Follow TV Tropes

Following

YMMV / Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories

Go To

  • Alternative Character Interpretation:
    • Seto helping the player against DarkNite has room for a lot of interpretation, given how villainous he is before that and how he escapes afterward without a word. Does he realize his mistakes and help out of altruism, is it a case of Pragmatic Villainy, as he doesn't want to die with the prince, or is it simply a way to get around the prince being a Heroic Mime?
    • Whether or not the ritual to control DarkNite would have worked if Seto had performed it is another ambiguous factor, as Seto's ancestors did make the pact with DarkNite while Heishin did not, and Seto's deck is stronger than both of theirs.
  • Awesome Music: Has its own page.
  • Breather Boss: There are a few examples of easier-than-normal bosses.
    • While the previous tourney opponents scaled up in difficulty, Shadi is a drastic step down, having monsters with stats in the hundreds, and not having significant fusions nor magic/trap cards in his deck. Sometimes Shadi will fusion summon the likes of "Mystical Sand" or "Boulder Tortoise", but none of those would cause major problem if you have enough materials to fuse into "Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon" or "Crimson Sunbird". He's the only opponent past the early game you're guaranteed to not need to grind for besides the Mage Soldier.
    • 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 or magic cards. His strongest monster is "Jirai Gumo" which can be easily taken care of with fusion monsters of Mars affinity such as "Metal Dragon", "Flame Swordsman" or "Vermillion Sparrow" — or your own Jirai Gumo, which there's a good chance you already have by that point due to its very low star chip cost. He's much weaker than the past few opponents you dueled in Kaiba's tournament, as well as the opponents to come.
    • High Mage Secmeton of the sea shrine and High Mage Martis of the desert shrine. Secmeton uses a whole deck of water monsters, which can be easily beaten with a Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon. Martis uses powerful fiends and spellcasters for his main attacking force that don't get powered up by the Wasteland field. This leaves him reliably beaten by a Twin-Head.
    • In the endgame gauntlet, Sebek is easier than the other opponents. He uses machine and beast type monsters, with the strongest being Metalzoa. Most of his remaining monsters only have slightly more than 2000 attack, and he has no significant magic/trap cards beyond Shadow Spell. A Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon on Moon with either an equip or an Umi is enough to reliably beat him.
  • Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: It can't be overstated just how active the Forbidden Memories modding scene is, with multiple mods that improve upon the base game experience massively. It's to the point where most people who play FM are usually playing an FM mod of some kind over the base game itself.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Most players gravitate towards the Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon as the cornerstone of their deck for the early to mid game, due to its many advantages such as easily obtainable fusion material, high attack, and good equip variety. Late game, most players rely heavily on the Meteor B. Dragon thanks to it having the highest attack of any obtainable monster and its guardian stars enabling it to beat other high powered monsters such as Gate Guardian and Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth.
  • Complete Monster: Heishin is an Evil Chancellor and Evil Sorcerer of Ancient Egypt. As soon as he gets the ancient power of the Millennium Items, he attacks the palace with his soldiers, killing various people, including the Pharaoh and his wife, and mortally wounding Simon Muran, the Prince's tutor. When the Prince tries to escape, he threatens to kill him if he doesn't give him the Millennium Puzzle. The Prince shatters it, and is transported inside of the puzzle to the present day. When he returns, he finds that Heishin has destroyed much of Egypt and Simon Muran has died from his injuries. After defeating Heishin's top mages, he finds Teana has been kidnapped and is having her life threatened in an attempt to lure the Prince into a trap to kill him, but this is stopped by Seto, Heishin's own henchman, who sets her free and ends up being The Starscream. Heishin obtains the Millennium Puzzle and summons the Dark God, Darknite, and commands him to destroy the world and make him a god, to which Darknite responds by killing Heishin. Petty, selfish, and so obsessed with power that he'd attempt to murder teenagers in his pursuit of it, Heishin was a monstrous individual.
  • Critical Dissonance: This game often gets criticized for its brutal difficulty and the amount of forced grinding needed to get pass certain areas. Despite this, it's treated rather warmly by fans who played it back in the day, and is listed as the fifth game of the top ten PS1 games on GameFAQs, despite barely having over a 50% review rating.
  • Cult Classic: Despite being infamous for its brutal difficulty (or perhaps because), this game still has quite a bit of fans to this day. It's unquestionably the most popular the older Yu-Gi-Oh games Konami has released (selling over 2 million copies worldwide), to the extent of attracting even people who aren't otherwise into the franchise or card game into it because of its dedicated speedrunning scene.
