I consider myself to be pretty knowledgeable when it comes to card games. I played Magic for a long time; I’ve played Pokemon, and even still have about 1000 cards from back in the day when I played Spellfire and Vampire: The Eternal Struggle. Well, I will admit that I did not understand Yu-Gi-Oh when I first tried to play it with my 9 year old, and it took him tutoring me for a couple of hours to try and figure out the first couple of video games that came out based on it. Well, I do have a much better understanding of it, so I was ready for Konami when they released their newest Yu-Gi-Oh title named The Falsebound Kingdom (TFK from now on for laziness reasons) for GameCube … only to have them completely change it up on me.

TFK revolves around Yu-Gi and his buddies as they are invited to try out a new VR monster battle game called “The Kingdom”. As they begin the simulation, they realize that it was a setup and find themselves as what are known as “marshals” (duelists) in a land that is being crushed under harsh tyranny by an uncaring ruler. Players can select from one of two totally different storylines … one being Yi-Gi and the other Kaiba … as they journey across the land liberating territories, trying to reunite, and ultimately get to the end and find their way back into their own world once more.

As I stated in the beginning of the review, Konami completely turned a 360 on me with this title since it doesn’t follow the standard card battle strategy that anyone who has played a Yu-Gi title will be used to. Instead, it follows more of an RPG based or turn based strategy format as players pick their marshals, and assign each of them up to three monsters to fight with either in towns or out in open areas. The menu is used to move marshals and their monsters around the maps or to check opposing faction creatures that may be incoming to try and claim a city or meet an opposing force.

Once two armies have met on the battlefield or an occupied city gets attacked, the screen changes to battle screen in which each monster gets a turn to attack an opposing creature, defend itself, or run away … and this continues for a set amount of turns (the one who scored the most damage wins) or until the entire opposing army has been wiped out. If you lose a monster, you can always go in and keep fighting, even if the turn ended during the last round.

One thing that TFK does is add an RPG style system to the monsters. As they fight, they will level up and gain access to more strengths like hit points or new attacks that they can use in battle. In addition, they can be interchanged, so monsters that you find along the way through defeating certain enemies or meeting up with a random monster along the way to a city or whatnot can be rotated into the fray if you choose to do so.

Realistically, this style of gameplay might be good for someone who was like me and didn’t understand the whole Yu-Gi-Oh concept or how the game was played, but fans of the card game will probably be disappointed in this style. First off, part of the card game fun even in video game format is the strategy behind trying to put together your own decks and trying them out against opponents to see how good you really are in your creativity or whatever. Instead, this title seems to be more based on who has the best monsters or who can gang up the hardest when it all comes down to it, and quickly becomes a multitude of rounds of just back and forth hitting until someone wins.

Secondly, the game pace seems extremely slow due to the overall element of the game. Since you only have access to three monsters per marshal, only having a couple of marshals tends to get really dull as you sit for a number of minutes just waiting or them to get from point A to point B. Also, battles just don’t seem to get very exciting, since monsters that you have level up as they go … and many times it doesn’t make much sense to rotate them out with a newer but lower level monster since the majority of the battles go to whoever can take down the most hit points first. When it’s all said and done, it just doesn’t come close to the original style of deck building and combat.

Graphically, TFK looks OK, and contains some pretty neat spell effects and some pretty nifty monster animation. Unfortunately, the backgrounds tend to get repetitive pretty quickly, and the overall color scheme and layout seem a little dull … just like the action in the game. The sound to TFK also was just right around the decent mark, and the music tends to just take up some background space and doesn’t really do a lot to add to the overall game.

For people who may be interested in what Yu-Gi-Oh is all about but just don’t understand the card game, this could be a much easier way to play. Unfortunately, the game tends to get repetitive and pretty dull pretty quickly regardless of whose story you play with, and fans of the card game will more than likely be pretty disappointed overall despite getting to see some of their favorite monsters once again on the console gaming screen. I highly recommend chalking TFK up as a weekend rental if you want to check it out, and stick to the card game if you are craving some Yu-Gi-Oh action.

Gameplay: 6.0
While there are some neat monsters to play around with, and there is the ability to customize your three monster army, the overall game pace is very slow and really doesn’t work well for the card based gameplay (reminded me a little of the disappointed feeling I had with MTG : Battlegrounds for PSX). Even though there are two different storylines to go through, I don’t see myself going back and playing through the second one anytime soon.

Graphics: 6.1
There are some neat character still shots and neat monster animations / spell effects, but the overall backgrounds and most of what you will see while you play tends to get repetitive and is pretty basic looking when it all comes down to it.

Sound: 6.4
The music to TFK really just adds a little background noise to listen to, and the monster and spell effects weren’t too bad, but pretty plain overall.

Difficulty: Medium
The game is pretty easy to figure out, and players should be able to mix and match their army, march out against a foe, or do whatever with a pretty minimal learning curve. Battles tend to just go to who has the strongest monsters vs. elemental placement or whatever, so the key is to keep on leveling up.

Concept: 5.8
While I see that the developers were trying to give something new to the gaming fans who enjoy Yu-Gi, this kind of game really doesn’t work for a card game since players really don’t have the same amount of strategic options at hand like they do when designing their own decks nor will they probably like the slow pace of the game.

Overall: 5.9
While a lot of the Yu-Gi-Oh games that have come out could probably be considered as “similar to the one that came out before it”, TFK unfortunately takes a step in the wrong direction by trying to take the popular card game and turn it into a turn based style RPG kind of format. Whether a Yu-Gi fan or not, I would highly recommend trying this out as a rental only. If you like it, great … but it will save you some aggravation in the end of you don’t.