THE GOOD: You can choose from 722 cards.
Duel with numerous characters from the anime.
Duel with a friend or trade with him.
Starchips you win in duels can be exchanged for new cards at the Password option. You need to input the card's 8-digit code first.THE BAD:
The final characters are too difficult to defeat.
Most cards are worth 999,999 starchips, even if they aren't powerful.
Some cards can only be won by facing a particular duelist a few hundred to a few thousand times.SUMMARY:
Welcome to my review of Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories for the Playstation console.
» Plot
You are the prince of Metropolis, a bustling city full of commoners and duelists, that has a knack for dueling. Everything is going good until the High Mage Heishin attacks the palace wielding some sort of strange magic. It turns out that Heishin has discovered the Millennium Items, and is missing one more. Your mentor, Simon Muran, entrusts you with the Item and keeping it from falling into the wrong hands. As you flee, Heishin catches you and you must duel him for control over the Item. Unfortunately you lose the duel, so you are left with one option - to shatter the Item so Heishin will never have complete power over the world. In doing so, your soul is trapped inside it and you have nothing else to do but wait until someone decides to put it back together again.
5000 years have passed since that day. Yugi Moto, a young duelist that is actually a representation of the prince himself, was able to rebuild the Item, and now is involved in a duelist tournament hosted by Kaiba. With the power of the Millennium Item and the heart of the cards, Yugi defeats all the duelists and manages to send the prince back to his own world. Once back there, it would be up to the prince to finally defeat Heishin once and for all.
» Audio
The dueling music is pretty solid; not distracting but not that great either. Most of the music in the game will be the same repetitive noise from last time with an exception for a few duels, namely the final ones. The sound effects are also good in the duels. Each monsters' attacks sound just like you would imagine them to be, but they could have been touched up a little. For example, Meteor B. Dragon has a flamethrower-type attack, so you will hear the sound of fire when it attacks.
» Visuals
The visuals are absolutely stunning for a Playstation game. Detail for the characters, the backgrounds and the cutscenes (if you can call them that) were created with utmost care and design with all kinds of color shades. The artwork from the real-life cards were copied unto Forbidden Memories so if you want to view a certain card but do not own it in real-life, then simply bring it up on the game and see. Konami also made an attempt to bring the cards to life by creating 3-D images for them. I'll admit that most of them were crap but some of them were actually designed well enough to appear life-like.
» Controls
There are quite a few controls to remember when playing Forbidden Memories, so it would be wise to check over the controls in the instruction booklet first before playing. Once you have gotten them down then it should be a piece of cake. You don't play with the analog sticks at all, so don't bother trying to. Other than that Konami has made good use of the control scheme with the Playstation controller. Basically every button has a use except for the select button.
» Gameplay Aspects
Now it's time to get down to the good stuff.
Dueling
The main point of the game is to become the strongest duelist of all, and to do that you'll need to have the best cards for the job. 722 cards are available to collect and use in the game - 600+ are monsters, the rest are magics and traps. Out of these, you must choose 40 cards to duel with, so plan out a strategy and choose your cards wisely.
When you defeat a person in Campaign mode, then they are available to duel in Free Duel mode. Here you can duel a person without worrying about getting Game Over. You can also duel for starchips and an extra card that may prove useful against later opponents. Each duelist has their own strategies and cards so get out there and prove who has better game.
Starchips
Depending on your performance in a duel, you can receive up to 5 starchips per duel. These can be exchanged at the Password option for better cards. In order to get a password, you must have real-life Yu-Gi-Oh trading cards. They have an 8-digit password that can be inputted to get the card in the game.
The amount of starchips needed for a card depends on the power, rarity or both. However, it doesn't really natter because most of the good cards are worth 999,999 starchips and so far no one has reached that amount.
Receiving Cards from Duelists
Defeating your opponent not only gives you starchips, but a card as well. The type of card usually depends on the following factors:
Duel rank
Performance
Strength of Duelist
Luck
Luck plays a huge role for getting a certain card because even if you duel a perfect game, it won't guarantee you the card you're looking for. Some believe that the game randomly gives you a card which may be the case since none of us seem to get the cards we need. If you are trying to collect every single card in this game then you may go mad even before getting half of them.
» Final Thoughts
Overall, this game can be frustrating and difficult but addictive at the same time. If you like a good challenge, then I definitely recommend this game for you.
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