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1[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/falseboundkingdombox.PNG]]
2
3''Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom'' is a ''Franchise/YuGiOh'' video game for the Platform/NintendoGameCube. The game is a sequel to ''VideoGame/YuGiOhForbiddenMemories'' and ''VideoGame/YuGiOhTheDuelistsOfTheRoses''.
4
5The story is split into campaigns for Yugi and Kaiba, with a campaign for Joey unlocked after beating both of those. It begins with the various characters from the series invited to a game company, SIC, to help test their new virtual reality RPG, "Kingdom", and ending up trapped in the game world.
6
7Taking on the role of marshals in command of teams of monsters, Yugi and Kaiba, along with other members of the ''Yu-Gi-Oh'' cast, participate in the story of a rebellion against the Sygh-Varths Empire on the continent of Rondeval, with the hope that winning the game will allow them to leave. Along the way, Yugi and Kaiba will recruit into their forces not only other players trapped in the game, but also a few [=NPCs=] and a wide variety of monsters from the anime and card game.
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9Gameplay is probably the most radically different from the TCG/OCG of any ''Yu-Gi-Oh'' game, being an RTS with turn based battle segments as opposed to a card and/or tabletop game. Players can construct teams of three monsters and can move them about the board freely. When encountering an enemy team, things shift to a turn based RPG for a few turns and ends when a team is wiped out or the number of turns is up. Each monster has their own HP total, and an energy rating for casting attacks. Certain monsters and teams can preform double or triple attacks. Each scenario usually has it's own unique win and failure condition, ranging for capturing an enemy base or [[HoldTheLine holding out until a timer passes]].
10
11----
12!! This game provides examples of:
13* ActuallyADoombot: At one point in Kaiba's campaign, he and Yami Yugi team up to defeat Scott, only for the real Scott to reveal that they'd defeated a remotely-controlled robot stand-in.
14* AdvancingBossOfDoom: Bandit Keith constantly charges you during his boss fight, meaning you have to flee from him repeatedly if you want to get the rare monster in the mission, as beating Keith immediately ends it.
15* AlternateCharacterInterpretation: Done in-universe in Kaiba's story. When he's drawn up on charges of treason, Kaiba declares that Marthis has been looking for the chance to get him out of the way and get ahead, which is why Marthis has been useless in battle. But on the other hand, Marthis' accusations are all valid and logical - Kaiba ''has'' ignored imperial doctrine and met with a resistance leader in secret, and Marthis' usefulness in battle has been up to the player [[GuestStarPartyMember up to this point]].
16* AndYouWereThere: While the characters who are real people trapped in the game are all playing versions of themselves, there are also [=NPCs=] who are based on characters from the series, such as Pegasus (named "Pegasus J. Kroitzel" in this game). There are also many characters who are recycled from ''Forbidden Memories'', and some character portraits are recycled from ''The Duelists of the Roses''.
17* AnotherSideAnotherStory: You can choose from Yugi's campaign and Kaiba's campaign to start, with each focusing on a different aspect of the story. Beat both the Yugi and Kaiba campaigns and you unlock the Joey campaign, which shows what Joey was doing before joining Yugi's forces.
18* AntiClimaxBoss: Invoked. The final fight with Scott Irvine is meant to be this on repeat playthroughs, as not only does he not scale to your levels, his team is much weaker than your first fight with him. It's justified in-story by Scott being at the end of his rope, as well as concentrating his efforts to summon the ''very'' powerful [=DarkNite=].
19* ArtificialStupidity: The AI is generally not very bright. In-battle their monsters will often attack targets at random just as much as they'll try to focus down your weakest monster, and it's often random if they'll use a monster's special abilities even if they could make a huge difference in a battle. In particular shows of stupidity, the AI will often have their monsters defend if they're at low HP, but if your monsters run out of AP (so they can't even attack anymore) the computer may still waste turns and AP ordering its monsters to defend. In the field the AI will universally ZergRush you and send every available troop they have at your outposts, perhaps trying to strike several if two or more are the same approximate distance away. However, distance is the only tactical consideration they allow and they will send units at you even if your defending characters are much stronger than them. Even more stupidly, they will head for bases that have defenses constructed; anti-ground and anti-air cannons deal a flat 75% max HP damage to their targets, and since KO'd enemies respawn with their monsters at half HP and don't wait to heal up before coming at you, they will continuously march blindly to their inevitable doom.
