Falsebound Kingdom


Okay! Okay! I admit it! I'm a huge Yu-Gi-Oh fan! So I thought to myself one day, "You know what would be awesome, Salazar? Playing a Yu-Gi-Oh game!" Clearly at this time I had never even touched one. So I cheerily sauntered into my nearest GameCrazy and proudly bought my copy of "Yu-Gi-Oh: The Falsebound Kingdom"

This may have ruined my chances of ever working there.

So I went home as quickly as possible and popped the disc into my Gamecube, eagerly awaiting the joy that was soon to follow. Unfortunately the only thing that followed was mass confusion and tears of frustration. You see, Falsebound Kingdom is a little different from the other YGO games in the fact that it isn't card based, so you deal with "real monsters".

The basic story-line (if you choose to play with Kaiba) is that you're going over to look at some new virtual game and then through treachery (surprise!)you and your brother Mokuba are sucked into it and forced to play as characters. Kaiba is what is called a "Marshall" and can summon real monsters to fight OTHER Marshalls who have real monsters. So far I was on the same page.

But then...THEN came the mass confusion and vague mental rioting. I was sent on my first mission by the Empire to squish some rebels, which sounded fine to me. You have Mokuba and some other Empire guy with you...uh...who's name currently escapes me because it was really weird. Anyway, random marshall-jerk guy starts trying to tell me how to do everything...but I couldn't really understand anything he said so I set out anyway to try and capture the nearest town.

Well, to my endless amazement I managed to movie my Kaiba icon from one castle to another (at a break neck pace of about .2 miles per hour, why you can't just jump from castle to castle is beyond me) and anyway, I took the nearest rebel town. So I did a little celebration dance. Marshall-jerk then informed me that a rebel Marshall was going to patheticly try at take back the town, and that I should kick his ass.

Well, asses were kicked. Of course, they were mine. So the rebel Marshall comes by and attacks me. Oookay, fine... I try and attack his monsters...right...I won that battle! Hooray! I'm still alive. With me so far? Things started getting bad because he then immediately turns around and comes back. This confused me. I fought him about 20 times in a row before smashing the Gamecube off button and stalking off to kick some babies.

I picked it up later to try again. Yeah, I understand the game now. And I have to ask Can the AI in the game get any dumber?! What could they possibly be thinking?! I haven't lost a single battle since that first time I ran in circles and possible started fighting myself...which means I've been kicking ass and taking names. My Kaiba is now so powerful he can wipe out up to two of the AI's monsters in one single battle, and leave his third at half health. But I think this would be the AI's thought process for what happens next:

Okay...two of my monsters are dead and one is weak. Kaiba's monsters all have full health and are 20 levels greater than mine. This can only mean one thing I should go back there and fight him! I'm pretty sure I'll win this time!

Duuurrr, sure you will!

There is little to no variety during this game. Rundown of gameplay:

1) Get a mission on the main map
2) Go there...fight people...win
3) Go back to main map and get a new mission

It's pretty darn repetitive.

Yeah, now, honestly...actually like playing this game, even if it is kind of dumb. That's how much I love YGO, enough to play and enjoy this game. Besides, Kaiba is always threatening to disembowel people, or rip their tongues out, or kill them in other hilariously violent ways. And violence is always funny.