Yu-Gi-Oh! Power of Chaos - Yugi the Destiny, Konami's latest title to bear the license of Kazuki Takahashi's popular anime, is little more than a bare-bones digital version of the collectible card game upon which the franchise is founded. For Yu-Gi-Oh! fans, the meager options make it less attractive than one of Konami's dozen or so other, more fully featured Yu-Gi-Oh! games, and to players who don't already have an investment in the series, it has about as much to offer as a game of solitaire.
The card game itself is virtually identical to the one seen in the Yu-Gi-Oh! cartoon and the real-world Yu-Gi-Oh! collectible card game, so fans should be instantly familiar with how to play. First-timers, of course, will have a slightly steeper learning curve to deal with, especially if they're not already knowledgeable about the basics of collectible card games. Most of the basics are elementary enough that you'll likely you'll likely catch on with a bit of trial and error, though the game features a serviceable tutorial mode, and the manual that comes with the game is dense with specific information about the subtler nuances of the Duel Monsters game.
Basically, you start off with a more or less random deck of cards consisting of monster cards, spell cards, trap cards, and special summon cards. The monster cards can be used to attack your opponent's monster cards or, if your opponent has no monster cards in play, to attack him or her directly, with the ultimate goal of taking all your opponent's hit points before he or she can do the same to you. Spell and trap cards serve a variety of different offensive and defensive purposes, such as upping the statistics of your monster cards, destroying one of your opponent's cards, counteracting your opponent's move, or fusing two monsters into a third, more powerful monster. Most monsters can be brought directly into play from your hand, though certain monsters require a summon card to be played before they can be brought into action.
Winning duels will net you new cards, and you can go into the game's deck construction mode to manage what cards you have that you want to use in your active playing deck. To the end of re-creating the collectible card game, Power of Chaos is quite successful. The problem is that, beyond dueling with the AI, there isn't anything else to Power of Chaos--no story mode, no multiplayer, nothing. If you consider the standards for PC collectible card games that have been set by the likes of Magic: The Gathering Online, having a stripped-down duel mode shoulder the entire weight of the game simply is not enough.
Watching a collectible card game unfold is pretty dull, but to its credit, Power of Chaos takes several steps to try to liven up the proceedings. The board you play on is embossed with the gold, black, and red color scheme that the Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise seems so deeply fond of, and all of the card art is rendered in really high resolutions. The most thoughtful touch to the visuals in Power of Chaos is the anime-style reactions you'll get from Yugi when you make specific moves--part of the screen will reveal a close-up of his surprised face, accompanied by a little audio sting and some voice describing the significance of the move. The game features a little voice acting for Yugi himself, all of which is appropriately over the top, though there are a few phrases that end up repeating a bit too often. The music in Power of Chaos is tense and dramatic, adding some much-needed excitement to the somewhat sterile proceedings of a card game, though the variety of the music is around nil--you end up hearing the same few music tracks over and over again.
The Yu-Gi-Oh! market is, for all intents and purposes, saturated. Power of Chaos may be the first in the series to arrive on the PC, but it arrives on the market long after several better Yu-Gi-Oh! games have been released on other platforms. When you consider that these superior titles were released on the Game Boy Advance, it looks particularly bad for Power of Chaos. But even on the PC, Wizards of the Coast's Magic: The Gathering Online offers a much more accomplished collectible card game experience, actually allowing you to collect and trade cards and battle against other human opponents. If you're a dyed-in-the-wool Yu-Gi-Oh! fan and the PC is your only gaming platform, you might be able to rationalize purchasing Power of Chaos. But, if you do not meet these fairly specific criteria, you have no need for this game.
