Features
- 100 new cards on top of the 1000 from last year.
- More than 25 characters to challenge
- Updated rule set
- Cartridge save (one slot)
- Link cable support (two players)
The trend of updating a game design for a separate edition is definitely not a new thing in videogames; sports games have been doing it for years. But at least those developers add more features to the game design to encourage additional, yearly purchases. There's not much new Konami can include in the Yu-Gi-Oh beyond an updated rules set and the new cards it introduced since the release of the last GBA game, so that's really all that the players are going to get with a re-purchase of this game. But because the game's target is the die-hard players of the series, it's pretty likely that these guys don't mind spending 30 bucks a year to get the latest in the series. After all, players put way more than that down in a single blink on card purchases. And most of those cards are here in the game, at least in virtual form.
These GBA renditions are, and always have been, absolutely terrible ways to learn the rules and strategies of the series. The past Yu-Gi-Oh trading card games on the handheld cater more to the actual players of the card design than it is a tutorial. It's a great game to hone skills in strategies and deck designs, absolutely, but to figure out how the game actually works? Not so good. From the first game on, the computer will prompt options like "Would you like this as part of a chain?" which honestly don't make a whole lot of sense to newbies, and the first hour or so for the novices are spent constantly going from game to manual just to figure out just what the heck's going on in the first few battles.
So, like the previous two games in the series, for World Championship Tournament 2004 it's best to brush up on the rules before diving into the computer or link-up competitions. It's not entirely difficult to understand all that happens in the card game with this rendition, but just don't expect it to hold your hand. That's where Konami could have improved the series: an interactive tutorial mode is something that has always been missing out this game design, and the company's insistence in leaving it out is getting more and more irritating.
At least the company didn't just slap the updated rules and cards into last year's game and call it a day. The studio did streamline a few menus, and cleaned up the interface prior to the battles. And even though the game looks exactly the same within the combat, the sound engine has been given a nice shot in quality. The tunes are far less NES/Game Boy 8-bit in quality and more mirror the standard that people expect out of the GBA's speakers. Everything else about the game, from the in-battle menus to the icons and card artwork and special effects, are identical from the past two Yu-Gi-Oh titles. And since there really wasn't anything wrong or bad about the imagery in the past, it's not a problem in World Championship Tournament. The other "big" inclusion is its ability to play in five different languages -- that bullet point doesn't exactly excite us, even if a guy from Spain can play against a player with his cartridge set in "English" mode.
Verdict
At this point, we expect a Yu-Gi-Oh game for every year that Konami ships brand new card themes, and we're sure the next year's version will be just as incremental in features as this one was to the past years before it. The game's still challenging and addictive, and we're not surprised at how engrossing it is this time around because we've already learned that fact twice before. But Konami still hasn't addressed the issues from past games, most notably adding some sort of tutorial to bring in a new audience. This game's made for the familiar, which sort of alienates some who might want to casually learn what the heck makes this game a fun strategy title.
