History VideoGame / YuGiOhForbiddenMemories

* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: Lose one duel in story mode (even against your friends), and it's game over.

* UrbanLegendOfZelda: There are many cards in the game that cannot be won from dueling. Naturally, there have been people who have claimed to have won these cards, usually in combination with claiming to have to won it through having an extraordinary amount of wins against a specific opponent, as well as dueling a specific, convoluted way. All of these claims were never verified, with their video/screenshot proof always being debunked. Eventually, a group of players hacked the game, and found that indeed, these cards are not in the drop list for any opponent. Even with this proof to confirm these cards as unobtainable, it hasn't stopped people from claiming to have won them or believing they can be won through some way.

* AwesomeButImpractical: In short, rituals are too convoluted, difficult, and time consuming to actually utilise, while offering too little of reward to be worth it, especially when there exists vastly superior options for creating stronger monsters (such as the aforementioned Twin Head fusion and just equipping monsters). You're better off using the minimum deck space of four cards that would be needed to use a ritual (which is one tenth of your deck) on other cards.
** Some other cards which have been banned from the modern TCG variants for their versatility, have limited usefulness under this ruleset. Dark Hole, which destroys every monster on the field, is now an invitation for your opponent to hit you directly with his next summon, because of the 1 card per turn rule.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Ritual cards can be utilized to summon some of the strongest monsters in the game. To use a ritual card, you have to activate it when you have the three specific monsters required for the ritual on the field (the required monsters are usually a [[GuideDangIt guide dang it to figure out]]). Since you can only get one card on the field each turn, this will take three turns of setup (turns that you could be using doing more productive things, such as summoning actually useful monsters). To make it even more difficult, many of the required monsters to use with rituals are not viable beyond even the midgame, and some of the required monsters are so weak to even be incapable of surviving in the early game (such as Kuriboh, a required monster of the Black Luster Ritual, that has 300 atk and 200 def). This complicate things farther, as you must keep these weak required monsters from being destroyed by your opponent (which can be about impossible without significant luck or setting up trap cards prior to protect them), and in the scenario where you're able to keep them alive, it's incredibly likely you already have the duel under your complete control, in which case, using a ritual card is unnecessary to win. And if one of these required monsters are destroyed, the ritual card becomes completely useless unless you are able to draw any backups of the destroyed cards that are potentially in your deck. Now if you actually go through all that trouble to get a ritual monster on the field, the reward itself is not much. Ritual monsters will usually have at least 550 more attack than the strongest monster used for the ritual (keep in mind this is only 50 more attack than a single equip would give, and some ritual monsters have even less of a stat boost compared to the strongest monster required), and will rarely have more than 1000 ATK than the strongest monster required for their ritual. To make things even worse for ritual cards, a simple and versatile fusion is all that is required to create a Twin Headed Thunder Dragon, which is stronger or as strong as all but five of the ritual monsters, and only two of those stronger ritual monsters (Gate Guardian and Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon) have more than 500 ATK than the Twin Head.
** In short, rituals are too convoluted, difficult, and time consuming to actually utilise, while offering too little of reward to be worth it, especially when there exists vastly superior options for creating stronger monsters (such as the aforementioned Twin Head fusion and just equipping monsters). You're better off using the minimum deck space of four cards that would be needed to use a ritual (which is one tenth of your deck) on other cards.

The game is noteworthy for [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness using gameplay rules vastly different from the actual card game]]. The game was released before the trading card game was, and as such, uses prototype rules that were originally considered for the TCG. Major differences include no tribute being necessary to summon level five and higher monsters, all monster cards being normal monster cards (thus no monster effects and the such), only one card being able to placed on the field each turn, fusion being done without the card Polymerization, and the majority of the possible fusions not being actual fusions in the TCG (and vice versa). The game is additionally poorly balanced, with the vast majority of cards being monster cards, and the few magic and trap cards having simple effects that are [[UselessUsefulSpell usually not useful]] (while the few that are useful like [[OneHitPolykill Raigeki]] verge on being [[GameBreaker Game Breakers]]). Magic/trap cards are made less effective by the one card per turn limit, so if you decide to play/place a magic/trap card, you won't be able to play a monster that turn and thus not strengthen your forces or leave yourself open to a direct attack from your opponent if you have no monsters on the field. This causes the most prominent strategy to be just getting stronger monsters out than your opponent, while strengthening them via fusions and equip cards (thus being a major departure from the prominent strategies in the TCG).

