Can't play the game if you don't have a 22 card chain combo that brings out a 4500 attack power beat stick on your first turn that can't be affected or destroyed by card effects. Yes im coping, yes im a YGO boomer that remembers starting a duel with 1 monster and 2 face downs at most, but this is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt.

Appreciate the game, but way too much bots right now

I love playing Yugioh
I love the way master duel is designed visually
I love the fact there's a solo mode so you don't have to duel players
I love that the solo mode starts with an in depth tutorial, that taught even a complete newbie who hasn't even seen the anime how to play the game enough for them to make a functioning Toon deck and start enjoying the card game I'm so passionate about.

But unfortunately, it's designed that you SHOULD duel players, that's what Yugioh is for, and that's really the only way to get more stuff anyway, and it SHOULDN'T be a problem in a well designed online card game with skill-based match-making
But god, I just want to rip my hair out, every single time I play this game, 224 hours in, and I think I've lost more hairs to pulling them out in frustration than I have to accidentally getting my hair caught in a blender.
In fact, the feeling of having your hair put into a blender is more enjoyable than this.

The biggest issue, the ranking system is pointless, there's 6 rankings, beginner, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, diamond, and master. And of those, once you start really playing, there's only 3, platinum, diamond, and master. Because you can't drop below platinum, so there's physically no point to the others.
I play decks that I find fun, decks that aren't necessarily meta, because this is an easily accessible game, and, if you ignore the micro-transactions, you can get decks you want to play in a day or two of playing early on, but over a week or so once you get past the early stages where they give you gems like Halloween candy.
But with the way the ranking system works, I should be down in bronze or silver, but I'm up in diamond, I'm fighting the same floodgates, spright, tearlaments, synchro negate spams, mass interaction, and FTKs that everyone is fighting, but because I'm using a deck I enjoy, rather than a deck that's meant to counter the meta or is the meta, I'm losing 80%-ish of my games, and several of those wins are my opponent losing connection, or misplaying before I've had a turn and then surrendering, or just doing it because their hand wasn't good enough. I'm not fighting the decks more my level, I'm David fighting Goliath, and I have to hard draw into my sling or I just get ass blasted like my opponent has some deep-seeded rage against someone trying to have fun, or get lucky and hope that Goliath just walks away and goes home.

The banlist is also very problematic, and, CONSTANTLY is too. One deck doing too good for a month? Fine, we'll hit like, two cards, and then release a new deck which causes even more problems and not get around to fixing it until two months later when everyone has spent money to get the deck in order to have a chance to compete.
Tearlaments are a perfect example of this, practically unlimited, full power Tearlaments, for nearly 3 months, all the tear cards, all the Ishizu's, all at 3, if you wanted to stand a lick of a chance, you either hard drew Dimension Shifter in your opening hand, or hoped they drew 3 Crymes and 2 Sulieks. It was practically impossible to beat with anything other than a lucky opening hand, or a better opening hand going first in a mirror match, and once Konami was absolutely certain everyone was tired of Tearlaments, and/or had paid top dollar to get a full functioning Tearlaments deck, they hit them with a ton of limits, so you had to dismantle all those extra copies of cards you got with no benefits. And sure they're still seeing top competitive play, because they hit a lot of cards, buuut, they didn't hit enough, Kitkalos is still around, all of the Ishizu's but one are at one, and the one that ISN'T is the strongest one at 2, etc etc. But they aren't the only problematic cards in need of bans or having had too much time unbanned
MAXX "C" IS AT 3
It took them far too long to ban Cyber Stein, who was a CONSISTENT FTK ENABLER though all that time. And other problem cards, like Sales Ban Rhongominiad, are also everywhere up in higher tiers, because they thought it was a good idea to ban the enabler and not the problem, when nobody wants to use the problem, but many people would like to use the enabler, for other things. Sure it's a double standard, ban Cyber Stein the Enabler, but don't ban Gossip Shadow the Enabler, but when you look at it case by case WHICH KONAMI SHOULD BE, it's pretty clear why.
MAXX "C" IS AT 3
There are tons of Decks that can still semi-consistently pull of FTKs, and even a 50% chance to win the game with no way your opponent can stop it is stupid, because if you flip a coin 100 times, gaining two points for each heads, and losing one point for each tails is still a profitable chance! And if you surrender, your rank doesn't go down, meaning these FTK decks just flip that coin until they get Heads, and leave every time they don't, like it never happened.
MAXX "C" IS AT 3

