PaigeFTW: Not Just a Children’s Card Game
Just before E3 came the thrilling news that CD Projekt Red would release a standalone version of The Witcher’s addictive Gwent card game. Well, it was thrilling for most people, anyway. I am quite bad at Gwent and card games as a general rule.
The one game I do have a tolerable amount of skill in is Yu-Gi-Oh!, of all things, which is why I could not resist the call of Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist during a recent sale on PSN.
All five animated series (yes, including GX, 5D’s, ZEXAL and ARC-V, and no, I have no idea what the latter two are either) make an appearance in the campaign mode, which has players recreating historical duels with the actual decks used in the battle — meaning that the patient duelist can easily summon Exodia to thrash Kaiba just as Yugi memorably did in the original series.
These scripted duels are not hard and are noticeably light on context, assuming that most players are by now well versed with the plot of the series, though I will say that if you’re not familiar with the deck you’re using, it can be a little tricky to know what your strategy should be. There are supposedly 230 archive duels to play, so it’ll take even a prodigy a while to get through them all.
The game also features online multiplayer dueling and extensive deck customization (there are over 6,600 cards in its database), which is probably all it really needed to be successful, in the end.
I’ve always found it amusing that Yu-Gi-Oh! has endured through the ages where other trading card games have fallen by the wayside, but unlike Pokemon or, really, most card game spinoffs, the Yu-Gi-Oh! properties have always put the game before all else.
It’s why their games still work today, and why I suspect Gwent may not have the same longevity as this children’s card game.
