Various Artists [Konami] - Yu-Gi-Oh!: Reshef of Destruction (2003, GOTY 2nd Place)
Composer: Norihiko Hibino, Masashi Watanabe, Shuichi Kobori, Toshihisa Furusawa
Console: GBA
Game Release Date: 2003-03-20
Bootleg Release Date: 2022-01-12
Ripper: Someone on KHInsider
Runtime: 2:42:07, 78 Tracks
Console: GBA
Game Release Date: 2003-03-20
Bootleg Release Date: 2022-01-12
Ripper: Someone on KHInsider
Runtime: 2:42:07, 78 Tracks
It was extremely hard to pick which game won 2nd and 3rd. Between this and Frogger it was a hard pick. Ultimately it came down to me spending more time on this game. Otherwise I would say they were about equal. This game was way harder though. This is also a GBA game.
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Reshef of Destruction is the direct sequel to the other GBA Yu-Gi-Oh! game, The Sacred Cards. It follows the same protagonist as the last game and is set sometime after the OC won the first tournament. I had thought I had done a post covering the first game but I guess not. I'll briefly explain it here. You play as an original character and friend of Yugi's circle. You are a duelist and contestant in the Battle City tournament and are set to compete. From there is basically just follows the plot with minor adjustments for this new friend. By the end of the game you battle Yugi for the semifinals and take on Marrik in the finals, also saving the world in the process. It diverges from the plot by having the epic final battle between Yugi and Marrik being against you instead.
Reshef of Destruction picks up sometime after with the OC and Joey organizing decks in preparation for a new tournament. This tournament will have duelists travel the world and fight duelists from different countries and explore the world. Yugi shows up, distraught because the millennium puzzle has gone missing and needs your help to find it. From there Yugi is pretty much useless and it is up to the OC (with Joey and Yugi following) to find out what happened.
I am just going to outright spoil the entire plot so if you want to avoid spoilers I would suggest skipping this paragraph. With Yugi and Joey in step you start following the tournament and meet up with Ishizu who explains that all millennium pieces have gone missing as a result of the dark being, Reshef re-appearing. She warns that Reshef will destroy the world soon if the Egyptian god cards aren't resurrected with the missing pieces everyone is fucked. So it's up to the 3 friends to find the pieces across the world. KaibaCorp inadvertently helps since it's sponsoring the round-the-world tournament but that plot point is soon forgotten as finding the pieces becomes the main goal. As you find the pieces you run into many characters from the show across the world. Rex Raptor is working as an archeologist in Alberta, Canada, Mako Tsunami and Weevil Underwood are in the Galapagos Islands exploring and so on. As you go across the world you are tracked by a shadowy organization led by Bandit Keith (later revealed to actually be led by some dude called Sol Chevalsky who looks a little like Maximillion Pegasus). Eventually there is a showdown on Pegasus/Chevalsky's personal island where he is attempting to resurrect Reshef faster. In an epic duel you battle possessed Mokuba, Sol then Reshef in one final duel.
The game also has a bunch of unlisted side quests such as battling Rebecca Hawkins and fighting a family of duelists on the train. I did most of the side quests where I could but a lot only appear without warning in one part of the game. I did do the Jean-Claude Magnum quest but a lot of the side quests I either completely missed or chose to skip because of the sheer difficulty of them. You are expected to fight Rebecca Hawkins very early on and her deck is stacked. The only way I could see to beat it was to cheese the deck even harder but I had no patience to do so. The same goes for the train fight. I probably could have done it but you're expected to win 3 duels just to get a shot at the family. After reloading twice I decided I am not going to keep running through those 3 fights especially when I didn't always win 3 in a row.
The game diverges from typical Yu-Gi-Oh! rules by making card types important. The game keeps the regular rules (ATK/DEF, special effects and terrain) but adds a new one. Types actually matter now. If you have a water type card attack a fire type card you will 100% kill the fire type regardless of attack. It is the same rules as The Sacred Cards but unlike TSC I don't remember it mattering as much as it did in this game. The types were also so confusing. You had fiend, angel, light and dark which cancelled each other out. At one point I crudely drawn on a sheet what counters what because I kept getting confused. You also keep your life points from the last battle so you actually need to heal. There are also a bunch of quirks that were rendered irrelevant when I played it. I will explain later.
The most notable thing about this game is the difficulty. It reaches kaizo levels without trying. You absolutely must grind otherwise it's impossible. I would compare it to another impossibly hard game I played, 7th Saga but I would say this is even harder. I had originally planned to play this game years ago back in 2017 (iirc) but that run was cancelled as a result of the game being too hard and there being a really REALLY annoying animation that played when cards were placed. The animation ruined the run as it would interrupt the flow of the game making a card game somehow into a clunky mess. Other reports of the game talk about the sheer difficulty of it and quirks that make things harder like inability to sell one-of-a-kind cards. It was generally not thought of as a good game. Then I heard about patch in like 2020 that fixed the game. A romhacker on /r/yugioh, Ephraim226 created a patch titled "ReshefIsActuallyTolerableNow". I will link it below. In summary it fixed every gripe I had with the game. You can now sell one-of-a-kind cards, the stupid animation is removed, health is reset between battles, selling cards actually gets you money and a bunch of quality of life changes. It was with that patch that the game went from an unplayable mess into one of the best games I played in 2021. The Sacred Cards is amazing, yes but with this patch Reshef reaches that same level.
