An upgrade and downgrade from the previous GBA game (EDS). Some features were added (such as having multiple deck slots) while other features were taken away (the card password unlock). The way you unlock duelist is interesting, like owning specific cards but not playing them or building a specific deck type.

It's cool that you can now see the "stats" of all the duelist and there are a few more you can duel. The downside to these stats is the luck stat (or cheat stat) making it so the AI knows your face down cards, draws the perfect card at the right time or calls every coin flip perfectly. It was honestly a very annoying thing to deal with. Oh there's also the fact that you have to play with the ban and restricted rules but your opponents get 3 of everything. Luckily the AI sometimes does dumb things like sacrificing a high ATK monster for a weaker one. Also the duels are still very slow but there is a hidden feature where holding the left bumper when selecting a duelist will make the phases go 2x faster.

Overall the game is fine but is held back by a lack of a few features and the heavy amount of cheating the AI does.

Yugioh World Championship 2004

Japan OCG: May 2002
North American: July 2003
(Fiber Format)


What a time for Yugipedia to die :(. This was my main source for referencing dates, deck lists, sets and etc. for these reviews so it's database getting fucked is a real shame.

Anyway fuck Fandom, I hope a good chunk of Yugipedia can get restored.

This is a really disappointing follow up to one of the better games so far. It's a fine enough simulator but its AI and Structure really hamper what should be just a straight improvement. While SDD felt like a tournament setting -building a deck from scratch, getting the itch to try all these kinds of deck ideas out- this one never really satisfied that itch.
I was wondering how this game would differ from earlier games aside from the card list, but immediately starting the game the first thing I noticed was certain features being missing from prior games. Where the hell is the password function? Or an in-game calendar with tournaments and bonus packs like in Eternal Duelist Soul? Or like any kind of writing? You just click on a duelist and they start dueling with no dialogue or flavor text whatsoever.
Duelists also have a 'theme' now on top of their usual character-specific deck archetypes. Now Rex Raptor is not only a Dinosaur based deck but also a defensive based deck? I get the idea but like, there's not really much of a 'win condition' when looking at his decklist. To elaborate: he doesn't have many of the best defensive monsters in Giant Soldier or labyrinth wall- or anyway to capitalize on stalling opponents or making this any kind of functional deck? Like no Sword & Shield even? It's just a bizarre combination of dinosaur monsters and somewhat high defense monsters. Never mind that by this games standard this just means any monster that has a higher defense than attack- meaning he'll just summon the worst 'Level 3 400ATK/1200DEF No Effect' thing from the first few waves of Yugioh cards. But please! Ignore all of that because everyone also has a copy (or multiples!!!) of each and every generically powerful spell card. The worst part about deck composition in this game is despite how trash a lot of the opponent decks are, almost everyone has a set of just POWER spell cards, even if they're not relevant to the duelist or their strategy. After the first three duelists everyone will just have a dark hole/raigeki/change of heart/harpies duster/magical cylinder/etc. just because they're the only other good cards they could think to put in the deck? I don't really get it. It shouldn't really bother me but it feels really unearned when a duelist just uses Raigeki to clear my board but then sends out a 750atk monster like- just give me the win at this point, my AI opponent is CLEARLY coping and shitting itself. This also gets to be EXTREMELY annoying later on in the game as opponents will just not abide by the in-game banlist and run multiple copies of raigeki, delinquent duo or snatch steal.

As I'm relatively new to the YGO modern meta, I can't say my deckbuilding is all that good myself yet. I still have to go by guides and others' recommendations on how many copies of 'X' card I should use in a given deck. However, enough time has provided me some understanding as to what makes a deck functional and interesting- not so much how many 'GOOD' cards you have but whether or not the good cards in your deck help fulfill your winning condition. For example, you COULD have a bunch of cards like Forceful Sentry, Delinquent Duo, Confiscation and White Magical Hat, and this does work for early hand destruction decks. But it's not all-powerful; going second and having drawn these 4 cards and maybe 2 duds- your opponent might have already set a bunch of backrow and had a monster that White Magical Hat (Atk= 1000) can't readily get over (Atk =<1000, as crashing it won't resolve the discard effect). It's a very specific example for sure, but the more I've played and the more I make a deck myself, the more often I come across flaws or patterns in my opening draw, or the more noticeable the 'power' of each draw gets when it comes back around to my turn. Here it's just the weirdest tempo of characters having maybe 5-8 cards that resemble some strategy or pretty powerful cards- but if you get over that strat all the opponent is left with are vanillas. Bakura has a lot of equip spells and Maha Vailo, along with Slate Warrior; pretty powerful cards! Does he have any other cards to help facilitate this to a competent enough deck? Not really. 18 pretty great cards but 14 of these are equip spells, and the rest are just generics (Upon looking up decklists Bakura has a better vanilla defensive monster in Defense Rat than Rex does in his entire ‘High Def’ deck).
I don't want the games to start out with the strongest, most beefed out versions of each strategy but I would prefer if the first few waves of duelists had more unique spells or monsters to make fighting certain opponents standout. I'd say later opponents seem to better utilize their decks to their fullest extent- starting out with Joey. But before then it's a good chance that your opponent just over-extends into running out of cards outside of vanillas.