20* AscendedExtra:
21** Scott Irvine originally appeared as a random [=KaibaCorp=] technician during the testing of the Battle City Duel Disk. He's the main villain of the game.
22** Fizdis only had 2 lines in ''Forbidden Memories'' and didn't get a name, but is a playable character here.
23** Marthis was just a generic high mage in ''Forbidden Memories'', but is a major antagonist in Kaiba's campaign early on. Villagers 1 and 2 from ''Forbidden Memories'' also get names (Jusell and Malairuka) and minor plot importance.
24* AwesomeButImpractical: Bases can be outfitted with anti-ground and/or anti-air defenses, which will automatically attack appropriate enemy teams that near them, dealing about 75% ''max'' HP damage. While this means any full-health team approaching your bases will be crippled and weakened teams may be wiped out entirely, this isn't as useful as it may seem; they take a while to recharge and will only be able to attack one enemy, while any other enemies closing in will be unperturbed, and since no one of your team fought them, no one will get experience. You're far better off building healers or barricades as base facilities if you're concerned about defense. Fortunately, the trope is still in play when the computer fields these defenses against you: you can send in a weak decoy to draw their fire and then storm the base with your heavy hitters now that the artillery is exhausted.
25* {{Backstory}}: Kaiba's campaign includes details on who Scott Irvine is and what he wants. To Yugi and friends he's just a crazy guy that trapped them in a game, but Kaiba knows him personally.
26* BitCharacter: Fizdis, who was an unimportant servant in ''Forbidden Memories'' and exists in this game mainly to add muscle to Yugi's forces. Labyrinth Ruler plays a similar role in Kaiba's story.
27* BittersweetEnding: How Joey's campaign ends: The bitter part: The Black Dragon Squad has to disband to their hideout being destroyed and Jussel and Malairuka will go on to appear as the first two bosses in Kaiba's story. The sweet part: Joey finally scores a victory over Kaiba and he, Tristan, Tea and Mai will appear in Yugi's story.
28* BoringYetPractical: Warrior and Beast-type monsters. Most of them don't have particularly impressive support abilities or special attacks that can swing the tide of battle, but they tend to have two or even three "Adept" passives (gives them stat boosts when fighting in certain types of terrain) and their power-up items are readily available early in all campaigns, so they'll have good raw stats and can pull their weight through sheer power.
29* BrainwashedAndCrazy: A few of Yugi's friends are brainwashed. Bakura, however, is NotBrainwashed, but instead just replaced with Yami Bakura.
30* BunnyEarsLawyer: Pegasus J. Kroitzel is as silly as you'd expect, but he's also a very powerful marshal and resistance leader.
31* CCGImportanceDissonance: Played with. Monsters that have higher stats in the card game retain those higher base stats in this game, but they tend to be recruited late into the campaigns and often at Level 1. By contrast, you begin with weaker monsters but have had time to level them up, so the stat difference isn't as large as you'd imagine. When all monsters are the same level, the ones that are strongest in the card game will still be stronger than the lower-level ones in terms of ATK/DEF, but lower-level monsters tend to have more Action Points and passive abilities to boost their battle performance. There's also a spectrum of what kinds of power-up items monsters can use, if they have access to spells, if their attack has special properties like bonus damage to a certain enemy type, and if they learn a secondary attack with its own special effect. All-in-all, how effective a monster is in this game doesn't necessarily reflect how useful they are in the card game.
32* CharacterSelectForcing: Some characters, usually ones with dialogue or plot importance, must be taken on certain missions. Kaiba's story has a particularly egregious case where he and Pegasus are the ''only'' ones allowed on a mission.
33* ClicheStorm: In-universe. Since SIC focuses more on the virtual reality aspect than the plot of Kingdom, the story and setting is very cliched--a fact which Seto Kaiba is happy to poke fun at.
34* ClimaxBoss: The fight with Yugi or Kaiba in their storylines, and the fight with Marik in Joey's. Both fights get special cinematics, are close to the end of the game, and feature major story revelations.
35* CombinationAttack: Some sets of monsters have attacks that work in conjunction with other monsters, such as the Dark Magician/Magician of Black Chaos and the Dark Magician Girl, the Gemini Elves, and the Harpie Lady Sisters.
36* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard:
37** Some computer opponents can use Cosmo Queen as a normal monster rather than having to fuse her.
38** The computer opponents have no restriction against using duplicates of the same monster (both having multiple marshals using the same monster during the same mission and a single marshal have multiples of the same monster on a single team), but it's impossible for you to ever get more than one of the same monster on your side (other than in cases where there are multiple individuals of the same type, like the Dark Magicians and Harpie Lady Sisters).
