Recent reviews by King Graham

Great fun. It has some notoriety for the whole FX3 -> FX debacle where your tables don't transfer and changes in physics but genuinely love this game and prefer it over FX3. The addition of questlines and events give some great incentive to play stuff you wouldn't normally and teach you what to focus on.

My personal favorites:
- Tales of Arabian Nights
- Theatre of Magic
- Black Rose
- Epic Quest
- Excalibur

Give it a shot. Once it clicks, you're hooked for hours.

Growing up on the Duelist Kingdom anime, my love for Yu-Gi-Oh has lasted 20+ years by now. And while this game initially disappointed me with its rather lackluster UI, graphics and accessibility options, by God does it slap hard in terms of how many fun decks you can build and the sheer amount of AI/campaign/challenge duels. I'm completely hooked!

If you can't get into this or are getting frustrated, some tips that might not seem obvious initially:

- If you feel like you're going to lose, don't quit out. Surrender (by clicking your deck) - this gives you some Duel Points and one card of the opponent's deck instead. Incidentally, this is also the quickest way to rack up Duel Points to open packs.

- The campaign duels are usually set-up to be in the first playable duelist's favour; you might struggle if you want to play with the story deck in the "Reversal" duel and this WILL get frustrating if you insist on playing like this. Some "villain"/opponent decks are simply intentionally bad (looking at you Mokuba) and will have you struggle to beat them; you're pretty much expected to use one of your own decks for these. Play them for the nostalgia, but don't keep retrying if you lose too much - there is no benefit or better reward if you play a Story Deck, so don't feel forced to play those, make some of your own! On that topic...

- Building your own deck initially can seem daunting, but the designers hid some exceptionally good decks behind the cheapest Card Pack (Grandpa Muto) available, look up the Gravekeepers guide - it can carry you through most of the campaigns. Or you can build a cheat-y Exodia Deck.

- The numbers under the Card Packs indicate how many unique cards are in there (314) and how many are in there total (942, 3 copies of each unique card). Most Card Packs contain a good mix of cards and have archetypes tied to that sole pack, so you can build fun decks if you just want to focus thematically on one character. Another way of getting these cards is to keep beating the opponent that uses the deck you want - every win nets you 3 cards, a loss/surrender nets you 1.

- Lastly, some of my decks/archetypes that I had great fun with and are potentially very strong if built correctly (or at least strong enough for the campaign/challenge duels). I'll list where to find most of the cards too, but you can always mix with other generally useful cards (Pot of Greed, Graceful Charity, etc.):

> Harpie Ladies -- Mai Valentine (Yu-Gi-Oh)
> Frog/Toadally Awesome* -- Bastion Misawa (GX)
> Amazoness Warriors -- Mai Valentine's Card Pack (Yu-Gi-Oh)
> Exodia, Obliterate! -- Grandpa Muto (Yu-Gi-Oh)
> Six Samurai -- Tetsu Trudge (5D)
> Golden Castle of Stromberg* -- Seto Kaiba (Yu-Gi-Oh)
> Legendary Fisherman/Ocean* -- Mai Valentine (Yu-Gi-Oh)

* = my three most played decks for now!

I'm collecting other cards for fun archetypes and there's 10,000+ cards so the possibilities are practically endless. It's a great feeling to see an opponent play a thematically fun deck and then collecting the cards to build one of your own, adjusting it as you play. Do give this a try! Exceptionally fun.

This is genuinely an exceptional game - in no little part thanks to its story - that is marred by a bad reputation and a controversial "life" system. Other reviews went into it already, but it's rather true: you get punished for playing badly and rewarded for playing well, feeling like you're fighting an uphill battle when you mess up and lose your power-ups.

Then again, the (Hungarian) voice acting, flavor, artwork, worldbuilding and story in this game is superb. The story is a little hard to follow, but here's a few tips without any spoilers.