Now, despite fixing many issues with the game the difficulty is still there. You need to constantly be adapting your deck to handle new challenges. You will need to re-do many fights and get a feel for how they duel and the best combination to beat them. By selling cards and getting more than a few cents it allows you to pivot easier. My final deck ended up being a mish-mash of at least 1-2 cards per type and lots of terrain changing cards to reverse effects. I barely had any cards with 5+ stars. Like, I am just astounded by how good the game is with the patch. I would not EVER recommend playing this without it unless you want kaizo-level difficulty.
One of the hardest duelists in the game had to be Arkana. I barely remember him from the show. His deck is nearly all shadow, fiend, light and dream creatures coupled with the Yami background making most of them overpowered. The Stern Mystic in particular I came to hate because of his BS 2300 ATK power meaning you can't counter him. I must have tried 30 times on that duel, subtly reworking my deck to beat his. This duel also forced myself to learn the differences between the 2 dark and 2 light types so I would know who would counter who. I had to write it down and keep it on a piece of paper that I could reference. I just kept forgetting which counters which. Eventually I got the idea to just stack the deck full of as many scenery changing cards as possible and kept the background as the water or mountains to force him to play fairly. It was only then I was able to beat him. Aside from the final boss which I will get to later Arkana was the hardest duelist by far.
As for the Reshef fight. Holy fuck. That was the hardest fight. Constantly he would win in just a few turns. He would instantly throw done Swords of Revealing Light, force cards to join his side and end me. Which, btw Swords of Revealing Light should 100% be banned from professional tournaments. That card is a shitload of fuck. So many late game duelists used it and it's just unfair. Several duelists also had multiple copies of that card in their deck. I spent like 2 hours on the ride home trying to beat Reshef and resetting then another 4 the next morning just trying to get him. It wasn't until like 11AM the next day that I finally beat him. And, ultimately it came to pure luck as I got Winged Dragon of Ra and Weather Report (to negate Swords of Revealing Light) that he choked and I managed to win. I have a video of the final duel that I will link below. It's afaik the only legit fight on YouTube against Reshef. It's also worth mentioning that the longplay of this on YouTube has the LPer literally cheating to beat the game and it's not a legitimate run. And, btw in the original game he gets 32,000LP instead of the nerfed 8000. How anyone even beat this game in the first place is beyond me. This has to be one of the hardest GBA games ever made.
The endgame strategy was to just use Weather Report to cancel out Swords of Revealing Light then sacrifice summon Ra and pray he doesn't combat that until I can kill him. Beating the final boss unlocks you a special area of even harder opponents with even more than 8000LP. While neat, I have zero intention of trying it.
I originally was playing this on my phone but decided to switch to my 3DS and play it there instead. I had been playing it on and off at home but it wasn't until I took it up camping with me that I really made progress. I played this on a different trip than Frogger. This game I played in conjunction with Last Bible III. The run lasted about a year. It started at some point in 2020 iirc then was on and off until August of this year when I really powered through it.
Since this is now the longest post I have ever written I am going to wrap it up. The games soundtrack is extremely similar to The Sacred Cards one. I find it hard to describe. The music is very focused, often taking a backseat to help you pick the right cards. It's almost like a very compressed library music soundtrack. Idk. It has its own sound. That said, I have barely listened to the games actual soundtrack, instead substituting my own albums in place. While camping I played a lot of the game to some albums I had brought up. It helped keep me interested in the game and allowed me to focus on the music (after replaying so many of the same duels it just becomes muscle memory). Here are the top 3 albums I listened to while playing. I will keep it very brief so as to not lengthen this post anymore.
A rap collective from NY that I only learned was a rap collective a little bit before buying the album. I had heard most of the rappers here on features but didn't know they were a group. Ask Me Why was one of the songs that really defined my trip. Lots of forest walking and listening to this tape. These guys have great chemistry together and I can't believe I hadn't heard of this album sooner.
Daniel Son, Asun Eastwood & Futurewave - Physics of Filth
Rah Swish - Mayor of the Streets
Below you will find the link to the Reshef patch, the video of me beating the final boss and a link to The Sacred Card's soundtrack. The cover art above is not the same. You'll find everything in the soundtrack.
Also shout out to this being the longest post on my blog!
Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUveUVwRlZTWksjbnVqQU5sOTlla1VoVDNiS3pGTnk4cHFSWklZRGpLTmYtV2w1NVdjcldfYw==
Patch: https://www.reddit.com/r/yugioh/comments/66xv1i/patch_for_yugioh_reshef_of_destruction_it_might/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKFYTb5w6Js
p@ss: kaizoyugioh
Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUveUVwRlZTWksjbnVqQU5sOTlla1VoVDNiS3pGTnk4cHFSWklZRGpLTmYtV2w1NVdjcldfYw==
Patch: https://www.reddit.com/r/yugioh/comments/66xv1i/patch_for_yugioh_reshef_of_destruction_it_might/
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKFYTb5w6Js
p@ss: kaizoyugioh
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