39** If a monster the AI owns has a Spell, they can use it even if their monster wasn't leveled up enough to know Magic. Similarly, AI monsters may know special abilities at lower levels than they'll learn them when you recruit them.
40** Status ailments tend to wear off from opponents faster than they will your monsters, including a possibility for them to wear off on the affected monster's next turn, while yours may be afflicted for multiple turns on end.
41** The trope is used as a plot point when Scott Irvine takes over the enemy army. Since he made the game and controls the program, he can do things like spawn a bunch of troops to outflank the heroes, or brainwash some players. But when Irvine finally puts himself into the game world to battle the heroes personally, he's then forced to play by the rules.
42* CoolButInefficient: Sadly, in contrast to most other ''Yu-Gi-Oh'' media, Dragon-types are this. Dragon-types are the only type in the game to not get a proper power-up item ("Dragonic Attack" prevents their attack from being dodged but doesn't actually increase their stats), their item that powers up Dragons in-battle also inflicts [[TheBerserker Confusion]], preventing them from doing anything but attacking, and through they get a power-up magic ability, said ability is Level 4 magic meaning no Dragon-type can actually use it. On the other hand, Warriors get an power-up item that increases their damage against Dragons and another item, Dragon Capture Jar, permanently paralyzes all Dragons in-battle, so if the enemy is packing these tools your Dragon team is toast.
43* {{Cyberspace}}: Technically the whole game takes place there, but it's most obvious in the last few stages where the characters have left the virtual world of the story and now have to conquer a graphical representation of the computer system that's running the game.
44* DarkIsNotEvil: Bonz and his monsters may be creepy-looking, but they're 100% on Kaiba's side.
45* DefeatMeansFriendship: Kaiba's method of recruiting new marshals. Since he didn't come with a bunch of friends like Yugi did, everyone he recruits aside from Mokuba and Marthis has to be defeated in battle first.
46* DefeatingTheUndefeatable: This game has one of the few moments in the entire franchise where Joey can fight and defeat Seto Kaiba in battle.
47* DevelopersForesight: Several missions have a story event occur during them where an ally provides aid to make things easier, like disabling enemy defenses or distracting some of their forces (in-game, this means a number of enemy teams are removed). But if you manage to complete the mission before this happens, you'll often get alternate dialogue where the ally arrives and is surprised to find the battle already over.
48* DinosaursAreDragons: Megazowler, Uraby, and Two-Headed King Rex are Dragon-types in this game while in the real card game, they're Dinosaur-types.
49* DirtyCoward: Marthis. When you fight against him as Kaiba, his pre-battle dialogue is begging for mercy.
50* DiscOneFinalBoss: Emperor Haysheen in both stories. While he's the final boss of the virtual game, upon defeat Scott Irvine takes over and becomes the main threat.
51* DoomedByCanon: Since Joey didn't bring a whole group with him when he joined your side in the Yugi campaign, it should be pretty obvious that the Black Dragon gang will have to split up by the end.
52* DumpStat: The Defense stat in this game only applies when a monster uses the defense action, with monsters not in defense mode having their Defense be effectively 0 in damage calculation. Rarely will you want one of your monsters going into defense as it still takes an action point, while you need to attack to eliminate enemy teams, and a better offense makes a better defense anyway as you'll just avoid damage altogether if you can kill an enemy monster before they use up all their action points. As such, monsters with low defense like the zombies don't actually die any faster than monsters with higher Defense, and so marshals and monsters that specialize in non-Defense stats will be a lot better than those that do specialize in Defense.
53* EarlyGameHell: The developers seem to assume that players will play Yugi's campaign first, then Kaiba's, because if you do Kaiba's first without carrying over monsters from Yugi's campaign, he's going to have a much harder time of things. Yugi's starting monsters aren't amazing but can handle themselves and consist of Warriors and Beasts that get equip items fairly early, and his campaign sees him recruit the Dark Magicians, Harpie Ladies, and other decent monsters. Kaiba and his allies, however, start off with mostly Dark monsters and monsters that simply have awful stats, less equip items to power them up, and his earlier missions have less chances to recruit roaming monsters than Yugi gets.[[note]]In his first five missions Yugi can recruit up to eight new monsters, and his sixth mission sees several new ones join him; Kaiba's first six missions only have ''three'' recruitable monsters.[[/note]] This means Kaiba's teams start out mediocre and are going to be static for most of his campaign.