  • Demonic Spiders:
    • The Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon is by far the most powerful monster in the game with 4500 attack, 1000 more than the Meteor Black Dragon. It requires three equips at minimum to defeat through battle, and only three obtainable monsters can do it with three equips (the Meteor Black Dragon, Skull Knight, and Zoa, the latter two also needing to be Mercury-aligned). Due to the 1 card-per-turn limit, using Raigeki or another magic card to destroy it can leave you open to a direct attack.
    • Gate Guardian has 3750 attack, is highly equip-versatile, and is used by a disgustingly large amount of opponents in the game, and is even worse on the Meadow field, where it gets a power boost.
  • Difficulty Spike: There are two distinct difficulty spikes in this game:
    • The early game starts out easy, with all the opponents being easily beatable with any starter deck and basic fusion knowledge, aside from Heishin, who you have to lose to anyway. And even without knowing the fusions, you'll still probably run through all of the early game opponents aside from Villager 2. Then you progress to Kaiba's tournament in the present, where after Rex Raptor, each of your opponents rapidly gets stronger and more difficult, with only the occasional reprieve. Even those with thorough knowledge of all the fusions will likely end up getting walled by Bakura or Pegasus without any grinding, and those without good fusion knowledge will likely get walled as soon as Weevil.
    • There's then the Boss Rush in the endgame, which has you duel six or seven straight opponents with no save point, and every duelist has very powerful monsters, spells, and traps. The final four in particular have cards far better than you'll ever be able to legitimately obtain, and the ability to see your facedown cards as well. Lose one duel here, even against the final boss, and you'll have to start the boss rush all over. Beating it without an optimal endgame deck is RNG hell, and even with an optimal deck, it'll still require decent luck to win. Lots of players have given up at this point in the game, and most speedruns will die here.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • The Meadow Mage. He's just a mook you only see on one screen in the game, yet he's the character that's remembered and talked about the most. With his amazing card drops, including giving most people their first Meteor Black Dragon, people have fond memories of extensively dueling him and gaining the cards that allowed them to finally beat the game.
    • Jono and Teana only appeared in this game, and have no equivalent in the manga or anime versions of the Ancient Egypt arc, but are popular for being counterparts to Joey and Tea and friends with the prince, making them easy to insert in fanfiction.
      • Especially Jono, whom you can duel for "Time Wizard" farming if you don't have one in your starter deck.note 
    • The servant girl Fizdis gets only 2 lines in the game and is only seen once, but is popular for her design. She also has a slightly bigger role in Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom, which gave her a name and made her playable.
    • Because of just how useful it is throughout the game, even people who play the real life card game have a fondness for Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon. Similarly, the Meteor Black Dragon never appeared in the anime or manga except for a single appearance in Toei's Yu-Gi-Oh movie that was never released outside Japan and a single appearance in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX. An official card wasn't released for the TCG until 2012, over 12 years after its OCG release, and long after the TCG's Power Creep and arrival of better Red-Eyes fusions rendered it obsolete. However, with its status as the Infinity +1 Sword and being the key to beating the game for almost every player, it has a deity-like reputation among those who played Forbidden Memories.
    • Despite being somewhat morbid and enigmatic storyline wise, Shadi is well liked by fans of the game for being the most reasonable opponent for Raigeki farming purpose (S-TEC), especially when compared to the likes of Heishin or Pegasus.
    • The card shop owner in Ancient Egypt timeline is somewhat liked by the fans. Not only he is an implied Badass Normal as he is not afraid of Heishin and secretly helps The Prince and his friends hiding underground, he is also supposed to be the ancestor of Curator Kanekura, whose greed is enough to warrant a penalty game from Shadi in the manga.
  • Fanwork-Only Fans: Most of the fanbase around Forbidden Memories often prefer hacks to the base game itself; mostly because they tend to greatly reduce the amount of grinding one needs to do to complete the game. The fifteen card drop hack combined with hacks that make unobtainable cards obtainable tend to be the most popular.
  • Fridge Logic: "Summonned Skull" in this game has two affinities, Moon (the default one) and Pluto. While most monsters who use thunder or electricity attacks in this game have Pluto affinity, Summonned Skull's anime trademark attack Makorai (lit. means Daemon Lightning) only occurs if the Moon affinity is chosen instead of Pluto.
  • Franchise Original Sin: If it's true that this game uses beta rules for the actual game, then it shows that special summoning was always supposed to be a big part of the game. Thanks to being able to get the cards out quickly and being able to chain fusions, Fusion Monsters in this game are even easier and quicker to get out than Synchro, Pendulum, and Xyz monsters, one of the most criticized aspects of the game from the old-school purists.
