http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/YuGiOhDuelLinks
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- Anticlimax Boss:
- The Strings Duel in Duelist Chronicles: Battle City Begins was an attempt to re-enact the iconic Slifer the Sky Dragon stand-off, except his deck barely had any way of amassing the 3 Tributes necessary to summon Slifer since he only ran 5 monsters total in a 20 card deck at Level 40. Most Duelists would have to deliberately stall the Duel out in order to see the Egyptian God Card. Another sour note is that there is no FMV for the summoning, like if Rex were to summon Tyrant Dragon.
- Yubel's Level 40 deck has powerful spells and annoying monster effects, but only 1 monster with attacking power, Mystic Tomato. All others, including the various Yubel forms, have 0 attack and defense. When combined with Yubel and Yubel - Terror Incarnate's effects, which destroy her monsters in the end phase, she can easily run out of monsters to hit you with and do no damage as long as you don't attack. Even Yubel - The Ultimate Nightmare's effect is neutered if your monsters aren't on the field, and if she uses a card to bring back Grave Squirmer, it defaults to attack mode and allows you a free hit. Even her Level 50 and 60 decks can be stalled out if you don't set monsters on the field.
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- Author's Saving Throw: Quite a few since inception. These are showing that the developers and Konami are taking those surveys seriously.
- The constant nerfs/buffs to character skills and the in-game banlist are the most obvious example, adressing overused skills and cards while also trying to give a chance to those less popular.
- A June 26 update addressed complaints players had with the game, adding the ability to upgrade cards' rarity to Glossy and Prismatic, updates to Ranked Duels, lowering the Card Trader's hours to update his stock, and giving you event items when you lose to NPCs as well as when you win.
- The 1.7 Bakura event introduces EX Jewels, which are a resource that can be traded at the Card Trader to obtain event card drops and rotated-out Card Trader cards.
- A July 4th update reformatted Ranked Duels to include incentives for playing online, including coupons that can be redeemed for previously unavailable cards and Legendary Duelist drops.
- Related to the above, one of the most prevalent complaints the game received was that Red-Eyes Insight and Red-Eyes Spirit, two crucially important cards for the most dominant deck at the time, were only given out through a limited-time only Luck-Based Mission in farming Super Joey (to the point that even one of the WCS Finalists didn't have a single copy). Konami eventually addressed the situation by making the cards available through Ranked Duels rewards, and later, Semi-Limiting Red-Eyes Spirit in an attempt to hinder its dominance.
- Destiny Heroes were lambasted for having very poor offensive options and no real plays to make or bide time for. As of 3/1/18, Konami released a structure deck full of Destiny Hero support and Vision Hero Trinity to give Aster's Destiny Heroes some much needed punch. And then Valiant Souls came out, giving them an extremely potent new One Turn Kill tool in Mask Change and Masked Hero Anki, that catapulted them to become one of the top decks.
- An emergency ban was implemented on Woodland Sprite and the Golden Bamboo Sword for its ability to use the Bamboo Sword cards to draw the entire deck and burn the opponent for the entire duel without retaliation (provided the starting hand was good).
- The skill Power of the Tributed, introduced in the third iteration of the Yami Marik event, restores one of The Winged Dragon of Ra's abilities in the manga / anime that was cut from the printed card in that it gains ATK and DEF equal to the sum of the monsters used to Tribute it. This not only makes Ra usable as a finisher monster instead of being a hollow shell of its manga / anime self, but does so in a way that makes thematic sense (since only certain Duelists with Ancient Egyptian lineage can take advantage of Ra's full powers).
- Crystal Beasts were not able to make much of an impact on first release. Konami released a second event for Jesse to give players not only a second chance to unlock him, but chances to win the much coveted Rare Value card. In addition, they updated the card trader to give him access to Crystal Raigeki and Gravi-Crush Dragon to give the Beasts much needed offensive options.
- Two months after the release of the monsters 'Fur Hire', which had been dominating PVP since the moment of their release and quickly became one of the most loathed decks in the history of the game and even included an abusable effect that could completely lock down an opponent and prevent them from attacking, Konami announced a nerf by Limiting Dyna, Hero Fur Hire (the key to the aforementioned abused effect), and semi-limiting Donpa, Marksman Fur Hire, who could instantly destroy any card on the field. The deck is still perfectly usable, but no longer an absolute Game-Breaker.
- Taken a step further with a recent banlist that restricts 'Amazoness Onslaught' to 1, while semi-limiting 'Amazoness Princess', 'Wiz, Sage Fur Hire', 'Hey, Trunade!', and 'Treacherous Trap Hole', forcing players to run other cards instead. Unlike other banlists where players usually hate the change, this banlist is met with open arms, as players are finally happy that not only the problematic decks are finally addressed properly, but also, now players can run other cards instead of feeling forced to run multiples of the staples or lose.
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- Breather Boss: Joey Wheeler, Tea Gardner, and Odion, even at Level 40. Joey runs Fusion monsters with weak materials. His only strong non-tribute monster is Gearfried the Iron Knight, so the mission to win against him 3 times consecutively is far easier than for Mai and Kaiba. Tea runs weak Fairy-Type monsters apart from Dunames Dark Witch with equip spells, and her Life Gain strategy doesn't help much when she can easily deck herself out or prevent her monsters from attacking with Cards from the Sky. Odion runs weak Zombie monsters with equip spells, with even his Tribute monsters only having 1800 ATK at most.
- Broken Base: The first selection box was this for some players. One selling point of the box was that it would have cards perfect for newer players just starting to get into the competitive scene and ranked duels quicker. While that's fine if a bit redundant, the sticking issue was that there were also some cards offered in the box that were not in any box prior including the valuable Dark World Dealings. Compounding frustration was that the price per packs were more expensive (though you get more cards in a pack compared to normal) and that it would be taken off the shelves after a set amount of time caused players to claim that the best way to get the cards needed before they were gone is to activate your credit cards.
- Cards introduced after the Arc-V era: A good chance to use some cards that weren't good enough in that era? Or too broken for Duel Links that doesn't mesh with a slower demanding playstyle, such as Cyber Angels and Fur Hires?
- Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
- The Paradox Brothers' skill Elements Unite allows you to start with the necessary setup to summon the 3750-ATK Gate Guardian on turn 1, at the cost of not having a hand and being reduced to 500 LP. The skill is next to useless in PVP but extremely useful in PVE, allowing the Brothers to easily defeat every opponent without monster removal or effect damage in their decks, as no CPU-controlled opponent has a monster over 3300 ATK without specific equip cards.
- Battle position change cards. With the game format putting emphasis on battle and limited summons in a turn, putting an opponent's monster in defense position can often spell defeat. Cards such as Enemy Controller, Windstorm of Etaqua, and Sphere Kuriboh are highly valued and find their way in top-tier decks thanks to how easily they can turn a game around. Meanwhile, monsters such as Trance the Magic Swordsman or Summoned Skull are looked down upon because of their terrible DEF score that makes them easy prey to these kinds of cards.
- Decks made to farm specific opponents or fulfill specific mission requirements on autoduel are fairly common, such as an Unhappy Girl deck for farming, a Mythical Beast Cerberus deck for high battle damage, or a Tea burn deck for high effect damage.
- Crosses the Line Twice:
- Kaiba and Keith's Jerkass statements when aimed at the little kid NPCs.
Kaiba: You're a third-rate duelist with a fourth-rate deck!
Keith: I win! I wish you could see the loser look on your loser face, loser! - Epileptic Trees: The fact that the Paradox Brothers, who were not able to be challenged at Jump Fiesta like Yami Bakura, Yami Marik, and Pegasus, were added opens up endless possibilities for other characters from the manga or anime to be included as well. Spinoffs are also speculated, as Para and Dox appeared in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX as well as the original series. This was later confirmed with the addition of characters like Arkana and Bonz, as well as a new GX world.
- Fridge Brilliance:
- Duel Links being created by Kaiba in-universe means that things that are out-of-place or out-of-character can just be how Kaiba sees them.
- While implied, Yami Marik isn't explicitly confirmed to be an NPC, as he asks Kaiba if he revived him and Kaiba says if he did he could erase him on a whim. Given Kaiba's obsession over resurrecting Atem in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, including making a virtual copy of the Pharaoh, either way it could be practice for that attempt.
- Fridge Horror:
- Ishizu invokes this in her appearance, berating Kaiba for recreating her Millennium Necklace and Battle City, as it means that Yami Marik and the misery that followed has also been recreated.
- Duel Links' Yami Bakura is confirmed to be an NPC controlled by Kaiba, which begs the question of why Kaiba made him, how he got his personality down, and why no one else knows he's an NPC.
- If Arkana's unlocking speech is any indication, which starts with him glassy-eyed and silent, Marik forgot about him completely and never released him from mind control/the Shadow Realm until after the tournament was over and/or the Items were scattered.
- Game-Breaker: So many it has its own page, though not all of these apply at any given time due to updates.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- A Mokuba audio glitch resulted in his attacking dialogue for monsters getting mixed up, with the Luster Dragons swapping roles and Alexandrite Dragon becoming Shinato, a card Noah used in the anime.
- A Yami Bakura glitch on day 1 of his Destiny Board event in version 1.7 resulted in him breaking the ratings scale◊ for levels before it was fixed.
- Just Here for Godzilla: Some players are only here for the ability to play as their favorite characters and to see the characters interact.
- Les Yay: Standard Duelist Jess professes her admiration for whichever Duelist you're playing as in her introduction, and her voice and dialogue is on the flirty side with them. It becomes this trope whenever you're playing as a female Duelist.
- Memetic Badass: Thanks to a typo/glitch in version 1.7's first Destiny Board event, Yami Bakura has been imagined as a duelist so difficult he starts with 5 Exodia pieces and losing to him deletes your account.
- Memetic Mutation:
- Beaver Warrior is talked about as if he was the best card in the game, similarly like Jerry Beans Man in the TCG.
- Chazz posting which usually consists of Chazz writing poems to Alexis.
- Jaden being the true master of magicians after a event gave him a Skill that belonged to Yami Yugi and related to Dark Magician.
- 'Apologems' is used every time there's server maintenance or just said at even the slightest annoyance on the game as a way to try to get free gems.
- Another 4chan meme is 'Jack Fatlus' which is Cloudian Altus with Jack Atlas hair.
- Narm:
- Yami Bakura and Yami Marik are notorious villains and threaten their opponents accordingly, but none of the Standard Duelists seem to take them seriously. Most of the time, they simply comment about having to do better at their game even though they're being threatened with a trip to the Shadow Realm, and others wish these mass murderers good luck or remind them to have fun.
- Never Say 'Die' is generally in play, which leads to Marik making awkward threats like 'So do you want to be gone from this existence?'
- The taunt button can invoke this in serious duels, like having Jaden tell Yubel 'The egg-wich is mine!' or having Arkana talk about Dark Magician when it isn't on the field.
- Narm Charm: Invoked by the English translation. Although a lot of lines are more faithful to the original Japanese manga/anime, it also inserts many of the lines from the 4Kids dub to appeal to nostalgic English dub or Yu-Gi-Oh! The Abridged Series fans, such as Arkana's Dark Energy Disks or one of Bonz's victory lines being 'You didn't stand a ghost of a chance!'
