Attention, duelists! Let's Play Yu-Gi-Oh: The Falsebound Kingdom!

While I wait for my co-commentator's parts in another LP, let's dive right into...



Yu-Gi-Oh: The Falsebound Kingdom!

Yes, welcome one and all to another of my (hopefully) entertaining LPs! The game that's been chosen this time happens to be a Gamecube title, released in 2003 for the US and 2004 for those in the PAL region. It's also the franchise's only entry on the Gamecube platform, so how does it measure up?

Truth be told, this game was not well received by reviewers, earning middling scores at best. If I had to compare the gameplay to another title, it would probably be Orge Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber. There will be plenty of trekking across terrain, commanding teams with different movement types and the like... The main differences that come to mind would be the lack of a (poorly-done) alignment system, and actual control over the battles you get into.



Ah, yes... The option of whose campaign to follow probably deserves a mention. As shown, you can pick either Yugi or Kaiba to start off with, with the other campaign becoming more difficult afterward. (However, it's possible to do just one of these repeatedly before choosing the other, with no extra difficulty. If your sanity holds, I would actually recommend doubling up on your first campaign.)

Music is pretty lack-luster, but I'll see what I can do about links and cutscene videos as per usual. Oh, and don't worry about the M&L thread; this is for whenever I'm waiting on my partner there. (Updates are likely to be more frequent here, though.)

A Yu-Gi-Oh game? This should be entertaining.

Anyways, go with Yugi because we all know he's going to pull a victory out of his ass somehow.

(I'm kind of interested in commentating for this one too.)

Uh... Yugi, I guess. He has crazier hair.

Yugi's boring - let's go with Kaiba.

Oh, I knew I forgot something... I was going to go with Yugi without offering a vote, because doing so makes Kaiba's path much more survivable. ...But if people feel like screwing me over, I suppose I can let 'em vote.

I'd be happy to get your commentary on this, Blitz! I'll let you know when I've got an update that needs ya. ^^

Kaiba- Not because I feel like screwing you over neccesarily- but because I recently watched the Kaiba anime.

It's crazy enough for two people.

I was going to vote for Kaiba just because of his less crazy hair, but... is that a padlock on a string around his neck? Forget him.

That's actually a pendant (in the shape of a card IIRC).

Mmm-hmm! There's a picture inside, which anyone familiar with the show or its abridged series would recognise.

So I just checked up some of this game's music, and it turns out that the music for Dark Duel Stories, one of my favorite games when I was younger (solely because my brother learned how to use the card construction system to create hilariously overpowered cards), was based off of this game's. Or maybe the other way around. Either way, if Falsebound Kingdom is anything like Dark Duel Stories I'll actually have some knowledge of it!

EDIT: Wait, shit, looks like there's another console Yu-Gi-Oh game with similar songs and characters. I guess I should go check up wikipedia to see when these games were made and what was based off of what but meh effort.

Actually, I may have been a bit hard on this game's soundtrack... The battle music is pretty good from what I can remember, and I might be pleasantly surprised by others as I play through.

As for whether this game is similar to others... Let's put this way: We won't be playing with cards!

what

are you serious

is it going to be dice instead or something

Is this anything like Duelists of the Roses?

Nope! No dice, no cards.

All will be explained in the first update. (Plus maybe some of the mechanics, but this game's annoyingly long-winded at the beginning of a campaign.)

Not that either... Played that one, had lots of fun making a murder squad of zombies and pumpkins.

All you guys who voted for Yugi are craaaazy.

Kaiba.

SCREW THE RULES I'M MAKING THE OBVIOUS REFERENCE!

(Kaiba)

Yes, but Yugi is voiced by DAN GREEN.

So, I used to watch the show a little when it was the only thing on as I got home from school. And week after week of watching Yugi stack his deck, the thing that always struck me was the similarity to the Mel Gibson Maverick movie.

At the end of the movie, Mel Gibson decides that he should have the magical ability to cut the deck to whatever card he needs to win, and of course he does exactly that at the last moment to manage the ultimate ass-pull victory. Yugi's heart of the cards just always seems like that.

