When I was younger I had 3 Yu-Gi-Oh games on DS - This one, Spirit Caller and World Championship 2007. For years I've had the opinion that Spirit Caller was my favourite. After replaying both that and this, I can say my memory did this game dirty.

Duel World mode is exactly what I want in a Yu-Gi-Oh game. It isn't really a story mode, it's sort of just maps with duel monsters that you can duel, who use a variety of decks generally focused on themselves as their key card. But what makes it great is that there's a ton of little gimmicks in each world. For example in the very first world there's a colosseum where you use structure decks (based on the ones from the real world at the time) to duel the AI with another random structure deck. It's a great way to earn the in-universe currency early on when your own deck would be lacking since you have 13 ready-made decks to use. And if you win with all 13 you get an extra reward, which is a single copy of every Amazonness card! Though admittedly that reward sets a standard not really met by any other challenge in the game. You can get cards from actions in the duel world, but it's generally just a single copy of a random card and never a full playset of an archetype. For example in one world there's a monster who is being "burned" by some fire-related card, and if you win the duel you can save him and get that card. There are chests in some maps which could contain a card (usually chest-related), fight a mimic monster, have DP (the currency of the game) or nothing. Even just winning against random duellists have a change of giving you a card related to them/their deck.

Other fun challenges in these worlds include things like duel puzzles, consecutive duels where life points carry over, having to use a monster-only deck, in one world every duel is a tag duel, and many more.

Not everything is a gimmick duel though (except tag duels in the 4th world). There's plenty of spirits around to have regular duels against, but these additional challenges are just a fun way to shake things up and get you to try out different decks.

As I said though the rewards are never as good as the colosseum makes you think they'll be. Generally they'll give you an anime character to duel in "World Championship" mode. The mode the game is named after. IN that mode you can...just kinda duel opponents and nothing else. It does eventually unlock 8-bracket tournaments, but otherwise there's no real difference from dueling here to dueling in duel world. Of course the opponents here are different (beating a spirit in DW mode 5 times unlocks an "upgraded" version of them in WC mode, so like beating Skull Servent 5 times with unlock King of Skull Servants. And as mentioned there's anime characters here who aren't in Duel World).

Depending on how much completion rating you feel like doing the game is actually super non-grindy. I think you only ever need to beat every opponent once each to get to the end. Of course unlocking more stuff will have a bit of a grind. As mentioned unlocking opponents in World Championship mode will involve beating everyone in Duel World 5 times each. Beating X opponents in WC mode unlocks packs too. You DO unlock packs every time you reach a new world so it's not like doing the bare minimum would leave you stranded with your starter deck, so it's really just rewarding the grind with more options.

Actually getting DP in this game is a little different than Spirit Caller. In the latter, along with all regular bonuses post-duel you got a big bonus every time you levelled up where you'd get DP = to your new level x 100. In this game there is no levels, so instead you get DP equal to the amount of total duels you've had divided by 10. It starts very slow but eventually you'll start getting a lot of money for every duel. However there's also a consecutive win bonus. Let me say this right now - if you want to cheese the system just save after every battle and do a reset to the menu whenever you lose a duel. You can effectively go the whole game with a full consecutive win bonus which will result in massive amounts of cash the further you get. I was too dumb to do that, but if you want to cheat your way through a 16 year old game in a very niche franchise, there's your way.

Anyway that's all I have to say. Duel World mode is fun and much better than the dragged out story modes of Nightmare Troubadour and Spirit Caller.

Not bad, though it's held back in a number of ways that prevent it from being truly awesome. I do like how sleek and simple its main modes are without being as barebones as most of its predecessors and without being as grindy as games like Tag Force and Spirit Caller. I think the less grindy nature of this game alone is something notable enough that that puts it above the vast majority of Yu-Gi-Oh! games in general. At least in theory. Unfortunately, it winds up being screwed by a few things seemingly outside of its control. It walks so other games can jog.

The Duel World mode is quite nice and I find it more compelling and cute than the later World Championship series games as a concept. My problem, though, is that there isn't really a world to walk around in; one of the first major things that hold WC2008 back is that if it had been made just a year later it perhaps may have been put together like 2009-2011's story modes. While I find that the later games are paced a bit worse and tend to feel more grindy, they at least do allow you to walk around instead of just being a cursor selecting characters. Unfortunately, though, Duel World is more like Spirit Caller's story mode. Even so, though, I think it has quite a lot of charm. They really went around the block in terms of picking random and notable monsters to feature, with a lot of them being picks that feel weirdly well thought-out. I like that Gigobyte's story was included to an extent in it, for example. The only really big problem I had was the forced tag duel section, wherein you are forcibly paired with a Neos/Neo Spacian deck that is absolutely horrid unless you want to grind for different tag partners. At the very least you can do the grind at all if you want a different partner, but it would have been nice if you could at least choose from a few old faces from earlier in the game instead of being limited so much.

Unfortunately, regardless of the quality of the story mode this game only got the worst part of the GX era card pool and didn't even have the more unhinged bizarre Forbidden/Limited lists of the late DM era either. Despite being one of the last GX era games it didn't even have the cards from the last few sets available - at least not during the maingame - so it doesn't even fully represent GX's better sides all that much. Once again the game holds itself back, and once again had it been made just a little later it could have been so much better. I could absolutely feel the

I can go on about this but I think the picture is pretty clear. This game has the potential to be one of the very best of the video games in YGO's history but a lot of where it falls short are due to things just barely outside of its control or scope. The game does do plenty of good, of course. The AI is quick and pretty decent, at least outside of tag partners. The Duel World is really cool and the booster packs seem to flow in much better than in the other WC games I've played. The Free Duel mode is super easy to get into and the AI deck variety is nice and high. And of course, the old pre-Synchro style of YGO is fun to partake in one last time before the 5D's era comes. Like I said the card pool isn't as good as it could be, but it's still good enough to encapsulate a decent amount of the era. I played this game in my free time slowly but surely over the last year or so and I think it was a real fun time-waster cause it was muuuuch more easy to pick up and play in story mode than the later WC games I've played.

WC 2008 is so close to being head and shoulders above its peers, but it just isn't quite there. Genuinely pretty sad at how it just barely falls short of a lot of potentially great aspects and winds up being just a pretty okay package. Still fun to play on the go and while waiting for food and such, though! This is one I can at least recommend to people interested in clean and simple Yu-Gi-Oh! The lack of grind in the maingame makes it far more quick to play on a whim and make progress in compared to its peers. I'm glad the 2009-2011 WC games were able to benefit from 2008's experimentation but this game in itself has quite a lot of merit in its strangeness to be sure.

This game taught me to be good at yugioh. For anyone who doesnt know how to progress:
You beat each opponent that appears in duel world once each, until something happens.

Beating them 5 times unlocks opponents in the world championship mode.

Beating world championship opponents 5 times, or progressing through the game, unlocks more packs and more opponents for world championship mode. If you want to unlock anything, you will NEED a guide (I used gamefaqs)

I loved yugioh, so I loved this game. If you don't love yugioh, then don't bother.