- Nightmare Fuel:
- Unlike most dueling themes, the Rare Hunters' theme is low-key and creepy, with ambient noises and an Ominous Music Box Tune. Marik mind-controlling them causes even scarier music to play, and when he controls Joey in the Battle City event it's even worse.
- Yami Bakura's Destiny Board event turned the sky into Dark Sanctuary, covering it in red clouds full of eyes.
- Unintentional, but Bonz has a smiling face complete with blush in this game, and it's far creepier than any other face or act he's put on.
- Should Syrus challenge Zane, Zane makes it plenty clear that in his broken state of mind, Zane's going to maim his little brother in a duel. The Cyberdark Impact event on July 23 introduced electrodes. Three reductions to your LP and you automatically lose the duel because the pain of the collars knocks out your character.
- Yubel's event replaces the music with a low, melancholy string and piano piece, and the sky turns purple, complete with a Giant Eye of Doom looming over the skyline. Duel Ghouls of standards duelists appear, with distorted smiles and deck names depicting their Horror Hunger. Alyson Leigh Rosenfield, normally cast as cute children or rebellious teens, absolutely nails Yubel's yandereInterplay of Sex and Violence tendencies.
- Like in the anime, whenever Electromagnetic waves are around Tyranno, he loses control and reverts to a primal form. In Duel Links, this is represented by Tyranno becoming Ultimate Tyranno Hassleberry, in which you have five turns to take him down (complete with a Ultimate Tyranno in the background as a friendly reminder) or else you automatically lose from his rampage ability.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Ice Barrier monsters in the traditional card game were essentially forgotten about save for their Synchros. Ice Barrier monsters in Duel Links, by contrast, see more than their fair share of play due to a great magic card in 'Magic Triangle of the Ice Barrier,' powerful two tribute monsters with great effects, excellent drawing power/potential and good synergy among its decks. It's not exactly top tier, but you'll see quite a few online duelists use them regularly.
- In the same vein, while HEROs aren't low Tier-Induced Scrappy status and are arguably the other way around, first generation Elemental HERO monsters were for being unnecessarily gimmicky. While they aren't top tier either, the reduced deck size makes it easier to get the materials you need for their fusions and also allows for a much more focused deck. In addition, they released the more useful and streamlined cards like Blazeman early and gave Jaden a skill to drop Skyscraper on the field to help ease the problem.
- Yubel in the real-life card game is considered an Awesome, but Impractical gimmick at best and a bricky mess at worst. Duel Links solved those problems with the reduced deck size, making it much easier to draw the cards you need, and also gave Yubel (the character) a skill to shuffle the evolved forms, which otherwise sit like bricks in your hand, back into your deck and search the base Yubel in their place. Combined with Fire King and Nephthys support to destroy Yubel in your hand, you can easily get Terror Incarnate onto the field without having waste resources summoning the base Yubel, making the deck vastly more consistent and powerful.
- Scrappy Mechanic:
- Certain rare, powerful cards can only be won from defeating a Legendary Duelist and getting lucky with the card drops, with a higher chance on higher level duelists. The problem is there are tons of Junk Rare cards that they all possess that you're likely to get tens and hundreds of before you even hope to see one of those cards. Luckily, a July 4 update allows you to trade Tickets from Ranked Duels to obtain Legendary Duelist cards.
- The four/five victory streak needed to progress at the highest ranks in PVP, Platinum and Legend. You need to be lucky enough to not get paired up against a deck that outright counters yours, get a good starting hand in each duel, and don't get screwed by the exploit-abusing duelists. While the Platinum ranks are more lenient with the requirement, for the Legend ranks you need a five win streak to climb to the next rank and there's three levels in Legend. The worst part? If you get a three loss streak you drop a rank.
- A subtle one, but some cards will follow rulings from the OCG as opposed to the TCG rulings, which can trip up a few TCG players. For example, 'Fusion Tag' has its effect able to be used, correctly, for when the target is used as a Fusion Material, not just for a Fusion Summon (there's a difference - Contact Fusions such as 'XYZ-Dragon Cannon' use Fusion Materials but aren't Fusion Summons). The latter case was incorrectly printed on the card in the TCG.
- The card trader is becoming this to some, as with many updates to its stock the card rotation is random and there are players upset at seeing repeats of cards they already have 3 or more copies of while others (especially for sets like Gemini or Aromages which have a lot of their support be exclusive to the card trader) can go weeks or even months without appearing. The Regular Inventory feature helps with this, but the issue still remains for newer cards that are not in the Regular Inventory yet.
- Any event in which the prizes are up to the lottery. The issue fans have with the lottery is the placement of gold or keys in the drawing, which squander chances of getting the limited edition cards available in a certain time-frame.
- The 5Ds characters have their ace cards (save Leo, whose box just gave players his Power Tool Dragon) locked behind a Skill that adds two Tuners and one copy of the ace dragon to the Extra Deck. These Skills screw up deck consistency (unless you build around it) and force players to fatten up their decks for no reason. Trudge's Skill is even worse in that it removes all OTHER cards in the Extra Deck just to run one Goyo Guardian, making it worthless. While Jutte Fighter itself is fine for a generic Tuner monster, players still don't see this as a fair enough trade-off. At least, until Konami updated Trudge's Skill in May 2019 to no longer remove all the other Extra Deck cards.
- To be fair, these skills are mostly there to ease players into Synchro Summoning for those who are not too familiar with it. That being said, now players have access to Stardust Dragon, Power Tool Dragon, Ancient Fairy Dragon, Black Winged Dragon, Red Archfiend Dragon and Black Rose Dragon via boxes, so the plan may be to release the Signer Dragons over time.
- Tear Jerker:
- Yugi's lines when you beat him are pretty upsetting, especially if you're Yami Yugi.
Yugi: Am I not good enough? Maybe I can't win on my own.- Dueling Kaiba and winning as Pegasus brings back bad memories of Duelist Kingdom. (This matchup became particularly common when Kaiba's Beatdown and Pegasus' Mind Scan were easily the two most used Skills in PVP)
Kaiba: (pre-duel) You've tried to destroy everything I care about! And for that, I will never forgive you!
Kaiba: [loses] Mokuba.. Forgive me.
Pegasus: Poor Kaiba boy. You let everyone down. I will spare you the agony of carrying on in this world.. by imprisoning your soul within a card!
Kaiba, post-loss: No.. This can’t be the end..- Dueling or defeating Ishizu or Odion as Yami Marik will make you feel horrible for winning, as they blame themselves over not being able to save Marik.
- Arkana's unlock speech is rather sad. While he is free from the Shadow Realm, all he remembers is a deep pain before choosing to ignore it and hide his pain behind his mask.
- That One Boss: Several Legendary Duelists at max level, primarily for having powerful cards unavailable to the player.
- Mai Valentine at Level 40 (and even Level 30) is one of the hardest Legendary Duelists to beat, let alone farm for Random Drops, because her Amazoness Village can replace any fallen Amazoness once per turn, she runs plenty of Trap Cards to revive them from the Graveyard, and she has cards like Amazoness Fighting Spirit and Amazoness Spellcasters to overpower most monsters you could throw at her. Unfortunately, two late-stage missions require you to win 3 consecutive victories against her and achieve 3 Quick Victories with Joey Wheeler (in two of your turns. Fortunately, these don't have to be consecutive) respectively.
- Ishizu Ishtar's Level 40 deck, much to the chagrin of those seeking to build a Gravekeeper deck. It features Necrovalley to boost her Gravekeepers by an unprecedented 500 ATK and DEF, as well as a hard-to-defeat boss monster in Gravekeeper's Visionary, which gains power for every Gravekeeper in the Graveyard and can protect itself from destruction by discarding Gravekeeper's monsters. Gravekeeper's Assailant also has its effect readily accessible to strike your powerhouses at their (usually) weaker DEF.
- Seto Kaiba's Level 40 deck is regarded as one of the hardest to beat. He runs the 1900 ATK Vorse Raider, as well as Cost Down to easily bring out a 2400 ATK Luster Dragon #2 for no Tribute or his signature Blue-Eyes White Dragon for only 1. And in case you try to overpower him with a monster, he also runs D.D. Warrior to remove any of your monsters or Enemy Controller to steal your monster and finish off your Life Points, or protect himself from attacks by switching your monsters to defense mode. Unfortunately, the latter is also one of his drops and a metagame staple. Also, like Mai, you have to win 3 times consecutively against him for a late-stage mission.
- Level 50 Yami Bakura runs a Dark Master Zorc deck revolving around disruptions, Dark Necrofear, Zorc's dice rolls, and Destiny Board. Destiny Board of Doom is also in effect, forcing you to play on a time limit if you're unable to remove Dark Necrofear from his graveyard. His Level 40 Evil Incarnate Deck in his Zombie mini-event was also notoriously difficult, running multiple copies of Tribute to the Doomed, Book of Life, and Sakuretsu Armor to stymie whatever the player tried along with 1800 ATK and up monsters.
- Alexis Rhodes is no joke. If you can't negate her rituals or have a backup plan to destroy them, they're going to hit hard, instantly destroy your monsters, and be well protected by their Ritual spell card. She also has Gemini Elf to back her up and other monsters with effects to irk and annoy you.
- Level 50 Yami Marik starts with Ra in Sphere Mode and can summon the Battle Mode on turn 1, and his other cards include stuff like Michizure, Dark Jeroid, and Viser Des. The only saving grace is that you could fight him indefinitely until you defeated him.
- Level 40 Zane not only has his Cyber Dragons, as in the original ones, the ones that Special Summon themselves, but also has Power Bond and the Cyber Dragon fusions. If you do not have anything ready to stop his monsters, chances are he will OTK you with Cyber Twin Dragon's second attack or Cyber End Dragon's 8000 ATK with piercing.
- During his Cyberdark event, Level 40/50 Zane's Cyberdark deck allows him to lead with a 2000+ ATK monster, usually alongside a Field Spell that offers great protection for his Cyberdark monsters. Unless your opening hand is good, you most likely will have no way to deal with his Cyberdarks quickly, which usually means a loss for you.
- Level 30 Aster's strategy focus on keeping Clock Tower Prison on the field with enough counters, preventing you from dealing damage to him. Level 40 Aster added a ridiculously powerful Fusion monster on top of that. Sure, Level 40 Aster sometimes bricked, but if he gets the combo going, you might as well just give up and take the loss.
- In the Tag Duel Tournament event, Joey and Mai are the bane of many players seeking to win Master level despite being only the second of five opponents (and if you lose any game in Master level, you have to start from the beginning). Mai runs a deck similar to her Level 40 Amazoness deck, including the reserve-spawning Amazoness Village, except it's even worse since she also has Amazoness Heirloom, which gives an Amazoness the ability to destroy any monster she attacks while protecting her from destruction by battle once per turn. Plus, both of them have a Skill that revives once of their partner's monsters once per Duel. All these factors make their monsters hard to overcome. Notably, Konami nerfed Mai's deck one day after Master level was released, but their That One Boss status remains.
- Inglorious Bastion's level 40 deck has been proven very difficult to farm against; combined with the speed at which he mills himself can prove fatal to either yourself if he brings out Kasha or himself if he decks out, preventing you from obtaining the maximum amount of points against him. Even his level 30 deck can bring out a huge beater directly from the Deck easily - depending on what farming deck you use, it's very possible he can take you out in the first three or five turns.
