Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection Reviews
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is an incredible work of game preservation, but some of the titles included remain a little rough around the edges.
For older fans wanting a hit of nostalgia, plenty of these games don’t hold up to revisits almost 25 years later. With none of the usual gubbins we’ve come to expect from retro anthologies, all you’re getting out of Early Days Collection is having your rose-tinted glasses stamped on.
There isn't a lot of heart in the cards with the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection stays true to its sources and brings a little piece of history into the modern age. Unfortunately, dull mechanics and often unwieldy UI plague many of the games in the collection just as they did on first release, although amidst 14 titles, it would be impossible not to have a couple of winners.For us, Monster Capsule and the two World Championship Tournament titles shone through beautifully. Although the included games are certainly imperfect, we recognise the intentionality behind the collection's curation and feel that it's an excellent time capsule of the origins of the iconic Yu-Gi-Oh! Series.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is the definitive compilation of classic handheld titles from its reign over card games. These are simple, unbalanced games, but charming and highly addictive. It doesn't seek to reinvent itself or compete within the genre, but rather to offer fans a gift that will relive a fun-filled era.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
Poor choice of included games, an almost disrespectful lack of multiplayer, and no effort put into modernizing mechanics doesn’t exactly make for an enjoyable, user-friendly experience. Despite all of this, I’ve still had fun with it. It’s not great, but damnit, I kinda, sorta, like it.
It’s a good collection, but it could be even better. It could be great.
Collector difficult to recommend to all gamers. Excellent for nostalgics, less so for those approaching Yu-Gi-Oh for the first time
Review in Italian | Read full review
If you want to complete 16 legendary installmentsof the Yugi saga, this is your opportunity to review its history and learn why it became a mass success. Also, if Konami sees interest in sales, they may now want to move to the PlayStation era.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is an incredibly robust collection that is sure to please long-time fans, but may be a bit too archaic for some newcomers.
As a preservation effort, the Early Days Collection deserves a big round of applause... judged on its software and features, however, it's less impressive. Ultimately, the compilation is best suited for collectors, historians, and older Yu-Gi-Oh! fans interested in reliving fond memories of their own early days.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a compilation clearly aimed at a very specific niche: the early fans of the series, those who have loved it since its very first years. For everyone else, including those who got into the TCG from 2008 onward, these games will, in most cases, feel far too "dated" in their structure to be truly enjoyable.
Review in Italian | Read full review
At the end of the day, if you are looking to play the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection to just relive or experience some of the beloved early games then it is worth picking up. If you are looking to battle against other duelists, then it might be better to hold off on picking up this collection until there are more multiplayer options.
Sure, you’d have a rush of nostalgic delight loading up the GBA game that you spent months playing back in the day, but it would only take one or two matches to realise that nostalgia has a habit of warping memories and not all classic video games are timeless. Some are. Konami’s Castlevania collections show that. I fully expect the impending Suikoden collection to be a similar story. These, however, are not.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is for a very specific type of Yu-Gi-Oh! player who favors battles against the CPU instead of real people. That player also knows all of the rules of the game, wants a fixed set of cards, and doesn't want further updates from new cards. For them, most of the games in the compilation will be fine if they can get over each title's shortcomings. For everyone else, especially newcomers, the games are cumbersome and unintuitive, so only those with an immense amount of patience would want to give the titles a shot.
It could've been fun to explore this with a friend, but as only one game would support online play I'd find it hard to recommend to even the most dedicated of Yu-Gi-Oh! players. But lowering your expectations and going in blind, especially for some of the more unusual titles in the collection, could still be fun. Just know that there is a high likelihood that by the end you'll be happy that you've moved past those early days.
Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection may just do the "homework," but it does it well. If you want to duel like they used to, you've come to the right place
Review in Italian | Read full review
The Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection serves as a captivating window into the franchise’s fledgling steps in the video game realm, pulling together 14 titles that stretch across several handheld generations.
At the end of the day, Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a love letter to classic Yu-Gi-Oh!fans. It offers an incredible amount of content, preserves some of the most beloved (and rare) games in the franchise, and introduces just enough quality-of-life improvements to make revisiting them enjoyable.
At the end of the day, Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection is a love letter to the franchise’s past, but not a carefully crafted one. It feels like a rushed compilation rather than a polished, definitive collection, and while the nostalgia factor is high, the gameplay experience itself is uneven. For hardcore fans of old-school Yu-Gi-Oh!, there’s enough here to justify a purchase, plus if you buy the physical versions you get one of two Quarter Century Rare "Harpie Feathers Duster." For most players, this collection will feel more like an incomplete relic of the past rather than a gratifying experience.