* LastLousyPoint: There are several obscure cards in the game that are not that useful, but have incredibly low drop rates, and are usually obtainable from only a single specific opponent that you won't duel often because of their poor/mediocre card drops (such as Dungeon Worm from the Labyrinth Mage and Hourglass of Courage from Jono). Those striving to [[OneHundredPercentCompletion obtain every card in the game]] must then duel these neglected opponents extensively (possibly in excess of 1000 duels) to win just one of these lousy cards. This is all for naught though, as unless you have the original Japanese version and a Pocket Station, there are many other cards that you cannot legitimately obtain. Not that this has stopped people from trying to find some way to win them without cheating for years, leading to [[UrbanLegendOfZelda several theories on how to win them and false claims of winning these cards]].

** Some other cards which have been banned from the modern TCG variants for their versatility, have limited usefulness under this ruleset. Dark Hole, which destroys every monster on the field, is now an invitation for your opponent to hit you directly, because of the 1 card per turn rule.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Gameplaywise, the rules of dueling are quite different from what they later became (such as, no tributing is needed to summon any monster card, fusions don't require a magic card to fuse and specific monsters aren't always necessary, only one card can be played on the field at a time, you draw until you have five cards in your hand and you cannot skip a turn without playing a card, and there are several monsters that are ritual monsters in the game, that aren't ritual monsters in the card game). Storywise, Seto is a far different character, and the sealing of the Pharaoh happens completely differently than what later becomes canon.

* InfinityPlusOneSword: The Meteor Black Dragon can be seen as this. It is by far the strongest monster card the player can obtain without cheating, with 3500 attack, which is tied with the Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth for 3rd highest in the game, and 500 points higher than the next strongest obtainable monsters, the Blue Eyes White Dragon and Metal Zoa. While it doesn't have much equip versatility (only being powered up by Dragon Treasure and Salamandra outside the universal equips, which is still one more than nearly every other high level dragon is capable of being powered up by), it has the best possible alignments, with Mars allowing it to take out the aforementioned Ultimate Moth without an equip, and Sun allowing it to take out even the Gate Guardian without an equip. Obtaining it however, is actually not that difficult, as you can obtain it from defeating the Meadow Mage, a rather easy opponent you can fight right after you win Kaiba's tournament and go back to the past (which is the halfway point in the game), and the card itself is not all that rare (you can reasonably obtain a Meteor Black Dragon by the time you defeat the [[MoneySpider Meadow Mage]] around 50 times or so). Compare this to the second strongest obtainable cards, Metal Zoa, who can only be obtained as a very rare prize from Sebek (who you can only grind against in Free Duel after completing the game), and Blue Eyes White Dragon, who can only be obtained as a very rare prize from [[spoiler:Seto 3]] (who like Sebek, can only be fought in Free Duel after completing the game, and is the [[ThatOneBoss most difficult opponent to defeat as well]]). This is very fortunate for the player, as the Meteor Black Dragon is pretty much required for the player to [[NintendoHard reliably get through the end game without significant luck]].

''Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories'' is a Yu-Gi-Oh! video game for the PlayStation. It is in an Alternate Universe to the anime, taking place in Ancient Egypt as the Pharaoh. For all practical purposes, it can be seen as an early draft of the Ancient Egypt arc that had yet to start in the canon media at the time.

!This Video Game provides examples of

''Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories'' is a Yu-Gi-Oh! video game for the PlayStation. It is in an Alternate Universe to the anime, taking place in Ancient Egypt as the Pharaoh.