- Epic Yami on day one had proven to be so powerful that not even a single current farming deck was able to take him out consistently without massive luck. Even then, his deck had answers for almost every currently known variant. Konami had to nerf his deck so that players can actually beat and farm him.
- That One Level:
- Missions 57 and 58 require the player to win against Mai at level 40 and Kaiba at Level 40, respectively, 3 times in a row.
- Mission 59 requires the player to summon Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, a 3500 ATK monster who can only be summoned through very weak cards staying on the field for up to 5 turns. It's slightly easier if you have Weevil's skill that halves the time limit or play a low level gate duelist, but getting the card is a pain in itself.
- It gets better, using Cocoon of Ultra Evolution doesn't complete the mission.
- The Scrappy:
- GX Standard Duelist Zachary is a smug, obnoxious elitist scrub that believes himself above everyone else and rubs your defeats to him in your face, but when he loses, he'll start whining or blame it all on his cards. He also seems to have trouble learning a lesson. Long story short, he's Obelisk Blue Chazz, you know, before his Character Development.
- DM Standard Duelist Andrew is an Insufferable Genius, and it's grating to lose against him.
- Tier-Induced Scrappy:
- Relinquished became this as soon as it debuted in the Toon World event. Despite being a Ritual Monster that takes three cards to summon, its ability to absorb enemy monsters more than makes up for it, especially since such unconditional monster removal is rare in the metagame. Even though there are ways around it, is an amazing come-back card that also serves as a win condition in itself. It's also very accessible to most players, since it can only take a few tries against max level Pegasus to get two copies of his signature monster and its Ritual Spell. The first KC Cup event fully solidified its status, as it was easily integrated into most decks, and even with plenty of potentially devastating counters, it was still considered the most powerful card in high-level play. The top deck in the Asia/Oceania region was dedicated entirely to getting out and protecting Relinquished.
- Sphere Kuriboh. Available from the very first pack as a UR, it became a competitive necessity due to its primary effect, which discards itself from the hand to prevent a single attack—something that's more than a little annoying to face and almost impossible to prevent. On top of that, its second effect allows the player to banish it from the Graveyard to add it to a Ritual Monster's Tribute.. which makes it ideal for use as the only Tribute to summon Relinquished, both cards being Level 1.
- Mai and her Harpie's Hunting Ground skill ended up as one. As described on the Game-Breaker page, the deck's powerful Spell/Trap removal and access to 1900 attack beaters such as Sonic Duck, makes it extremely powerful. The deck being easily able to blend with the aforementioned Relinquished and becoming its skill of choice after the Switcheroo nerf didn't help matters. It ended up being the most overused deck in the second Kaiba Cup.
- Tea/Anzu Burn decks, augmented with the Duel standby skill. Tea players would either win on their first 2 turns or squirm around trying to do it. The perceived lack of skill to pilot the decknote and how playing against it couls easily ruin a win streak ended up making it the most hated deck for competitive and casual players alike until it was nerfed.
- Toons became this as soon as Toon Kingdom was released. The Field Spell not only renders Toons effectively impervious to battle, but also renders any cards with targeting effects useless. This meant that once Toon Kingdom was played, Toon Monsters could take advantage of their shared ability to attack your Life Points directly while the opponent could do almost nothing to stop them if they couldn't remove the Field Spell. Such an action often requires specialized counters that weaken the deck's consistency against anything else, so often, the only option players have is to simply hope Toon Kingdom doesn't show up. Because of its solitaire-style Luck-Based Mission gameplay and the aforementioned difficulty in countering it consistently, it had become the most reviled deck in the game at the time it was commonly used.
- Red-Eyes Insight/Zombie decks have become heavily disliked for being promoted and focused on compared to other archetypes, gaining a lot of support cards while having next to no counters and other archetypes had no support. Eventually, Red-Eyes Spirit was Semi-Limited to give other decks a chance.
- Cyber Angels immediately took over the ladder as soon as they were released. Though they were Alexis's signature archetype in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX, they were actually released in the Arc-V era and buffed accordingly to account for Power Creep. The result was a hyper-consistent deck with searching and card recycling prowess far surpassing any other deck of the time, easily allowing them to get out and reuse Cyber Angel Dakini, a monster with 2700 ATK that could remove an opponent's monster on summon and recycle Ritual cards each turn. In addition, their Ritual Spell, Machine Angel Ritual, also protected them from destruction, making them hard to remove by conventional methods. Konami instantly took note of this and Limited Machine Angel Ritual merely weeks later due to immense fan outcry. However, this did little to stop them, as Machine Angel Absolute Ritual could use monsters from the Graveyard to fulfill its summoning condition and swarm the field. They completely took over the November KC Cup to the point that almost nothing else could compete except for a similarly reviled Ninja deck that abused the 3-Star Demotion skill to get out its boss monsters instantly, in contrast to previous formats. Cyber Angels can also take 2-3 minutes each to complete a single turn due to their long combo chains.
- Sylvans are unbelievably fast (quite ironic as speed wasn't one of the deck's strengths in the TCG when they debuted), their monsters have great stats, and with Rose Lover, they've got enough synergy to mill their heavy hitters (such as Sylvan Hermitree or one of the Flower Princesses), revive lost monsters with Carrotweight Champion, or just pick apart your field piece by piece with multiple Komushroomos or Marshalleafs. Much of the player base refers to them as 'Skillvans' because of how easily they can get their combo pieces in the Graveyard to devastate their opponent's field and OTK with minimal input required from its players.
- Lava Golem has become infamous for being the primary win condition of Burn decks. It removes two of the opponent's monsters to Special Summon itself to their side of the field and inflicts 1000 damage to them at the beginning of each of their turns (which is huge in a 4000 LP format). Even though it's a 3000 ATK beater, Burn decks run multiple cards to disable it and other monsters from attacking, all while whittling down the opponent's LP through other means to reduce the amount of turns Lava Golem's controller has to survive. The Golem is also hard to get rid of in decks that don't run Tribute or Ritual Monsters (and even then, they still have to take 1000 damage before they can Tribute it), as Enemy Controller is the only card most decks run that Tribute their own monsters, and that can be countered by the Burn deck player simply not playing any monsters for the opponent to take.
- Flamvell fall on the lower tiers here as well, with almost all monsters having only 200 DEF leaving them vulnerable to Enemy Controller/Pulse Mines. Furthermore, they have no access to their boss monsters or ace cards like Rekindling, Flamvell Firedog or even Flamvell Counter and Flamvell Commando.
- Ghostricks relied on main phase 2 to use their effects, which is absent in Duel Links, so their only real option is to mill the enemy's deck with Ghostrick Skeleton.
- Woodland Sprite's burn effects were so complained about that almost immediately after it was released, Konami took notice and made an announcement about a nerf.
- The 'Fur Hires.' Along with being an inexpensive deck to build (all of the key cards are either Normal or Rare, with only one card being Super-Rare), they took the meta by storm the day they came out, due to their ability to swarm the field with their special summoning effects, which allow them to instantly summon heavy hitters like 'Dyna, Hero Fur Hire' and 'Wiz, Sage Fur Hire' directly from the hand, with 'Beat, Swordsman Fur Hire' even able to search the deck for them. That alone would have put them on par with the Sylvans, but combine their Zerg Rush abilities with the ability to draw monsters out of the graveyard, banish opponents' monsters from their graveyard, negate spells and traps effects, and even instantly destroy cards that are either face up or face down, all simply by utilizing their special abilities, and you have a deck capable of first-turn kills with remarkable consistency. Players were screaming for a nerf practically from day one, especially after the Duel Island - Gladiator event. In August of 2018, Konami obliged, Limiting Dyna, Hero Fur Hire and Semi-Limiting Donpa, Marksman Fur Hire. They took a further step in October of 2018, by Semi-Limiting Wiz, Sage Fur Hire.
- Notably, the deck 'Fur Hire' is often complained to be a deck that should not be on Duel Links already, considering it's a deck released in real life during 2018, making it extremely new and thus has effects that accounts for real life Power Creep (similar to the Cyber Angels entry above), meaning they're very powerful compared to the much older cards in Duel Links.
- Treacherous Trap Hole is a prime candidate for the most hated backrow card in the game. Upon activation, it instantly destroys 2 monsters on the field, practically for free. For perspective, you can only have a maximum 3 monsters on your side of the field, which makes it close to a total field clear, and most often, it's used to intercept the opponent's plays so that they will be forced to end their turn with no monsters to defend themselves from a likely One Turn Kill. Try to evade the card by playing only 1 monster? The opponent can just destroy one of their own monsters to take out yours. Even its supposed limiting condition of requiring no Traps in the Graveyard to activate it is made trivial by the multitude of decks that don't have room for Traps anyway, run Quick-Play Spells as defensive cards instead, or use the Endless Trap Hell skill to empty the Graveyard of Traps. Also, since the minimum deck size is a mere 20 cards, players got used to seeing this card often. Since it can singlehandedly win games on its own and widens the gap between high and low tier decks by discouraging anything that requires building up field presence to make plays (including the widely-anticipated Synchro monsters introduced with the Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's update), players have constantly called for it to be placed on the Forbidden / Limited list, speculating that Konami is reluctant to do so in fear of losing trust from players that spent a lot of currency to get a Super Rare Box card. In the October 2018 banlist, Konami finally obliged, adding Treacherous Trap Hole to the semi-limited list.
- Amazoness was initially a weak archetype mostly filled with only beaters, but when Amazoness Princess, Amazoness Queen, and Amazoness Onslaught are introduced, the deck immediately sweeps the metagame due to how powerful the new cards are, making the deck far stronger than most other decks, eventually requiring Konami to hit the deck with the banlist not just once, but twice.
- Unexpected Character:
- With Yugi and Yami Marik being the only characters in the initial roster that nobody had, many were surprised to see the Paradox Brothers added to the game before their potential events. Tristan was also unexpected, as he didn't duel at all in the manga and only dueled once in the anime.
- One of the cards the player can win from Chazz is Ojamandala, a Spell card that gives you back each of the three Ojama brothers if you pay 1000 LP. Ojamandala is an anime only card; it's never seen proper circulation in the TCG. While anime-only cards aren't a new thing in the games, many weren't expecting a card like that in Duel Links, which up until the Chazz event, only features cards that are already printed in real life.
- Almost no-one expected Lumis and Umbra to be added as characters, as most of their cards had already been added to the game and they hadn't appeared during the first Battle City event. This ended up being a pleasant surprise for most however as there was some genuine effort behind their inclusion, with all new sprites for the duo (since they hadn't appeared in Tag Force unlike every other playable character) and a nice animation if they to summon Masked Beast Des Gardius, who is notably more animated than the other monsters.
- Win Back the Crowd:
- A lot of old-school Yu-Gi-Oh fans picked up the game not only because it featured the original cast, complete with voice-overs, but also serves as a return to a less special-summoning focused format for those disenchanted with the regular game's Power Creep or new summoning methods. Cards introduced from GX onward are selected so as not to overpower the original generation cards, and power cards from the original game have been excluded (e.g. the strongest instant-kill cards are single-target with various conditions or costs). Thus, cards and strategies that never saw any competitive use in the TCG, such as Flash Assailant or Guardian Statue, end up being extremely useful or even the focus of their respective decks.