"There's no way I can beat you unless I happen to pull one specific card that I didn't even bother to put in my deck . . . oh, look at that, I drew it anyways."

So, that being said, neither of these jokers looks much like Mel Gibson, but I kind of like to imagine an older Yugi getting pulled over and making racist, drunken accusations about tournament rigging.

Play Yugi.

The reason Yugi could do crap like that was because it was his superpower. No, really.

Go Yugi.

Hmm... Even if I don't count the two posts that I think were not-quite-clear Yugi votes, the wild-haired one is still beating out Mr. Moneybags. I'd say that's good enough for me to start taking screenshots.

So, since the people voted in favour of Yugi's path, let's get this under-way...



Regardless of which path you choose, we get a quote from this philosopher to start off with... There's probably a bit of truth in there.

It isn’t very appropriate for this series though. I mean, Yugi got complete control over the EGYPTIAN GOD CARDS at the end of Battle City.



On Yugi's path, our pint-size protagonist and his friends has been invited to this place, SIC Domino Labs. I'll spare you a transcription of this scene, as it's pretty long and uninteresting overall.

What I want to know is what SIC stands for. Seto InCorporated? Spelled InCorrectly?

I'll tell everyone later, because of spoilers~



Bakura here has the short and sweet version of what this company everyone's standing in front does... But that doesn't exactly tell us why we're here. For that, we need to wait for Yugi to read out a couple of parts from a letter SIC sent him.











To surmise for those tyrant who had their eyes glaze over through that, Yugi's awesome at a children's card game, and so he and his friends get to test this company's equivalent of 'The World'. (Only without ruining the internet, or the US nearly ending the world.)

An alternate summary is that this game is a rip off of a filler season that in itself was a ripoff of a story arc from the original manga.

Oh, and don't worry if you don't know who all these people are... I'll give everyone a little introduction when it becomes relevant, if Blitz doesn't beat me to it.

Like I’d give myself more work.



Anyway, let's go inside... I'm sure this will all go smoothly.





Good thing this is only for developing the technology, because trying to market Kingdom would result in one big fat lawsuit from KaibaCorp.

...Oh yeah, that jerk that lost the vote? Rich as hell, CEO and majority shareholder in his own multi-national company. Just so you know.

Also a total douchebag.



And yes, as promised there will be no actual cards or dice involved here. There will be more of an explanation shortly.

No cards huh? Then what’s the point of the ten card readers on the Duel Disk Kingdom?



...They're an Empire in a video game, of course they're oppressing everyone. It goes without saying!



Okay then, let's get to it! After all, what could possibly go wrong...?



Oh, and this guy you did choose has an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh in the pyramid necklace he's wearing. That's why he looks taller and more masculine on the campaign choice screen; because it was possessing his body, Phoenix Wright style.

That’s what would make sense, but apparently Yugi just grows a foot in height because he’s standing up straighter.

I don't believe that for a minute.

Those are some random names. A quick check on Google tells me that “RONDEVAL” is Dutch for “Round House” and that “SYGH-VARTHS” is complete gibberish.


Empire.

Oh, so the Imperial evilness is a recent development? Guess they were really more of a Kingdom before this!

This empire has only been around for 300 years, yet there’s already been twelve emperors? This job doesn’t have a very long life expectancy, huh.





Typical fare. Guess SIC's excuse of being focused on the technology lets the real game developers get away with a bare-bones plot such as this.





Children of the revolution~♪

Google tells me that VAXI is a genus of moths of the Crambidae family.

ZZZZAP!



...Crud.



Only Mode 2? The SNES could do better than that.



Double crud!

Why would there even be a lock in mode? What possible point could that serve other than to trap people?

Shhh.



...And our protagonist lost consciousness. Brilliant.



At least the AI responds well to this situation. This is Shimon, who I'm fairly sure I saw in a PSX Yu-Gi-Oh game... He's about to fill us in, as well as serving as the source of our tutorials for Yugi's campaign.

Shimon is basically the ancient Egyptian version of Yugi’s grandfathe- wait, why am I giving character summaries. Anyways, you probably saw him in Forbidden Memories, a really crappy Yu-Gi-Oh game.


out.

