Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Stardust Acclerator World Championship 2009 Review

Another year, another Yu-Gi-Oh! game. Since 2004, Konami has given the public annual releases of their World Championship series (although oddly enough the 2007 and 2008 installments were released in the same year). Even though the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise isn’t as popular as it once was, these titles still manage to generate enough sales for Konami to keep coming back every year. This year they have decided to treat us to Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s Stardust Accelerator World Championship 2009.

There are two main game modes in which you will be playing Word Championship 2009: Story Mode (which is an improvement over 2008’s Duel World Mode) and World Championship Mode. Story Mode puts you in the shoes of a boy who wakes up in an alley all alone. He can’t remember who he is or how he got there, but there is one thing he did not forget, and that’s how to duel. You will be making your way around this small 3D world, running from person to person, place to place, dueling people in the hopes you will remember who you are. There are also a few sections where you will be doing some lite racing. Story Mode is a nice attempt to add depth to the game, but I have wonder if the writers who came up with the story actually thought it was a good one. The racing sections aren’t horrible, but are definitely a waste of time. And I won’t even mention the laughable “push the blocks” puzzles. Your only incentive for playing Story Mode is to unlock items in which to customize your character with, and more importantly more cards, which you will definitely want to do if you want to make the best deck you can.

World Championship Mode is pretty much the same as Story Mode, except instead of running around the world map to go duel and buy cards, you choose what you want to do from a menu screen. Doesn’t sound very exciting I know, but this is essentially what it is. The biggest allure to World Championship mode is the ability to duel over Nintendo Wi-Fi connection. Here you can choose to duel against friends you’ve traded friend codes with, or duel randomly against anyone in the world. You can also download new opponents to duel against offline, updated card ban lists, and even rare cards that are offered every week.

World Championship 2009 is modeled after the new spinoff anime Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D’s, and as such, this game also includes the new dueling style introduced in the anime. However, Turbo Duels aren’t really all that different from regular duels, except the only spell cards allowed are speed spells, which require speed counters to activate, which you gain one of during yours and your opponent’s standby phase. It’s nice to have another play option, but I really didn’t care for Turbo Duels and am glad it’s existence in the game is limited.

My major complaint with World Championship 2009 is, if you’ve played any of the previous DS incarnations of World Championship, you are really getting just more of the same. Aside from a few new rules, a few different duel types, and new cards, you’re really experiencing the same game. Granted this title should be all about dueling and that’s definitely what you’ll get, but I was even able to recognize a good amount of music, sound effects, and even certain layouts that were present in the 2007 edition. I suppose you can take it as a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” situation, but making a game look and sound the same than it has in years past doesn’t help its case.

Overall I would say this is a very solid Yu-Gi-Oh! game. For anyone who has been curious as to how a trading card game like Yu-Gi-Oh! is played, this is worth checking out, especially since the game includes a very extensive tutorial that goes into every aspect of the game. And with the number of cards included, the amount of play options available (more if you unlock them), and a very solid online experience, this is a title every Yu-Gi-Oh! fan will be playing for many many hours, if you are willing to accept the fact that it’s just more of the same.