Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel: three things to improve soon

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel

Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, at the time of writing, is available on practically any existing platform: on the old generation of consoles, on the new one, on PC, even on mobile devices (Android and iOS), the greats excluded from the launch that took place last January 19, 2022. Why do we return to talk about Konami's latest iteration on the famous collectible card game known all over the world? For a very simple reason.

From our review of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel you have probably understood that you are struggling with the best game dedicated to the franchise currently in circulation. This is a fact; the other fact is that not everything is perfect, there are at least three things about Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel to be improved as soon as possible. Let's think about these three aspects together, and then let us know in the comments if you agree with us, or if you would rather like different changes.

The game timer in ranked mode

At least the summon animations, in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, they steal little time That timer. That damn timer. How many games have you played in Yu-Gi-Oh! Ranked mode by now! Master Duel (ie in online ranked matches), thinking: "but how many hours does it take to finish a round"? Don't worry: you are not the problem. It is precisely the choice made upstream by Konami that continues to arouse some perplexity. At the time of writing, a single game round - limited to this mode, which however is also the fundamental one in an online title - lasts up to 480 seconds (ie eight minutes); to which, in truth, the possible 240 seconds (another 4 minutes) lost here and there between one move and another must also be added.

In theory they seem few, but in fact they constitute an enormous amount of time for a card game, especially from the point of view of an online experience that should prove to be as fluid, rapid, pleasant as possible. Eight minutes for a "hand" is really too much, unless you're testing a whole new deck and need to read every single effect, every single description of every damned card in the hand, field, and graveyard. The opponent will probably have fallen asleep in the meantime; all this without considering latency, connection delays and secondary technical problems that do not penalize the experience, but do not even facilitate it.

Chain upon chain upon chain, a turn of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel lasts forever Perhaps a comparison helps you to understand the situation better. Remember how long the turns lasted on Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Link on smartphone? Generally "much less", and in practice exactly 300 seconds (5 minutes) plus another twenty seconds of recovery. Now, of course we don't expect total uniformity, because the rules of Duel Link are very different, the decks reduced to 20 cards, the terrain drastically reduced. But here, maybe a middle ground ...

Combo of a thousand summons in the first round

If the opponent on Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel starts summoning Link monsters, probably never stops The other sore point of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is soon evident to those returning to the card game after years of absence. Too many years, it is evident: Yu-Gi-Oh! it's not what it used to be, and having a Blue-Eyes White Dragon on the ground doesn't necessarily (anymore) mean you have an advantage over your opponent. By now, all "meta" decks, that is, those that dominate ranked matches and even tournaments in the real world, allow you to perform combos of a thousand summons in the first round. Practically you start playing, and the unfortunate observer sees the enemy terrain literally filled with a myriad of monsters, even up to six, all summoned in a single "hand".

Let's already imagine your brutal observation: these these are problems of those who have not kept up with the current meta, of those who preferred to unpack packages to assemble the nostalgic deck of Elemental Heroes against a more useful and effective Zodiac Tri-Brigade. And to a certain extent you are also right. But what if a user just wants to have fun online without getting brutalized by the experts?

Pendulum, Link, Xyz: Summoning Monsters in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has never been easier. Certainly a few more modes would be useful. It is true that you can create rooms open to the public, in which you play with certain rules (for example by modifying the list of banned cards), but what would really do Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is simply the presence of alternative modes. For example, in rotation, you could allow the use of only certain archetypes and expansions, limiting others; or prohibit the use of exactly the "tier" decks of the ranked mode (ie the strongest of all). Currently, it is very limiting having to choose between the competitive online and the rooms created at random by other users.

Viewing the cards

No problem during the chains: but "light" the cemetery in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is not easy Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel is the first game in the series to contain a truly impressive number of cards: there are already 10,000, and more will arrive in the future; among other things on certain platforms all this goodness is also available in 4K, for a real pleasure of the eyes. But speaking of eyes: what is the use of all this if the visualization on so many occasions is so painful?

Think of any game, both solo and competitive. How many times have you looked at the graveyard or at the banned cards ... without being able to see literally anything? Of course: the cards are stacked vertically with dimensions clearly designed to rage on the most short-sighted! We're kidding of course, don't be offended (by the way, the writer is completely short-sighted). But apart from that: the dimensions of the objects banished and in the graveyard are really tiny: we don't pretend that you can read the effects (that's impossible even for the elements on the main terrain) but at least understand the number and name of the cards there.

The animations of Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, yes, those are nice. Speaking of visualization problems, the experience of creating a new deck is literally traumatic. It is understandable to have tried to mediate between screens and input system, so that everything turned out to be usable on consoles, on PCs and on smartphones. But creating the deck is really frustrating: apart from the size of the cards, our list is shown on the right in a chaotic way. Filters are supposed to help you orient yourself, but they actually take up the entire top of the screen and even once introduced they complicate things further instead of simplifying them. On balance, the best way is to act having already a clear idea of ​​what you are going to do, using the "linked cards" function or the search by name of the individual cards. But this may be fine up to a point for the experts, certainly not for the newcomers.

Have you noticed any other small smudges in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel? In this case, let us know: we naturally focused on the three main problems of our personal experience with the new Konami title. An experience that today continues to be more than positive ... apart from these small problems, which fortunately can be remedied in the coming months.

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