If you’re not really into card battling games like Warhammer or Magic: the Gathering — you won’t like Duel Masters: Kaijudo Showdown. If, on the other hand, you enjoy this type of genre, it’s still a solid card game, albeit no substitute for playing with real cards.

Basically, you’ll choose cards from your Starter Deck, and your goal is to maintain your five shields by summoning blocker and attacker monsters. Blockers protect your shields directly. If your opponent summons an attack monster to attack a shield, your blocker will automatically protect the shield. Generally, if the blocker has a higher numerical value than the attacker, than your opponent has just wasted a turn, as the attacker is destroyed with the blocker none the worse for wear. If the blocker has a lower numerical value than the attacker, then it will protect one of your shields for that one time only, as then it will be sent to the “graveyard”. And if both the attacker and the blocker are of equal strength, they both are destroyed for the remainder of the battle. If you manage to destroy all five of your opponent’s shields, your next turn can be used to summon an attacker to strike the opponent directly, and win the match. You need to unlock the ending of each of the five main characters in the game in order to proceed onward — and each character specialises in a “civilization.”

Duel Master decks can be comprised of five different types of cards, known as civilizations. In order to summon any of these creatures, you need a certain amount of mana of the corresponding civilization, which you obtain by sacrificing corresponding civilization cards for a turn. The civilisztions are:

• Fire creatures — monsters that are fast, relentless attackers that can quickly overwhelm an opponent, but there are no blockers.
• Darkness creatures — monsters that cost a lot of mana to summon, but are very powerful fighters and decent blockers.
• Earth — monsters with special abilities that can increase your mana.
• Light — monsters that are very slow but very powerful.
• Water — monsters that have the best blockers.

There are many more rules—and it can quickly become confusing and overwhelming to all but the most hard-core of card-battling fans. The graphics, however, have a nice 2D overhead charm with anime character designs, and while they aren’t that great, they aren’t terrible either.

This is not the type of game that you can pick up and play, although the GBA is a good platform of choice for this game, more so than the PS2 version, because you can take the game wherever you want and link up with another GBA player to trade cards and duel. In this one regard, it’s more accessible. But the basic premise is still the same - battle CPU opponents in shopping malls and stores to increase your reputation, and then finally battle the ultimate card duellist who has malevolent intentions using some ridiculous scheme. You’ll also be able to purchase cards in stores (either booster packs or starter decks) and trade with other CPU players. If this type of game appeals to you, then go for it, but it is not kind to beginners of the genre. If you’re really interested in this type of game then you might want to practice for real before trying this version.