- Another charm to the game is the speed duel format. With half a deck size, LP count, and no Main Phase 2 available to the player, it's a different style of dueling that when combined with the card pool, forces players to think up fun new strategies or make do with what is available. Furthermore, cards that were introduced such as Gladiator Beasts or Mermails are surprisingly balanced against other decks (with few exceptions) promoting a game that a lot of players can enjoy.
- The Woobie:
- Roland gets yelled at if you click on the KC status reports when nothing new's happened.
- Bella is a little girl with self-confidence issues, which can make you feel awful if Kaiba, Keith, or Yami Bakura defeats her.
- Evan is a confidence-lacking Slifer Red Student, without much money to afford a competitive deck. He can be extremely disappointed with himself on defeat, sometimes even asking you to give him your Deck out of despair. This is even worse if you use Kaiba against him, because Kaiba's not afraid of showing all the money he spent on his Deck.
- Bastion starts to really doubt himself and creates his new Yokai deck from the GX Manga in hopes of being remembered by everybody again. Beat him; and he'll wonder if he's really a failure
- Woolseyism: The Standard Duelists in the Japanese version had generic names such as 'Student who likes Dueling' or 'Energetic boy.' They were given proper names for the International release, which made them stand out as distinct characters, particularly when they started participating in event skits.
It's been a while duelists!
How's your deck construction going? I hope you guys can join our event! If you haven't entered, you can check out the event details here: :arrow_right: Deck Build Challenge
Anyway, this entry isn't all too exciting. I just wanted to share a new skill that I recently unlocked with Mai! This is one of the unlisted skills that you don't receive during a level milestone.
I was half-expecting that this field card wasn't going to be included in the meta considering it's actually a bit overpowered, but considering how low the Harpie drops are, I guess it's pretty harmless! (Somewhat lol)
As most of you might know, Harpie's Hunting Ground is literally Mai's go to field spell for her Harpies. Not only does this card empower her winged-beast monsters but it also allows you to control and prevent your opponent from making use of their spell/trap zone. Turning into prey real quick :sweat_drops:
To obtain the skill, you may need to level Mai above 15 (around level 19) to unlock the skill. I'm not certain of the requirements but should you unlock this ability, it will become your automatic field spell at the start of the game.
Card Description:
All Winged Beast-Type monsters gain 200 ATK and DEF. When any 'Harpie Lady' or 'Harpie Lady Sisters' are Normal or Special Summoned: The player who conducted the Summon targets 1 Spell/Trap Card on the field; destroy that target.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/VideoGame/YuGiOhDuelLinks
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Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Links is a mobile game in the popular Yu-Gi-Oh! franchise, specifically the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga and anime. Set in the world of Duel Links, the VR world featured in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Dark Side of Dimensions, you start as either Yami Yugi or Seto Kaiba and try to become King of the Duel World, dueling opponents from the obscure to the noteworthy.
Leveling up your character, Stage, and fulfilling certain requirements will unlock more duelists, as well as character-specific skills to give you an edge on the playing field. After unlocking other characters, you can play as them, duel characters you've unlocked, duel players online in real-time, save your best matches, buy cards, and other activities. The game released on November 17, 2016 in Japan and in January 2017 worldwide.
How To Unlock Level 40 Legendary Duelists 3
While originally the game focused on just the original series, the world of Yu-Gi-Oh! GX was added on September 27, 2017, and a Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's world on September 24, 2018. The game came to PC on Steam on November 17, 2017.
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This game contains examples of:
- Adaptation Distillation: Due to the mobile phone format, the Speed Duel format is used, where many elements of the regular TCG are simplified. Your minimum deck size and starting Life Points are half that of the TCG, you have one less card in your starting hand, you have 3 slots on the game mat for Monsters and Spells/Traps instead of 5, and every summon mechanic from Xyz Summoning onward has been excluded for now.
- Allegedly Free Game: In the early days it was possible to build a competitive deck without spending any real money, as cards were generally balanced and easy to get, and characters received powerful cards upon leveling up. Nowadays the Power Creep means competitive cards become increasingly difficult to find and what's good can change quickly, and level-up cards tend to be less powerful than before.
- Animation Bump: Signature monsters, such as Yami Yugi's Dark Magician, get awesome special summoning animations. Except for Ojama King, which is more hilarious than awesome.
- Anticlimax Boss: Invoked in the 'Attack of the Tristans' April Fools' event. Duel World glitched badly and clones of Tristan Taylor appeared everywhere, but when you clicked on him, his defeat animation played - implying that he is such a terrible duelist that you didn't even have to try to defeat him.
- Anti-Frustration Features:
- There's an auto-duel option for standard opponents, which can be turned off mid-fight, an automatic deck creator, which automatically uses your strongest cards, and a way to favorite cards so you can easily find them.
- After the first tag duel tournament was criticized for difficulty and artificial stupidity, the second tournament added the ability to control your partner and select your opponent's difficulty level.
- Artificial Stupidity: The auto-dueling feature can make very dumb moves at times, as can the AI.
- Yugi's Level 40 deck revolves around spell counters, which he usually uses to power up his attacking monsters even when you've used Mask of Accursed to stop them from attacking. In some cases he'll use Wonder Wand to destroy the monster even if it's powered up to draw 2 cards.
- Mai's Level 40 deck revolves around Amazonesses, including Amazoness Chain Master. If it's destroyed and she has enough LP, she will use it to steal a card from you even if it's worthless.
- Para and Dox's Level 40 deck revolves around Kazejin and Suijin. Since their effects only work once per duel and the AI has no way to track this, they'll tribute a Kazejin and Suijin to summon another Suijin, even if you have a weaker monster than both of them.
- After the 1.7 update, Yami Bakura gained the habit of playing Malice Doll of Demise in Attack Position even when your monsters are stronger.
- Syrus Truesdale's Level 30 and 40 decks has Inverse Universe, a card that swaps ATK and DEF, which for whatever reason, he may activate even if it does not change the situation at all (the attacking monster still destroy his monster anyway, despite the change in stats). He also sometimes sets a monster in defense mode and then automatically destroys it with Shield Crush.
- Black Dragon Ninja has an ability to banish any opposing monster for the price of a Ninja monster and Ninjitsu Art from your hand or field. However, this comes with a drawback; if Black Dragon Ninja leaves the field, it will Special Summon all those banished monsters back to the field. If there are no other Ninjas, the AI will sacrifice Black Dragon Ninja itself, ignoring the fact that doing so would cancel its own effect out.
- The Auto-duel AI hit a big snag around the release of Blades of Spirits as it's gotten way weaker/dumber. Such maladies with auto-AI include occasionally giving purely beneficial equip cards to your opponent's monsters, just plain not using cards, summoning monsters like Sphere Kuriboh (weak monster works better as a hand trap than being summoned) or Labyrinth Wall (zero attack) in attack position, and using cards like Enemy Controller on things when there's no need to or it puts you in a worse situation. Considering the opposing AI never does this, it's clear that the auto duel AI was intentionally designed to be worse.
- Tag Duel partner AI seems fine enough, but only when using their own cards. If you have specific strategies involving said card, chances are, the AI partner will misuse the card.
- Against a Karakuri deck, they'll constantly attack you even if you have a facedown card that can turn the tides in your favor because of the effect of those monsters shifting them to defense mode. They'll walk right into all of your spells and traps easily.
- NP Cs in general seem to have an issue with cards that mill their own deck - they will use the card's effect just to reduce damage once or destroy 1 monster, regardless of the risk in accidentally milling important cards. They will also continuously spam the milling effect if possible, even if they end up doing nothing else on the same turn due to still being unable to break your board. This can result in them needlessly cutting their deck until they have only 4 or even 2 cards left, making it easy for them to Deck Out if you just stall for a bit more.
- Auto-dueling will also not use abilities even when the criteria fits, even when doing so could help them turn the duel around.
- Attack! Attack! Attack!: Level 10 opponents will continually Summon monsters in attack position even if they know theirs are weaker than yours. This still applies even if their monster has 0 ATK. In addition to that, they will Summon their Flip monsters in face-up attack position, even though those monsters generally have weak ATK stat and are only used for their effect, which requires them to be Set, not Summoned.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Decks that rely too heavily on Tributes, Fusions, or Rituals frequently end up unable to summon any monsters at all.
- Yugi's skill Grandpa's Cards adds the five pieces of Exodia into your deck. However, the Exodia cards are added on top of the cards you already built. For example, if you have a 20 card deck, it increased to 25, thus deck construction must consider that factor. In addition, because you start with a four card hand if you go first, it becomes a lot more difficult to get the five cards while maintaining a defense, and searching for the cards is also difficult.
- In general, with only 20 card decks, 4 card opening hands, and no Side Deck option due to no Match (best of 3) system, every card needs to be useful at almost all times, which makes more situational cards this. Cards designed to counter other cards, such as Gamushara and Magic Deflector, mean one less card to protect your monsters, and having such cards sit dead on the field can be fatal due to the lack of resources. Even Spell/Trap removal cards like Nobleman of Extermination, which would normally be a no-brainer staple in the OCG or TCG, can fall into this trope because they mean one less defensive card.
- The Winged Dragon of Ra proved to be this. On top of its effect of reducing your HP to 100 being mediocre and making you weak to effect damage decks, getting it out is even more of a pain because of the three monster slots and it isn't immune to spell and trap cards, making it easy to play around despite its power. Yami Marik even claimed he would enjoy seeing you try to use it and fail.
- All of the Yu-Gi-Oh 5D's characters have an ability that allows the player to add a free Synchro Monster (the character's signature monster) to their Extra Deck along with 2 free Tuners, even if your Extra Deck was at it's maximum already. Officer Tetsu Trudge's ability on the other hand, 'Let's Go Goyo!', doesn't add his Synchro Monster, but instead replaces your entire Extra Deck with a single copy of Goyo Guardian, so you cannot summon any other Synchro Monsters, nor can you Fusion Summon at all.
- Badass Boast: Joey, the first boss, invites you to duel him with one of these. He immediately lampshades it and wonders to himself if you're afraid.Joey: Step right up so I can knock ya down!
- Balance Buff:
- Joey's Reinforcement, Ishizu's Prescience, and Odion's Endless Trap Hell Skills were all buffed in a May 23 update.
- In an August 3 update, Ishizu's Fairy's Smile Skill was altered to give 1000 Life Points instead of 500.
- Bastion's 'attribute boosting field' skills were all made easier to bring out in a February 2018 update.
- Bonus Boss: Event duelists can be found at Level 50 after fulfilling certain requirements, with tendencies to use very strong traps and monsters and sometimes exclusive skills. Zane Truesdale's Underworld Duels has an option to duel him at level 60, with an even more powerful deck. Jack Atlas' Turbo Duels has similar option, which makes him change his Multi Piece Golem turbo duel deck into a Synchro-based turbo duel deck that features a variety of strong Synchro monsters.
- Boring, but Practical:
- Normal Monster beatdown decks are relatively simplistic in deck construction and strategy, but they are low-cost, consistent, and that simplicity works best with auto-duel.
- Fusion decks also work well in auto-duel, especially with cards that can act as Fusion Substitutes.
- In competitive play, any of the top-tier decks used to get through the ranked duels will serve you well. Even if you don't win all the time, you just need the cumulative victories to get the more powerful cards.
