Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection makes a much-needed change to its historic repertoire

Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection is out later this week for PC and Nintendo Switch, bringing an enormous roster of Yu-Gi-Oh titles from the original Nintendo Game Boy and its successors to modern platforms.

While I’ve personally had a blast revisiting some of the games as part of my review, I’ve especially loved how this collection solves one massive problem with these games: they ain’t easy.

Take a look at the trailer for Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection below

Don’t get me wrong, challenge is a good thing, but some of these games border on unfair at points with how broken the AI can be. It reminds me of the OG Pokémon games; you’ve got a great strategy but you’re anxiously hoping the RNG doesn’t screw you over.

Fortunately, the Early Days Collection introduced several settings that I’d love to see implemented in other collections like it, many of which make replaying some of these dated titles easier to digest.

On the main menu screen you can choose to give yourself some or all of the cards in the game depending on their star rank. In case you weren’t aware Yu-Gi-Oh monsters all have a star rank that determine how you summon them onto the field and generally how powerful they are. In each game you start off with three, four or five star cards, enough to get you going but nothing that’ll break the game. If you’re having trouble you can give yourself all the cards up to a certain star rank allowing for better decks or just access to your favourite cards.

I love this, and while I’m sure many will say it ruins the game just remember that you don’t have to use it, you can play all the games as Konami intended when they first released. It’s a great option for those who are struggling though, as well as those who don’t want to grind or do story missions to get their favourite cards like Red Eyes Black Dragon.

Another reason this works well for the Early Days Collection especially is most games are roughly the same game, as in they’re all Yu-Gi-Oh in different formats. Giving yourself access to all the cards means you don’t have to gather them all up again, you can just jump straight in until you’ve beaten them all. It’s also a good option for those that just want to experience these games from a conservation point of view, just playing with each other and seeing what they’re like and how they compare.

The only downside is once you’ve activated it there’s no way of reversing it obviously, so if you decide the game is now too easy you’ll just have to rearrange your deck to be more in-line with what the game is throwing at you.

It is nice to be able to run some ace or bizarre decks straight from the word “go” though, and it’ll make challenge runs a hell of a lot easier to access, such as only beating the game with Joey Wheeler’s deck or something like that.

The Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection does a lot right, but I think it’s this feature in particular that it does best. We had far more patience for these kinds of games when we were younger but as adults I’m sure we don’t have the time to pour hours and hours into grinding for the best cards, this feature fixes that. I’d love to see something similar implemented into other retro titles whenever they’re re-released.

The Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection is out on 27 February for PC and Nintendo Switch, and is well-worth the investment for fans who played the original games or those who are new to the series and want to experience its glory days first-hand.