received much spam about it not being cool that I take money from kids or that I side with Konami. All I can say after I have addressed these issues thoroughly and been more than fair about it, is “LOLlerskates!!!” Believe me, if y’all knew how little profit we see from reselling these duelpasses, you’d realize that you have a moot point. We offer these services for the community because we love the game. It helps us out here and there but, trust me, we’re not going to buy mansions with the money we make here. =oP

What people have to realize is that everyone needs to make a living. If you do not want to pay for video games, fine, but realize that, if everyone took your stance, there would be no games to play. At some point, someone has to pay money somehow because games cost money to develop, maintain, host, market, and upgrade. It’s just simple logic. I’ve made it clear to our cheapskate duelists that we will not give free duelpasses, especially to people that never dropped a dime in our shop. If you guys want free duels, check out one of the Yahoo or MySpace groups for webcam Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling; seriously, they have that! Yeah, I laughed too when I heard about it. I am a geek but even I have my limits! =oX

Now, back to business, there’s war to be waged… Train hard, soldiers!