- Gladiator Beast Decks. Three Bestiari, Murmillo and Laquari with your choice of filler and standard protection. 100% Boring and 100% Predictable, yet almost 100% reliable barring really unique tech choices.
- Sylvan decks. Three Komushroomo, Marshalleaf, Guardioak, two Hermitree, Rose Lover, World Carrotweight Champion, and a few techs of your choice. Once you see them, you know what they're going to do. Boring? Yes. Practical? Yes.
- Fur Hire is similar to Sylvan in that it's really predictable what will happen the moment you see a low level monster Fur Hire being summoned. And just like Sylvan, as boring as it is, it's also so powerful Konami ends up having to limit a few of its cards.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: After you level up enough, standard duelists become quite difficult, especially ones that run Graveyard-based decks.
- Bowdlerize:
- Bandit Keith wearing a cross was edited out of his character design, despite other games retaining it.
- The Battle City Finals event changed the manga scenario where Ishizu wanted to stay on the island when it exploded if Marik wasn't rescued by having Kaiba ask her if she was okay with Yugi doing her work for her, to which she says any route is acceptable so long as the end goal's achieved.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: You can purchase gems, gate keys, and packs with real-world money to accelerate their acquisition process. Pre-made structure decks, as well as enemy NP Cs that gives higher exp than normal, can also be bought this way.
- Broad Strokes: Like most Yu-Gi-Oh video games, Duel Links mixes the manga and anime in terms of character designs, personalities, cards, and events.
- Most of the characters have lines for monsters they only used in the anime or only in the manga, such as Tyrant Dragon for Rex and Fire Sorcerer for Tea, or Toy Magician for Yugi Muto. A bug in Mokuba's event ended up with him talking about using Noah's card, Shinato.
- Bakura makes references to the Monster World manga arc when talking to Joey and Mokuba's level 30 deck, Poison Hamburger references the manga events of Death-T. Mokuba also mentions being a champion at Capsule Monsters when he beats you.
- The Set Sail for the Kingdom event is mostly manga-based, but includes dubbed anime lines wholesale where appropriate, Keith's punishment is ambiguous enough that it can be seen as the hand-gun from the manga or the trap door in the anime, and whether Yugi and Joey dueled like in the anime or didn't duel like in the manga is never brought up.
- The Battle City events include panels and dialogue from the manga as well as anime scenarios, including Arkana's Dark Energy Disc threat from the dub and Yugi having seen Marik's mind-control powers when he was brainwashing Keith.
- Butt-Monkey:
- Joey. Whenever the developers need to show a Duelist getting humiliated or defeated, they will most often use him as an example, and one mission asks you to defeat him three times. Tea is also seen as a weak duelist, but she doesn't get it nearly as bad as he does.
- Whenever Roland appears, he tends to get yelled at, whether by Seto or by Mokuba.
- Bastion Misawa nearly got left out of the Japanese release trailer for GX, only showing up at the end after everyone else was introduced together, and his fortune doesn't improve in the game proper. He's the only Legendary Duelist that doesn't have his own battle theme (instead using the Standard Duelist theme), and even Logan and Zachary, his Standard Duelist fanboys, forget his name. Even his unlock mission doesn't help him; it asks you to win 50 duels while having 3 or less cards in your deck, arguably a tedious enough requirement to deter people from trying to unlock him.
- Bonz gets it pretty bad too, from almost everyone being afraid of how he looks to others like Keith and Bakura who either humiliate him or flatly terrify him, Bonz gets the short end of the stick.
- Call-Back:
- Having Tea win against Joey has her say the same lines she used when beating him in the second anime episode.
- Pegasus's Toon World event revolves around collecting Star Chips like in Duelist Kingdom, and a later event retold parts of Duelist Kingdom. If you approach him as Bandit Keith in the Toon World event, he mentions dropping Keith in the ocean like in the anime.
- Yami Bakura's event revolves around you collecting 10-sided dice, a reference to the Monster World game from the manga/Toei anime.
- If Mokuba summons Mystical Elf in attack mode he'll reference Princess Adena from the Legendary Heroes arc of the anime. Adena was a princess who looked near-identical to Mokuba but was Mystical Elf in disguise.
- In Jesse's first event, Jesse says he can't stay and fight as the developers of the game haven't programmed Rainbow Dragon into the game, so he feels he can't fight with an incomplete deck. This ties into Jesse's first appearance against Jaden revealing that he doesn't have the dragon yet because Pegasus still needed to make the card for Jesse.
- Dr. Crowler's battle theme is a remix of Season 4's final battle between him and Jaden before he summoned the Ultimate Ancient Gear Golem.
- If a GX character battles normal Zane, they're going to comment on how much different he was in season 2 compared to season one.. except Crowler who will comment on Zane's heart failure problems, the issue he had in season 3. If you defeat Zane in battle, his defeat animation is him clutching his chest near his heart. In addition, if Zane is defeated by Jaden, Zane will compliment that Jaden will be the best at the school.. despite his grades, referencing Zane's graduation duel. If defeated by Aster, Zane will remember that he missed out on having any of the fun of dueling, the same epiphany he had against his duel with Yubel-possessed Jesse in season 3. If Syrus defeats him, Zane will be legitimately proud of his brother for surpassing him, a nod to season 4 and the climax of Syrus's character arc from GX.
- The Tag Duel tournament borrows several cues from the Tag Force series of games. The starry background on the arena floor is reminiscent of the dueling background seen in the first three Tag Force games.
- In the Tag Duel Master Class, Pegasus teams up with Mickey, but keeps calling him Sam. In the English dub of the original season, Sam was the name of the kid Pegasus called forth to defeat Bandit Keith.
- During the Duel event to awaken the Rainbow Dragon, Zane will also show up as a roaming duelist to provide a ton of points. In the anime, Jesse dueled Zane to obtain a ton of dueling energy to send the dragon over the dimensional barrier to Jesse.
- The Cyberdark Impact event introduces Genex (GX) medals needed to duel Zane, which were the medals in season 2's tournament. Also, Cyberdark Impact was the name of the pack the Cyberdark monsters joined the TCG in, and the name of the special fusion card used to special summon Cyberdark fusion monsters.
- An August 2018 event has a Monster World themed event with Yami Bakura as Game Master, just like in the manga.
- Yubel's duel arena in her event is reminiscent of the final arena her and Jaden dueled in during the Season 3 climax. For added bonus, the starry underground at the center of the arena can be a Tag Force reference and the other dimension his friends were sent to beforehand.
- Should Zane challenge Sartorius in the field, Sartorius predicts Zane's self-destruction, which is what he's technically doing in the anime in season 2 and throughout season 3.
- Calling the Old Man Out: If Syrus defeats Zane, he'll tear into his brother about how far Zane sank just for victory and that Syrus will respect an opponent if Zane won't.
- Cast from Hit Points: Joey's Last Gamble and the Paradox Brothers' Three-Star Demotion skills require spending your LP to use.
- There are some cards that have an LP cost to use their abilities.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Duke Devlin doesn't get mentioned at all, and Ryou Bakura is mentioned but he doesn't appear. Tristan Taylor was also subjected to this until he appeared for an April Fool's Day event, and later became a Legendary Duelist.
- Interestingly, there is a few unused dialogue for Tristan that sounds like he's talking to Duke, implying that they have a plan to include Duke in the game.
- Composite Character: Yami Marik is a combination of himself and regular Marik, having Yami Marik's bloodthirst and appearance and Marik's mind controlling ability and army of Ghouls and Rare Hunters, who had disbanded by the time Yami Marik appeared in Battle City.
- Compressed Adaptation: Yami Marik's event is a loose retelling of Battle City, shortening the number of Rare Hunter fights and letting you face him early on.
- Continuity Nod:
- Tea suffers the same problems she did in the anime's virtual world and the manga's Egypt arc, being registered as a duelist by accident and not knowing what her cards are.
- Yami Bakura's event mentions several manga events like Ryou reclaiming the Ring from Yugi and the Monster World arc, but also mentions anime events like Pegasus and Keith being alive.
- Mokuba's Level 30 Deck is a reference to the Russian Roulette Dinner he played with Yugi and Joey before Death-T in the manga, while his Level 40 deck includes both Luster Dragons, Alexandrite Dragon, and Kaibaman from the anime.
- Most of Bandit Keith's skills are based on his tendency to cheat during his Duels in the anime and manga. His Bandit skill is an adaptation of his unreleased card of the same name (named Pillager in the dub), though it steals a card from the opponent's field rather than their hand.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Gameplay-wise, Tea. Despite being mostly a non-duelist in the original canon, she has potent abilities in Holy Guard, which prevents her from taking damage during her turn, Life Cost 0, which allows her to use cards without paying their Life Point costs if she has less than 1000 LP and Duel, Standby!, which allows both players to start with an extra card in their opening hand. Life Cost 0, in combination with Cyber-Stein, means she can easily pulverize her opponents with Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragons, and Duel, Standby! makes any decks becomes more potent, as the fast pace of this game means getting a card early can be the difference between winning and losing.
- Also, due to the free duel nature of the game, you can use Tea to battle and defeat practically anyone she would never be able to defeat in any other media, such as Kaiba, Yami Marik, and Bandit Keith.
- Dark Horse Victory:
- The Feb. 2018 KC Cup had a diverse array of decks considered meta viable. Popular decks that were expected to reach the top include recent decks in Hazy Flame, which could swarm the field with untargetable beaters, and Gladiator Beasts, which had a variety of tag out effects to control the field. There were also established older OTK decks in Red-Eyes and Cyber Angels which brought to the Cup an already formidable reputation. Out of this field, which deck became number one? To many Duelists' surprise, it was Magnet Warriors, a deck that was previously dismissed as mere casual fanservice for Yugi fans, and that never placed high on anyone's tier lists, if it placed at all.
- Happened again during Nov. 2018 KC Cup. The popular decks were Blue-Eyes White Dragon, Masked HERO, and Vampires, which all could swarm the field with powerful monsters and end the game quickly. The winning deck, however, was simply a mismash of 24note good cards, and did not have any Special Summon monsters despite Normal Summoning only once per turn being seen as too slow for the current pace of the game. It triumphed with a slow-and-steady strategy of backrow removal, powerful defensive Traps, and monsters that could remove any opposing threats they battled with, using previously dismissed cards in Breaker the Magical Warrior, Dust Tornado, D.D. Assailant, and Wind-Up Juggler. The deck was so effective that it became the new top-tier deck overnight, especially after it got an upgrade in Armades, Keeper of Boundaries, which could freely attack without opponents being able to respond with effects.
- Dark Is Not Evil: The Card Trader looks incredibly shady, but he's a perfectly harmless, helpful NPC.
- A Day in the Limelight: You can invoke this by playing as a minor duelist like Weevil, Rex, or Mako. Konami themselves did this by giving Rex Raptor his own event, which includes a section in which he monologues about Dinosaur cards upon reaching certain point milestones.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts:
- Yami Marik's Shadow Game skill drains LP based on how many cards are in the graveyard. While it usually isn't much on its own, it can add up over time and Cherry Tap you (or him) to death.
- Mind-Controlled Joey can spawn Sparks and Hinotama cards from outside his deck every turn, leading to death via burn damage if you're careless.
- Defeating the Undefeatable: Yami Yugi and Kaiba can lose to anyone in the game, leaving them incredulous that their opponent won.Kaiba: I lost to Joey Wheeler?JOEY WHEELER?!? This is a nightmare..