* ArtificialStupidity: If you have a face-up monster on your side of the field while the AI has no monsters, they will always play a single monster card (the exception to this are the field mages who'll play their respective field card regardless of what you have on your field), regardless of if their monster is too weak and a magic card in their hand could wipe out all of their opponent's monsters, there exists a fusion in their hand, or if they have a equip they could combine with their monster to strengthen it enough to defeat your monsters. This can be exploited to ensure your opponent does not fuse on you, does not equip their monsters, and prevent them from using magic/trap cards. For a more minor case of AI stupidity, they will never put a monster of 3000 or higher base attack in defense mode, regardless of how strong your monsters are and how much their monster has been weaken. On the reverse (and less likely to occur), a powerupped monster with a base attack of 0 will never be attacked with, even if it would win the duel for the AI.
* AwesomeButImpractical: Ritual cards can be utilized to summon some of the strongest monsters in the game. To use a ritual card, you have to activate it when you have the three specific monsters required for the ritual on the field (the required monsters are usually a [[GuideDangIt guide dang it to figure out]]). Since you can only get one card on the field each turn, this will take three turns of setup (turns that you could be using doing more productive things, such as summoning actually useful monsters). To make it even more difficult, many of the required monsters to use with rituals are not viable beyond even the midgame, and some of the required monsters are so weak to even be capable of surviving in the early game (such as White Dolphin, a required monster of the Fortress Whale Oath, that has 500 atk and 400 def). This complicate things farther, as you must keep these weak required monsters from being destroyed by your opponent (which can be about impossible without significant luck or setting up trap cards prior to protect them), and in the scenario where you're able to keep them alive, you already have the duel under your complete control, in which case, using a ritual card is unnecessary to win. And if one of these required monsters are destroyed, the ritual card becomes completely useless without you being able to draw any backups of the destroyed cards potentially in your deck. Now if you actually go through all that trouble to get a ritual monster on the field, the reward itself is not much. Ritual monsters will usually have at least 550 more attack than the strongest monster used for the ritual (keep in mind this is only 50 more attack than a single equip would give, and some ritual monsters have even less of a stat boost compared to the strongest monster required), and will rarely have more than 1000 ATK than the strongest monster required for their ritual. To make things even worse for ritual cards, a simple and versatile fusion is all that is required to create a Twin Headed Thunder Dragon, which is stronger or as strong as all but five of the ritual monsters, and only two of those stronger ritual mosnters (Gate Guardian and Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon) have more than 500 ATK than the Twin Head.
** In short, rituals are too convoluted, difficult, and time consuming to actually utilize, while offering too little of reward to be worth it, especially when there exists vastly superior options for creating stronger monsters (such as the aforementioned Twin Head fusion and just equipping monsters). You're better off using the minimum deck space of four cards that would be needed to use a ritual (which is one tenth of your deck) on other cards.

* BossRush: The end game requires you to duel and defeat seven straight opponents (all seven being difficult opponents by themselves, and the last four of which are the most difficult opponents in the game), with no chance to retreat and save in between (meaning if you lose to any of them, you must duel them all over again). If you successfully traverse the labyrinth after Teena is captured to rescue her, before defeating all the high mages however, and defeat [[BonusBoss Seto 2]], you'll skip the Labyrinth Mage in the endgame gauntlet, making it very slightly easier (though this doesn't help much, as he was arguably the least difficult of the final seven anyway).

* DiscOneNuke: The Twin Headed Thunder Dragon fusion. To create one, all that is required is any Dragon type monster (which includes pseudo dragons such as Dragon Zombie), and any Thunder type monster, with one of them having an attack of 1600 or higher (such ingredients can be in the deck you start out with, and aren't difficult to obtain in the early/mid game). The Twin Head has an attack of 2800 (which only 10 monsters in the game have an higher attack than, and is strong enough to wipe out your opponent's life points in just three direct attacks), and is compatible with two field cards (being a Thunder type, it is powered up by sea and mountain, and is the strongest monster with a dual compatibility), as well as compatible with many different equip cards, making it easy to powerup. With proper deck building around it, The Twin Head can be reliably used to take on any monster outside the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon, and reliably carry the player to the end game. Eventually, unless you're fortunate enough to obtain Sanga of the Thunder, the Thunder monsters required for your fusion will become unviable for use themselves, and the Twin Head becomes overshadowed by the obtainable [[InfinityPlusOneSword Meteor Black Dragon]] (and to a lesser extent, by the slightly weaker but even more equip versatile Skull Knight). Regardless, a card of the Twin Head is actually reasonably obtainable, and remains very viable in the end game.

** Also since this was made before the official appearance of Ishizu and Marik. There is a slight change where Ishizu becomes Isis and is a completely different character from her Battle City appearance, while Marik doesn't appear at all, and the Millennium Rod has been given to Kaiba.

* GameMod: There exists a mod of this game that slightly alters the drop lists, mainly to make card drops more sensible for the opponent (such as, you no longer win Meteor Black Dragon from the Meadow Mage), as well as allow the unobtainable cards from the original to be winnable (albeit, they're extremely rare to win). The same person who created this mod also planned to create a Forbidden Memories 2 mod, an unofficial sequel that replaced many of the cards in the game with new ones, as well as several other alterations. However, [[DevelopmentHell the creator did not meet promised dates to release things pertaining to the mod (such as a beta and trailers), and nothing has been heard about it from the creator in over a year]].

