Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters - Slow and Steady Doesn't Beat RNG

24/12/23

I’m always amused by the gap between what I enjoy at the age of 28, in 2023, and what small, much stupider Mitchell used to like as a tender pre-teen. I picked out a bunch of Game Boy Abyss reviews ahead of time, and considering the amount of genuine shite I play, I always try and pepper in games that I either know are generally pretty well remembered, or that I have particularly fond memories of. Today’s pick, Yu-Gi-Oh: Dungeon Dice Monsters is a game I remembered having plenty of fun with, but within minutes of tackling my first dice duel, I was struck by just how….dry this game is - and I feel that’s being generous. Whilst there are surprises to be had, Dungeon Dice Monsters dry visuals, poor deck building guidelines and glacially slow pace kneecap what is otherwise a relatively interesting dice-based battler.

Yu-Gi-Oh was my JAM back in the day. Whilst when I was very small I mostly watched the original, Yugi-centric series, I think Yu-Gi-Oh GX was the series that clicked the most with me, terrible dub and all - and thankfully, GX actually has a game that’s, y’know, good. Anyway, full disclosure, I’m pretty sure my childhood friend's copy of Dungeon Dice Monsters was accidentally stolen from my best friend at the time, so, uh, yeah. Not sure why I threw that in there. We ain’t friends anymore, so yeah.

Beyond pulling the creature designs from its parent card game, Dungeon Dice Monsters is an almost wholly different beast. To start with, you’ll build a deck with fifteen, six-sided dice that’ll have a different variety of ‘crests’ on each side. Everything you do is decided by what crests you get on a roll, but you gotta be throwing out the right monsters to actually get you the win. Each dice takes the form of a creature or item you’ll be able to place on the field, each with a star rating from one to four. For example, one star monsters will have four ‘summon crests’ on their surfaces, in addition to two other crests. Two star monsters have three summon crests, three stars have two, and four stars have a sole crest. To summon a monster, you need at least two of the three dice you roll at the start of each turn to have a matching star numbered summon crest as their result - this will allow you to select one of the monsters to play on the field.

So that’s monsters - but what’s the actual goal of the matches? Well, Dungeon Dice Monster games take place in a large, mostly empty field, with each end having a Dice Master. As you’d likely guess, eliminating the enemy DM is your ultimate goal for every match, but you can’t just summon your monsters willy-nilly. No, you need to build your path; upon summoning a monster, its shape will ‘unfurl’, allowing you to place the opened dice adjacent to any territory you’ve placed. So you can’t just be throwing top tier monsters out and hope for the best - you need to stack your deck with weaker monsters, not just for their potential crests for your pool, but so you can begin to build your territory towards the enemy DM. The foe will be doing the same thing, and there’s a decent amount of strategy in worming your way past enemy territory, preventing them from taking your own DM. The AI isn’t particularly intelligent, which can hamper the potential of the game’s more strategic elements, but as the game progresses this element becomes more and more relevant, and it’s waaaay more interesting than just building a straight path to the enemy Dice Master (which I’m absolutely guilty of in the early game).

As I said, everything you do in this game is conducted by which crests you roll - without movement crests, you can’t move. No attack crests, no fighting. So you have to balance summoning monsters to build a pathway to the enemy DM, whilst also rolling - but potentially not summoning - monsters that’ll give you multiples of key crests so you can attack the enemy DM and monsters. Monster to monster combat is probably the element closest to the base Yu-Gi-Oh card game, with each monster having its own Attack and Defense stat and damage (shown in this game as Hearts). Damage is either simply a Heart per 10 attack, OR a Heart per 10 Attack minus a Heart for each 10 Defense if the victim chooses to use a Guard Crest. Yep, you don’t get any defense crests, you’re gonna get creamed. Dice Masters are the sole exception to this rule, as no matter how hard you hit, you’ll always only do a single heart, but it’ll always take three turns to take him down, as he can’t guard.

But what if you can’t attack?

Considering this is a game wholly based around rolling dice, of course some RNG is to be expected, even I know that. But still, I was not prepared for how hard RNG can hit you in the early game. It was the end of a match - I think the third in the first tourney, and I was almost at the finish line, practically adjacent to the enemy’s dice master, but I was completely out of movement crests. I had a ton of everything else - I could attack, and defend myself from enemy monsters, but I just couldn’t move. No problem. No - problem. I spent close to a dozen turns, rolling dice with a multitude of move crests, praying that I’ll be able to, y’know, be able to actually play the game, but luck was just not on my side AT ALL. No matter what combo of dice, no matter how many times I rolled, I just had to sit there as my foe casually strode over to my Dice Master and ended the match. Insanity. Now, I could see these RNG issues becoming less apparent as the game wears on, earning more dice from victories and having greater access at Grandpa’s Shop to expand your decks repertoire, giving you a greater spread of crests that’ll make it easier to pivot in the direction you want, but that doesn’t make the early game - at least in my experience - all the more palpable to deal with.

