Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection review: a third-rate duelist with a first-rate collection

Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection seriously impressed me, not just with its game selection but with how it respects my free time.

After watching the anime as a child the Yu-Gi-Oh card game dug its talons into my psyche, so much so that I swore of Pokémon for years in favour of Dark Magician and Blue Eyes White Dragon. While I was more of a fan of the actual real-life cards than the games, I dabbled in a few titles for my Nintendo DS Lite but never fully dove in.

Fortunately Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection is here to help you relive some memories, and make new ones with games you probably haven’t played before

Simply put, the Early Days Collection contains 14 games predominantly played on Nintendo’s handheld consoles. I’m a sucker for a retro game anthology so this was right up my street regardless of it being Yu-Gi-Oh related or not.

I won’t include the full list of games, but some of the highlights from my time with the collection include: Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories, Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul and Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament 2004 just to name a few. That’s just me though, and what kind of kick you get out of this collection will depend on why you wanted it in the first place, whether it be nostalgia for the early days or simply an interest in how this franchise entered the video game sphere.

Overall I think the selection is fine, and offers plenty of different gameplay experiences from more traditional Yu-Gi-Oh gameplay, to RPGs, to different games entirely like Dungeon Dice Monsters. I think if I had to make any adjustments I’d have included Yu-Gi-Oh titles from other platforms, particularly some of the PlayStation games like Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion they’re being saved for a second volume.

What this collection does better than any previous collection I’ve played though is how it respects my time.

One of the biggest “issues” with retro games such as this is they were made for a different time, and a different audience. In the early 2000s you didn’t get sprawling 60+ hour adventures especially not for card games. HowLongToBeat puts most of these games at around 10 or so hours to finish the main story, with 20 or 30 hours being for the main story and any unlockables you want to get along the way. It’s important to keep in mind that the majority of the game length for titles like this will come from CPU difficulty as well, pulling out shady tactics to defeat you and prolong your playtime.

Now I don’t know about you but I don’t have nearly as much time in my life to play video games, especially ones that are hellbent on staggering my progress so it’s a good thing the Early Days Collection includes a variety of settings to accommodate casual players like myself.

Before loading up a game there’ll be a menu you can access that lets you play around with some of the gameplay mechanics. This includes unlocking every card in the game, changing your character’s level to use more powerful cards, and even unlocking characters or other rewards that you’d usually have to grind for.

This is a lovely addition, and it’s entirely optional. If you’d rather play the games legitimately that’s perfectly fine but if you’d rather jump straight in with all the cards so you can put together your favourite decks that’s perfectly fine too, it’s your game you decide how you want to play. I love that we have the option and I hope other game collections take note of it.

As for the rest of the game, I can’t complain; it’s presented beautifully with all the amenities you’d expect nowadays. You get save states, a rewind button, and you can select regional variants of some of the games which are all nice touches.

Whether you’ve been a long-time fan of the Yu-Gi-Oh franchise or have only recently gotten into it, the Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection is a fine compilation containing both gameplay and historic value. You’d be getting enough bang for your buck with this and the changes you can make to the gameplay make it accessible to players of all skill levels.

I’d be eager to see another collection done in a similar style, and one that includes the more advanced Yu-Gi-Oh titles from home consoles, but this is fine for the time being.

Pros: Great game selection, historic value, plenty of amenities to make it accessible to new fans, the gameplay modifiers are an inspired addition

Cons: Lack of more advanced titles from the PlayStation is noticeable

For fans of: Yu-Gi-Oh (who’d have thought?) Pokémon, and Digimon

9/10: Exceptional

Yu-Gi-Oh The Early Days Collection will launch on Nintendo Switch (version tested) and PC on 27 February. Review code was provided by the publisher. Read a guide to our review scores here.