* BreatherBoss: There are a few examples in this game.
** After you make it past the preliminaries in Kaiba's tournament, you'll duel Shadi, the fifth opponent overall. While the previous four opponents scaled up in difficulty, Shadi is a noticeable step down, having monsters with stats in the hundreds, and not having significant fusions nor magic/trap cards in his deck. He's pretty much the only opponent past the early game you're guaranteed to not need to grind for.
** When you return to the past, the first mandatory opponent is the mage soldier, whose monsters only have stats in the mid thousands, as well as no significant fusions nor magic/trap/equip cards. He's much weaker than the past few opponents you dueled in Kaiba's tournament, as well as the opponents to come.
** When you return to the past and must retrieve the [[MacGuffin Millennium Items]] from the high mages in the shrines, High Mage Martis of the desert shrine will come off as this, especially if you dueled the other, more difficult high mages before him. Instead of having monsters in the high 2000s or even 3000s that get powered up by his field, he instead uses powerful fiends and spellcasters (such as Summoned Skull and Skull Knight), that while still strong, do not get the field power bonus the strongest monsters of the other high mages have. This results in him fielding significantly weaker monsters than what the other high mages are using against you. The lack of strong monsters boosted by the wasteland field can be blamed for his odd monster choice, as no monster in the game has an attack over 2200 that is also boosted by wasteland.
** In the endgame [[BossRush gauntlet]], the second opponent (or first if you defeated Seto 2), Sebek, is much easier than the high mages you dueled and defeated, as well as easier than the opponents to come. He uses machine and beast type monsters, with the strongest being by far a Metal Zoa (which while it has 3000 attack, you have already defeated opponents fielding stronger monsters than this), and while dueling him on a yami field, which does nothing to boost his monsters. Most of his remaining monsters only have slightly more than 2000 attack, and he has no significant magic/trap cards nor equips.

* EarlyBirdBoss: This game has a couple of them.
** Weevil Underwood is the second opponent the player faces in Kaiba's tournament, as well as the third mandatory opponent. While the player could coast through the early game and [[WarmupBoss Rex Raptor]] with their starter deck, Weevil is a step up from Rex, and unless the player has a solid grasp on fusions and did some grinding to improve their deck, they are likely to get stomped by him. Once the player learns how to play and to adequately grind, Weevil will fall easily, though having provided a [[NintendoHard taste on what is to come]].
** Pegasus is the seventh opponent in Kaiba's tournament, who is dueled in the quarterfinals. He is a significant step up from prior opponents, with powerful magic/trap cards, good equips, monsters with 2000+ attack, and the capability to create many powerful fusions. He is also the only opponent not in the endgame to be able to see your facedown cards. He is likely to be the first roadblock in a player's progress, and if it hasn't been done already, will drive it in to the player that grinding is an absolute necessity in this game, as well as knowing exactly what you're doing when playing. Arguably [[ThatOneBoss that one boss]], though the opponents to come provide similar difficulty.

* GuideDangIt: The game has several examples of this:
** The exact monsters required for each ritual card. While the description of each ritual card gives you a hint on what is required, these hints are commonly vague, and often don't cover all three monsters needed to complete the ritual.
** The possible fusions in the game. Most are simple enough to reasonably figure out on your own through some trial and error, and the fusions requiring specific monsters are intuitive (such as Black Skull Dragon), as well as can be learned from following the anime and playing the card game. Fusions can also be learned by watching what the computer fuses. The fusions requiring magic cards on the other hand...
** The fact that getting a power or technical rating when winning a duel affects the card you win (getting a power ranking gives you a chance to win more powerful monster cards, while a technical rating gives you a chance to win more useful magic and trap cards). Exactly how to obtain a technical ranking instead of a power ranking is never explained by the game or its manual.
** The cards you can win from each opponent. While sometimes intuitive (such as being able to obtain a Red Eyes Black Dragon from Jono 2), they are nonsensical other times (such as being able to obtain a [[InfinityPlusOneSword Meteor Black Dragon]] from the Meadow Mage).
** The fact that many cards can not be legitimately obtained in the game without unrealistic grinding to 999,999 starchips (such as Summoned Skull), or unable to be obtained at all.
** The correct path to traverse the labyrinth when rescuing Teena (which is [[spoiler: right, right, left, right]]). While it isn't too complicated for one to reasonably figure out on their own, there is no indication that you encounter the Labyrinth Mage if you go the wrong path instead of the right path, and there's no indication that going the wrong path brings you back to the beginning.

