Recent reviews by Sprite

This is the epitome of a 9/10 game for me, with the very real potential to become a 10/10. It's some of the most fun I've ever had online, and the gameplay loop is social, addictive, and extremely expressive. You can approach objectives with a wide variety of tactics and ideas, and what you think of can probably work. Additionally, the devs are extremely responsive & managed to create a live service game that justifies its status as a live service game while also not having any of the predatory crap often found in AAA games. You can find the premium currency as a world drop and get the monthly warbonds easily with a very reasonable playtime for free. Additionally, the balancing is on point, and the devs are highly transparent and willing to work with the community on a wide variety of gameplay concerns.

The only thing preventing me from giving a full fledged 10/10 are some bugs currently in the game. These bugs are usually of the funny sort, but some obnoxious gameplay bugs remain: DoT damage is bugged off of host, and sometimes enemies can fire through walls, to name the two worst. However, the bugs have been widely fixed and plans persist for the currently present ones, and I expect this game to be fully deserving of a 10/10 on the current trajectory with a bit more time to cook. I do not give 10/10s lightly.

The review score for this game is going to be deflated due to the whole Sony PSN account thing, but it got walked back in no small part thanks to the developers. Give this game a try: it's the best $40 I've spent on the steam store, and I bought the premium version (which has just cosmetic changes) out of a desire to support the developers of a game of unusual quality: something I almost never do.

Step 1: Build a solid deck capable of taking on any duelist
Step 2: Go to ranked, which is the only content in the game
Step 3: Lose the coin toss or decide to play a going second deck
Step 4: The opposing player goes first and you don't draw 2 or more hand traps, one of which practically must be Maxx "C," which is played at 3 in virtually any deck that attempts to win, because the best draw card since Pot of Greed is unlimited. I would criticize this if it didn't provide the only counterplay to what I'm about to describe.

Now choose your own adventure since there are only two relevant decks in Ranked past Gold V

Step 5a: Your opponent plays Dryton goes +10 in card advantage, sets up 10 more cards in their GY, and you have to sit there for 15 minutes as they follow a Reddit flow chart which results in a board that can only be broken by a Kaiju. This is not exaggeration. They didn't apply Dryton banlist decisions to this game, so it is a regular occurrence for the opponent to have a card which negates any and all effects and summons at the cost of discarding 1 fairy monster, and a halfway decent Dryton opening hand can have more than 6, which is the number of cards you have.

Step 5b. Your opponent is playing Eldliches, and summons two 3500ATK beatsticks, then activates their unbanned(?!?) copies of Imperial Order and Skill Drain, removing your ability to use monster effects and spell cards.

Step 6. Sit there as you literally do not get to play the game.


If ranked duels are going to be the only content to your game besides an extremely limited singleplayer mode that feels like an afterthought, maybe make sure you use the banlist to curate a playable meta. Even if you do get lucky or build directly to counter the two decks, the counterplay is a snooze compared to what a normal meta looks like, and Drytons in particular can regularly take close to 15 minutes per turn to do setups expressed by 20-step flowcharts posted on Reddit which start with any two of three searchable cards.

If you want a game where you can tell stories about what you did in it, say no more.