Pros: More Cards, Seems Slighty Faster, More Variety Amongst Duelists
Cons: No Tutorial, Can Only Use a Password Once
The bottom line: Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition Is A Great Choice For The Yu-Gi-Oh! Fan In Your Family.
If there's one guilty pleasure that I can't seem to keep secret too well than it's Yu-Gi-Oh, as I've been watching the show ever since last Summer and I haven't yet missed a single episode. What's more is that somehow I've managed to get myself into the card game, and what's bad about this is that it's just so expensive, I have a hard time keeping up with it while at the same time buying my games, movies, and other such stuff. Then I heard of Konami's upcoming game Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition, but I was a little cautious with this title, as I already owned 2 of Konami's past Yu-Gi-Oh games; Dark Duel Stories for the Gameboy Color and Forbidden Memories for the Playstation, and I had plenty of experience with their former top Yu-Gi-Oh gameboy advance title; Eternal Duelist Soul, but none of those offered up an above average play experience. So you can probably see behind the nature of my caution, but then I received the game as a gift of sorts, and I can finally say that Konami has done justice to the Yu-Gi-Oh name.

While all the Yu-Gi-Oh games in the past seemed to share many of the same problems, they each had a different gaping flaw to them. Dark Duel Stories didn't follow the rules too well, Forbidden Memories tried to be something it's not, and Eternal Duelist Soul had very little in the way of diversity amongst each battle. Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition is really the first Yu-Gi-Oh game that doesn't have a huge stand out problem with it's gameplay. This game does present a new (but small) problem to the Yu-Gi-Oh universe, and this is that it is far too much like it's predecessor, but like I said, it's a very miniscule problem.

While Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition does fix some of the aspects that I disliked with Eternal Duelist Soul, a lot of the problems still exist. Now call me cynical, but to me it seems like Konami is never going to fix these problems in their line of Gameboy Advance Yu-Gi-Oh titles, as long as they keep selling Konami will keep on being lazy and simply re-hashing the engine until their GBA Yu-Gi-Oh games stop selling. What's strange is that Konami is always trying new things on the console versions (Duelists of the Roses and Forcebound Kingdom come to mind), but they have yet to try anything new on a handheld (not counting Dungeon Dice Monsters of course).

Storyline
Before I begin to describe the plot I should tell you one thing; Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition focuses almost entirely on gameplay with a pretty much non existant storyline. The game does, however, fall pretty nicely in with the anime series, with nearly all of the recurring characters making an appearance, and even a few that you wouldn't expect at all. What's better is that each character plays with a deck of cards that fits in with the corresponding character from the show, and it follows this extremely close.

Since this game is based off of the show, a little background from the television series wouldn't hurt. Yu-Gi-Oh follows the story of a teenager named Yugi Moto, a particularly talented student when it comes to playing the card game duel monsters. Yugi may not look like much, but appearances are not everything, as Yugi has a alter ego named Yami, who's soul inhabits the puzzle that fits around Yugi's neck. Yami is a pharaoh from ancient Egypt who was sealed inside the puzzle many years ago after stopping a powerful magic force from taking over the world, it's too bad this didn't stay in the past though, as this magic once again threatens the land, and it's up to Yugi and Yami to save it from evil.

For those of you familiar with the series, Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition takes place in the battle city section of the show. You play as a nameless duelist as you travel across battle city challenging countless characters from the show, both the good and the evil characters. The characters' personality portrayed through the dialogue is pretty much what you'd expect from the characters in the series, and so the game has the authentic Yu-Gi-Oh feel to it.

There are a few scripted events in the game, and these make it feel even more like the show. While in battle city you can participate in a mini tournament, and you can be jumped by rare hunters looking for hard to find cards, lose to one of these hunters and they'll steal a random card of yours. It's little touches like these that make the game less repetitive. I'm not exactly sure what triggers events like these, as I'm sure it's calculated randomly, but I actually look forward to these despite the fact that I could lose a rare card. The only other story driven dialogue besides encountering a duelist that occurs is in the very beginning of the game, so you'll learn to look forward to these scripted events.

Konami could have definitely improved Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition by making it a full blown RPG, I mean it would be much more fun if you could fully control your character and run through battle city looking for duelists, but maybe that's an addition they could use to improve their next game, but knowing Konami they'll just stick with the tried and true method. Konami really should have incorporated more scripted events into the game, as they just give you a taste of them with the rare hunters, and there is plenty of opportunity to incorporate them without taking anything away from their chosen methods of gameplay for this title.

Gameplay
We've finally arrived to the real steak and potatoes of the game. Gameplay and management are the two biggest focuses for a title like this, and Konami did an excellent job of making sure that you'll be playing this game for a very long time. The only part of this game that is overly difficult is learning how to play the card game, which is a complete necessity in Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition. What's bad about this is that Konami completely left out any form of a tutor in this game, which would have made this game playable to more than just the Yu-Gi-Oh fans.

