LogFAQs > #956404212

So bane brought this up and we're halfway through, so now feels like a fine time to discuss this about why exactly I am very much a "back in my day" person when it comes to yugioh, about the extra summon types specifically.

For starters, rituals and fusions for the most part require a spell card to initiate the special summon. Which tbh, that plus the materials required used to be too much of a hassle in the early days, when you had things like summoned skull available for 1 tribute. But still, the concept is the same as tribute summoning: you're consolidating monsters into a bigger better monster, this is fine. You never really saw moves afaik where you're taking 5 minutes on your turn getting a full field of 5 monsters in one turn (aside from stuff like ultimate offering which eventually got banned). Generally it was about who could utilize their normal summon more effectively.

When synchro summoning hit, it marked the advent of the mindset of abusing the hell out of special summoning, and this is the crux of the issue I have with the direction the game has gone; straight up marginalizing imo core parts of the game because another part of the game is so good. Things like blackwings (just as a notable example) began getting released with effects that would allow them easy special summoning to go into synchro summoning. 1 normal summon per turn stopped being a limiting factor when you only needed the 1 to go into all sorts of special summon plays. Not only that, but the extra deck monsters started seeing more impressive effects to where you were often getting more than the sum of your parts. Alongside this, positive graveyard effects started becoming more commonplace too, so sometimes (one monster on this list in fact, to be revealed later) could just do something good for you after you "sacrificed" it for a synchro summon. The only restriction is that the monsters combined had to equal the level, but there is no shortage of varying levels of tuners that this basically is a non-issue, and you can include different synchros in your extra deck so you can have one ready for any occasion.

XYZs took it a step further and had even fewer restrictions; now the monsters just had to be the same level, you didn't even have to have a tuner. YOu could just take any 2 level x monsters and turn them into a great monster without the need for any sort of conduit or anything. So between how easy it got to summon these newer types of monsters, and the ever power-creeping effects they were given, the game shifted to the extra deck completely. And because of these great monster effects, trap cards mostly fell by the wayside. I think it is a problem personally when one of the phases of your game (the battle phase in this case) and an entire third of your card types (traps) is rendered kind of irrelevant by how powerful your monster effects are.

I never paid or cared to pay attention to how pendulums work so I will skip them, but links took it EVEN farther, not even requiring the same level monsters anymore. Every one of them is different but there are plenty that are just "2+ monsters" or something like that, that you can then use that monster to go into other link monsters and huge combos.

I think the most interesting aspect of any competitive game is interaction with the opponent, and I think synchros/xyzs/links take away from that and are more focused on just pulling off as many combos in your own deck as you can. It is no surprise that in just about all the major card games I've played (Magic, HS, YGO), there are always problem decks that do well because they lock your opponent out of interacting. A game where both players first turns are "Draw, set a trap, summon monster" in 30 seconds is vastly more interesting to me, and fun, than being the first player to set up your unbreakable board in the first turn with "Draw, summon monster, special summon, link summon, link summon, graveyard effect, search the deck, etc." I think this is one thing that, despite having introduced synchros and XYZs into the game, duel links does very well because they straight up removed the main phase 2, which condenses turns and makes you really consider if you're ready to hit the battle phase, and that's why battle traps and other battle phase shenanigans work so well over there, because if you pop one and it's effective, your opponent doesn't get a whole main phase 2 to reset their board.

Beyond that, another gripe I have is that rituals and fusions make sense thematically. You are sacrificing something in a ritual, or fusing 2 monsters together (Like dark magician girl dragon knight, or meteor black dragon) and usually they will fit the theme of what you're playing. IE if you fuse a warrior and a fire monster, you're getting a flame swordsman. But with synchros, tuners come in all shapes and sizes and synchros usually don't require anything but generic materials, same with XYZs. The result being you can use say, a spellcaster and a warrior and end up with a Red Dragon Archfiend. It really sucks on duel links to see someone's extra deck adn they're playing a spellcaster deck and their extra deck is like, Dragons, Mechs, Warriors, etc. I just don't like it thematically.

So there you go, that's my "get off my lawn" speech. If you like the way the game is played now, that is perfectly fine and you are welcome to it, it's just not for me. TL;DR: There's too much focus on the extra deck because there are too many extra deck monsters that are too strong, and this focus has rendered several core principles of the game obsolete like battle phase stuff and normal summoning among them. I like the old days better where turns were not so overpowering, and you really had to whiff several turns in a row before you got yourself into an unwinnable situation, rather than not having a negate the one turn your opponent pops off and now you can't break their board.

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I'm a greener egg than the eggs from dr. seuss