Score
Gameplay:	6
Graphics:	6
Sound:	6
FunFactor:	6
PlasmaFactor:	5
Overall:	5.8

Duel Masters Review
January 16, 2005 by Brian Callam

by BrianC - January 16, 2005

The creatures of Duel Masters come to life and battle in real-time before your very eyes as you build stronger and stronger decks to duel in increasingly harder single or two-player duels. Duel Masters will help you make your way down the long journey to becoming a Kaijudo Master.

Gameplay

The game play that is found in Duel Masters is fairly simple and easy to understand after a few rounds of your first duel. There are two modes in which you can play, story mode as well as arcade mode. Apart from these there are tutorials that you can do which make playing in an actual match easier and teaches those players who haven�t played the card game before the rules (such as myself).

Arcade mode allows you to battle against computer players as well as going head to head with a friend in a two-player game. Arcade mode also allows players to trade cards with their friends, as long as both players have their memory cards plugged into the PS2. This makes playing the game as realistic as going to a comic book store and playing/trading with your friends.

Within story mode you can play as five different characters (Trey, Luc, Rusty, Flynn and Rebecca). The goal of the game is to stop the evil Widow and her minions as they try to bring evil upon the world. The ultimate goal for playing as each character is to get them all into the Five-Colors Tournament, but to do so you have to play through the game as each character before any of them can advance into this final tournament. To gain access to this tournament you must prove your worth by completing quests and defeating increasingly harder and harder opponents along the way.

You travel around the town via a map that shows the different areas you can visit. Some of the locations become unlocked as you defeat other players and complete quests. Once you have arrived at a location, there will be several opponents waiting to duel you. You can go through and take out each one building experience and winning you cards to add into your decks.

Deck building is probably the most important aspect of the game. Without being able to upgrade your deck, you will begin to lose. Luckily for you there are numerous ways to upgrade and rearrange your deck into a completely unique deck that no one else has. These include trading with other players, winning cards from fallen single-player opponents to buying and selling with Chuck.

Another part of the game play is the buying and selling of your cards within the game. Whenever you win a single-player duel you are awarded at least one card. There is a 4 card limit on the types you can have at once, good thing for the card shop otherwise you would be in trouble. Chuck, the card shop owner, is more than willing to buy your extra cards off of you as well as sell you booster packs of cards.

Graphics

The graphics of this game are something that shouldn�t impress anyone. The characters have a 3-D cartoonish-anime look that make you wonder if the artists can even draw anime or if they are just trying to hard. The monsters in the game look as though they don�t belong with the animation of the characters and the other interfaces present throughout the game.

Sounds of death? or synthesizers?

The voice acting present in Duel Masters feels as though the actors are just reading right off of a script giving you the feeling that the dialogue isn�t real. The monsters in the battles sound very generic and the background music sounds as though the same few lines of synthesized guitar music are being played over and over again.

FunFactor

Regardless of the not-so-impressive graphics as well as the sound, Duel Masters is a fun way to bring the card game to the PlayStation 2 console. With more than 140 cards from the base set of Duel Masters as well as 5 never-before seen cards, Duel Masters fans all over should have a good time whenever they pick up a controller and play this game.

PlasmaFactor

The replay of this game depends almost completely on whether or not you are a Duel Masters fan before you played this game. While the game play and head-to-head battles are fun even for those who have never played Duel Masters, this game is will appeal more to the younger kids as well as the hardcore Duel Master fans out there.

 

 

Duel Masters: not-so-hot graphics, ok sound quality, easy to use menus and easy game play make this game one in which not many people will enjoy that are not into card games with turn based battling. On the other side, if you are a Duel Masters fan or a fan of card games such as Magic the Gathering, than you too can find this an enjoyable experience. But if you aren�t a Duel Master fan, I recommend sticking to game-based games in which you know you will enjoy.