- Difficult, but Awesome: Gem-Knights have to juggle fusion engines and a 20 card limit with protection. You can go pure beatdown, but if you wish to bring out the best of them, you're going to have to stick to one of the fusions and run an engine off of that to get the most of them. This still hurts them in overall play because they lose out on the extra fusions and backup plans needed if the current strategy with them doesn't work.
- Lavals have monsters that either work with a ton of them in your graveyard or a ton of them banished. Figuring out a good mixture of your monsters is key to building a Laval deck; but when done right, Lavals can blow up entire fields and synchro summon very well.
- Difficulty Spike: Once you pass Stage 38 in the DM world, Standard Duelists become much more difficult to beat and only get tougher as you progress.
- Dinosaurs Are Dragons: Lampshaded in Rex's Dino Mayhem event, where he gets confused about what differentiates Dinosaur Cards from Dragon cards if they're both allowed to have wings.
- Double Unlock: You unlock some duelists as opponents by reaching certain stages, while you must meet other requirements in the next stage and beyond to unlock them as playable characters. Other duelists require specific conditions to unlock at the Gate, and become playable when you fulfill their unlocking conditions.
- Dummied Out: The game's audio files revealed idle dialogue for characters, the rest of the playable characters saying the title screen, dialogue for characters using cards they don't have yet or cards that they never use but ties to them thematically, and duelists using Synchro, Xyz, Pendulum, and Link Summoning. Some of them have been added in later updates, while others remain unused for now.
- Exact Words: In his Level 50 event, Yami Bakura says his deck isn’t the same as his Destiny Board deck, but his Destiny Board of Doom skill still activates.
- Face Death with Dignity: Or rather defeat. On occasion, an AI opponent will just summon a monster in attack mode that has no way of winning with no spell/trap protection, essentially inviting you to deal the finishing blow.
- Fake Balance: Archfiends fall here under the trope's 'Fragile Balance' category. They're powerful, they hit immensely hard, have access to instant destruction and unlike other archetypes, they can revive constantly. However, the amount of fiends and recursion cards needed must be run in 3s or else faces deck inconsistency. As a result, they CAN be powerful and hit hard, but they're also open to getting hit with almost no protection (barring innate abilities in Archfiend cards) and they have a problem getting back up to speed.
- Fake Difficulty: Many Level 40/50/60 Legendary Duelists have powerful cards that the player has limited or no access to, making farming them a pain without a specific tailored deck. In events they also have AI-exclusive skills.
- Mai Valentine has Amazoness Village, a Field Spell that replaces fallen Amazonesses once per turn and can easily overwhelm the player with them. She is somewhat doable if you run Spell/Trap removal; but the problem there is, as mentioned above, deck space to fit in spell/trap removal and protection in a 20 card deck.
- Yami Bakura's event had him start with the Destiny Board of Doom skill that makes him automatically win in 5 turns, compounded with his rare cards, and since he always goes first you technically have to beat him or remove Dark Necrofear from the Graveyard in four turns. This was later mitigated slightly by him not using the skill for Levels 10-30, not always going first when it is active, and nerfing his Level 40 deck.
- In the Set Sail for the Kingdom event, Level 40 Kaiba had the Blue-Eyes Advent Skill, which let him summon a Blue-Eyes before turn 1, and Level 40 Pegasus had the Unholy Advent Skill, which let him summon a Relinquished to the field after taking damage. The Tag Duel tournament gave Joey, Mai, and the Yugis similar skills which let them summon or replenish powerful monsters for no cost at all, on top of well-synergized decks.
- Aster at level 30 has Destiny Hero cards, but is curved to be a fair fight. Aster at Level 40 runs three Destiny Draws and has Destiny End Dragoon, a monstrous fusion that can simply destroy a monster on the field and (if face up) burn you for the LP equal to the ATK of that monster. If you can't negate that fusion when it happens, you're as good as sunk. The reason why he's not consistently difficult is because the deck, just as it can be deadly, can also easily brick on him.
- Level 40 Zane has his Cyber Dragons, which when combined via Power Bond can potentially Summon a monster with over 6000 ATK. Combined with Cyber Twin Dragon's ability to attack twice per battle or Cyber End's piercing ability, the ability to Special Summon Cyber Dragon from the hand, the Luminous Spark card, and spells to recycle his dragons, he can easily OTK you. He also packs Lightray Daedalus for Dark Paladin users, if you thought Dark Paladin's spell negation would help you.
- Yami Yugi in the tag duels has an efficient spellcaster deck focused around getting out Dark Magician and blowing away enemies. Joey still seems to think cards like Baby Dragon are excellent attack power monsters that don't need protection and backup. Joey ends up being more of a hindrance in the tag duel tournament than the opponents, making the tournament challenging for all the wrong reasons. And then there is Kaiba, who comes up with strategies that would make Sun Tzu weep with misery such as 'ram my 1200 ATK D.D. Warrior into my opponent's 2500 Dark Magician to get rid of it, other two monsters on the field be damned.' with very poor protection (Enemy Controller can only do so much). The Master tournament also kicks you back to start when you lose as opposed to the other two tournaments, meaning you can lose if Kaiba decides to be like..well, like Kaiba.
- Zane's Cyberdark Impact event introduces Underground Duels and Electrodes, where if you're hit three times you lose the duel regardless of remaining LP. His deck is loaded with monsters that can hit for 2400 without tributes, all of which can either go around your monsters, pierce them, or deal 300 LP damage as well as various negation and piercing tactics to drop either your LP or your electrode count to 0, and the Electrodes' effects don't apply to him.
- The Vagabond frequently runs decks that have placed high within the duelist ranking board, a number of which are OTK decks that get around common defense cards. By itself this would be merely difficult, but these duels also impose restrictions on the player as well. If the restriction is particularly limiting, such as not being able to special summon or starting with one card, beating him boils down to luck.
- Fanservice: Noticeably ramped up in the GX World as the female Duel Academy students have more revealing outfits and defeat poses compared to their Domino High counterparts in the original world. Alexis's summoning and victory pose also draws attention to her large breasts.
- Foreshadowing:
- Yami Bakura's event mentioned that Yami Marik would eventually appear in Duel Links, which he did. Arkana's appearance was also build-up for Marik's appearance, as he worked for him as one of the Rare Hunters and occasionally mentioned him in his dialogue. If you defeated him seven times, Marik got fed up and mind-controlled him.
- Yami Marik's first event hinted that he'd use the Winged Dragon of Ra when returning for another event, which he did. His second event ended with Marik finally freeing himself, foreshadowing his appearance later on.
- A shadowed Yubel was seen in a preview after the one-year anniversary event, and appeared in a mid-September event.
- Officer Trudge's entrance into Duel Links hinted at an investigation of the Dark Signers arriving in Duel Links, to be featured later on.
- Friendship Moment: Bella's lost card in Bonz's party event turned out to be Shining Friendship, and Bonz returning it to her helped everyone convince him to keep dueling.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- While Yami Bakura is an NPC in-universe, the player can unlock and play as him.
- Espa Roba can supposedly see your hand as an NPC, but it has no bearing on his play style.
- In the Battle City Chronicles, since Yugi Muto isn't one of the default characters, you get more points for beating the second mind-controlled Joey with Yami Yugi even though Yugi takes over for that portion of the fight.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar: Bastion Misawa's Super Mode is named Inglourious Bastion.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Rare abilities are hidden for each character, including exclusive hidden abilities such as Mai's Harpie's Hunting Ground or Weevil's Moth to the Flame. Before September 2018 introduced a Skill list, the only way to know if they existed was to win one from Legendary Duelists, as Standard Duelists don't drop them.
- Several Legendary Duelists' unlock requirements are extremely obtuse. Bastion Misawa requires you to win 50 total duels with 3 or less cards left in your deck, Luna requires you to win 100 duels as Leo, and Crow Hogan requires you to get 5000 points or above on the Sector Security NPC.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Yami Marik at level 40 has The Winged Dragon of Ra: Sphere Mode, which he will use if you ever have three monsters out on your side of the field by tributing all of them, putting Sphere Mode Ra on your side of the field with the intention of special summoning The Winged Dragon of Ra on his next turn. If, however, you happen to have a Ra of your own in your deck, you can use Sphere Mode Ra to special summon it, with a whopping 4,000 ATK to boot, and turning Marik's entire power play on its head.
- Hypercompetent Sidekick: Yugi in the Kuriboh Cup of June 2018's Tag Duel tournament is a lethally effective partner, rocking the Silent Swordsman cards, all three Magnet Warriors (including Valkyrion the Magna Warrior), and even powerful cards like Monster Reborn and Swords of Revealing Light. He could easily solo many of the opponents you're up against, even at level 40.
- Inconsistent Coloring:
- Continuing the trend of the Bakuras' eye colors constantly changing, Yami Bakura has blood-red eyes here when they were different colors in other mediums. Ishizu's eyes are also magenta when they were blue in the manga and anime.
- Yubel's design was changed so the male half is grey instead of skin-colored, looking more like armor.
- Jack-of-All-Trades: After the release of Burning Nova box, Gem-Knights got unbelievably versatile. You can continue to focus on a particular fusion, gemini support, normal beatdown with Alexandrite and Crystal, use the Boss fusions repeatedly, Banish-Fusion style with fusion gate, or hybrid them into other decks like a thunder variant or a pyro variant.
- Kick the Dog:
- Even taking his manga self into account, what Mokuba says after beating Joey is really cruel.
Mokuba: Hahahaha! Poor poor Joey! Born a loser, always a loser!- In his Ra event, Yami Marik mocks Odion over not being an Ishtar and says he can become a tombkeeper in his next life.
- Chazz's Serious Chazz event has him mocking the Ojamas and taking them out of his deck in his quest for the top, making them sad.
- Large Ham: Background character Zachary from the GX world shouts every other line, win or lose.
- Last Chance Hit Point: The Skill Grit allows you to survive with 1 LP for the rest of the turn even if you would take a fatal hit(s). This occurs randomly, with the Skill having a higher chance of activating if a player's LP are full at the start of a turn.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
- In his Dino Mayhem event, Rex laments that more people attribute Red-Eyes Black Dragon to Joey then him, forgetting that Rex originally owned the card. He also discusses the Dinosaurs Are Dragons issue when he notices that Two-Headed King Rex has wings, and notes that Two-Mouth Darkruler resembles a Dragon more than a Dinosaur (originally it was misprinted as a Dragon before being changed back).
- The Superb Tea event had Joey complain about Tea's overuse of Spell cards instead of monsters, a complaint echoed by many players who suffered through Tea Burn decks. The use of Joey in the scene is meant to be a funny nod to the time Joey dueled Tea in the manga and anime, and lost after Tea used a Spell card on him.
- Lethal Joke Item:
- Massivemorph is a Trap card that doubles an opposing monster's ATK and DEF, but prevents them from attacking directly. The latter clause can prevent a powerful opposing monster from attacking for game if you have no monsters on the field. The other, more important reason is that Amazoness Swords Woman can redirect any Battle Damage to the opponent (and has 1500 ATK). In a format with only 4000 LP, and many decks running boss monsters with over 2000 ATK at its time of release, it only takes a bit of prior burn damage for her to finish an opponent off instantly. Massivemorph became so overused and was the subject of so many complaints about the card dragging duels out longer than they should be that it was later added to the Limited list.
