I happen to be an expert on this topic
Pokemon TCG for Game Boy
>very, very well put together and showcases what a card game should be
<incredibly short if you have the vaguest idea of what you're doing
<adapts a stupidly broken era of card game that the AI is not remotely capable of dealing with
<has some absurdly low drop rates for ultra rare cards
<can be beaten in an hour
<the Card Pop exclusives are literally impossible to get even if you get multiple GBCs and copies of the game because of a programming bug.
Good job at what it is, needed expansion.
TCG Neo romhack
>removes or nerfs the most broken cards
>nearly ever Pokemon card was replaced making the game feel different
>rather than just port newer cards, there's conscious archetypes
>for instance a good number of fire Pokemon can send the top X cards from their deck to the grave as a side effect, so a burn deck might actually be plausible)
>no Pokemon cards that are just terrible and pointless
<still very easy as the read me acknowledges it can't remotely fix the game without entirely new AI and programming new rules from scratch
Worth a play if you liked the normal game
Pokemon TCG 2
>it's more Pokemon TCG for GB
>Mint is a great FeMC
>adds a bunch of new cards
<most of the broken shit is still in, unnerffed
<the "solution" was to force your deck to meet certain requirements for some bosses, which really just makes the game way more tedious as you have to grind to even get the cards needed to meet the often absurdly specific requirements and the variety of deckbuilding goes out the window
<translation for non-card stuff is pre-AI machine translation cleaned up because the actual translation was taking forever
>not as bad as it sounds because TCG and TCG2 have crazy text programming that let them spit out an absurdly high number of kanji for an original Game Boy game so it rarely deals with kana soup,
<but it misses a lot of nuance like the lightning club members talk in katakana only, which is a stereotypical robot/brainwashed speech (English translations normally go with ALL CAPS SPEECH), but talk normally in the translation
Give it a go, but it lacks the replayability of the original.
Yu-Gi-Oh
Stairway to the Destined Duel
>fun format
>decent variety
>enough happens between battles to break up the fact that it's just a gallery of opponents style of game
<unintuitive menus
<short
<boosters are done in kinda retarded way
<variety is finite
<easily broken format
<no tutorial
It's the best classic era YGO game, but still kinda shallow.
7 Trials to Glory[Expand Post]
>you can actually buy a starter deck
<which has an overinflated price and only has a handful of useful cards unlike real counterparts
<RNG based progression is even worse than gallery of opponents
<progression is super RNG heavy
<boosters are super expensive, limited in availability, and rigged to provide only useless cards till post-game
<new cards come at cost of older cards (there's the same total number of cards as SWttDD)
<many of the cut cards are ones you'd actually want to use instead of useless normal monsters or old spells strictly worse than other options
<loads of nasty bugs
<first YGO game that follows actual rules with visible player character and he looks retarded
Just bad.
Duel Academy
>breaks up gallery of opponents with
>game exclusives boosters aren't as terrible as normally are
<still cutting cards for new ones
<a quarter of each opponent's deck is a random selection of the same staple cards as every other duelist
<super "buy a guide" level bullshit with event triggers (there's a calendar, and some cards are unobtainable if you don't do the exact thing under the exact conditions on an exact day)
<opponent selection isn't as big as SwttDD, but you have to duel them more which combined with a quarter of their decks being identical makes it tedious
<worst AI in the franchise (the only game where the AI will summon Man Eater Bug in attack position without being forced to)
<no PC face but explicitly male
World Championship Tournament 2006
>actually starts you with a real starter deck with the staples intact
>includes all cards in game at time
>you can enter Golden Sun tier passwords to create custom ban lists
>first to let you explicitly play a a cute girl girl, at least nominally (you can select a player icon, and some are girls, but there's absolutely no plot)
<pure gallery of opponents
<makes getting cards super fucking tedious
<challenges are eh, either trivial or go grind an absurdly specific deck for this one thing
<literally unbeatable because one of the missions is bugged having completed it
<just not a fun era, as it's right after the game started over correcting for its power creep and tried introducing archetypes without having any idea how to make an archetype actually work
Nightmare Troubadour
>only YGO game to use best ban list
<does not have all the cards in TCG at time which means it can't take advantage of the top tier format
<does enough to disguise its gallery of opponents nature but does this by making your opponents RNG based after you need to do a minigame to find them
<uses game exclusives boosters where half the game you're fed useless trash that even a new player wouldn't use because it's all worse than a starter deck but you never actually get a sensible starter deck and there's few good or interesting cards obtainable
This is early DS tech demo.
Spirit Caller
>lets you customize your character first time
<male only
<same flaws as NT
<has the same bad era problem WC2006 had
2007
>lets you play as customizable girl
<fictional boosters that aren't there just to feed you shit cards but are still lame
<lacks very random cards that really shouldn't be missing (you can get A Legendary Ocean but all the good WATER monsters it supports and the spells that make it fun are missing)
<still earlyish GX
2008
>play as cute girl again
>an attempt at a story
<it's a glorified gallery of opponents with RNG on what opponent you can fight
<fictional boosters are tedious and an excuse to fuck you with bad cards again
<made them even more tedious by raising requirement to unlock new boosters beating every group of opponents five times instead of the normal three
2009
>play as cute girl
>3d overworld
>there's even an OK racing minigame to complete the card games on motorcycles feel
>turbo duels
<it's slow as fuck
<barely anything to do on overworld
<plot just copies anime most of the time
<why the fuck would you make a synchro game where every opponent uses synchros but the player can only access the most basic synchros till post-game
<what were they thinking?!?
2010
>all the good stuff from 2009
>but actually faster
>you can get synchros
>you can get structure decks early
>overworld has flavor text for everything and collectibles you can trade for cosmetics
<it just anime plot again for the most part despite the intro being a bit different
<slow start
It's actually pretty good, but it's really just a worse version of the next game
2011
>everything good from 2010
>original plot that actually feels like it fits in the world
>great era
>rental deck duel early on using some actually pretty tough decks lets you see how game plays at higher level and understand card synergy as a new player
>your starting deck is actually kinda OK but not so good you can ignore deck building for long
<one booster pack short of being a time capsule of a perfect era
<AI can get a bit slow
<last arc of the plot has to force itself to follow anime with minor change
Great, what a card game game should be. I wish they made another one.
Yohane the Parhelion - NUMAZU in the MIRAGE -
I wish this wasn't a roguelite. The demo was fun, but I can't see it enduring once your deck's cards are pure RNG.