A prequel set just before Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, Transcend Game is theoretically supposed to lay some background and setup for that movie. It, um...doesn't do that.

It introduces the Duel Links system from the movie...er, I mean, the...Neurons system? Which is a completely different thing? It also introduces the character Sera, who is...nothing at all like she is in the movie. Honestly, it makes me wonder if Transcend Game is the story, or premise, that Kazuki Takahashi actually wanted to make, but the powers that be thought it was too weird or too un-Yu-Gi-Oh-like (damn that's a lot of dashes). I've got no evidence for that, it's just idle speculation.

Like Dark Side of Dimensions, the focus of Transcend Game is Seto Kaiba. Personally - and maybe this is unusual for a Yu-Gi-Oh fan - I'm lukewarm on Kaiba. His bombast is great in small doses, but wears out his welcome fast. The problem is that, when he's the lead, he's just as awesome as he thinks he is, when in reality he's only 90% as awesome as he thinks he is. That's a bit of a digression, though. The point is the plot, of which there is basically none. It's all setup, but for a story that doesn't exist, but none of the concepts in it have anything to do with things in Dark Side of Dimensions. There are, I suppose, some thematic connections, but that's not much to go on.

So Transcend Game has no notable plot and no connection to the thing it's supposed to connect to. But it's Yu-Gi-Oh, so it's at least got some cool duels, right? Sure, if "Person A summons a monster, Kaiba summons a bigger monster and instantly wins" sounds like a cool duel to you. And I don't mean that Kaiba does some ridiculous 12-card combo to summon a giant monster. His kung fu is just bigger than the other guy's kung fu.

To be fair, there are some good points to Transcend Game. For example, it introduced Meteor Duza the Cubic Vessel to the game, which is an interesting card that makes Cubics like twice as consistent. Yes, that is my praise for Transcend Game. It has a good card in it.

To actually be fair, it has some neat ideas in it. The Neurons system could be compelling as the setting for a story of actual length, but Transcend Game is just two chapters. It doesn't do much more (by which I mean doesn't do any more) than sorta gesture at players forming guilds and powering up monsters with their willpower before hurrying on to all the other unimportant things it has to get to.

I'm not one to care much about numerical scores, but Transcend Game is difficult to score. On the one hand it has essentially nothing to offer, but on the other there's not much actually bad about it. So \rolls dice\...