  • Game-Breaker:
    • The magic card Raigeki, which destroys all of your opponent's monster cards with no cost to you. A single Raigeki can break a stalemate and win you the duel in just that turn, and just like any other card, you can have three of them in your deck. Crush Card can serve the same purpose against monsters with over 1500 ATK (and in the latter half of the game, is pretty much equivalent to Raigeki against any monster except Millennium Shield or Labyrinth Wall.)
    • The equip card Megamorph is compatible with every monster and boosts their stats by 1000. It'll turn any midtier monster into a powerhouse, and the most powerful monsters will become untouchable except by magic. You can get it as early as Pegasus as long as you're good at S-Tecing.
    • People who have managed to import a Japanese PSX, Japanese version of the game, and Pocket Station can attest that the Pocket Station tears the game's difficulty in half. It's possible for players to end up with end game monsters and equips before the first duel with Simon.
  • Genius Bonus: Sebek and Neku are named for the Egyptian gods Sobek and Nekhbet, respectively. Their appearances are also based on said gods, with Sebek having an alligator headdress and Neku having a vulture's.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
    • A significant portion of the game's cult fanbase are Brazilians and from other Central/South American countries. They were also the driving force behind the extensive data mining of the game and its modding scene, and if you look up FM mods you're going to come across predominantly Spanish- and Portuguese-language pages.
    • The game is infamous for being an RNG grindfest, but it's oddly popular with speedrunners and racers despite luck elements and grinding normally being antithesis to speedrunning. Racers and spectators alike enjoy seeing how the RNG can be benevolent and screw them over in equal measure. It has become much less of an issue since because RNG manipulations have since been developed to reliably get strong cards more easily, though the game is still actively ran without RNG manipulation. Not to mention, the fact that the game regularly finds itself atop many a "longest speedruns" list and may be home to the longest hypothetical speedrun ever definitely helps give it its own appeal. This video goes in depth on its odd popularity and history with speedrunning
  • Goddamn Bats: Labyrinth Wall and Millennium Shield have no attack at all and will never pose a direct threat to you, but they have a massive 3000 defense that will require magic cards to overcome unless you have the Meteor Black Dragon out, and a large amount of opponents from Bakura-onward will have one or both of them. They're additionally Uranus-aligned, which makes them particularly annoying for the usually Pluto-aligned Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon (while putting it in its secondary Moon alignment to get around them without two equips then leaves it vulnerable to powerful Sun-aligned monsters like the Blue-Eyes White Dragon), and the Saturn alignment to take advantage of their alignment is uncommon among stronger monsters. Wall Shadow has a similar 3000 DEF and no attack presence (since the AI will never attack with it despite its 1600 ATK), but is easier to deal with due to its Moon alignment being easy to take advantage of and not impeding any important monsters for the player.
  • Low-Tier Letdown: A lot of types are very weak as a whole compared to others and making viable themed endgame decks with them is practically impossible.
    • Dinosaurs aren't very strong (Bracchio-raidus is the strongest at 2200 ATK), have very limited fusion prospects, and have limited equip versatility, making them worthless once their power is outclassed. Sword Arm Of Dragon and Crawling Dragon #2 are the exceptions, as they count as dragons for Dragon-Based fusions despite being technically Dinosaurs, while also surpassing the coveted 1600 ATK mark, letting them fuse into the Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon without requiring an intermediate fusion.
    • Fishes really got the short end of the stick, having no obtainable Fish with more than 2100 attack while additionally being very limited in fusion capabilities, with none of the fish fusions being useful at all.
    • Bugs as a whole are of very little use to the player outside of Jirai Gumo, as they have little fusion or equip potential and are often Pocket Station exclusive, making them extremely hard to get and worthless if you do.
    • Pyro types are limited in number and quite weak, with the strongest being Flame Cerberus at 2100 attack, while also having no field power bonus except being weak to water. Fire-aligned monsters do make good fusion fodder, but because these fusions rely on the fire alignment and don't require Pyro monsters, players will instead opt to use the abundant fire-aligned monsters of other types that can serve dual-fusion purposes (such as Firegrass, which can be used for fire-based fusions and plant-based fusions), leaving Pyro monsters with no niche of their own.
    • Fairies are weak and weakened by Yami (which many of the endgame bosses have as a field by default), and have little fusion capabilities. Their only good points are having multiple type-specific equips and a lot of them being female monsters that can be used for the various female-centric fusions.
