Subject: Rant about Dark Duel Stories' various problems -Pegasus Hello again. For those of you who don't know, Dark Duel Stories is a Gameboy game that attempts to mirror the Duel Monsters card game. It works fairly well, but isn't true to the real game in countless respects: (maybe because it was released far too soon) I. The magic/trap zone is one card big. And it only applies to traps. Magics are activated immediately and then discarded. SORL is still in effect while it's in the graveyard (well for 3 turns anyway). And you can't destroy Field Magic cards (because they're also discarded after they're used). II. The special effects of monsters can only be activated the turn they're put out (or while they're facedown). "Flip" effects are nonexistent. III. Various monsters (Maha Vailo, Lord of D., Jinzo, Jinzo #7, Steel Scorpion, The Fiend Megacyber, Princess of Tsurugi, Griggle, Cannon Soldier, WoTBF, Sangan, Sanga of the Thunder, Kazejin, Suijin, Weather Report, Muka Muka, Shadow Ghoul, Man-eater Bug, Big Eye, Invader of the Throne, Deepsea Warrior, Parasite Paracide, Wall of Illusion, Barrel Dragon, Dream Clown, Thunder Dragon, toon monsters, and others) do not possess their special effects. At least the Princess' pic in DDS is a lot cuter than the real one. IV. Fusion does not require polymerization: playing one of the fusion material above the other fuses them. Fusion decks are nonexistent. BEUD and Gate Guardian are ritual cards. V. Rituals work completely differently: only the ritual card needs to be in your hand, and you must tribute two monsters ON THE FIELD while a THIRD monster (specified on the ritual card) is transformed into the Ritual Monster. e.g. Black Luster Ritual requires you to tribute two monsters and have Gaia the Fierce Knight in play (and not be tributed). Gaia is then changed into Black Luster Soldier. VI. Ritual monsters can be played without the Ritual. Fusion monsters can be played as normal monsters. VII. Cards have "elemental advantages" over each other, e.g. an aqua monster with 300 atk would be able to instantly destroy a pyro monster with 1800 atk. And all Ritual monsters are of a special element called "Devine" that's neutral. VIII. Castle of Dark Illusions has a totally different effect (and name). In DDS, it's the "Castle of D. Magic" and it changes the field to Yami and flips over all face-down monsters. This is kinda cool because it lets you reactivate special effects, but it's not true to the real game so I don't like it (regardless of the strength of my Yami deck in DDS). IX. Giant Soldier of Stone has a special effect that lets it, in essence, destroy all field magic cards in play. X. Tri-Horned Dragon and Serpent Night Dragon are ritual monsters. XI. Rituals are NOT special summons. XII. Toon World isn't required to play Toon cards. XIII. Beast of Talwar is seven stars instead of six and Hannibal Necroservant is Hannibal Necromancer and is five stars instead of four. XIV. King of Yamimakai is 2600/2300 instead of 2000/1530 (or whatever its defence is). XV. Cocoon of Evolution can be played without Larvae or Petit Moth and automatically turns into Great Moth in one turn. Great Moth turns into Perfectly Ultimate (future card? 3500/3000) the turn after. XVI. Great Moth and Perfectly Ultimate can be played as normal monsters (two tributes for 3500 atk, woo). XVII. Thousand-eyes Restrict and Relinquished have totally different effects: Restrict replaces itself with one of the opponent's monsters (which is then destroyed) and raises its ATK and DEF by 1000 points. Relinquished is just a change of heart except that it's a monster card and it destroys itself. XVIII. Equip magic works totally differently: all positive equip magic (including Axe of Despair and Megamorph) raises ATK and DEF by 500 pts, and it can only be raised to a maximum of 1000 points higher. XIX. SORL, Raigeki, Pot of Greed, etc. are restricted to one per deck, BUT many enemies have three copies of those cards. (Including Marik, damn him). Imagine facing a deck with 3 SORL, 3 Raigeki, 3 Change of Heart, and 3 Brain Controls... that's what DDS players have to deal with. XX. Monster Reborn and Shield and Sword don't even exist, among others (MST, Magic Jammer... the list goes on and on). XXI. Metalmorph's only effect is to change Red-eyes and Zoa into their metal forms (albeit this doesn't require their metal forms to actually be in your deck... AND you can play their metal forms as normal monsters). XXII. Dark Elf is a fusion card (Gemini Elf (future card? 4 stars 1900/900) + La Jinn the Mystical Genie) and doesn't require lp loss in order to attack. And Jirai Gumo can attack like a normal monster. Now, this isn't a bad thing, but still... (Note: and Bakura has 3 Jirai Gumos) XXIII. Field Magic actually does what it's supposed to do (give all corresponding monsters a 30% ATK and DEF boost instead of 200 pts, and give certain types of monsters a 30% ATK and DEF decrease). This is a very good thing, but still not true to the REAL card game... XXVI. Mystical Elf has a special effect that allows it to power up BEWD 500 atk and def (and only BEWD). Of course, because of