* NintendoHard: Since this game was made a few years before the actual card game was released (Was Released in US shortly after Duel Monsters was Localized and following the card game as well), the game is extremely unbalanced. Additionally, the deck strength of your opponents scale rapidly once you progress past the early game, the opponents will have access to many powerful cards you'll never legitimately be able to use, and you will need to grind a lot, often to just defeat the next opponent in the story, and especially to be able to survive the endgame.
* ThatOneBoss: High Mage Kepura is the most difficult of the high mages you'll face, and is as difficult as what you'll face in the endgame, using Gate Guardian powered up by the meadow you duel him on. With an attack over 4000, it'll take just two direct attacks from it to be defeated. Even the Meteor Black Dragon alone won't gain you victory here. [[spoiler: Seto 3]] is also this, being the most difficult opponent in the game, having Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon and nearly every other extremely powerful monster, as well as the most powerful magic, trap, and equip cards.
* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Some opponents (Pegasus, Heishin, [[spoiler: [=Seto 3=], and [=Darknite/Nitemare=]]]) are able to read what cards you have face down on the field, and thus can't be bluffed into not attacking your weaker monster/bluffed into attacking your stronger monster. Your opponents also have complete access to the cards you cannot legitimately obtain (such as ritual monsters, Black Skull Dragon, Shadow Spell, etc.), and have different, more favorable mechanics for how their hand and drawing works (for example, they will often draw multiples of the strongest monster in their deck on their first turn).
* UnwinnableByInsanity: When trading with another player, you're not required to put up the same amount of cards the other player is trading (nor have to put up any card at all). As such, it's possible to trade all your cards in your chest, and while the game does not allow you to trade cards that are in your deck, the game does not disallow you from exiting the build deck screen with less than 40 cards in your deck. So if you were to trade without 40 cards in your deck, and traded enough cards away, you would not have enough cards left to fill out a 40 card deck. And since you can't have 40 cards in your deck, the game will not allow you to duel anyone, thus preventing you from being able to play farther and preventing you from being able to get more cards to fill a 40 card deck again. The only ways out of this are to have enough starchips from beforehand to buy enough cards to fill out a 40 card deck (which considering the inane prices, is very unlikely), or get more cards from a player in a trade. Of course, the player would have to be intentionally invoking this, as there's no reason to exit the build deck screen with an incomplete deck, nor a beneficial reason for trading away all your cards to another player without getting anything in return.

* MoneySpider: The Meadow Mage, seemingly just another mook to a high mage that will be assumed to give you cards slightly better than mediocre at best, inexplicably gives you the best card drops out of anyone in the game. Such cards include several monsters with 1800+ attack (including a Meteor Dragon), Curse of Dragon (2000 attack and can be used as a strong ingredient for the Twin Headed Thunder Dragon fusion, as well as fused with Gaia to create the Dragon Champion), Gaia the Fierce Knight (2300 attack with good equip versatility and be fused with the aforementioned Curse of Dragon), Dark Magician (2500 attack), Skull Knight (2650 attack, with the useful Mercury alignment and possibly the best equip versatility in the game), and the '''[[InfinityPlusOneSword Meteor Black Dragon]]'''. While some of these cards can be obtained from other, harder opponents, the Skull Knight and Meteor Black Dragon are an exclusive to him. Once you defeat him in campaign, run off and grind against him in Free Duel. You're going to need those Meteor Black Dragons and Skull Knights to complete the game.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: Some opponents (Pegasus, Heishin, [[spoiler: [=Seto 3=], and [=Darknite/Nitemare=]]]) are able to read what cards you have face down on the field, and thus can't be bluffed into not attacking your weaker monster/bluffed into attacking your stronger monster. Your opponents also have complete access to the cards you cannot legitimately obtain (such as ritual monsters, Black Skull Dragon, Dien Keto the Cure Master, etc.), and have different, more favorable mechanics for how their hand and drawing works (for example, they will often draw multiples of the strongest monster in their deck on their first turn).

* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: Want those powerful cards without cheating or just dueling a character to get it? Hope you're prepared to Fight hundreds upon hundreds of duels to get the Starchips required to buy even a single card. To elaborate, the max amount of starchips you can get winning a duel is five, where any decent or useful card will cost hundreds or thousands of starchips. To make it more ridiculous, many cards inexplicably cost 999,999 starchips (which is pretty much the majority of monster cards with 2000+ attack, those with significance in the anime at the time of the game's release, and even cards that you are incapable of winning from beating people). It's to the point where you would be surprised when a card is actually viable near the endgame and can be realistically bought without cheating.

** After you make it past the preliminaries in Kaiba's tournament, you'll duel Shadi, the fifth opponent overall. While the previous four opponents scaled up in difficulty, Shadi is a noticeable step down, having monsters with stats in the hundreds, and not having significant fusions nor magic/trap cards in his deck. He's pretty much the opponent past the early game you're guaranteed to not need to grind for.

* ArtificialStupidity: If you have a face-up monster on your side of the field while the AI has no monsters, they will always play a single monster card, regardless of if their monster is too weak and a magic card in their hand could wipe out all of their opponent's monsters, there exists a fusion in their hand, or if they have a equip they could combine with their monster to strengthen it enough to defeat your monsters. This can be exploited to ensure your opponent does not fuse on you, does not equip their monsters, and prevent them from using magic/trap cards. For a more minor case of AI stupidity, they will never put a monster of 3000 or higher base attack in defense mode, regardless of how strong your monsters are and how much their monster has been weaken. On the reverse (and less likely to occur), a powerupped monster with a base attack of 0 will never be attacked with, even if it would win the duel for the AI.

* DiscOneNuke: The Twin Headed Thunder Dragon fusion. To create one, all that is required is any Dragon type monster (which includes pseudo dragons such as Dragon Zombie), and any Thunder type monster, with one of them having an attack of 1600 or higher (such ingredients can be in the deck you start out with, and aren't difficult to obtain in the early/mid game). The Twin Head has an attack of 2800 (which only 10 monsters in the game have an higher attack than, and is strong enough to wipe out your opponent's life points in just three direct attacks), and is compatible with two field cards (being a Thunder type, it is powered up by sea and mountain, and is the strongest monster with a dual compatibility), as well as compatible with many different equip cards, making it easy to powerup. With proper deck building around it, The Twin Head can be reliably used to take on any monster outside the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon, and reliably carry the player to the end game. Eventually, unless you're fortunate enough to obtain Sanga of the Thunder, the Thunder monsters required for your fusion will become unviable for use themselves, and the Twin Head becomes overshadowed by the obtainable [[Infinity+1Sword Meteor Black Dragon]] (and to a lesser extent, by the slightly weaker but even more equip versatile Skull Knight). Regardless, a card of the Twin Head is actually reasonably obtainable, and remains very viable in the end game.

* ForcedLevelGrinding: Once you're in the present in Kaiba's tournament, if you don't take advantage of Free Duel to get new cards to strengthen your deck, don't expect to get far past [[WarmupBoss Rex Raptor]] without significant luck, as your starter deck with the few additional cards you win from the optional duels in the early game, will be far too underpowered to do much against the quickly escalating opponents. Do expect to grind a lot in Free Duel before you can defeat the next opponent in campaign, and you will need to do an extreme amount of grinding if you're to have any hope of [[NintendoHard surviving the endgame]]. Grinding can be alleviated a bit though, through [[SaveScumming Start Scumming]] to get a better starter deck, Start Scumming with a second file to get cards to trade over to the first file (such as useful equips and multiple Raigekis), and by knowing which opponents to grind against (dueling [[MoneySpider Meadow Mage]] a hundred times for example, will give you much better rewards than dueling Kaibi one hundred times).

* MoneySpider: The Meadow Mage, seemingly just another [[Mooks mook]] to a high mage that will be assumed to give you cards slightly better than mediocre at best, inexplicably gives you the best card drops out of anyone in the game. Such cards include several monsters with 1800+ attack (including a Meteor Dragon), Curse of Dragon (2000 attack and can be used as a strong ingredient for the Twin Headed Thunder Dragon fusion, as well as fused with Gaia to create the Dragon Champion), Gaia the Fierce Knight (2300 attack with good equip versatility and be fused with the aforementioned Curse of Dragon), Dark Magician (2500 attack), Skull Knight (2650 attack, with the useful Mercury alignment and possibly the best equip versatility in the game), and the '''[[InfinityPlusOneSword Meteor Black Dragon]]'''. While some of these cards can be obtained from other, harder opponents, the Skull Knight and Meteor Black Dragon are an exclusive to him. Once you defeat him in campaign, run off and grind against him in Free Duel. You're going to need those Meteor Black Dragons and Skull Knights to complete the game.

