Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship 2007 Review

The basic starter set here is an absolute mess, a cobbled-together Elemental Hero deck with almost no decent cards and only a single copy of each. This makes picking up wins against even the most relaxed opponents something of a chore and building your deck into something more impressive is no mean feat either. Where other Yu-Gi-Oh! games have started with only a few booster packs unlocked and introduced the rest along the way, WC2007 starts with many of them open for business so finding your desired cards can be pretty tricky unless you know exactly what you're looking for. This is usually where the card password system would save the day but with single a good card setting you back as many DP (Duel Points, the game's currency) as 25 booster packs, you're better off just trawling through packs until you find the cards you need.

> Six Samurai decks can be a nightmare to beat better steer clear of Wi-Fi duels until you've sorted out a nice deck of your own.

This slow start is a real shame because almost everything else about World Championship 2007 is as tight and expansive as the game's subject matter allows it to be. You can try your hand at all kinds of play modes - from solving duel puzzles (like newspaper chess puzzles, using a given set-up to flip the odds and pull out a single turn win) to competing in events with certain restrictions and even endurance matches. Even within the basic duelling, there's no shortage of opposition as each rival has a different and interesting deck concept that can inspire you to go off and create something bigger and better of your own once you amass the necessary amount of cards. And once your collection starts encompassing some of the better cards, there's almost limitless potential in what your decks can do.

Best of all, though, is support for Wi-Fi Connection duelling against anybody in the world and the online action doesn't stop there. Proper leaderboards and even downloadable content that ranges from single cards to player ghosts make this an almost perfect example of how the DS' online service can be put to use in capable hands but having said that, there are a few concerns about this side of the game. Cheating through the use of Action Replays and other such game-breaking devices is worryingly rife here, allowing unscrupulous duellists to rig their decks with multiple copies of outlawed cards, do insane damage off basic attacks or just gyp their way to the top of the leaderboards.

Konami has taken steps to try and prevent this but as soon as you start playing higher ranked duellists, you're bound to bump into a dirty cheater sooner or later. Some have turned this to their advantage, though, downloading the ridiculously high-ranked ghosts of cheaters and farming DP by smashing their awful decks over and over. Avoid the cheaters (and the stroppy disconnectors, who are just as prevalent here as in the rest of one-on-one online play) and network play is wonderful, though - making use of the friend code system is obviously the best way to steer clear of these unsavoury characters.

> Despite summon animations, WC2007 is much quicker than previous Yu-Gi-Oh! games and benefits greatly for it.