Something DESPERATELY needs to be done about the ranking system, and make a better way to punish and reward players. If a player Surrenders, make them lose points, if they surrender too many duels in a short time span, punish them with a time-out, make it so when you go up a rank, you can still fall back down to the rank below it, so you don't end up in platinum on a fluke and win one of every 20 games while permanently stuck there, not getting the chance to do dailies because you just end up dying before you get a chance to play. Ban cards that only see play in decks that are designed to lose the game so they can drop ranks. Just do SOMETHING. Because ALL they've done, is add a new rank, because players were complaining that the ranks didn't go high enough, and then LIMIT the ranks you can drop to by another one, effectively making the whole thing redundant, there's still 3 ranks- all you've done is make more room for players who play the game twice a month to not end up with ALL of the tryhard sweats that make the game unfun.
Yes, a lot of this is me complaining about me not playing the better decks and saying the meta is OP, I get it, it looks like a 'git gud'-able moment, or a 'skill issue', but that's just part of it. I shouldn't have to ignore 95% of the cards in the whole GAME to be able to play it and enjoy it. I shouldn't HAVE to sit through turns that take 10+ minutes of summoning, connection delay, summoning, connection delay, summoning, connection delay- just to start my turn, draw a card that doesn't help me, and then surrender, wasting all that time. This is supposed to be fun, I want to play a deck I want to play, say some goofy ah summoning chants to myself whenever I bring out my boss monster, and win/lose games 50/50 with people around my deck's strength level.

Until these issues are fixed, I think it's safe to say, the 224 hours I've spent playing this game have been completely worthless.
Unless you're a hyper-competitive Yugioh player who doesn't have the money for IRL decks, or a complete beginner who's only here for the tutorials, this game is a complete waste of time, and brain cells.

If you're going to play Master Duel, just know you're not in for a fun time, unless you're willing to constantly keep up with the meta, abandoning what's fun, to play what's good. And hey, if that's how you enjoy your time, using the best possible set ups to ruin others' days, I say go for it.
But please, please don't drop ranks to screw over people trying to have fun with your meta, Master Duel is the ideal game for beginners and casuals alike, cool animations, semi-auto functions and understanding of problem-solving card-text that makes things function as intended. And the only way it can be kept like that is if people stop ruining the game for others.

I REALLY want to keep going, cause there's so much more I want to address, but my head hurts already.


TL;DR: Master Duel isn't worth your time unless you're playing it for the Tutorials, or are playing Hyper-Competitive. The game could be made better, but as it stands, it's not worth the time or space.

Overall review: Not reccomended for new players or casual players. Competitive players will need to accept a coin-flip meta that embraces a large number of unfair game-winning cards.

Pros:
1. The game is frontloaded with enough gems to make your first deck with little effort.

2. Larger playerbase despite continuously dwindling numbers.

3. Much better graphics, UI, and music than previous Yu-Gi-Oh! titles.

4. Occasional once-per-month "events" that introduce a temporary change in deckbuilding limits but only stick around for 2 weeks, leaving you with little to do in-between.

5. A crafting system allows players to dismantle cards for crafting points at an unfavourable rate in order to craft cards that they need.

Cons:
1. Throughout the game's first year, Konami has continued to fail to utilize their ban list effectively. You should expect most games at higher ranks to end in the first two turns - usually due to a surrender after a game-winning card is played. Cards that have been banned for a long time for good reason in the real game run rampant here and result in a coin-flip meta.

2. The card pool is frustratingly outdated. While the game was initially marketed as a modern Yu-Gi-Oh! platform and many had hoped it would be a good virtual simulation of the current TCG, Konami has failed to keep it up to date with the modern game, and it trails a good 6 months behind for no good reason.

3. The pack system is very poorly handled. None of the card packs are available straight away. New players will be encouraged to spend their limited gems on the few packs that they unlock, and packs are only available for 24 hours at a time.

