Master Duel was hyped up for the longest time with plenty of fears that it would fail to deliver, but thankfully it has met literally every expectation anyone could have imagined.
The monetization system is very, VERY forgiving and - despite hefty investments on staples / handtraps - all cards are EXTREMELY accessible despite the fact that they aren't handed to you for free. Spending money is worthwhile and feels more like a bonus than a necessity and playing the game totally F2P feels very rewarding with a stable system of progression.

The animations are BEAUTIFUL. Everything looks so CLEAN!!! It makes duels that you are losing bad INFINITELY MORE ENJOYABLE. Yu-Gi-Oh is super scary to new players because its hard to tell who is winning or what's happening, but solo mode very slowly and nicely introduces mechanics to new players and spectating matches is easy to follow because of the flashy animations.

One issue I have is the limited soundtrack. While the soundtrack is cleverly used, there are like... 3 songs. Which kinda sucks. But it's fine.
Menus also take a weirdly long time to load? Like it takes a solid 25 seconds to get from the deck editor to the ranked duel queue.

If the menu animations could load faster, more songs were added, and the ability to choose between match and single format duels were in the game it would be, in my honest opinion, the perfect Yu-Gi-Oh sim.
This is, without a doubt, THE way to play Yu-Gi-Oh in 2022.

Master Duel was hyped up for the longest time with plenty of fears that it would fail to deliver, but thankfully it has met literally every expectation anyone could have imagined. The monetization system is very, VERY forgiving and - despite hefty investments on staples / handtraps - all cards are EXTREMELY accessible despite the fact that they aren't handed to you for free. Spending money is worthwhile and feels more like a bonus than a necessity and playing the game totally F2P feels very rewarding with a stable system of progression. The animations are BEAUTIFUL. Everything looks so CLEAN!!! It makes duels that you are losing bad INFINITELY MORE ENJOYABLE. Yu-Gi-Oh is super scary to new players because its hard to tell who is winning or what's happening, but solo mode very slowly and nicely introduces mechanics to new players and spectating matches is easy to follow because of the flashy animations. One issue I have is the limited soundtrack. While the soundtrack is cleverly used, there are like... 3 songs. Which kinda sucks. But it's fine. Menus also take a weirdly long time to load? Like it takes a solid 25 seconds to get from the deck editor to the ranked duel queue. If the menu animations could load faster, more songs were added, and the ability to choose between match and single format duels were in the game it would be, in my honest opinion, the perfect Yu-Gi-Oh sim. This is, without a doubt, THE way to play Yu-Gi-Oh in 2022.