First the basics, you'll need to learn how to play the card game. The card game, Duel Monsters plays exactly like the real cards, and so if you need some detailed rules and general information on the card game for playing than please direct yourself to this review. For those without time to check that out, I'll give a very brief description of the rules now.

Before starting you'll need a deck of at least 40 cards, you can have up to 60 cards in your deck in this game, but the duel will flow more smoothly if you have only 40. You'll want to make a perfect balance of trap, magic, and monster cards to set up strategies and win in this game. In the very beginning of the game you are given your choice of 3 starter decks, each consists of 40 cards or so. It doesn't really matter which one you choose, as they all have the same necessities like monster reborn, but they differ slightly in monster cards and less important magic/trap cards. After selecting a starter deck you are unleashed into battle city to go duel with your opponents and hopefully score a couple victories along the way.

The game takes place in phases and turns, each duelist can summon or set a monster to the field every turn, and depending on the phase, can attack with it. The statistics of each card is something that you will need to constantly keep track of, if a monster card has less attack monster than another monster than it can be attacked and destroyed, the difference in attack power will be subtracted from the attacked duelist's life points (which start at 8000 every duel by the way). A defending monster does not need to worry about attack power though, as their defense points are matched up with the attacking monster's attack power, but while in defense mode the duelist's life points will not go down from being attacked, and the attacking monster's duelist will lose life points if the monster's defense points are higher than their attacking monster. Sounds confusing, eh?

Monster cards aren't the only thing to worry about though, as there are also magic, trap, and effect monsters to keep in mind. These cards all bring miscellaneous effects to the duel, and you must read the card in order to tell exactly what it does and when you can use it. Normally magic and effect monsters are used during the owner's turn, while trap cards are used during an enemies turn, but there are special exceptions to these rules.

Navigating around Battle City isn't too tough, it's set up in a sort of grid/sector layout. You can move to a new space, and challenge whichever duelist(s) are located there, or you can choose not to. You can only navigate a space at a time, but you can travel to any space adjacent to the one that you are currently on. The game incorporates a kind of calender, and events take place on certain days of the week, so it's wise to keep track of what's going on and when.

After every victory in the game you are given the opportunity to receive new cards, and in a very Yu-Gi-Oh centric way. You are given a choice of booster packs (just like in the real game), and they each have different cards that can be received in them with varying rates of rarity. As you progress more into the game you can unlock more booster packs.

Different opponents can also be unlocked in the game by completing certain tasks that range from obtaining a specific card to beating an opponent a set number of times. There are a variety of duelist's with different techniques and cards, whereas in Eternal Duelist Soul every duelist seemed to have a Summon Skull, a couple Magic Jammers, and a couple more cards, each duelist in Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition uses different cards and techniques. My personal favorite opponents are Seto Kaiba and Pegasus.

The enemies also seem to get better at playing as time passes in the game. One example of this is with Tea, who I could easily beat with my starter deck in the beginning, but later on after I've upgraded my deck to no end she can usually beat me about 40% of the time, whereas she was never able to beat me before. It could all just be my imagination though, but it seems like a good enough aspect to the game.

The password system is back, and now you can unlock even more cards with it. Basically each card in real life has a small password written on it, and by inputting these passwords into the game than you will receive the card in the game and can use it in your deck. This is a very nice feature, and for all those of you who are looking to cheat, you can simply go online and find all the passwords for the cards. The only drawback to the password system is that you can only use each password once.

Graphics, Sound, and Control
While the graphics are nothing entirely impressive, they're still nice to look at, even though backgrounds are a little on the plain side. Everything looks pretty much average outside of battle, more graphical work could have been put into the battle city map, but it's not a big deal. The graphics get significantly better during a duel, with scrolling backgrounds and the original artwork for each card.

Sound falls short though, as it gets more than a little repetitive and doesn't even sound too great in the first place. If I remember correctly, most of the music used in this game was also utilized in Eternal Duelist Soul. Because of this, I was already tired of the music and sound effects before I had even played Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition.

The controls work very nicely for this game, as there's nothing that you'll need to do that doesn't involve confirming, cancelling and moving a little cursor around the cards to select. The menus are a little clunky, and the game makes you confirm your selection far too much. One of the worst things about this is that if an enemy busts out with a trap card you can't check the card's description before making a choice to cancel it or let the enemy carry out the effect. This gets a little annoying, and makes for some guessing along the way.

Final Recommendation
If you are a fan of Yu-Gi-Oh and know a little about the card game than I highly recommend checking out Yu-Gi-Oh! Worldwide Edition as it's currently the best simulation of the real card game, and it follows all the real rules pretty much exactly how they are written for Duel Monsters.

Overall Rating: 9.1