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There’s One Feature Yu-Gi-Oh Video Games Must Change to Fix Their Biggest Flaw
Yu-Gi-Oh has meant a great deal to me over the years. I got into it from an exceptionally young age, devoured as much 5Ds content as I possibly could, built some of the worst decks, and had some surprisingly wholesome matches at a casual Yu-Gi-Oh tournament as a kid. The classic GBA titles, Refresh of Destruction especially, were some of my favorite games for a long while, and I even remember the time Yami Yugi made that escaped prisoner set fire to himself in the manga. Good times all around.
However, as I have gotten older, my consumption of Yu-Gi-Oh media has waned rather substantially. The new sets became overly complex and brutally broken to the point where, if you didn’t keep up, you would be thrashed in a turn or two. So, I turned to one of the best TCGs available, Magic: The Gathering, in search of something new. Yet, Yu-Gi-Oh has always remained at the back of my mind. I still watch Yu-Gi-Oh abridged, buy reprints of pre-XYZ decks I’ll never play with, and dabble in the occasional video game. Unfortunately, the latter specifically still has a fundamental issue that’s preventing me from truly sticking with the series, and it needs to be fixed, not just for my sake, but for the TCG as a whole.
Yu-Gi-Oh Is Broken Right Now
Yu-Gi-Oh has felt broken for quite some time now, and I’m not convinced there’s a simple fix for it. The obvious problem, at least the way I see it, is that the newer sets, post XYZ specifically, are designed in such a way that you’re punished for weak combos or slow-burn decks. Everything is about searching for one specific card that can pull off a devastating, game-winning combo, and, as Yu-Gi-Oh has introduced more cards that let you search through your deck, these combos are easier to pull off. Pendulum and Link cards are also infinitely more confusing and equally broken, as they allow for ridiculously powerful plays that ostensibly facilitate that you play with them. Should you opt out of either, you’re playing at a disadvantage.
What this ends up looking like are 40-minute long first turns that end with a game over for whoever was unlucky enough in the coin toss. Even if you manage to get to play a turn, there’s a good chance it’ll be your last. So, you’re encouraged to build a deck the same way everyone else is, to use cards you may not want to, all in an effort to stay ahead of the curve and have even the slightest semblance of a chance of winning. This frustrating flaw materializes in the video games, too, including even the very best Yu-Gi-Oh games like Master Duel. The playing field is never even, and you’re up against people who’ve likely poured more money into making the decks they want to.
The only way Yu-Gi-Oh can work now is in a casual setting, one in which you’re playing against friends who’ve balanced their decks to match your own. Either that, or you’re playing draft format where everyone is ostensibly in the same boat. Otherwise, Yu-Gi-Oh is basically a game about luck and money, neither of which makes a TCG particularly fun. I miss the days when it was at least somewhat viable for a bad deck to win in the end, thanks to player skill. Nowadays, that’s a rarity at best. However, while this is an issue that cannot be fixed in the wider TCG without some completely unfair bans that would render entire sets null and void, it can be improved upon in the video games.
The Yu-Gi-Oh Video Games Need To Re-establish The Playing Field
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Legacy of the Duelist features two modes that replicate my favorite way of playing the titular card game: sealed and draft. Both see players handed packs and require them to build decks with cards from those packs. These modes can be played online or against the fairly challenging AI, and provide a fun way of both mixing things up and pulling you away from the broken deck designed to win in turn one, which you always rely on. I mention these modes as I believe they are the only solution to fixing Yu-Gi-Oh’s biggest flaw, at least within a video game format.
What the games need, more than anything, is to level the playing field, specifically when playing online. If you go into a match knowing that you and your opponent are drawing from the same pool of cards and aren’t going in with predetermined strategies that’ll win in turn one, then you’ve got a pretty good chance of actually enjoying yourself. Another option is for the game to just randomly generate decks for you, something that would be a tad chaotic as you’d have no idea what the synergy is, but an enjoyable mystery worth uncovering, at least in my opinion.
Crucially, Yu-Gi-Oh video games need to find a way to encourage varied playstyles and lessen the dependency on extremely overpowered combos. I loved opening boosters with friends as a kid and seeing what decks I could build, or attempting to craft something even remotely playable out of my random selection of bulk. I understand that for a lot of people, winning Yu-Gi-Oh is what makes it fun, and I completely respect that. However, for me, at the very least, what makes this wonderful TCG so enjoyable is actually playing it. I miss being able to get stuck into a match, replicating those nailbitingly tense moments from the anime that made me fall in love with the game in the first place.
These moments, the ability to play beyond a turn or two, and the chance to see how your new deck plays are not viable in modern Yu-Gi-Oh. The video games have an opportunity to recapture these moments because they’re better controlled by Konami itself. At the very least, fleshing out draft and sealed play in whatever the next Yu-Gi-Oh game will be, or indeed adding such modes to Master Duel or Duel Links, would go a long way in ensuring that those of us who are tired of modern Yu-Gi-Oh have a way of enjoying it again. Maybe I’m alone here, but I wager that there are a lot more people out there who are keen to crack open a pack or two and play a game just to have some fun, regardless of whether they win or lose.
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