Yugioh Master Duel Single Player
Josephine Heathershaw
Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel sets itself apart from other digital TCGs through its huge amount of single-player content. They help you learn the basics of the game, the more advanced concepts that can be scary to newcomers, and even look into the lore of the cards depicted on them.
Updated May 5, 2023 by Joe Parlock: Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel's newest Solo Gate focuses on the underground nightmares of the Subterrors archetype. This flip-heavy deck has you turning massive monsters face-down and face-up to give you an advantage. The Solo Gate gives you a good foundation for a Subterror deck, so it's worth seeing if you dig this new strategy.
The tutorial introduces you to the absolute basics of Yu-Gi-Oh! dueling before you get into the game itself. Summoning monsters, attacking, life points, and setting cards are all explained here. Keep in mind any cosmetic rewards are in bold.
The gate goes over things like summoning and setting monsters, spells and trap cards, and the phases of a turn, before challenging you to a freeform duel to master what you've learned.
The rewards for each mission vary. Many are cards, but there are also a few cosmetics, like Field Parts that decorate your game screen, and a Mate mascot that cheers you in while duelling. The Practice missions also give you a lot of gems.
The one track of practice missions explains four types of Special Summoning: Synchro, Link, Pendulum, and Xyz. If you played Yu-Gi-Oh! a long time ago and want to catch up with what's been added since then, this campaign is a great way to be introduced to newer mechanics.
Unlike the first Duel Strategy track, Duel Strategy 2 doesn't have any freeform duels to practice in. Instead, it is entirely comprised of the more structured practice duel missions to ensure you really understand the concepts being introduced.
The first of two story campaigns available as soon as you complete the tutorial, The Absolute Monarch dives into the backstory of the popular Monarch archetype. This campaign sets out the format of all those after, and will walk you through how to play the archetype. In particular, Monarchs are very heavy in Tribute Summoning (sacrificing your own monsters to summon bigger ones).
In all the archetype campaigns, Duel Missions give you different rewards depending on if you use the loaner deck supplied to you or your own. Some missions will also reward you with orbs. Orbs are used to unlock additional tracks in each campaign, which can give you better reward and exclusive cosmetics. However, orbs aren't rewarded in order, so you'll have to come back later once you've earned orbs in one campaign to unlock the extra missions in another.
Ruin and Demise is the first of many campaigns that show up on your Solo menu after completing the Goal mission in The Absolute Monarch. However, it will only be accessible after completing the Goal mission for The Warriors of the Six Elemental Lords.
The campaign focuses on the Ruin, Queen of Oblivion and Demise, King of Armageddon archetype. Using lots of ritual summoning, you're meant to flip between these two to cause massive damage to your opponent.
The Glory of the Gladiator Beasts, Studying the Origins of the Karakuri, and Gears of Justice dispatch! all unlock once you've completed both the Mystery of the Megalith and Pyroxene Warriors' Goal missions.
The Glory of the Gladiator Beasts, Studying the Origins of the Karakuri, and Gears of Justice dispatch! all unlock once you've completed both the Mystery of the Megalith and Pyroxene Warriors' Goal missions.
The Karakuri are an archetype focused on Syncrho summoning. The catch is more Karakuri monsters have to attack when they're able to, and also switch to Defense position whenever they're attack. In exchange, there are lots of effects that activate when they switch between positions.
The Geargia Monsters archetype is focused on swarming the field, as each Geargia monster is excellent at pulling each other out of your deck. They can then combine into powerful Xyz Summons, like Gear Gigant X.
Digital Bug has some similarities to both the Karakuri and Geargia archetypes. Like Geargia, it's an Xyz Summoning-focused archetype that likes to flood the board, but like the Karakuri it has a heavy Defense-position-matters theme.
Qli (also known as Qliphort) is another archetype that uses Pendulum Summoning. However, it goes one step further than the Dinomists and uses the Pendulum Summoned monsters to then Tribute Summon into even bigger things. There are also lots of effects that activate when the monsters are Tributed.