    • Reptiles have no home field, no stats higher than 1800, very few Reptiles existing at all, and have almost no fusion capabilities.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Priest Seto, the Egyptian version of Seto Kaiba, started out as a minion of Big Bad Heishin and subdues Prince Atem for his boss to murder both the Pharaoh and his wife. Giving the Millennium Items to Heishin's guards, Seto intends on manipulating the vengeful prince to defeat and claim them, only for Seto himself planning to defeat the prince and take them for himself. Planning on betraying Heishin to conquer Egypt for himself with the use of DarkNite, Seto gives the prince hints to stop DarkNite when it turns them both into cards, never losing his charm or ability to adapt through all the challenges he faces.
  • Narm: DarkNite's informal way of speaking, combined with his huge Big "NO!" after you beat him, makes him pretty hard to take seriously at times.
  • Narm Charm: DarkNite's informal way of speaking is amusing however, coming from what is supposed to be an ancient Egyptian dark god with world ending powers. His interactions with the characters are also humorous.
  • Older Than They Think: Seto's encounter and battle themes are remixes of a tune from Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule Breed and Battle, a Japan-only game.
  • Scrappy Mechanic:
    • The starchip system. You can win up to five per duel, but most strong and useful cards cost in the hundreds and thousands, and Pocket Station cards and many others are given a 999,999 cost to make them effectively unbuyable. Their only real practical use is buying cheap fusion fodder early on (namely Dragons and Thunder monsters), and monsters with lopsided stats that make them cheap for their effectiveness like Jirai Gumo and Millennium Shield.
    • The drop rate mechanics in general are widely disliked. You can only get one card per duel, and the drop rates for most strong and useful cards are extremely low (as in, less than 1%), with even endgame opponents having drop tables filled with cards that are totally useless. This means that if you are looking for a particular good card, you will likely need to duel the respective opponent *hundreds* of times before you obtain the card you want, never mind if you want multiple copies. With how long even an optimally played duel takes, you're looking at potentially several hours' worth of grinding in order to obtain the cards necessary to have a realistic shot at beating the game.
    • Getting a S/A-TEC rank, which is required to obtain many of the better magic and trap cards from certain opponents, requires you to use a lot of magic and trap cards while stalling the duel, or making the opponent deck out by forcing them to fuse. This is a very involved process that is counter-intuitive to how most people would play the game, as stalling out a game to this degree, especially against the tougher endgame opponents, is very dangerous, as they often have extremely powerful monsters and magic cards that can quickly and decisively turn around the whole duel in their favor. Many people playing the game casually may not even realize that the TEC ranks even exist without looking them up, much less how to get the higher ranks effectively. Moreover, with how slow the game plays, being forced to draw until your hand is full, and the player always going first, a single S-TEC duel can take a very long time, even on an emulator. And with the fairly terrible drop rates for most desirable cards, this makes what would already be a very long and tedious grind exponentially worse.
    • The PocketStation features being only available in Japan, leaving it impossible to obtain the cards only available through them, including many strong AI-only cards and the cards on the cover of the game. This makes the endgame very difficult and unfair, as the final opponents have access to far stronger cards than anything you can obtain legitimately, such as Gate Guardian and Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon. This basically forces you to rely on specific cards like Meteor Black Dragon and equips such as Megamorph (which themselves usually require a lot of tedious grinding to obtain) that usually need to be drawn quickly lest you have a strong chance of losing, making an already very RNG-heavy game even worse.
    • Ritual monsters, which are incredibly difficult to get out onto the field. You need to summon three specific monsters onto the field (some of them so weak that they'll likely be killed the next turn by your opponent thanks to how the AI works), then draw the right Ritual card or magic cards to fuse it, and then finally you can summon the monster. Getting all the right cards for it to work usually takes such a long time that you'll probably have lost or won the duel long before you pull it off. It doesn't help that there are some monsters that are basically only obtainable this way because of the dummied out PocketStation content; it's the only way the player can use Gate Guardian, for instance.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge: Due to being a deck building card game, a common challenge is to try and beat Forbidden Memories without any dragon monsters (widely considered the game's best monster type), or sticking to a specific monster type. Although possible, it often comes with much more grinding, as equip cards are often vital to beat the game without access to Meteor B. Dragon.
  • Tear Jerker:
    • The Prince's sealing in the Puzzle is sad, especially with what Simon says.
    Simon: One day, when the Puzzle is solved, you will be free to walk among men. Until that day comes... Sleep, my prince.
    • When you return to the past, you find Egypt has been completely overrun, the Prince's parents are dead, Heishin wouldn't give them a proper burial in a tomb, and everything you knew of your old life is in ruins. The music is also really sad.