54* {{Egopolis}}: The credits reveal that Haysheen's last name is Sygh-Varths, which is the name of the empire he rules as well as its capital city's name.
55* EleventhHourSuperpower:
56** The Winged Dragon of Ra is obtained at the end of the second to last scenario of Joey's Campaign, which is only unlocked after playing Kaiba and Yugi's Campaign, making it this in spades. Of course, it carries over to further New Game Plus files, which leads into the real cases of this.
57** The game takes 6 playthroughs on an optimized run to get every monster - three of Yugi, two of Kaiba, and one of Joey. Yugi and Kaiba both have one that must be played after Joey's run. This means there are a few monsters (one of the Gemini Elves and either a second Dark Magician 1 or King of Yamimakai and Reaper of the Cards for Yugi, and one of the Battleguards, and a second Larvae Moth, Zanki, Zoa, and Crawling Dragon for Kaiba) that must be obtained after nearly everything else. Again though, these carry into New Game Plus.
58* {{Epigraph}}: The game starts with a quote attributed to "Alexander Irvine, philosopher". However, this doesn't seem to be a real person, but is more likely an in-universe relative of Scott Irvine- especially since, at the end of the game, Scott's last words tie back to the epigraph.
59* EscortMission: On a first playthrough, the first appearance of Téa is one of these, as her monsters are very low-leveled compared to those of the enemies you're facing and will be defeated quickly if they're attacked. Thus you have to get her to escape from the enemy forces. In later playthroughs though, her monsters may be strong enough to take on the opponents.
60* FaceHeelTurn: Roland/Isono quit [=KaibaCorp=] to work for Scott Irvine, and is complicit in trapping Yugi and Kaiba in the game.
61* FakeLongevity: If you're aiming for OneHundredPercentCompletion, you need to complete all three campaigns, then complete Yugi and Kaiba's a second time each, because both have monsters in them that can only be recruited if you have monsters recruited in Joey's campaign, the Gemini Elves and the Swamp/Lava Battleguards, respectively.[[note]]This is in addition to Reaper of the Cards and King of Yamimakai, who only join if you've got the first and second Dark Magicians currently in your team. If you intend to have the two of them as well as the two Dark Magicians and the Magician of Black Chaos, a transformation of the Dark Magician, you'll have to play Yugi's campaign a ''third'' time.[[/note]]
62* FragileSpeedster: Mai and Weevil, whose stats are skewed towards high AP but low defense. Their monsters have a lot of battle actions, but won't be able to make as good of use of the Defend action, not that this matters though as rarely will you want your monsters defending.
63* FromNobodyToNightmare: Scott was a background extra from the manga and anime before appearing in the game. It's really highlighted in Yugi's campaign, since they have no idea who he is.
64* FunWithAcronyms: SIC stands for Scott Irvine Corporation just as KC stands for Kaiba Corporation. Kaiba lampshades this in the intro to his story as he tries to figure out who's behind the plot.
65* FusionDance: Like the card game, you can fuse certain monsters by equipping them with Polymerization and using it on a compatible monster.
66* GameplayAndStoryIntegration:
67** When characters are kidnapped or otherwise busy, you can't select them as marshals. That said, there's nothing preventing you from reassigning their monsters and equipment while they're gone.
68** On repeat playthroughs some monsters won't be available on their introductory mission, because they need to be on newly introduced marshal teams.
69* GlassCannon:
70** Dragon Zombie and Armored Zombie have extremely low defenses, but gain an insane amount of AP and Attack as they level up. Given that Defense is a total DumpStat in this game however, they end up extremely powerful and aren't any easier to kill.
71** Kuriboh plays this straighter, as when equipped with Multiply, its Attack shoots through the roof (with three Multiplies boosting its Attack by 3000!), and Multiply gives it a very powerful special attack that hits the entire enemy team, while it naturally has a lot of AP to make use of its offensive prowess. However it has among the lowest HP of any monster in the game, and so usually it won't be able to take more than a few hits before it goes down, while filling its item slots with Multiply will prevent it from carrying any healing items to heal itself.
72* GreaterScopeVillain: [=DarkNite=], who Scott Irvine is trying to summon.
73* GuideDangIt:
74** Finding all the monsters in the game takes a lot of work and exploration, often leading troops into completely secluded areas. It has monsters which only show up if you send a specific marshal at them, monsters which only join if you have a specific other monster as your leader, and in Moisture Creature's case, a monster that roams around a specific area at a specific time. You have to be pretty precise to find certain monsters as well, which is annoying when the best guides out there can only specify up to "Somewhere in the mountains in the north half of the mission".