You follow two seperate points in time. The first follows the amputee Ronotra Koss being "helped" through blackmail by Myryan Magusa and an AI GARAI 74/22876 to avenge his son; the second has you follow Akyta Dryad, leader of the Enkie resistance, assisted by Durak, Enkie noblewoman and Lynthe Ytoo, former imperialist.

The way time is marked is mainly what makes it confusing:

- Ronotra Koss' narrative starts in "circle" (= the game's years) 1380 IN and ends in circle 1517 IN
- Akyta Dryad's narrative starts in circle 102 ET and ends in circle zero ET

i.e. the "IN" or "Imperial Nir" counts UP from an unknown time whereas the "ET" or "Enkie Time" counts DOWN to a prophesied moment in time.

You can piece the story together with these hints yourself by going through the story mode twice (if you beat challenge mode once, you unlock the alternative narrative for the true ending) and by leafing through the Encyclopedia (which you'll unlock after beating the story once). Note that Ronotra Koss' actions predate Akyta Dryad's - though time is its own character in this story.

Do yourself a favour and give this a shot, get good at it, forgive its flaws and experience that great Hungarian voice acting and storywriting. WholeHEARTEDLY recommended! This game was bashed far too unfairly!

This is genuinely an exceptional game - in no little part thanks to its story - that is marred by a bad reputation and a controversial "life" system. Other reviews went into it already, but it's rather true: you get punished for playing badly and rewarded for playing well, feeling like you're fighting an uphill battle when you mess up and lose your power-ups.

Then again, the (Hungarian) voice acting, flavor, artwork, worldbuilding and story in this game is superb. The story is a little hard to follow, but here's a few tips without any spoilers.

You follow two seperate points in time. The first follows the amputee Ronotra Koss being "helped" through blackmail by Myryan Magusa and an AI GARAI 74/22876 to avenge his son; the second has you follow Akyta Dryad, leader of the Enkie resistance, assisted by Durak, Enkie noblewoman and Lynthe Ytoo, former imperialist.

The way time is marked is mainly what makes it confusing:

- Ronotra Koss' narrative starts in "circle" (= the game's years) 1380 IN and ends in circle 1517 IN
- Akyta Dryad's narrative starts in circle 102 ET and ends in circle zero ET

i.e. the "IN" or "Imperial Nir" counts UP from an unknown time whereas the "ET" or "Enkie Time" counts DOWN to a prophesied moment in time.

You can piece the story together with these hints yourself by going through the story mode twice (if you beat challenge mode once, you unlock the alternative narrative for the true ending) and by leafing through the Encyclopedia (which you'll unlock after beating the story once). Note that Ronotra Koss' actions predate Akyta Dryad's - though time is its own character in this story.

Do yourself a favour and give this a shot, get good at it, forgive its flaws and experience that great Hungarian voice acting and storywriting. WholeHEARTEDLY recommended! This game was bashed far too unfairly!

Besides the insanely fun gameplay loop, Blade is voiced by Michael Jai White a.k.a. Black Dynamite. Just that sold me on it within the first hour.

Just a ton of fun, incredibly well thought out, super-satisfying combos & accompanying sound effects.

Pump the joker endorphines straight into my veins brother.

What a superb little game. And free! Weaves a gorgeous soundtrack into its gameplay and narrative - also does that thing where controller vibration actually enhances the experience.

Play it! You can finish it easily in under an hour, possibly a little more if you want to find all the secrets.

Besides the stellar gameplay and the sprites receiving a gorgeous overhaul with a lot more personality, Chris Christodoulou knocks it out of the park once again with a remastered soundtrack that oozes style. "Tropic of Cancer" [#10 on the Risk of Rain Returns album on Bandcamp] is the stand-out track for me, go look it up and wait for the sickest drop @ 2:08 in the history of video game music.

Short but sweet, took me 99 minutes to complete. Great voice acting, rather satisfying albeit somewhat simple gameplay.

Not challenging at all, but a nice relaxing journey.

Play it!