Now, I’ll be honest, I’m not very good at ANYTHING with deck building elements. I’ll constantly be second-guessing myself if my ‘build’, so-to-speak, isn’t going to synergize correctly and I’ll just crash and burn. When everything you can do in this game, from building your path, to attacking and moving, is dictated by the dice you pick, this just rackets up my anxieties in regard to deck building. I took a glance at some decks people started off this game with online, and I don’t know if they’re smart or I’m just dumb, but I never considered the fact stacking multiple dice of the same monsters who are coated in multiples of the most important crests. I dunno - I just never really found a good balance to my deck, or at least to alleviate the RNG issues I was having. Skill issue, I’m sure - it never was really a deal breaker, as overall the early game of Dungeon Dice Monsters is fairly easy, but I think I’m just kinda… done with deck-builder games, what with so many modern games in 2023 just throwing them in some form or another.

It doesn’t help that, due to the RNG issues and just the general pace of the game, matches in this game can take forever, and when coupled with the fact that you’re playing four or more matches in a row, you better buckle down and get comfortable. It’s utterly insane to me that there’s no save system whatsoever - not even a quick save to prevent save scumming. As a kid, I had the time to sit with a game for hours straight, with nary a thing to pull me away, and whilst I’m not the busiest adult in the world, things come up. Meals, chats with family, whatever. If you’re playing this game via an emulator or something that can suspend or save your progress, you’re golden, but I’m writing this with the idea you’d be playing it on an actual GBA, and I can’t imagine it being anything but an exercise in frustration. And ultimately, there’s not a whole lot of evolution as the game goes on; what you’ll see in the first match is essentially what you’ll be seeing throughout the entire game. I had a good time for my first tourney or so, but the slow pace and RNG issues really burnt me out quickly, but like everything, it’s just a matter of taste - your mileage may vary wildly.

On the lighter side of things, one of the biggest surprises I had with this game - that, sadly, had nothing to do with the actual gameplay - was the participants of the numerous tournaments you’ll be running through. Considering these are sixteen person tourneys, the developers have had to make some fantastically deep cuts in regards to who’s actually participating in them. Seeing a variety of Yugi’s classmates, for an example, in the very first tourney was a massive delight to me, especially as someone who read the ton out of the original, much weirder, Yu-Gi-Oh manga, since these characters were barely relevant in the non-season 0 anime. Also, I’d also like to shout out that I really love tournament formats in general - seeing a huge pool of rivals paired down to just the grand final is always a satisfying format to battle through. It’s set dressing, but who doesn’t love a bit of set dressing?

At the very least, the tunes are a hell of a banger; nothing overly complex, but simple toe-tappers that’ll fill the air as you roll crests after crests that absolutely aren’t the movement crests you need (I’m not salty). Look, beyond the menus and the actual Dungeon Dice fields, there aren’t a lot of opportunities for new instances of music. I wish I could say the same for the visuals - it’s an extremely dry looking game, not really bad, but there’s little to say. It succeeds where it needs to, but I’m genuinely having to look at screenshots to really remember how it looks - I love the little Dice Masters, they’re cute little guys. But yeah, there’s not a whole lot to say visually about Dungeon Dice Monsters - it’s not not bad, but yeah.

Dungeon Dice Monsters was frustrating to play and review. It’s certainly not a bad game; its concepts are solid, and I’m sure that someone with a better handle on deck building would get a little bit more out of it. But the extreme challenge of dealing with RNG, the overall slow pace and just the overall dry, aged nature of the game, coupled with a total lack of way to suspend your progress mid-game makes playing this game in a non-save state environment and exercise in frustration. I don’t overly dislike this game, but it’s left me feeling little at all, really, and ultimately, that makes me a bit sadder than the alternatives.

Thank you so much for reading my review of Dungeon Dice Monsters on the Game Boy Abyss! This was actually going to be Review #55, but I completely forgot about my desire to write a Phoenix Wright review for Christmas, so this had to get pushed. Ah well! Next review should be soon, and trust me, it’s gonna be a doozy… in a sense. Either way, you can find me over at Twitter @Lemmy7003, email me at mgeorge7003@hotmail.com or cckaiju@gmail.com - and now, you can find me over at Twitch under GameBoyAbyss, where I’ll be streaming both GBA and non-GBA games. Throw me a follow if you’d like! As always, thanks again for reading and I’ll see you in my next review.