75** Teams will move at very different speeds in the overworld depending on which monster they have leading the team, making it very important to learn which monsters make ideal team leaders, as some missions do require you to get to places quite fast (most infamously Mission 15: Betrayal in Yugi's campaign, which even the fastest moving monsters can barely make it to Jakhud before Yami Bakura, failing which is an automatic game over). However, how fast a monster moves a team as the team leader is a completely hidden stat, you'll have to figure out which monsters move fastest through TrialAndErrorGameplay or looking it up through a guide.
76** Whether a monster gets new abilities, attack effects, or can be used for fusions/rituals is a complete mystery to the player. You can look at the monsters in challenge mode to see them at higher levels, but it still won't tell the exact level they learn things, and some are never available. This is particularly problematic with magic, as the game will feature merchants stocking spells likely long before you have any monsters with aptitude in magic, leaving the player wondering how to use magic as items since the game never tells you that magic is a passive ability that monsters will learn as they level up.
77* HateSink: Marthis, a backstabbing toady in Kaiba's campaign who takes pleasure in hurting people and is responsible for Kaiba becoming a fugitive. Taking revenge on him is quite satisfying.
78* HaveANiceDeath: If Yugi, Kaiba, or Joey loses to a plot-important character in a campaign, your adversary will comment on your defeat.
79* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: Whether you win or lose against Kaiba in Joey's campaign, the Black Dragon Squad is wiped out and Yugi's friends separate.
80* HeelFaceTurn: Kaiba is pretty much forced to make one by Marthis, who accuses him of treason in order to get more of the Emperor's favor, but Kaiba doesn't like working for the Empire anyway so he's fine with it.
81* HeroMustSurvive: Usually, the mission objectives will include failure if the campaign's main character is beaten.
82* IHaveManyNames: Heishin is called Haysheen in this game.
83* InconsistentDub: Several monsters have different attack names compared to the anime's dub such as Fortress Whale's attack still being called "Whale Hail" but Obelisk's single monster attack being called "Omni Hand Crusher" instead of "Fist of Fate/Fury".
84* IHaveYourWife: Scott holds Mokuba captive and threatens to kill him if Kaiba doesn't fight and defeat Yugi.
85* InstantWinCondition: In most missions, you win if you manage to capture the primary enemy encampment, which entails defeating any marshals guarding it. This can be exploited to win a lot of missions quick and easily, since the AI tends to send all available marshals at your base as soon as the mission begins, leaving one behind to occupy bases. With a sufficiently strong single party, it's perfectly possible to just move around the line of enemies marching toward your base and then head for theirs to capture it, winning the mission in a single battle.
86* InsufferableGenius: Scott talks down to Yugi and his friends frequently, calling them a feeble-minded bunch who wouldn't understand his schemes. When Yami Yugi ''does'' figure it out, he's only mildly impressed.
87* InterfaceSpoiler: Since you don't have Tea with you by the time you take the fight to Emperor Haysheen, but she was part of the group that entered the game, it's easy to tell that defeating him will not end the game.
88* {{Jerkass}}: Marthis accuses Kaiba of treason in order to get more of the Emperor's favor and takes pleasure in seeing people hurt. Kaiba calls him out on this when he's set on executing Bonz.
89* JokeCharacter: Dark Plant. It has low stats with poor growth rates, and lacks the high AP growth that a lot of weaker monsters have. Its only real advantage is that its attack can poison enemies at later levels, but there are many more useful monsters with that same ability.
90** Most of the starting monsters fall into this. They're pretty much designed to be weaker than everything else to encourage players to recruit try out new ones.
91* JustifiedTutorial: Yugi and Kaiba don't know how to play the game, so the characters explain. Lampshaded in Joey's chapter, where the game simply states that the rules were explained to Joey.
92* KillItWithFire:
93** Ryou Bakura's plan to help out is to sneak into the enemy base, wait a day, and then set the place on fire to take out the cannons. He's so eager to do this that Yami Yugi can't stop him.
94** Shimon enacts a similar plan in an early mission, luring a bunch of enemy troops to a fort then setting it on fire.
95* KneelBeforeZod: Inverted. Marthis demands Kaiba ''stand'' before Emperor Haysheen.
