Yu Gi Oh: Falsebound Kingdom is not what you've come to expect from a
Yu Gi Oh game. You don't take part in card battles, nor do you compete in tournaments. Instead, the game takes an entirely different direction by creating an RPG world for players to explore.
The game's plot is a rewritten plot from the two-part series that served as a gap between the Duelist Kingdom and Battle City seasons of the show. Players take the role of either Yu Gi or Seto Kaiba, each of whom have their own paths through the story. The game also features a Joey story line which is unlocked after completing the original two campaigns. The game begins when the two are invited to try out a new virtual reality game developed by a new gaming company. The virtual world takes the Duel Monsters game and transports it into a game world. After jacking into the game, things go wrong and the two are trapped. The two soon discover that they are 'marshals' (which are essentially duelists) in the game's war torn kingdom. In order to escape the virtual world, the two must complete the game.
It's hard to know where to begin explaining the game because, frankly, I still think I'm missing something. After choosing your character and suffering through the slow-moving plot setups, you're taken through an introductory campaign. During these campaigns, you assign a team of three monsters to each of your marshals and command them to attack cities in the area. Travel between cities is painfully slow and really not interesting. Once you get to a city, you must defeat the city's defenders. Here's where the game begins to make no sense.
Battles can be won without killing anyone. Each side has a given number of action points which deplete over the course of the battle. The first team to run out of points loses that battle. After being ejected from the battle, your monsters are given some EXP and the marshal is knocked back a few feet from the city and begins his painful march back to the city, only to attack the same set of monsters again. Battles are eventually won due to attrition. The system is slow, meaningless and just no fun at all. During your forced marches around the kingdom, you will also run across random battles. Of course, the frequency of these battles is low and it is possible to go through the first four scenarios and only face one random battle.
After taking over towns, you can build structures in the town walls. These include things like healers and defensive structures (cannons, walls). Other than healers, building these structures is pointless because they do nothing. For example, after building a cannon system to protect my town, an enemy marshal was still able to walk right up and attack my city. Healers are useful, but expensive.