Back to Google! MAKHAD is a “hilly historical town” in Pakistan.



Etos is either a retailer in the Netherlands or an acronym for either Eternal Tears Of Sorrow or Efficient Technology Of Spike-sorting.



Basically, this is a strategy meeting and we're about to go out on another operation. This is not a good place to drop someone with no in-world knowledge.

Strangely enough, the only thing I’m focused on right now are those barrels in the background. They look awfully squished.

Oh, and we're in charge of the whole resistance here. Even better!





To really put the icing on the cake, Yugi's expected to lead a team of Duel Monsters out into the field, because he's lucky enough to have the ability to be a Marshal. (Read: team leader.) People with this ability are apparently few and far between, because the entire resistance has exactly three of them.

Every monster is as strong as several thousand men? Even Skull Servant?

Apparently.





Oh yeah, and we're trapped here. Gotta do something about that while we lead the rebel forces to victory, I guess.



The Pharaoh comes up with as good a plan as any... Let's play to win!

Because clearly every video game must have levels and an end.

I can practically taste your sarcasm, Blitz.



One transition later, and we're looking at the map of Kingdom... The highlighted area contains the town of MAKHAD, the section of VAXI island we're currently in.





This will be our goal for the first few missions: Taking over VAXI by conquering TSUGHUT, which I'm not sure how to pronounce. We're going to start a bit closer to home though, attacking one of the local Imperial castles.

”TSUGHUT” is more gibberish, but Google says it’s close to the arabic word “Taghut”, which apparently means false leader.



Shimon gives us a quick rundown of how Marshals lead Teams, but this is the only important line out of the lot. (He's talking about the monster in the centre of a marshal's team, by the way.) I'll point things out as they become relevant, don't worry.



I find it pretty pathetic how I can recognize those monsters despite the fact I stopped playing around the end of GX. Anyways, from left to right, Yugi starts with Feral Imp, Celtic Guardian, and Kuriboh.

Okay, time to round out our first update with some actual mechanics talk! This here is information for one of our marshals, Yugi himself. Let's go from top to bottom...

Foot icon: Shows the team's movement type, in this case Ground. Determined by the movement type of the team leader. Important when cannons come into play!
Name: You should know this.
Level and Exp.: How competent the marshal is. Each battle in a mission will give them experience, and eventually improve some of their other stats.
Battle-P: Yet another Ham-Chat A rough guide of how much extra power monsters controlled by this marshal have.
Life-P & Action-P: Similar to Battle-P. See monster details below.
Coloured orb: This is the 'essence' of the marshal... Monsters that have essences that are too different from that of the marshal get less of the ???-P bonuses. Essences will slowly shift and converge over time to give monsters the full benefit of these effects.



As for the monster details:

Movement type, name, level and exp.: As above.
Heart: How much life the monster has.
Sword: Attack power.
Shield: Defence power.
Star: Number of Action Points per battle. Using items, defending or attacking all consume one of these, as you might expect.
Money bag: I honestly have no idea. I can't find an explanation anywhere, and it doesn't appear to have any significant effect.

Maybe how much money the monster drops if you defeat it? Probably for enemies.

Blue square with sword: A broad classification of a monster's type, in this case Warrior. Others include things like Dragon, Spellcaster, Darklands or Spirit.
'Essence': As above.
Item/Abilities/Battle Arts: Press L/R to cycle through this display.
-Item: Any items being held. Only three spaces per monster.
-Abilities: Special characteristics of this unit.
-Battle Arts covers the monster's attacks and any special effects they have.

Don't worry if not everything's clear right now; the mission we'll be going on next time should help clear some of this up. I'll also cover what marshals and creatures we have available in a bit more detail at the start of the next update. Until then!

The average reign of most monarchs pre-Industrial Revolution and modern medicine runs about 10-20 years, actually.

...I'm not the only one who's picturing the character dialogue in LittleKuriboh's voice acting, am I?

I didn't know there was any other way to imagine it.

There isn't... In America.

*rimshot*

Nyeh?