96* KonamiCode: Using the D-Pad to input the code in the field earns you [[GoroawaseNumber 573]] gold. Which you can input as many times as you desire (or can stand the voice-over from each occurrence).
97* LaResistance: Yugi's army, and eventually Kaiba's as well, are both branches of the resistance against the Empire.
98* LethalJokeCharacter: Kuriboh, true to the anime. It has pitiful stats and will likely be cycled out of your teams early on, unless you know what it's capable of when equipped with Multiply. Multiply not only gives it a huge boost to its Attack, but gives it a special ability that lets it attack all enemies at once. Equipping additional Multiplies on it boosts its power even higher, and if you give its teammates items to power it up even more and give it additional action points, you have a surprisingly dangerous little furball. A boss in the endgame exploits this to potentially catch players offguard.
99* LevelScaling: Most bosses scale to your level on repeat playthroughs.
100* LoadBearingBoss: After you beat the final boss, the SIC building burns down from flames coming out of the machines when you finally wake up.
101* LotusEaterMachine: Scott mentions that Yugi and Kaiba could have elected to stay in the game forever instead of trying to escape.
102-->'''Scott:''' You could have lived here knowing you had beaten me and destroyed the Empire. You should be thanking me for trapping you in one of those games you like so much. What more could you want?
103* MadScientist: Scott Irvine built a huge video game simulation to trap the players' souls and summon a wicked spirit.
104* MagikarpPower: Quite a few monsters suffer from poor starts, but become quite good at later levels. A few good examples of this are Man-Eater Bug, Water Girl, and Zarigun.
105* MasterOfNone: Fizdis has the second-worst stats of any marshal in the game. However, she has the useful Discount ability, which lowers the cost of buying items.
106* MetaGuy: Kaiba spends a lot of his story poking fun at the various tropes found within the game.
107* {{Mons}}: The monsters, which are controlled and summoned by the characters.
108* MonsterArena: The challenge mode could be considered a form of this, though it has no bearing on the campaign mode itself.
109* TheMostDangerousVideoGame: Kingdom is connected to the players' souls and is set up to tribute them to [=DarkNite=] as sacrifices. (Not ''The Falsebound Kingdom'' itself though. Hopefully.)
110* MrExposition: In Yugi's campaign, Bakura explains what SIC is and what it hopes to accomplish.
111* NamedByTheAdaptation:
112** Villagers 1 and 2 from ''Forbidden Memories'' were named Jusell and Malairuka, respectively, and the servant girl was named Fizdis.
113** The Blue-Eyes White Dragons are named Azrael, Ibris, and Djibril, the Harpie Lady Sisters are named Airo, Ocupete, and Keraino, and the Gemini Elf twins are named Kachua and Lora.
114* NewGamePlus: All monsters and items are carried over every time you finish a campaign.
115** Also, if you have used a marshal, their levels carry over (so in a Yugi NewGamePlus, Yugi's levels will carry over). To combat this, the enemies also gain power for doing specific things in NewGamePlus.
116* NoodleIncident: How Rex and Weevil wound up ruling over their own domains is never explained.
117* NonstandardGameOver: While there are two ways to generally lose, letting your main base be taken or having the viewpoint character lose, letting the mission timer run out often gets special dialogue. There are also other Game Overs under special circumstances.
118** Letting Téa lose her escort mission results in her crying out for help as the Rare Hunter defeats/kills her, while Yami Yugi looks on helplessly.
119** After brainwashing Téa, Scott makes her attempt a forbidden spell that will destroy the world, with herself as the tribute for it. If you wait until the mission timer runs out, she succeeds.
120** If you win the second brainwashed Joey fight with anyone but Mai, he fails to break free of the mind control. Scott sets him up to sacrifice himself via a hypnotic suggestion, and Yugi and friends can't even take revenge on Scott since he appears as a hologram.
121** Your second encounter with Yami Bakura has him threatening to burn Jakhud to the ground. If you fail to stop him from reaching the city, he ''does'' burn it down, and you get a special cutscene of the city burning and Fizdis crying out for her parents.
122** In Kaiba's campaign, waiting for the timer to run out during the Raid mission results in Lumis and Umbra arriving with reinforcements to trap you.
123** In Kaiba's campaign, if you fail to help Yami Yugi in time when he goes to rescue Mokuba, Pegasus reports that something's happened at the city and there's no way Yugi and Mokuba could have survived.
124** In Joey's campaign, if you let the timer run out during the third mission a huge army surrounds you on both sides, leaving no way out. Joey goes down fighting.