previous statements, doing so puts the Elf in attack mode... XXVII. Harpie Lady powers up Harpie's Pet Dragon 500 pts, and Harpie Lady Sisters powers up Harpie's Pet Dragon 1000 pts. These are the harpies' special effects, not the Dragon's. Oh, and Harpie Lady Sisters is played like a normal monster too (although Elegant Egotist + Harpie Lady still works). XXVIII. Dark Magician Girl (future card, 6 stars 2000/1600) is powered up by the # of Dark Magicians in your hand instead of in play. This effect, again, can only be activated the turn that the DMG is played. XXIX. The "construction" cards are just way cheap. I've already found 5 different combos that produce 4-star monsters with 2000 atk. One of them has 2000 defence as well. XXX. Beastking of the Sand has an effect that does the same thing as Dark Hole. XXXI. Time Wizard's effect is solely to transform Baby Dragon into Thousand Dragon, rather than the Raigeki-like effect it's supposed to have. XXXII. Panther Warrior is six stars and has no effect. (In the show it's four stars and requires a tribute to attack). I'm not sure whether it's released yet (so for future reference, it's 2000/1600). XXXIII. Iron Waist Warrior (future card, 4 stars 100/2600, Yugi should play it in the Battle City tournament) is called Big Shield Gardna. Weird. (and Bakura has 3 of them, the slimeball) XXXIV. Dian Keto the Cure Master heals 5000 lp instead of 1000. Again, this is a good thing, but still not true to the game. XXXV. Trap Master has an odd effect that lets it set Acid Trap Hole as a trap. XXXVI. Horn of Heaven is equip magic. +500 ATK and DEF to "horned monsters except shadow." XXXVII. Tremendous Fire does 1000 lp damage to your opponent but no damage to you. Another good, but still untrue thing. XXXVIII. Change of Heart is permanent (now you see why I'm so P.O.'ed about the unlimited thing). XXXIX. Crush Card only activates for one turn (rather than paralyzing your opponent's deck like in the show). And it's quick-play magic rather than continuous trap. XXXX. Book of Secret Arts doesn't work on Dark Magician. What. The. Heck. Now, these were just the problems with the cards... now the problems with the AI: I. The computer will always attack your face-down monsters in defense mode as long as the ATK of the card they're using to attack is more than a percentage of that card's defense points. (I have reason to believe that percentage is 75%) This means that Seeker (the Rare Hunter who won Red Eyes from Joey) would attack a face-down Mystical Elf using his Man-eater bug. II. The computer will play every magic card in its hand (except Raigeki, Change of Heart, and Brain Control when you have no monsters out). This means that the computer WILL play two SORLs in two consecutive turns if it draws two SORLs (what a waste). This also means that the comp would rather waste two equip magic on an Anthrosaurus (future card? 1000/850, 3 stars) rather than wait to use them on a Bracchio-Raidus the next turn (future card? 2200/1800, 6 stars). III. The computer plays the monster card in its hand with the highest ATK + DEF. So it'll choose a Mystic Horseman(1300/1550) over La Jinn. IV. When using SORL, the comp will tribute a monster on the field to play a 6 or 5-star monster rather than playing another 4-star and waiting to play a 7 or 8-star monster. V. If the comp attacks one of your face-down monsters and you flip it back facedown with Castle of D. Magic, the comp will attack that same monster and lose lp again. VI. The comp will attack one of your face-down monsters rather than a face-up 100-atk monster. VII. The comp will never keep a monster in attack mode but not attack (unless you activated Stop Defense). This means that the comp plays Jirai Gumos in DEFENSE mode when they go first, god. (well, Bakura does anyway. The other duelists don't even HAVE Jirai Gumo) VIII. The comp doesn't use monsters' special effects at all. (e.g. Tristan will play Relinquished in defense mode rather than activating its effect) IX. None of the players have Trap Cards in their decks. If they did, they'd probably use them the same way they use magic cards. In conclusion... if you want an electronic version of the Yugioh card game (no worrying about your little brother bending, ripping, or otherwise destroying your cards) get Eternal Duelist Soul. DDS just does NOT cut it. (There are only 800 different cards in DDS besides the cheapo Construction monsters... false advertisement!) And the fact that you can play awesome monsters like BEUD (4500/3800), Gate Guardian (3750/3400), Meteor Black Dragon (future card? 3500/2000, should be fusion in the real card game involving Meteor Dragon (future card, 1800/2000, 6 stars, piece of junk) + another dragon, possibly Red-eyes), and Perfectly Ultimate (3500/3000) as normal two-tribute monsters is so incredibly powerful that it's just stupid. Comments, Questions, or you want to tell me whether I should keep using Roman Numerals and nested parentheses: qc@fengyuan.com -Pegasus (P.S. some of the later complaints won't make sense unless you've read the earlier ones. So DO bother to read all of them because they're interconnected)