So, because I'm a scrub and a dirty casual I started playing Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links to remind me of the days when I was young and still into trading card games. Yugioh was always the dumb fun game to play, something that didn't require the thought and dedication that Magic did, which I also played. I'm not saying Yugioh couldn't be played competitively, it certainly has been over the years, but it's a lot better than magic for just pulling together some cards and playing.
I stopped playing around the time Elemental Heroes became a thing, the focus on archetypes didn't really appeal to me, and I was out of the game until I picked up Duel Links these past couple months. And I have been having an absolute blast with it. And it's weird to say that because Yugioh is a terrible game in a lot of ways.
You have your older mechanics for summoning big monsters, those being Polymerization and Tribue summoning. For those who don't know, a Tribute is when you sacrifice a monster to summon up a higher level monster. The problem is Yugioh is a game of advantage and not resources. Most cards don't require costs like Magic, and can just be played out. So typically the one with more cards has the advantage. You play that Blue Eyes for two tributes like in the early days, he gets destroyed by one man-eater bug and you are at a massive disadvantage. You just lost three creatures total, and your opponent only one. Same thing with Polymerization. You lose a spell and two creatures for one guy.
It took the game a while to realize that monsters of that level had to have some kind of powerful effect to justify calling them out, so as time went on the game added more and more ways to summon out monsters, to search necessary cards, and to overall make the game a lot smoother running then it was in the beginning. The problem came with some pretty crazy cards and combos, and it took them a while to really understand what was a proper cost to summon out creatures with powerful abilities.
Duel Links isn't up to where the modern era is. Link Summons, Pendulum Summons, and XYZ summons have yet to be introduced and instead, we are at the Synchro monsters. That and XYZ are probably, on paper at least, the best running Yugioh can get. I won't break down the mechanics, but essentially this is where the issues with Tribute and Fusion summoning were no longer an issue, and were almost entirely replaced by a much better mechanic.
But the problem I have always had is card balance. With Archetypes getting more and more focus, cards designed to work together with such as Toons, Elemental Heroes, or Archfiends, you end up with archetypes that are just plain better, and this is a problem that has carried over into Duel Links.
I loved playing Brother Hood of Fire Cards. They were fast, they could easily call out their traps and spells to the field, and there were a handful of interesting effects. The problem is the deck is absolutely terrible. Honestly, until the recent Six Samurai Deck release, I struggle to find a deck that is both fun to play as an effective in competitive. Once more cards start coming out, and that deck fades into the background, will there be a new deck running around that is going to be that? It's really hard to say.
The good things bout Duel Links is you really can go decently far putting in minimal funds, at least for a while. Eventually, it will start to hit your wallet a bit to play competitive for the long term, but there is plenty of ways to grind up gems from events and the normal gameplay that unless you get really hardcore into it, you can have a lot of fun without spending much money, and even no money if you're patient enough. There is nothing a guy paying can get that the free player can't.
It's not a bad game to try out for free to see if you like it. The matches are fast, there is auto-dueling for AI fights if you don't really want to focus much on that part and just want to grind stuff away, and the aspect of building decks has always been fun for me.
If you ever liked Yugioh or wanted to give it a try, it's worth it. It doesn't play exactly like the IRL game since you have a smaller field, hand, deck, and fewer life points, but it captures the feeling fo the game all the same. I'd avoid it if you're a compulsive buyer, but for anyone else, it's some good fun.