This is the only campaign to have more than one chapter, and is by far the longest campaign in the game. Each chapter has more missions than any other (though a lot of them are Scenario cutscenes), and it serves as something of a 'final boss' for the solo mode.
World Chalice was one of the game's earliest archetypes built around Link Summoning. By tributing the right number of Link Levels, you can bring out increasingly more powerful Link Monsters, which can then be protected with other cards in the deck.
The final campaign in the solo mode so far, Gift of the Martyr continues the story set up by Chosen by the World Legacy. You must have completed Chosen by the World Legacy's Goal mission to unlock it.
Common sense is to assume the worst when a game gets suddenly dropped in the middle of the night after months of buildup and no previous announcement about a release date. Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel has somehow violated all common sense.
Konami themselves have never released a competing product, instead sticking with a series of one-off and primarily single-player titles that allowed the player to duel against a long series of AI-controlled opponents. They have Duel Links, which has been around for several years and is meant to be a speedier, condensed version of the main game, but its history left players divided when Master Duel was announced last year. A free-to-play duel simulator with professional production values sounded awesome, but would it lean as deeply into the gacha-type gameplay system of its sister game?
Upon logging in and downloading the full game, players are presented with a relatively sparse options menu. The first and largest will queue the player up for a ranked match against a similarly-ranked stranger. This works pretty much the same way as the Player-Vs-Player rank-climbing system of Duel Links, but there will be many who are disappointed to hear that there is no option for a true best-of-three match with side-decking involved. Instead, every game is a best-of-one. You can also find your friends and duel them specifically, but obviously with fewer rewards than matchmaking.
In 2015, Konami launched Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist for PC and consoles. The game features characters, cards and stories from the Yu-Gi-Oh!TCG and anime series, from the original era through to Yu-Gi-Oh!'s Arc-V era, with more duels added as DLC over time. In 2019, Konami released an updated remaster called Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution, which added new cards from the Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS era, a section for the eponymous anime series and more.
Though Link Evolution has been out for a few years now, it's still absolutely still worth playing for new and returning Yu-Gi-Oh! players alike, mainly thanks to its abundance of top-quality single-player content. The game is an expansive yet abridged way to experience Yu-Gi-Oh!'s iconic stories through a new lens, and it's packed with interesting and powerful cards for players to build decks to their heart's content.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Legacy of the Duelist: Link Evolution is mostly worth playing for its single-player content. This includes a Story Mode for each anime series, a Duelist Challenge mode that unlocks as players defeat characters in Story Mode, and two Battle Pack Modes; Draft Play, where players create a deck from 45 cards in three rounds of pack opening, and Sealed Play, where players' decks are generated instantly from 10 five-card Battle Packs.
These formats are fun and interesting, and they're rarely seen in modern Yu-Gi-Oh!, especially at official events and tournaments. They offer a unique spin on the TCG unlike anything else, so it's great to have the option to play them in Link Evolution. For multiplayer fans, Link Evolution does have a few online options -- but unlike Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel, there's no cross-play, so friends looking to play together must be on the same platform. Because it's fairly dated, Link Evolution isn't as active online as Master Duel or Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links, but it does maintain a small fanbase.
Except for Yu-Gi-Oh! Sevens and its sequel, which cover a different Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG altogether, Link Evolution covers every Yu-Gi-Oh! anime series in its Story Mode. Players can choose which era to play, and it's possible to progress through Yu-Gi-Oh!'s entire history from beginning to end, or start at any point in the middle.
While Link Evolution doesn't include every duel from each series like the original version, it allows players to use either a Story Deck or a User Deck they made themselves. Link Evolution also added Reverse Duels, where players can duel against the other Story Deck featured in each duel. Playing with a User Deck might help players get past Legacy of the Duelist's most challenging duels. Link Evolution features over 10,000 cards from up to February 2020, excluding some alternate art cards, that players can earn from winning duels and purchasing booster packs unlocked by progressing in-game, and there's endless potential for creative deckbuilding.
d3342ee215