- Let's Get Dangerous!: Occasionally duelists will decide to go all-out and having a Super Mode action pose and adjective added to their name. They usually have tougher decks than normal as well as story segments.
- Lighter and Softer: Most of the storyline events are Slice of Life hi-jinks featuring the Yu-Gi-Oh characters. Though this is not out of the ordinary in the GX universe, they are a lot lighter in tone compared to the Duel Monsters manga and anime, showing what the characters are like when not Dueling with the fate of the world at stake.
- Me's a Crowd: The April Fool's event featured multiple copies of Tristan appearing, who were all so weak the player defeated them just by interacting with them.
- Metal Slime: The Vagabond appears infrequently and duels you using special rules, such as having only one card in your opening hand or no special summons being allowed. Winning or losing against him gives more EXP than normal.
- Mirror Match: Online duels allow players to use the same character, leading to matches like Seto Kaiba versus himself. This can also happen in single-player on occasion when characters spawn outside the Gate to duel, or in events.
- Money Spider: The Treasure Room in board game events is full of Millennium Coins and costs only one die to roll, giving you many chances at the card lottery.
- Mundane Utility: The Egyptian God cards are more often used for farming than in serious duels, since they give you a huge point bonus just for being played and can all easily hit for over 3000 damage. Slifer can also hit 5000+ damage easily by hoarding cards, while Ra drops you down to 100 for an easy LP on the Brink bonus.
- Mythology Gag:
- Yugi uses Toy Magician, which he only used in Yu-Gi-Oh! R. He lampshades the general unfamiliarity of the monster in dialogue.
- Mokuba's Level 30 deck's inclusion of Battle Steer, Bio Plant and Griggle may be a reference to the monster requirements for Hamburger Recipe in Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories, as well as the plant-themed decks he uses in other video games.
- Tristan's dueling quotes for Shovel Crusher, Thunder Kid, and Thunder Dragon are a reference to when they were on his team in Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters, a 4Kids-produced spinoff to the main anime.
- Yami Bakura also used a Dark Master Zorc deck, complete with brainwashed dice, in the Duel Terminal arcade machines.
- The lower guitar line in the Tag Duel matches is similar to the one in Seto Kaiba's theme in Forbidden Memories.
- Karate Man's dialogue references several of the card's abilities and weaknesses.
- Named by the Adaptation: Standard Duelists were given names in the English version, while in the Japanese version they were given descriptors, such as 'Boy that enjoys dueling.'
- Near Victory Fanfare:
- Jaden has a unique theme that plays if they're first to drop an opponent's life points to 1000 or below or summon an ace monster. It's more triumphant than the other 1000 LP themes, and it's also surprisingly long for a tune you're often only going to hear for a few seconds.
- The 5Ds characters do this trope one better. Not only does every character have a fanfare (with Yusei getting a unique one), but they play any time they summon their ace or gain the upper hand. Also, while they are still often examples of Long Song, Short Scene, the regular 5Ds version plays its climactic notes immediately so that it has more impact.
- Nerf:
- Bandit Keith's Switcheroo skill, which could previously be used freely, was changed so his LP had to be lowered by 1000 for him to use it.
- Yami Bakura's event used to have every duel start with Destiny Board of Doom, even Level 10, but this has been relegated to Level 40 and up, and he no longer rigs the coin flips to go first. His Level 40 deck was also nerfed a bit.
- Mai's Harpie's Hunting Ground skill was changed to put the card on top of her deck instead of on the field, Weevil's Parasite Paracide Skill was changed to put from 1 to 2 Parasites in the opponent's deck in instead of 1 to 3, and the Paradox Brothers' Three-Star Demotion skill was changed to cost 3000 LP instead of 2000.
- Never My Fault: Keith blames Kaiba for rigging the rules against him when you defeat him for the first time.
- Never Say 'Die': References to the Shadow Realm are common with Bakura, Marik, and Arkana, as are threats like 'Do you want to be gone from this existence?'
- Non Sequitur:
- One of Aster Phoenix's quotes can be this. While Dueling he can proudly proclaim that 'My Destiny Heroes are far superior to the Elemental Heroes!' even if neither player is using Elemental Heroes, or Destiny Heroes. It's especially funny if he himself is using Elemental Heroes (Which his Level 10 AI deck does.)
- Arkana's taunt button quotes frequently mention Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl, also leading to this when neither monster is present.
- Not Completely Useless: Booster packs contain mostly Vendor Trash for their Common and Rare cards, but several cards fall into this category.
- Possessed Dark Soul could steal any Level 3 or lower monster your opponent controlled. Because Level 4 is the most common level and lower-level monsters were generally too weak to be worth stealing, the card barely saw any play in the TCG and was also ignored when it first came out in Duel Links. However, it experienced a sudden surge in popularity near the end of the KC Cup because Relinquished, arguably the most powerful and popular monster at the time, was Level 1, and other meta decks had key Monsters that were Level 3.
- Inaba White Rabbit is a weak 700 ATK monster which can attack your opponent directly and returns to the hand at the end of the turn it is summoned. While Noah used this card effectively in the anime most players saw it as a gimmick. However, it became a major pest in burn decks built around Weevil's Parasite Infestation skill because it can continually chip away at an opponent's Life Points over time, compounded with other burn cards and stalling cards. In addition, its drawback of returning to the hand became beneficial in this deck since that meant very few cards could kill it outright, and many players would be reluctant to waste their Spells/Traps on such a weak card. It also found usage due to Yami Marik's Right Back At You skill, which increases a monster's ATK by half of the Battle Damage received last turn by the last monster to inflict damage and further hastens the opponent's defeat.
- Healing cards in general are primarily considered a waste of space for providing no direct field or card advantage. However, certain Skills rely on losing 2000 LP or more to activate powerful effects. Thus, cards like Supremacy Berry (heals 2000 LP) and Aegis of Gaia (heals 3000 LP) effectively allow a player to re-use their Skill whereas without them, they would only be able to activate the Skill once at most.
- Not the Intended Use:
- Blaze Accelerator is a Continuous Spell card that destroys an opponent's monster if fed a Pyro monster with 500 or less ATK, and is meant to work with Volcanic Shell, which replaces itself in your hand once per turn. Many Volcanic builds in Duel Links ignore Blaze Accelerator's effect entirely, instead using the Spell Card itself as fodder for powerful destruction cards that require you to sacrifice one of your own cards first, such as Parallel Twister, Eliminating the League, or Divine Wrath. This works because Volcanic Rocket can recycle it from the Graveyard as well as search it from the Deck.
- A few Skills are like this due to the lack of restriction put into them, allowing them to be used in ways Konami didn't intend. The most famous example is the skill Cyber Style. Originally meant to ease players into Fusion Summoning Cyber End Dragon, the monsters provided by the skill ended up being abused as free tribute fodder instead. Konami eventually restricted the monsters from the skill to be usable for Fusion Summon only.
- Obviously Evil: Bandit Keith's intro has him planning to steal Duel Links' data and sell it to the highest bidder.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: When meeting Kaiba, Yami Bakura breaks character and informs him, and the players, that he's an NPC controlled by Kaiba.
- Pet the Dog:
- After telling Mokuba to get his own cards if he wants to duel, Seto gives him access to a powerful dragon-themed deck and even lets him use his Blue-Eyes.
- Of all characters, Yami Marik has several moments where he's kind to Arkana, complimenting his skills during his Ra event and offering to make him second-in-command if you duel him as Arkana. If you win, he praises his skills and hopes he continues to serve him faithfully.
- Phony Psychic: Zig-zagged with Espa Roba. He enters the game vowing not to cheat.. then realizes he can see people's hands somehow, causing him to think he really is psychic and gloat about it.
- Power Creep: Inevitable, but almost every time new cards are released, older cards fall by the wayside.
- Axe Raider was an Ultra Rare card in the first box and one of the strongest basic monsters at the game release with 1700 ATK, which was only matched by the Rare Random Drop Battle Ox. And then the 1750 ATK Jerry Beans Man was released.. as a Super Rare. Followed by the 1800 ATK Dunames Dark Witch (a UR in her own box), then the 1850 ATK Blazing Inpachi (also UR in its own box). All of the above were supplanted one by one, as 1900 ATK vanillas as simple Rare cards became commonplace (Alien Shocktrooper, Luster Dragon..) and monsters with 1800 ATK and effects on top of that became Common cards. Now there's absolutely no reason to search for Axe Raider aside from completion.
- Dunames Dark Witch is the most extreme example of this. In the year 2017 she's a UR rarity cover card in her own box, but her retrained form that comes with effect, Power Angel Valkyria, is a mere N rarity card in a year 2019 box.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: The Vagabond is the protagonist of the Tag Force series of games, and is implied to be the hero in other Yu-Gi-Oh games.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Thanks to a typo/glitch that was later fixed, Yami Bakura was listed at Level 200, 300, 400, and 600 on the lifetime missions for a while.
- Running Gag: Since Kaiba made the game in-universe, characters tend to blame him when things go wrong for them.
- Russian Reversal: Mokuba's dialogue when attacking with Hungry Burger is like this.Mokuba: Isn't it weird when food eats YOU instead of the other way around?
- Science Marches On: In-universe, Rex's Dino Mayhem event has him note that latest studies show that dinosaurs used to have feathers, so he can look past wings on Dinosaur-type cards.
- Self-Imposed Challenge: In the Duelist Chronicles events, you can choose whether to duel opponents at Level 20 or Level 40, with their Level 40 decks being supposedly very difficult to beat but offering a double reward.
- Sequel Difficulty Drop:
- The first D.D Tower event, FIRE Dimension, was Nintendo Hard. You did not recover Life Points between Duels, and if you lost all of them, you had to either wait until your LP fully recovered in 3 hours or use a limited-supply LP potion. Worse, the higher floors had monsters use proven metagame decks, and if you wanted all the rewards guaranteed, the missions gave exactly enough points to go through the rewards box three times, even though many of them are tedious or require a specific Awesome, but Impractical strategy. The follow-ups, WATER Dimension and all the subsequent Dimensions, made things a lot easier by reducing the strength of the decks, being far more generous with mission points, allowing you to play even with 100 LP, and introducing a randomly spawning D.D. Invader who you could defeat for mission points and a full health restore.
- Duelist Chronicles underwent a similar difficulty drop from Duelist Kingdom to Battle City Begins. The former had buffed versions of characters' decks inspired by the metagame at Level 40, as well as powerful, AI-exclusive skills, while the latter kept the decks more accurate to the source material at the cost of difficulty. The best example can be seen with Mako's deck. In Duelist Kingdom, he ran field-swarming Hammer Shark and the field-destroying Levia-Dragon - Daedalus, making him a challenging fight, while in Battle City, his strongest monster is The Legendary Fisherman, which has lower ATK than Levia-Dragon and a weaker effect.
- Sharing a Body: Since the Yugis share a body, even if you duel one as the other you don't get pre-duel or post-duel dialogue.
- Ship Tease:
- Pegasus's event teases Tea/Yugi and Tea/Yami Yugi by having him refer to her as Yugi's girlfriend.
- Joey/Rex is teased in the Duelist Challenges event, as they bond over finally having something in common, dueling by instinct and not book smarts. What really adds to it is that the sprites used for the interaction are the blushing sprites.