The AI is also just really really dumb. Like targeting their own Mystical Space Typhoon dumb. Like- tributing their Jirai Gumo for a weaker monster dumb (thanks Weevil). Like, playing spells and traps even though Imperial Order or Royal Decree (both negate the activation of Spells/Traps respectively) are up. Like, won't attack a monster for some reason despite having a higher attack than defense dumb (had a Goblin Attack Force on field in defense and Joey just decides to sit there not wanting to attack???). It's bizarre- even later opponents will seemingly have these weird quirks where they just don't play as adequately as they could. Despite the fact that some of them just plain cheat! Most of the time the AI will just know what kind of flip card you have or what cards not to attack. Also this game now has ‘Stats?’ and they’re kinda neat indicators for what they have. However! They also have a luck stat! All this can lead me to believe is that under certain circumstances, the AI will just pull whatever card they need to out your board! Very neat.

The game does want you to get some pretty good cards and encourages you to do so- unfortunately this is done by locking Tier 3 opponents behind pulling certain cards from packs and having them in your trunk. However, most of these ‘Tier 3’ cards are really good cards like Harpies Feather Duster, or Jinzo so you’d want to put it in your deck- taking them out of your ‘trunk’. In other words this means IT’S NOT IN YOUR DECK, THESE TIER 3 DUELISTS JUST DISAPPEAR IF YOU TAKE YOUR SINGLE COPY OF "X" CARD AND PUT IT IN YOUR DECK. You can't fight Mai with a Harpie's Feather if you only have the one, you can't fight Joey with Jinzo if you only have the one (this one can be REALLY annoying with how often he has Ring of Destruction). These guys needing one specific card in the trunk is annoying enough but then you get to Pegasus, who needs not one BUT THREE copies of rare cards meaning if you don't have these by the time you've fought everyone enough you just have to sit and grind incessantly. I get it- if you want a card sometimes they can be very rare and you'll get a bunch of dupes of cards you'll never use and you'll end up with seven House of Adhesives or something. But in this game's case it's not because I really want Toon World, it's because I NEED it to unlock these guys, beat them 7 times and unlock the next wave of duelists. By the time I got done with meeting all other requirements for other duelists I would have still needed to grind to get Barrel Dragon from the Barrel Dragon card pack.
At least in Stairway to the Destined Duel most of the progression in the game is centered around the base fighters you start out with, with unlocked characters like Bandit Keith being a bonus. Here, you unlock the second wave by getting a certain amount of cards in each of the starter packs, then by getting specific cover cards from various packs (Barrel Dragon, Toon World/Summoned Skull/BEWD, Harpie's Feather Duster, Jinzo), all of which are rare and this game does NOT have a guaranteed rare in each pack so you just as easily spend several duels seeing absolutely nothing. Hell, in the Pegasus’s case you could get DOUBLES of other cards before getting the last of the 3 toons. It’s really frustrating and by the time I realized what I needed to do I just wanted to drop it from how much of a waste of time it seemed.

Along with WC04 we get the Pharaonic Guardian set of cards, a combination of the similarly named pack in Japan but also the 'New Ruler' set. I'd go over it in its entirety like with other entries but to be completely honest because I dropped this midway through I really didn't get to see any of these in play. Also Dawn of Destiny uses cards approximately to the same format as this so I might wait until that review to go over those cards.

Overall it's still a functional Yu-gi-oh simulator but I think this is the biggest downgrade in this subsection of YGO games. The lack of a lot of features and mechanics really brings this down but on top of that the AI/structure of battling duelists here doesn't feel nearly as solidified as prior titles and gets to be more repetitive with how it gates you off in later rounds. Really nice to have been playing this on actual hardware though, on a japanese copy no less.