4. There is a significant lack of any substantial solo content such as that included in Duel Links or Legacy of the Duelist - occasionally you might see a new "story" added that includes 3 duels against a faceless bot using a slight variation on the same deck. (Once per month) This equates to about 30 minutes of "content" every month.

5. Once you've exhausted your supply of initial gems (Missions, solo mode, etc) you will have no way to farm gems to open packs. Expect 140 daily gems, which will allow you to open a single pack which is unlikely to provide anything useful.

6. As time progresses, new cards are being "rarity-bumped" before being added to packs with the intention of making new decks prohibitively expensive. Many newer decks will have at least four times as many ultra rares as those from the game's launch.

7. Konami has been embracing a gem paywall in a small number of their recent events while releasing alongside them powerful unlimited meta strategies to encourage players to spend their gems to compete in the event. During the Link Regulation event, they replaced the casual play-for-gems format with a much more competitive win-for-gems style. At the same time, they left two powerful archetypes unlimited in the event ban list, while introducing their new cards to the shop.
The result is that players unwilling to spend on the two "new" archetypes had a difficult time getting hold of all the rewards.

8. Konami has exhibited an unacceptable lack of communication throughout the course of their game, and have made efforts to reduce information getting to customers via "leaks". Upcoming events, packs, banlist changes, and even celebration milestones are all left unannounced until they drop, leaving players unable to gauge whether they should be saving their limited resources and bored as they wait an entire month for a sign of new content.

9. Despite now reaching its first year anniversary, (although ignored by Konami) the game still has little-to-no appeal for long-time fans of the anime, casual players, or competitive players of older formats. Konami's continued failure to implement a "classic mode" or older formats is one of the many factors that ensured the playerbase has continued a downwards decline since launch. A lack of other interesting modes like "tag duels" and best-of-3 matches means that other applications such as Duel Links and fan-made applications like EDOPro are still the ideal choice for providing captivating games of Yu-Gi-Oh! with regular updates, interesting game modes, or a modern card pool.

10. The nature of the game's marketing and Yu-Gi-Oh!'s previously-established community means that it has fostered a rather nasty hyper-competitive playerbase. New players and casual players will struggle to enjoy interacting with long-time players of the TCG and OCG. Playing a casual or sub-optimal deck, being a fan of the anime foremost, and voicing frustrations with the game's lack of balancing or ban list utilization are sure to result in condescending, childish, or hostile reactions from the playerbase.

Master Duel has everything that would make it one of the best places to play YGO. It's easy, it's fast (relatively), it's visually good with a mostly cohesive UI, building decks and finding games is incredibly simple and I enjoy being able to boot it up during downtime and hitting a quick match.

It's a shame that every single match is god forsaken awful. I understand what their approach to the banlist has been. More leniency with certain historically broken cards to allow those archetypes to have their spotlight on a wide online platform, which means every game becomes a sort of pleasant mixed bag where you can never fully plan for what you'll find on the other side. But because the format is a Best of One where fundamentally broken cards like MAXX C, Protos, Eva, Colossus, Scythe, the list goes on and on... decks end up going into one of two fundamental camps: decks that can ftk you, or decks that can stun you.

This ultimately means that no matter what decks are available, the top cuts are always going to be a predictable mess of win turn 1 strategies. The boss monsters and win conditions are almost all the same, the only difference is how they reach that end board. We're more or less permanently stuck in the exact same environment as the Adamancipator/Eldlich era because Konami refuses to remove decks that can abuse the best of 1 format to its maximum.

Yes, obviously there are ways to out floodgate boards and ways to break mass negate and handtraps to out ftk, but it's borderline impossible to play a deck that can run all 3 and still have a game plan that won't lose to a Numeron or Accesscode Talker OTK on turn 2. This is exactly why the sideboard is invaluable, and until Master Duel does something to acknowledge the fundamental issue this game will never be anything more than a "go second, concede".

tl;dr
it's a 5/10, best coinflip simulator on the market

When you inevitably uninstall this as the powercreep, handtrap bs and the lack of gems after the first missions are a terrible experience, make sure to delete your "steamapps\common\Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel" folder as the launcher uses it's own downloader for whatever reason. Steam can only uninstall the 300mb launcher itself, I still had to manually delete the remaining 28.6GB worth of files, love that.