- Joey/Mai, almost to Official Couple levels. Several of their normal duel dialogues are flirtatious, and the Set Sail for the Kingdom event seemed to go out of its way to include all of their Ship Tease from the manga and anime and add in a Luminescent Blush or two as well.
- Weevil seems interested in Rex as more than a rival, making a suggestive comment at him when winning against him and shoving Joey aside during the Duelist Challenges event to talk to Rex just as the two become friendly.
- Yami Bakura and Marik/Yami Marik were famous for having conversations full of innuendo, particularly in the anime, but Duel Links took it even further when they complimented each other's toughness and Bakura talked about them being connected by fate. In the second event, when they talk about the Winged Dragon of Ra it's even more suggestive. Their partnership in the Tag Tournament also has them enjoying causing pain together.
Yami Marik: I brought [Ra] because I want you to experience ultimate pain. I hope you enjoy the suffering as much as I enjoy delivering it.
Yami Bakura: ..Your Egyptian God is mighty. But Duelists here already know what it can do.
Yami Marik: Who cares if they do? All cards are powerless against my Egyptian God!
Yami Bakura: Ooooh. Then I better be careful not to get hit! Hahahahahaha!- Yusei/Akiza got teased right out the gate with their first conversation. Akiza had Anger Born of Worry at Yusei just disappearing without saying something, with Yusei apologizing for it. After their first duel Akiza asks if she can stay in Duel Links, with Yusei saying she doesn't need his permission for that and Akiza thanking Yusei with a blush. Akiza also has a line when she summons Stardust Dragon and says she feels at ease with Yusei's strength helping her.
- Shout-Out: The Gradius monster makes several shout-outs to the video game Gradius in its dialogue, and the card sleeves won in its debut event are screenshots from the original game.
- Slasher Smile: The Vagabond does this as part of his idle animation on the Duelist Chronicles maps.
- SNK Boss: Level 50 Yami Marik starts with Ra in Sphere Mode and can summon the Battle Mode on his first turn for a One-Turn Kill, and his other cards include Michizure, Mask of the Accursed, Dark Jeroid, and Viser Des to destroy or weaken your monsters/LP. The only saving grace is that you can fight him indefinitely until you win.
- Something We Forgot: If Arkana's unlocking speech is any indication, which starts with him glassy-eyed and silent, Marik forgot about him completely and never released him from mind control/the Shadow Realm until after the tournament was over and/or the Items were scattered.
- Spared by the Adaptation:
- While he was killed in the manga and banished in the anime, never returning in either continuity, Bonz seems to have survived his ordeal and is back in the world of Duel Links.
- Subtly done with Arkana. In the manga, Marik stirred up his worst memories so that he would be Driven to Suicide upon waking up, and in the anime he broke down mentally after realizing Marik lied about reuniting him with his lost love Catherine. In Duel Links Arkana feels a non-specific sadness in his heart and decides to cover up his depression and join Duel Links.
- Taunt Button: Clicking your character's head mid-duel will bring up a list of unique quotes to taunt your opponent with.Joey: You're like the 21st person I've ever met who's makin' me break a sweat.
Odion: Just when I think you couldn't play any worse, you prove me wrong.
Kaiba: That's nothing special. I have 36 copies of that card! - Temporary Online Content: Several events stopped happening once the respective characters were moved to the Gate.
- This Looks Like a Job for Aquaman: Several otherwise useless cards find use in high score decks or in completing missions.
- Mooyan Curry, which heals a pitiful 200 LP for either player. However, it is useful in conjunction with Spells that cause you to lose LP down to 100 or less so that you can get the Cards on the Brink bonus that awards 1000 points, exactly enough for an extra prize drop.
- Gravekeeper's Vassal, whose unique ability to inflict his Battle Damage as Effect Damage makes him valued for completing missions that require you to inflict a high amount of Effect Damage. In conjunction with Union Attack, another example of this trope since Vassal is the only monster in the game that can bypass Union Attack's 'No Battle Damage' restriction, so along with two monsters over 2300 attack, Vassal can net you half of the maximum drop prizes by himself by inflicting over 9999 ATK of Effect Damage, which gives both a 3000 Point bonus for the high damage and 1000 Points if you only dealt Effect Damage.
- Piranha Army sees a lot of use in high-score farm decks due to the battle damage it inflicts being doubled if it attacks directly, meaning it only needs to gain 4200 ATK to deal the maximum possible damage, something achievable by bringing out a powerful Fusion Monster and using Gift of the Martyr to send it to the Graveyard while also giving its ATK to Piranha Army.
- Mystical Beast of Serket is Awesome, but Impractical in regular Duels, but only requires one Tribute to bring out and can unleash a Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon or Master of Oz, both with over 4000 ATK and ready to be sacrificed to give Vassal or Piranha Army terrifying power.
- Card of Sanctity, which requires you to banish your entire field and hand (and you need at least 1 card in your hand) just to draw two cards, is considered one of the worst cards ever printed due to its hefty drawback. However, in Duel Links, it finds use in Burn Decks focused on depleting your opponent's Life Points as fast as possible, since such decks usually have no field presence and it allows a player to trade a card to get to their LP damage cards faster. It also works by the OCG rulings, meaning you only need one card in hand or field to activate itnote .
- The Unhappy Girl enables several different farming strategies due to its effect locking down monsters it battles with and being unable to be destroyed by battle when in Attack Position. Combined with constant LP regeneration or Tea's Holy Guard skill that prevents any battle damage on her turn, this allows the player to stall while they burn through their Deck or get the cards they need for a combo.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: Tristan was initially unmentioned to the point where Duel Chronicles: Set Sail for the Kingdomcut out his scenes entirely. The 2018 April Fool's event revealed that Tristan wasn't allowed to access Duel Links because he wasn't a Legendary Duelist, not even to cheer on his friends. However, since then he earned the right to be a Legendary Duelist.
- Timed Mission: Yami Bakura's event, starting at level 40, has him start with Destiny Board active and Dark Necrofear in his Graveyard to sustain it. If he goes first, you must defeat him or get rid of Dark Necrofear within four turns.
- Title Scream: Starting up the game will have a randomly-selected character say 'Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Links!'
- Token Evil Teammate: Pegasus, Weevil, Bandit Keith, the Paradox Brothers, Arkana, Yami Bakura, and Yami Marik are among the playable characters.
- Took a Level in Kindness:
- While mischievous in some cases and malicious in others, Yami Bakura is nicer to several characters than in canon, particularly Mai, Weevil, Kaiba, and Yami Yugi. He also doesn't make his Monster World game a Shadow Game, telling you to just have fun. Justified in that he's explicitly an NPC in-universe and not the real Bakura.
- Rex Raptor in the Dino Rampage event becomes less antagonistic and is simply portrayed as an excitable dinosaur fanboy. He even decides he'll let Joey have Red-Eyes as his signature card (and even before then, he bonded with Joey over being unable to solve the Duel Challenges). Notably, since the game primarily follows manga canon, it seems to ignore his Adaptational Villainy in the Atlantis arc, in which he was vengeful for losing Red-Eyes to Joey.
- Tournament Arc:
- February 2017 had the KC Cup event, which had Ranked Duelists participating for prizes.
- June 2017 added the World Championship Qualifiers, colloquially known by the playerbase as 'the second KC Cup tournament'.
- Translator Buddy: Tour Guide from the Underworld can speak to Duel Spirits and translates Gladiator Beast Andal's growls.
- Trash Talk: The game's fully-voiced, and characters who are antagonistic to one another will deal this out in spades.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change: The Duelist Chronicles events are board games where you roll dice to move across spaces and duel, collect coins for lottery prizes, and travel across themed maps. Monster World is similar, using tiled maps and dice battles as well as pre-made decks.
- Unknown Rival: Standard Duelists Andrew and Zachary act like typical shonen rivals, but are background characters and completely unknown to the main cast.
- Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Bandit Keith and Seto Kaiba will really gloat if they win a match, especially against Joey.Keith: I win! I wish you could see the loser look on your loser face, loser!
Kaiba: You're a third-rate duelist with a fourth-rate deck! - Video Game Cruelty Potential: Generally, any duelist that engages in the above-mentioned Trash Talk can satisfy this.
- Kaiba is the primary source of this potential, since nearly all of his lines (aside from in situations of desperation or defeat) are either denigrating insults towards the opponent's skills, bragging about his superiority, or both. It's particularly nasty against certain Duelists who did nothing to deserve such humiliation, most of all Bella, a little girl with self-confidence issues, or Yugi Muto, who becomes depressed and questions himself if he loses. This even extends to his victory quotes against Mokuba, his own brother.
- Yami Marik's entry into the game introduces even more cruelty potential, particularly if he wins against Mai or Joey.
- Bonz dueling Yami Bakura again is an exercise in this trope, especially if Bakura wins. Bonz is terrified the whole time and begs him for mercy when he loses.
- The Voiceless: The Vagabond generally communicates in ellipses, his only lines being 'Excellent dueling' and a generic friend invite message. He is also one of a few characters with no voice-acted dialogue, Marik's Rare Hunters and Strings the mime being the others.
- Wham Episode: The September-October 2017 update schedule introduced several new gameplay modes and DM characters, but most importantly, a Yu-Gi-Oh! GX Duel World with new characters, story, and missions. Similarly, September 24, 2018 introduced a Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's world.
- Wham Line:
- Up until Ishizu you could assume most of the characters are just logging in as themselves, but her introduction throws the whole game into question.
Ishizu: I did not think I would ever stand on the battlefield again. This is most unexpected, Kaiba. And why do I have this Millennium Necklace? I gave it to Yugi during Battle City.. Can it be that this world has recreated my abilities that I had during Battle City? If this world is a recreation.. Does that mean Marik is here as well? Kaiba, must I relive the horrors I faced back then?- If you used either Ishizu or Odion to battle in the Yami Bakura event it triggered explicit confirmation that Yami Marik had returned. However, as possible consolation, the fact that Yami Bakura is an AI makes it possible this Yami Marik is also secretly just an AI.
- Syrus's introduction to the game confirms the Tour Guide is an AI, not a Duel Spirit like many thought.
- Yami Bakura's Monster World event ended with the revelation that his real goal with the games was to trick players into playtesting for the Ultimate Shadow RPG, a key component of the final manga and anime arc.
- Dueling Yubel as Syrus reveals that from his perspective, the end of season 3 and Jaden's duel with her already happened. Yubel is completely confused by what he's saying, implying she's just an AI version of the real Yubel, like Yami Bakura.
- The end of Trudge's event reveals that the disturbance he was investigating was the apparent appearance of the Dark Signers.
- When Sartorius was confirmed for Duel Links, his lines were all datamined, revealing names for additional Arcana Force monsters such as Hierophant, Tower, and the Sun, which currently don't exist in the OCG or TCG, or even the anime. This led to speculation of additional Arcana Force support to complete the tarot-themed archetype.
- In a 'blink (or rather, tap too fast) and you miss it' moment, a short, unrepeatable dialogue from Yusei at the start of Kalin's event states that Kalin becomes a Dark Signer AGAIN. Whether he's yet another AI or something else happened, is still a mystery.
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: The Different Dimension towers appear to end at floors 30 and 40, but while the D.D. Guide congratulates you it says that you have yet to reach the true top of the tower.