YU-GI-OH! LEGACY OF THE DUELIST: LINK EVOLUTION is a Fantastic Game for TCG Fans
I love Yu-Gi-Oh!. Or rather, I loved it when I was younger. When it first came out, I was all over it. I was even looking at what to expect with cards that were in the Japanese sets and not yet in English. I left the game during the GX era and every now and then I have dabbled with trying to come back. Then, Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution came out for the Nintendo Switch. It is only $40 and if you’ve ever wanted to try, get back into, or continue playing Yu-Gi-Oh!, Link Evolution is a great game.
The Story Mode takes you through the different seasons of the anime. It doesn’t cover all the duels (all but the final duel from season 5 of Yu-Gi-Oh! are missing for example), but the most iconic ones are there. The first duel of each series will typically be a tutorial to help you learn new mechanics such as Link Monsters in VRAINS. This is fantastic as it gradually introduces you to the overwhelming Extra Deck mechanics that exist these days and gives you plenty of time to solidify your knowledge of each level. The Story Mode is also fun because with each duel, you can choose to use the Story Deck (a deck built based on the cards used in the anime for the duel) or your own custom deck. I’ve been using the Story Deck for each of my duels and it can get very challenging. Joey’s decks are typically the hardest to use by the way because he used so many high-level monsters with bad stats and in the anime, he also used a few Fusion Monsters as Normal Monsters which means in Link Evolution, you get the Fusion Materials for those Fusion Monsters which typically suck. Finally, after beating a duel in Story Mode, you can then play the reverse version which is a lot of fun.
As you progress through the Story Mode, you’ll unlock duelists for Duelist Challenges. These challenges will see you face the duelist with a much harder deck than in Story Mode, but you’ll be able to win cards for beating them.
Battle Packs are another fun mode that let you create decks in either Sealed Play or in Draft Play. This is a new kind of challenge where you have to build a deck with cards from random packs, but it’s a lot of fun. You can then take your deck and test it against online, local, or even AI opponents.
So, what do I not like about Link Evolution? First, you can’t play with someone on the same system. You can only play with people who have their own Switch and copy of the game. I can understand why this is a thing (sharing the screen would be a big problem), but it’s still a bummer that we can’t figure out a good way to make it happen. Next, the Card Shop could use some help in my opinion. There’s no option for purchasing more than one pack at a time that I can find. This means you will be spending a lot of time pressing A to buy and open packs. In addition, there’s no description about what’s in each pack so you have to either take a gamble, or you have to look card lists up online.
Third, the story is presented in a really bland manner and they only have one image of each character. That means that characters are in incorrect outfits all the time (at least in the original series). Would it have killed them to include a couple more images?
Fourth, I was hoping for more 3D models. Only very key cards like Blue-Eyes White Dragon and Dark Magician get 3D models and animations. For a console game, I was hoping for a little bit more. Even if it isn’t fully animated models for every card.
Overall, if you want to try Yu-Gi-Oh! or love it already, Link Evolution is a fantastic title. It’s just as good for people who want to try getting back into the game. Now, when can we get a new Dungeon Dice Monsters game?
