Yu! Gi! Oh! is one of the most enduring and popular children's fads in recent memory, starting with a complicated and intense card dueling game that forms the foundation of everything in the Yugi universe. Characters here live to duel, treating the duel monsters as mythical versions of ancient Egyptian deities and monsters.  The key to dueling in Yu! Gi! Oh! is deciding on a strategy you wish to play, building your deck based on that strategy and then playing it out. The success or failure of your strategy often depends on the type of strategy your expected opponent plays as much as your own skill.

The Dawn of Destiny, the latest installment in a line of Yugi video games, abandons the rudimentary RPG elements of prior games and simply focuses on the meat and potatoes of the game, the card duels and the strategy of building a deck. In terms of the tools required to conduct a duel and build the deck, the game interface is unparalleled. It matches exactly the rules and feeling of the duel arena as shown on the TV show. As a duelist, you can either challenge single players or teams of three players in a rapid-fire sequence that is quite a bit more entertaining than the single traditional duels. Winning a duel will grant you additional cards. This is the ONLY way to add cards to your deck. Unlike previous games in the series, in Dawn of Destiny, there is no way to add cards to your library without winning them. This serves to limit the speed at which you can improve your deck and to change your strategy.

When you have accumulated enough cards through winning duels, you can spend hours assembling and fine-tuning your deck. Based on the standard Yu! Gi! Oh! tournament rules, players go into a match or series of matches with a main deck of 40 - 60 cards, and a side deck of up to 15 cards. The side deck gives you the ability to tweak your deck between matches of a series by adding or subtracting cards. The deck building interface allows you to sort cards based on type of card, group by effects, etc. With the vast number of cards included in the library, it becomes very important to organize your available cards. The Dawn of Destiny gives each player the ability to create up to three customized main deck/side deck combinations.

As a Yu! Gi! Oh! card dueling simulator, the game is fine. However, despite the best dueling interface of any game to date, as a Yu! Gi! Oh! experience, it is pretty flat and uninteresting. There is little reason to play this game verses playing the card game, except that the computer will serve as your opponent. And you should get used to playing the computer, as the only provision for playing human opponents is via System Link for head-to-head play. The addition of Xbox Live to this title, with world-wide leader boards and the ability to form dueling leagues would flip this dull, half-finished title into the blockbuster hit that the dueling interface deserves to be a part of.

Gameplay: 6.6
The dueling interface is very good, but there is nothing else to the game. The previous games in the series provided a story line and some comic relief. The designers of Dawn of Destiny apparently decided to follow the minimalist approach.

Graphics: 6.5
Generally decent graphics but nothing really that stands out from a game that could have been made 5 years ago. The inclusion of graphics representing the battle between duel monsters was nice but each sequence was incredibly brief, adding little to the game experience. The designers would have done well to include a bit more of the battles as shown on the TV series.

Sound: 4.5
Mute it. The sound track was repetitive, the sound effects added little to the experience at all.

Difficulty: Easy
The Dawn of Destiny would be a good training tool or primer for young Yu! Gi! Oh! players who want to learn how to duel. The game's manual is one of the most detailed and useful documents around for learning how to play, but there is no in-game tutorial of any kind.

Concept: 6.0
This is a direct implementation of the card game on the game console, no extra stuff added.

Multiplayer: 5.5
The only type of multiplayer supported is SystemLink. This game just screams for Xbox Live support.

Overall: 6.0
Until they add Xbox Live support, there is really no pressing reason to own this game. You cannot add cards to your deck without winning them in a long series of duels, so it wouldn't even be useful for trying to run tournaments, other than having people bring their decks on a memory card.