Watch your opponent play 30 cards on Turn 1 for 6 minutes and build an impossible board with 4 different negate effects that wont let you play any cards at all. Really fun.

I’ve put hundreds of hours into this game across multiple accounts, and every time I come back thinking, “Maybe it’ll be different this time,” I end up reaching the same conclusion: this game is just not fun anymore. Not because of the core mechanics. It’s the players and Konami’s balancing that completely ruin the experience.

Even in Bronze ranks, which are supposed to be the beginner tier, you’re up against copy pasted meta decks. I like to play with decks I find fun or interesting. But that doesn’t matter when your opponent's idea of fun is locking you out of the game entirely on turn one.

Go first? Great! Now get ready to have every summon and effect negated instantly, and just sit there with nothing left to do.
Go second? Even worse! First, you have to watch your opponent summon half their deck for 15 minutes straight all before you even get to draw.

And then, when it’s finally your turn? It’s not really your turn. Because they’re still activating a dozen more effects in response to everything you try to do. By the time you actually get to make a move, you’ve completely lost track of your strategy and any motivation to continue.

Honestly, I’ve lost more duels by surrendering out of boredom or frustration than actually getting my LP reduced to zero.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not some "old yugioh was better" boomer. I enjoy the new stuff but it feels like the fun element of this game was just ripped out, and the players seem to be completely okay with it. Because why build unique fun decks from hundreds of archetypes to choose from when you can just google the current meta deck and copy paste everything and have every single duel be the same as the last.

Something has to seriously be done about skill based matchmaking. Because there is no difference if I play in bronze or platinum because I am going against the same decks, the same tactics, the same 10 cards that are in every single damn deck and quite frankly I am so sick of it.

I know most people will just dismiss this by saying "skill issue", but the reality is, there is no skill involved in this game. Copying meta decks doesn't take skill. Spamming effect chains to summon your entire deck on turn 1 doesn't take skill. Locking out your opponent from the game on turn 1 using the same 3 cards doesn't take skill.

Unfortunately there is literally no alternative for those of us who actually want to enjoy the game for what it was originally. Because realistically, Master Duel is the best quality yugioh game out there and any alternative just ends up being disappointing or boring (I'm looking at you legacy of the duelist).

This game has so much potential and can be really fun at times, but like every other online game nowadays it has been ruined by sweats.

Konami has actually ruined Master Duel by allowing Tearlaments to come to the game without any sort of proper balancing. I have never had a more miserable ranked experience with this game. I'm running into it every other match at all ranks and it is beyond broken. No meta deck I've encountered before has been this dominating in every way. I do not care if there are ultra-specific decks that run counter to it. Having to build an entire deck just to counter 1 specific meta-deck is a waste of gems, and if I might put my tin foil hat on for one moment, probably by design. You have a good game on your hands here for once, Konami. The banlists have been pretty good up until now. Please listen to the playerbase, nerf Tearlaments, and don't allow another archetype to come to Master Duel again without any sort of balance.

Master Duel is a fine Yu-Gi-Oh simulator, but I wish Konami would finally implement a banlist of some sort to change up the meta/limit problematic cards. The game is very playable without spending money; just don't expect to create too many decks while relying solely on free gems. I wish there was an insta-queue for unranked PvP instead of for only ranked games. Lately, people have created bot accounts to either automatically play consistent FTK decks or to farm Duel Pass levels by not even playing the game.

Edit: 4/24/22 - Konami just announced first forbidden list update to launch 5/9/22
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2799426839
It only took 3 months to create a first banlist update, and it's a good first step, but seems to have missed the bigger problem meta cards.

Yu-Gi-Oh trading card game simulator (with unique forbidden list)

Master Duel simulates playing the Yu-Gi-Oh card game digitally. Two players match up and enter a coin toss; whoever gets heads (chosen at random) decides to go either first or second. From there, the gameplay is the usual Yu-Gi-Oh standard of alternating turns, drawing, standby phases, main phases, battle phases, end phases, etc. You can toggle options during duels for how often you get prompted to respond to an effect with a chain if that is bothering you.

