Duel Masters for the PS2 marks the first time the series has landed on home consoles, and it does so reasonably well. I tend to think these games are better suited for on-the-go play, but a compelling enough collectible card game (Culdecept comes immediately to mind) can easily work at home. While Duel Masters isn’t as good as that gem, it manages to pull off some unique tricks and even separate itself from the GameBoy Duel Masters series, even though the basic gameplay is the same.

The story, irrelevant as it is, is told through a mix of fully animated anime and real-time cutscenes. The anime scenes look about as good as the average Saturday morning cartoon, and they helped make the otherwise uninterested story a bit more compelling. I found myself actually looking forward to cutscenes. The real-time work, obviously, doesn’t look nearly as good. Seeing as the story only serves as an excuse to duel, though, it’s hard to complain much. Some witch is trying to take over the world, or something, and the only way to stop her is for you and your friends to win duel tournaments. Whatever, it’s fun to duel.



The Dual Masters card game is best described as a watered-down version of Magic: The Gathering. Just like in Magic, the basic goal here is to simply destroy your opponent. Players start with five shields, and each time they take damage, a shield breaks. Once all the shields have been destroyed, it only takes one more hit to win the duel. To accomplish this, there are five different colors of cards, and each has a distinct playing style. Some colors rely on powerful creatures, while others use manipulative magic to go for the win. The variety of cards in this edition is far better than the original, although still not nearly as vast as the average Yu-Gi-Oh title. There is also an extensive tutorial that should easily teach anyone who is the least bit familiar with CCGs how to play. Basically, though, play is very similar to Magic: The Gathering. It makes sense, since Wizards of the Coast publishes both card games.

At the beginning of each turn, players can sacrifice a card in their hand to add it to their mana pool. Once there, that card can be tapped for mana once per turn in order to cast spells or summon creatures. A creature that takes three mana to cast requires the player to tap three cards in his mana pool, plus one of those needs to match the color of the casting card. After that, players can summon creatures to the arena or cast spells, as long as he enough mana. Finally, the attack phase comes. Unlike in Magic, creatures cannot normally be blocked. Only special creature cards designated as “blockers” can stop an enemy attack. There are other special creature statuses, which produce a variety of effects. Some creatures break two enemy shields when attacking, and others cannot be blocked- even by a “blocker” creature. The different creature types require players to put a fair amount of thought into deck construction. Without blockers, or some other means of stopping enemy creatures, you’ll be defenseless.

As in the GameBoy versions, I found the dueling here to be too slow. Fortunately, though, that’s what Extreme mode is for. This eliminates the turn-based element, meaning battles are fought in real-time. Mana regenerates, cards are drawn and creatures become ready to attack at set intervals. This obviously makes battles go much faster, and I found myself having a lot of fun with this option. After discovering it, I couldn’t go back to playing the standard way. This is also how multiplayer battles play out.

The PS2 version of Duel Masters obviously looks considerably better than the GameBoy counterparts. The battle area is displayed in full 3D, and every creature has attack and defeat animations which are enjoyable the first few times. Mercifully, these animations can be turned off. The card art is reproduced wonderfully here, and as mentioned before, the anime cut scenes look fantastic. There’s an odd mix of hard rock and mellow tunes in the soundtrack, but neither really stands out as particularly good or bad.



Article By: Joe