DUEL INTENTIONS

YU-GI-OH! MASTER DUEL brings the legendary card game into the esports age

- Donald Borenstein

NEED TO KNOW

WHAT IS IT? A way to play theYu-Gi-Oh! TCG online

EXPECT TO PAY Free-to-play

DEVELOPER Konami Digital Entertainment

PUBLISHER In-house

REVIEWED ON Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X, 32GB RAM

MULTIPLAYER Yes

LINK bit.ly/3uQm5ap

Yu-Gi-Oh! at one point was nearly as ubiquitous as Pokémon, but what was once a simple collectible card game where you’d summon one monster and set a couple traps now regularly involves ten minute turns. It’s extremely complicated, but the basic appeal of TCGs remains: the agony and ecstasy at the intersection of skill and luck.

After years of exploitative Yu-GiOh! gacha games, buggy efforts at multiplayer, and anime tie-ins that were fun but more targeted at kids, Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has dragged the card game into the free-to-play PvP age far more elegantly than anyone could have expected. The learning curve will be rather steep for any newcomers and there isn’t really much of an offering outside of the competitive ladder mode (though this seems likely to change in the near future). But despite all that, it’s still one of the best digital card games available today.