Aside from the duels themselves, you obtain cards to create decks by either spending the game's currency, gems, for booster packs or by crafting cards using CP corresponding to the rarity of the card you want to make (e.g. you must spend 30 UR Craft Points to create 1 UR card, or 30 SR Craft Points to create 1 SR card). Gems are obtained by completing limited (daily) missions and unlimited missions (permanent progress tracks), or by participating in limited time festival events. Craft Points are obtained by deconstructing non-legacy-pack cards (weird dev decision) or by making progress on a battle pass.

Master Duel looks very clean and the various menus are presented to be easily readable (e.g. click the graveyard to view all the cards in the graveyard in a vertical list on the right). You can spend gems on buying cosmetics that change how your field looks or the card protectors your deck uses. You can also view an ingame log through a button that documents every action being taken in a game historically and in real time.

You can play through single-player exhibitions that explain the lore behind certain archetypes of cards, such as the Lightsworn or the Gladiator Beast cards. These begin with a small cutscene of lore, continue into a practice session explaining the gimmick behind the archetype cards, and then follow into duels against an AI deck to challenge you to use the archetype to win. Completion of these exhibition duels rewards you with currency to unlock more duels in single-player, sometimes gems, and sometimes deck master decorations.

•Game presentation is top notch and presented so that new players can understand the flow of a duel.

•You can make several decks without spending any money, just not all at once.

•PvP ranked queue matches you instantaneously 90% of the time.

•Most "boss" monsters have cool summon artwork animations.

•The real time duel log keeps track of the game history very nicely to inform you of every interaction since the start of the duel.

•Konami isn't really communicating their roadmap for the game's future; updates usually just drop out of the blue unannounced.

•Master Duel's card pool is not fully up to date with the TCG/OCG yet.

•A banlist update is heavily needed as certain decks are just too consistent.

•Master Duel is a best of 1, not a best of 3. There is no side decking. You have to strictly build your deck to fully commit to either going first or going second.

•There is no auto-queue for unranked play; the only option is to create/join open lobbies and then wait for other players to enter and agree to duel.

•Master Duel could use more ranks in the ladder. Platinum rank is filled with the tryhard meta decks with little variety/few rogue decks, so I have chosen to stay in Gold for the past number of seasons.

Edit: 4/30/22: New Diamond rank just added above Platinum. Level of tryhardness this season to be determined.

•There are many bots "playing" the game in the form of FTK decks or NOT playing the game just to farm progress on their Duel Pass. It is very underwhelming when you want to just duel someone else and you run into several of these bots within a play session.

•You can't break down legacy pack cards into crafting materials.

•Shop booster packs are only available for 24 hours at a time, and you need to unlock its availability first.

•I don't have a problem with the modern Yu-Gi-Oh meta, but I think it is objectively terrible. You either go first and try to build an unstoppable board filled with negates to anything your opponent tries on their turn, or you build to go second and watch your opponent spend 5+ minutes (no exaggeration) comboing their cards into the unstoppable board, and then proceed to use all your going second resources to solve the puzzle they set up. Making a going second deck is a commitment since Master Duel is only best of 1, and most players will opt to go first in order to go through their lengthy first turns hoping that the second turn player does not "draw the out" to their board. As a result, some people will simply close the game upon losing the coin flip and seeing that their opponent has chosen to go first since their deck probably isn't built to properly go second.

Edit: 4/27/22: Update just got announced so coin flip abusers will receive a loss upon reloading the game.

•Chain link animations could be sped up.

•PC crossplay with mobile is terrible. Apparently mobile players are constantly being disconnected, and since they can connect to duel with PC players, PC players have to suffer watching the opponent constantly disconnect with every game interaction, slowing the game to an incredible halt every second.

•Limited time festival events are weird because even though they use unique banlists, Konami makes weird decisions to leave some annoying decks as the meta to play (e.g. not playing Synchro in a Synchro-only festival).

•Profile/cosmetic customization could see more variety.

6/10

Konami, please just curb the number of bots and change the banlist more often.

Checkbox reviews are lazy copy & paste bullsh*t. ASCII art reviews tell you nothing. "Let's be honest, I only wrote this review for awards" is a waste of everyone's time. If you are interested in genuine & detailed game reviews, feel free to check out my others here (or don't, I don't tell you what to do).