* AwesomeButImpractical: Ritual cards can be utilised to summon some of the strongest monsters in the game. To use a ritual card, you have to activate it when you have the three specific monsters required for the ritual on the field (the required monsters are usually a [[GuideDangIt guide dang it to figure out]]). Since you can only get one card on the field each turn, this will take three turns of setup (turns that you could be using doing more productive things, such as summoning actually useful monsters). To make it even more difficult, many of the required monsters to use with rituals are not viable beyond even the midgame, and some of the required monsters are so weak to even be capable of surviving in the early game (such as White Dolphin, a required monster of the Fortress Whale Oath, that has 500 atk and 400 def). This complicate things farther, as you must keep these weak required monsters from being destroyed by your opponent (which can be about impossible without significant luck or setting up trap cards prior to protect them), and in the scenario where you're able to keep them alive, you already have the duel under your complete control, in which case, using a ritual card is unnecessary to win. And if one of these required monsters are destroyed, the ritual card becomes completely useless without you being able to draw any backups of the destroyed cards potentially in your deck. Now if you actually go through all that trouble to get a ritual monster on the field, the reward itself is not much. Ritual monsters will usually have at least 550 more attack than the strongest monster used for the ritual (keep in mind this is only 50 more attack than a single equip would give, and some ritual monsters have even less of a stat boost compared to the strongest monster required), and will rarely have more than 1000 atk than the strongest monster required for their ritual. To make things even worse for ritual cards, a simple and versatile fusion is all that is required to create a Twin Headed Thunder Dragon, which is stronger or as strong as all but five of the ritual monsters, and only two of those stronger ritual mosnters (Gate Guardian and Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon) have more than 500 atk than the Twin Head.
** In short, rituals are too convoluted, difficult, and time consuming to actually utilise, while offering too little of reward to be worth it, especially when there exists vastly superior options for creating stronger monsters (such as the aforementioned Twin Head fusion and just equipping monsters). You're better off using the minimum deck space of four cards that would be needed to use a ritual (which is one tenth of your deck) on other cards.

* AdamSmithHatesYourGuts: Want those powerful cards without cheating or just dueling a character to get it? Hope your prepared to Fight hundreds upon hundreds of duels to get the Starchips required to buy them.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Gameplaywise, the rules of dueling are quite different from what they later became. Storywise, Seto is a far different character, and the sealing of the Pharaoh happens completely differently than what later becomes canon.
** Also since this was made before the Official appearance of Ishizu and Marik there is a slight change where Ishizu becomes Isis and is a completely different character from her Battle City appearance while Marik doesn't appear at all and the Millennium Rod has been given to Kaiba.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The AI reads your hand and changes it's current hand at random when ever it's in danger. Part of the reason why this game is [[NintendoHard Balls to the wall unfair]] the other reason being the previously mentioned [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness variation of the rules]].
* NintendoHard: Since this game was made a few years before the actual card game was released (Was Released in US shortly after Duel Monsters was Localized and following the card game as well) The game is extremely unbalanced.

* AndIMustScream: [[spoiler: After Spending the entire game collecting the Millennium items to summon DarkNite, Heishin is turned into a Card at the end. The Must Scream Moment isn't very long because DarkNite then burns the card.]]

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The AI reads your hand and changes it's current hand at random when ever it's in danger. Part of the reason why this game is [[NintendoHard Balls to the wall unfair]] the other reason being the previously mentioned [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness variation of the rules]].

* JackassGenie: [[BigBad DarkNite]] is (supposedly) bound to obey the owner of all seven Millennium items. He is summoned by the tribute of all seven Millennium items - which means the summoner doesn't have them anymore!

* EarlyInstallmentWierdness: Gameplaywise, the rules of dueling are quite different from what they later became. Storywise, Seto is a far different character, and the sealing of the Pharaoh happens completely differently than what later becomes canon.

!This Video Game provides examples of

Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories is a Yu-Gi-Oh! video game for the PlayStation. It is an Alternate Universe to the anime, taking place in Ancient Egypt as the Pharaoh.