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Yu-Gi-Oh!
Dungeon
Dice Monsters |
Dungeon Dice Monsters
Konami
has announced another launch title for
 Nintendo's Game Boy Advance, due to
appear in Japan on March 21. Called Yugioh
Dungeon Dice Monsters, the game is
based on the popular anime Yugioh.
Players will use dice in a board game
setting to summon monsters and work
through dungeons while defeating
enemies. Konami promises more than 100
monsters in the game, and players will
be able to broker deals with other
players.
There
are RPG aspects to the game --
collecting cards and strategically
deploying and leveling up monsters --
but the game is mostly a strategy
board game. You play every turn with
choosing a set of cards, then a role
of the dice, then a few moves in the
strategic section. It's a little bit
of everything that's NOT a videogame,
as just about everything is luck and
option-handling, but fans of the game
series would at least appreciate
having all the pieces in a game rather
than scattered in their bedrooms.
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| A
sweet Mode-7 style battle
ensues, but it's just one swing
in each match, and no real
Gameplay here. |
Japanese
gamers love the Yugioh series
for the same reason Americans love Magic
cards -- there are lots of cards to
collect, and therefore lots of
variables to the game. Yugioh
also makes it a bit more interesting,
because here you have to roll the dice
to be able to deploy a card. In each
turn, you choose from a set of monster
cards and enhancers, then roll for
points to buy your chosen cards.
Points are kept like Yahtzee
rolls, and you throw three dice every
time -- only one will triumph every
time, but there are so many variables
here, you can even choose different
kinds of dice.
It's
when you finally accrue the points and
enter the Strategy function that the
game starts getting interesting. This
is what you've probably seen the most
of in screenshots -- an isometric map
with monsters on it. That's because,
when you finally get to buy one of
your cards, you get to turn them into
a monster that you drop onto the
battlefield via a tetrad block. This
provides some strategy, since some
monsters move certain ways or provide
different services (like more defense
for your own wizard standing at the
back). You have to think about where
you'll put your beast's block where
they'll fit (while still touching one
of your own blocks to grow off of) and
still be of some use to your
offensive.
 But
this is where the game starts to fall
apart. So you place these menacing
monsters on a grid, and you'd like to
march them into battle against your
foe. Unfortunately, it doesn't work
that way. In some games, pieces have
limited moves. In this game, only a
few limited monsters have a few
limited moves while being further
limited by being only able to move
once every few turns. It's terribly
frustrating to put a Dragon two feet
away from an Ogre, then being forced
15 turns or so before you can have
them battle.
The
confusion about how to play doesn't
just extend to the gamer. Even the
computer seems to be lost in the
game's interface. For some reason, it
doesn't tell you which pieces are
ready to do something important, so
you have to bounce between them all
(using the R shoulder button or the
cursor) to find what's going on. You
have to constantly scan the field to
get simple tactical info. And so does
the computer -- you watch it bounce
between pieces and then suddenly
realize there's nothing to do. And
then it's your turn to do nothing. At
some point, the battlefield is too
full to put in new monsters, and then
everybody's screwed, just sitting
around and waiting for something to
happen.
We
expected the depth of this game from
the qualified developers at KCEJ (home
of Kojima and many other great minds),
but figured the gameplay would be more
involving. Sure, there were things
that would have made it more fun that
I missed in the options, but I spen t
hours with this thing... on the same
game! It was just a continuous
stalemate, and when I finally spent
enough energy to get into a battle, I
didn't have enough battle experience
to know that a Dragon's fire breath
bounces off the armor of the
Slug-Thing. So I die. It was a
visually sharp game from KCEJ in many
instances -- sharp battlegrounds and
some nice effects in the battles, but
there was nothing going on with the
monster's animation, and the dice
rounds and cards were actually blurry
for some reason. You spent just about
all your time in these menus, and yet
the graphics are not only weakest
here, but they work against players
who are trying to figure out what the
heck monster it is they're choosing!
If you can't tell if you're sending in
a Centaur or a Skull Head, then how
are you supposed to plan for a battle
with the Mushroom Tree?
Thanks
to
IGN
Pocket
for some of the
review.
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