[A Retrospective Review] Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Duel Academy
Experience the student life in a school that teaches children how to play Children Card Games. Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Duel Academy is the ultimate Yu-Gi-Oh game for GBA.
Yu-Gi-Oh GX: Duel Academy is one of the biggest titles for Game Boy Advance. It fills a 32MB Cartridge with insane amount of content including 1200+ cards and story with colorful characters.
The game lets you take the role of a student in the anime's Duel Academy with the goal of becoming the King of Games, the strongest duelist in the school. You start as Sliver Red dorm student and you work your way up by attending classes, befriending students and teachers and building stronger decks to increase your rank in the school.
Duelist Life Simulator
As a student in the Duel Academy you live in one of the dorms in the Academy's island and you get to choose where to go and who to duel. You have a PDA which is used among other things to edit you deck and Email characters you befriended.
(Love the Cafeteria! You grab something to eat as you duel!)
Three times per day you choose where to go in the island, when the place has one of the characters their icon will appear there. You can also end your day by sleeping in your room.
Yu-Gi-Oh GX Duel Academy mainly follows the anime's first season in its story with dozens of events. Some follow the schedule like the monthly exam, while others unlock when you achieve certain conditions like winning 10 duels. Some events only happen in certain days but they can be played in a later day if you missed them. Some duelist can require unlocked certain events to be able to duel them.
Just like the anime, students live in dorms related to their skill levels. From the weakest to the elitist there's Sliver Red, Ra Yellow and Obelisk Blue. If you score high enough in the exams you could get promoted into higher ranked dorm. Some events only unlock when you're a member of a certain dorm so it's recommended to spend a while in each one.
Good Old Yu-Gi-Oh Duels
Duel Academy gives you a pretty decent cards from the start (not strong though.) It's easy to earn cards from events and by buying them, it's offset by the fact that there are 1200 cards in the game which can take a long time for completionists to get them all.
The game follows the real life Trading Card Games rules. The duel starts with 8000 LP (Life Points) and players have to use monsters, spells and traps to decrease your opponents LP to 0. Each card has its unique effect.
If you're not familiar with the card game, your room has a tutorial section that does a good job of teaching the rules of the game.
I love how the field looks in this game. It is psuedo 3D and fits all the field areas (even the opponent hand) in one screen. Card name appears when you highlight it and the current turn and phase are nicely shown on the side. It's brilliant for the small screen of GBA.
The character you're dueling might start talking which adds to their characterization, especially when using their iconic cards like Jaden's Elemental Heroes.
You earn DP by winning duels, and you get more depending on how you win (Like winning using Exodia instead of depleting opponent's LP.) DP can be used to buy card packs from the shop.
(Dorothy Shop)
Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Academy has its own forbidden/limited cards list (overpowered cards that with limited copies per deck.) Cards in the list alternate as you play. Allowing you to use cards that you won't be able to use otherwise.
Since the game is an old GBA title, Duel Academy lacks some quality of life features of the recent Yu-Gi-Oh video-games and it feels a bit slow. For example it it's filter feature isn't as robust as the more recent games. Though it has a good time-saving feature called "Change Activation Timing" which allows you to change if the prompt of effect activation happens for each card indiviually.
(Checking card details.)
Fimiliar Faces
Since the game puts you as a new student in the academy. You get to see the characters from a perspective not seen in the anime. Especially as you become Ra and Obelisk dorm member and you get to interact with others from the same dorm.
Jaden, Syrus and Chumly become your friends from the start. You can duel Bastion from Ra Yellow too though you have to increase your rank to duel Alexis and Chazz. It feels nice to be friends with the main characters.
(Ah, Winged Kuriboh is in the game?)
Other than the main characters, there are few side characters from the anime who appear in this game. I liked how they put Dimitri and Blair character arcs here. They each have one episode in the anime and they're adapted as events in this game. Though I wish the game had characters from the second half of season 1.
The graphics for Duel Academy are good for a GBA game. On the handheld's tiny screen they look amazing. But as you can see from the screenshots in this article, they can get ugly and pixelated when scaled up.
Even with that, it still blows my mind how Konami could fit all the cards and character sprites and areas in the tiny GBA cartridge.
Final Thoughts...
This is one of the games I played with my brother and cousins as a teenager and I have fond memories playing it. Yu-Gi-Oh GX was airing in the arab world back then so we witnessed some events in the anime and the game nearly at the same time.
I only recommend the game if you're fan of Yu-Gi-Oh GX anime and want to see how the games were at the time. I don't recommend Duel Academy over the most recent Yu-Gi-Oh games especially since they're more polished, have better graphics and more cards. While the game is floored by the likes of Yu-Gi-Oh GX Tag Force of the PSP era. Yu-Gi-Oh GX Duel Academy is still the best Yu-Gi-Oh game for the GBA.
If you want to read more Yu-Gi-Oh articles, here's my Power of Chaos and Forbidden Memories reviews. Or my Duel Links article. If you want to read more gaming content follow me here on STEEM!