125** In Joey's campaign, waiting for the timer to run out when Marik is separated from his army results in him returning... as Yami Marik.
126* OffscreenMomentOfAwesome: Kaiba escapes his execution entirely offscreen.
127* OneStatToRuleThemAll: The most important stat by far is action points; there's not only a lot more flexibility when your monsters are able to make more actions per battle, being able to attack more greatly improves a monster's damage output. A monster that deals 400 damage per attack compared to another monster's 300 damage is ultimately dishing out a lot less damage if the latter monster is able to attack twice as much per battle. More action points also helps a lot with survivability, when the monster has more opportunities to heal itself and others with items. So overall, monsters with a lot of action points like the Harpies just dominate, while monsters with terminally low action points like the dragons are just awful to use unless they have some other extreme merit to them (like the Blue-Eyes having the BEUD fusion, or Moisture Creature having immediate access to level 5 magic).
128* OverlyLongFightingAnimation: Monsters' attack animations can be ridiculously long in this game, which is made worse by the fact every monster only gets one basic attack, so you will be wasting a lot of time sitting through the same overly long animations over and over. Harpie's Pet Dragon and Red-Eyes Black Dragon are the most notorious offenders, with the former having a fire breath attack that lasts several seconds, and the latter spitting a barrage of nearly two dozen fire balls for its attack, while neither remotely have the attack power to justify their attack animations being so excessively long.
129* PetTheDog: Early in Kaiba's story, he spares Bonz when Marthis is dead-set on executing him. This gains him Bonz's loyalty for the rest of the game.
130* PurposelyOverpowered:
131** Characters' signature monsters, such as Yugi's Dark Magician and Dark Magician Girl, Mai's Harpie Ladies, and Kaiba's Blue-Eyes White Dragons, tend to be much stronger than most monsters. The Egyptian Gods are even stronger than that. Naturally, this is because a player is going to want the characters to use their signature monsters in battle other more generic monsters.
132** Tea joins Yugi's team with three high-level Spirit monsters, including one with an ability that inflicts Blind on the enemy team. Given that the mission she joins sees her being attacked by enemies on all sides, she's given this powerful team so she can actually defend herself from them.
133* RecycledSoundtrack: Several tracks are recycled from ''Duelists of the Roses'', which itself had tracks remixed from ''Forbidden Memories''.
134* RiskStyleMap: The between-stage story segments illustrate the locations of each stage this way, as do a few parts where the characters are describing their strategies.
135* SchmuckBait: Arkana calls out Yugi to fight him with his Dark Magician. Should you take the bait, you'll find Arkana's Dark Magician is Level 99 and has ''very'' powerful magic.
136* ScienceFantasy: In the virtual reality RPG features wizards, magic, machines, etc.
137* ShipTease: Joey and Mai, as per usual. In Yugi’s campaign, after the first battle with a BrainwashedAndCrazy Joey ends with him retreating, the next chapter starts with Mai asking Yugi to let her fight him this time, [[IKnowYoureInThereSomewhereFight believing that she can snap him out of Scott Irvine’s brainwashing]] (and indeed, she’s the ONLY one who can; defeating him with anyone else earns you a NonStandardGameOver). The pre-battle dialogue indicates that Scott’s hold over Joey starts weakening when he sees Mai, and after completing the chapter, she thinks to herself how relieved she is that he’s okay. The chapter is even titled “For That Someone Special”.
138* ShootTheMedicFirst: One of the most frustrating monsters to face on enemy teams is Fairy's Gift, which has a special ability to heal their party a ton of HP, and they'll spam it as much as they can while their two allies wail on you. Beyond that, it's always a good idea to check if the enemy team has any Medicines on them and prioritize taking out the ones that do, or else they'll keep healing whomever you're damaging and make the fight much more difficult. At the least this wears off if you dragon out missions to level grind, since Medicines have finite uses in each mission.
139* SmugSnake: In ''Kingdom'', Marthis and Emperor Haysheen are ''way'' too smug for their own good. In general, Scott Irvine's defining trait is his smugness.
140* StatusEffects: Poison, blindness, paralyzation, and confusion are all among the status effects you can get. Confusion is notable in that it stops monsters from guarding or using items, locking them into attacking.
141* SuperToughness: Mako and Rex Raptor, whose marshal stats prioritize high HP over all else.
142* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: Mako's marshal ability, which makes his team move fast if all of his monsters are Aqua-type, is near-useless... unless the enemy has both anti-air and anti-ground cannons. Since swimming monsters don't fit either traveling style, Mako's team can bypass the cannons and attack very quickly.
143** Can be applied to swimming monsters in general. Most of them are on the weaker side, and players can easily avoid fighting on the water. Bypassing cannons is their only real gameplay strength.
144* TimedMission:
145** The fight with the brainwashed Téa has a much faster clock than normal due to the circumstances of the mission. Letting it run out gets you a special Game Over.
146** The second fight with Yami Bakura gives you about 30 seconds to reach Jakhud before he does.
147** In Kaiba's campaign, going on a raid and going to help Yugi at Sygh-Varths also have a much faster clock than normal.
148** In Joey's campaign, the Quick Attack and Master Plan missions also have sped-up timers due to the mission circumstances; letting it run out on either of these gets you a special game over.
149* TookALevelInBadass:
150** Using a Ritual on an appropriate monster will turn it into a far, far more powerful monster. The best example of this is using a Cocoon of Evolution on Larvae Moth, an almost completely useless monster, to turn it into Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, one of the best monsters in the game.
151** Many monsters that are absolutely awful in the card game, such as Armored Zombie and Ansatsu, are extremely powerful here.
152* {{Troll}}: Kaiba needles the game characters about the fact that they're in a game and mocks the cliched story when he can.
153* TrueFinalBoss: Nitemare becomes the final boss after beating one of the campaigns. He uses a god monster with maxed-out stats that you can't weaken like you could his first form.
154* UnskilledButStrong:
155** Several monsters, like Panther Warrior, Dungeon Worm, Armored Zombie and Dragon Zombie, and Ansatsu, don't have special abilities aside from passives that boost their stats and perhaps a status ailment on their attack. What they do have is really good stats and lots of Action Points to be powerhouses in battle.
156** Most Machine-type monsters don't have special abilities, but have really good stats. This is accentuated by their unique power-up item Shock Shell, which inflicts Confuse on enemies (making them unable to do anything but attack), and many of them have the passive ability Armor which reduces all damage they take.
157* VillainForgotToLevelGrind: Literally. On repeat playthroughs, Scott Irvine's final team is the ''only'' boss who doesn't scale with your stats.
158* WeakButSkilled: Many lower-level monsters from the card game lack the stats of higher-level monsters, but they tend to make up for it with high Action Points, passive abilities to boost their stats, and perhaps access to magic or a special attack.
159* WeCannotGoOnWithoutYou: Usually, it's game over if the campaign's viewpoint character loses a battle.
160* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Yugi's team is not mentioned in Kaiba's ending, nor are Kaiba and Mokuba mentioned in Yugi's. Additionally, Mako and Espa Roba have no impact on the plot once they join Yugi, and Labyrinth Ruler, Weevil, and Rex have no plot after they join Kaiba. And then there's Moisha, the alien who somehow got sucked into the game and integrated into Kingdom as the Moisture Creature monster. Despite this setup begging for continuation, Moisha has no further plot outside the recruitment dialog. (Of course, Kaiba doesn't really care.)
161* WinToExit: The goal for most of the game is to complete it and escape.
162* WombLevel: Invoked in the final levels, as the computer system the group explores is directly compared to a body's heart and brain.
163-->'''Scott:''' You are all standing on a circuit that's just above the heart of the computer. They're much like nerves in the human body. They both carry electronic signals. The human brain is a collection of electronic signals. You're now closer to that than anyone has ever been.
164* XanatosGambit: Yami Bakura enacts a plan so he wins no matter what happens. He gets Yugi to chase him while his army attempts to burn the resistance's capital city from behind. If he defeats Yugi and the resistance, that's one problem solved. If Yugi defeats him, Scott's army knows exactly where Yugi is and can thus strike.
165* YouCantThwartStageOne: Despite Yugi and Kaiba's best efforts, Scott manages to summon [=DarkNite=] and jeopardize the safety of the world.
166* YouHaveFailedMe: Scott deletes the virtual Panik and Arkana from the game after they fail to beat Yugi.
167* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Scott pulls this on Emperor Haysheen, taking over his army and role in the story.
168* YourPrincessIsInAnotherCastle: You'd think the story would be over once you defeated the Emperor in battle, right? Well, Scott Irvine has different plans.
169* YourSoulIsMine: Scott steals Mokuba's soul to coerce Seto into fighting Yugi, with the added caveat that he'd ''kill'' Mokuba if Kaiba didn't comply.

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