  • That One Attack:
    • Raigeki and Crush Card work just as effectively at nuking your playing field as they do an opponent's.
    • Shadow Spell, which reduces the attack of all your in-play monsters by 1000, crippling them unless significantly equipped. The card Cursebreaker can be used to reverse its effects, but having no effect beyond this and being the epitome of Useless Useful Spell, you probably won't have it in your deck, much less having in your hand/on the field when you actually need it.
    • Reverse Trap reverses the effect of equips, leaving you with a crippled monster, wasting your equips, and killing your chance at a comeback if powering up that monster was your only hope to overcoming your opponent's overwhelming forces. The AI placing this trap down can often be what seals your loss in a duel.
    • Swords of Revealing Light, which prevents you from being able to attack for three turns. It can lead to your opponent building up a force or drawing the magic/equips needed to take your monsters out without retaliation. And when trying to grind for good cards, besides making things more tedious, it'll usually extend a duel long enough to kill your chance at getting a S/A POW rank. There are also no cards in this game that can remove Swords from the field any sooner, so you must sit through those three turns every time it's activated.
    • Megamorph, which powers up any monster by 1000 points. If it gets used on an especially powerful monster, the duel is likely over unless the player draws a monster-destroying card or draws their own Megamorph.
    • Dragon Capture Jar. While Pegasus is the only one who uses it consistently enough to be a threat, it can destroy every dragon on your side of the field, including Meteor B. Dragon. This becomes even worse if you're trying to S-Tec him with a strong monster, as the most powerful monsters in the game are dragons.
    • Harpie's Feather Duster, which destroys all trap cards and magic cards your have set on your side of field without any restriction or cost to its user.
  • That One Boss:
    • Seto 2 has plenty of 3000 ATK cards like Metalzoa and Black Luster Soldier, and his strongest monster is the Gate Guardian. The weakest monsters in his arsenal have over 2000 attack, and if you do get something strong he'll Crush Card or Raigeki you. He's also at the end of a difficult labyrinth without the ability to save, meaning if you lose you'll have to fight the Labyrinth Mage again.
    • 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. If given the opportunity, he'll often equip his Gate Guardian to make it even more powerful. If you takes too long to defeat him, he will summon defensive monsters such as Wall Shadow or Millennium Shield to stall the game until he draws another Gate Guardian. If you try to change the terrain from Meadow into Mountain and expecting your Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon to surpass his warrior monsters, unfortunately, Kepura also has Black Skull Dragon, which will gain the terrain boost. Relying on THTD and a couple of buff cards won't gain you victory here, you will need Meteor Black Dragon and other strong destructive cards such as Raigeki or Widespread Ruins.
    • Heishin 2 can be considered on the same level as Seto 2, with the exception that it is nearly impossible to S-Tec him by forcing a deck-out, thanks to him having all five parts of Exodia, which means you would probably lose before Heishin ran out of cards. You can still hope for the best by using a lot of spell cards, though.
    • Seto 3 is also this, being the most difficult opponent in the game, having Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon at an even higher frequency than the final boss and nearly every other extremely powerful monster, as well as a very high frequency of using Raigeki, Shadow Spell, Widespread Ruin, and Harpie's Feather Duster. Plus he has the ability to see your facedown cards and thus can't be bluffed. Also, unlike every other opponent in the game, Priest Seto is smart enough to place Raigeki on the field before placing a monster so he can defeat you on his turn.
    • Pegasus has a chance of having a Meteor B. Dragon as well as three (and sometimes four) Raigeki. He also has Dragon Capture Jars in a game where dragons are your main fighting force. True to the anime, he's also programmed to be able to see what cards are in your hand, as well as what cards you have face down, making him impossible to bluff. On top of that, he gives some of the best magic and traps in the game, meaning you're going to be fighting him a lot in free duel. S-Tecing him can be even more of a pain.
    • Nitemare, the Final Boss of the game, qualifies as well. He has a deck with all of the most powerful monsters in the game, including Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon and Gate Guardian. While he doesn't have any magic or traps in his deck, this serves as a double-edged sword: if you can make a monster capable of destroying the Blue-Eyes Ultimate Dragon, you have just guaranteed yourself a victory no matter how badly you were losing before (as long as you don't make any stupid mistakes). However, his lack of magic and traps means that he can't be stalled out either, as he'll instead summon monsters every turn that can overwhelm the player's defenses. As many speedrunners would attest, a duel with Nitemare will result in either a fast win or a fast loss, and a loss means starting all over again at the beginning of the final gauntlet.

Top