DDS 3:02 post-commentary

Intro
- This is WR speedrun as of March 30, 2018
- To start, this commentary will be very general in discussing this run, as there isn't much value in dissecting each duel. The duels are pretty repetitive and luck-based, and once you understand the general concepts of the game, you can figure out which duels went well just by watching.
- Rules for this game are different than the popular YGO TCG, and they actually precede the TCG. They're a bit more similar to the rules of the PS1 game Forbidden Memories, which is the most popular YGO speedrun
- 800 cards in this game -- mostly normal monsters, a few effect monsters, some magics and traps. These cards can also be found in the TCG, but they often have more complex effects
- Start run by inputting passwords for some of the best cards in the game. Each card has an eight-digit code, which can be found in the bottom-right corner of its real trading card, that you can enter once to add the card to your in-game trunk. No cost for inputting passwords, although each card has a cost to put in your deck -- more on that later

Duel rules:
- Are simple
- 40 cards in a deck, each duelist starts with 5 cards, draws 1 per turn, maximum 5 cards in a hand. Both duelists start at 8000 LP, and you win when your opponent's LP hit 0 -- or when you draw all 5 cards of Exodia
- Just like TCG, can summon one monster per turn and put it in face-up ATK or face-down DEF. 5-6 star monsters require 1 tribute, and 7-8 star monsters require 2 tributes
- Battle system is identical except for one important difference: A monster's alignment is relevant. It's the rock-paper-scissors system featured in FM. There are two sets of alignments. In one, Shadow beats Light, which beats Fiend, which beats Dreams, which beats Shadow. In the other, Forest beats Wind, which beats Earth, which beats Thunder, which beats Aqua, which beats Pyro, which beats Forest. So it's similar to Pokemon. In FM, an alignment advantage boosted your Attack by 500 (or Defense by 500 if in DEF mode), but in this game, you automatically destroy the monster with an inferior alignment. So Kuriboh beats BEWD, Flame Viper beats Perfectly Ultimate Great Moth, etc. There's also a Devine alignment that's neutral against everything, and that's reserved for ritual monsters such as Cosmo Queen.
- Another importance difference from FM is that the fusion system is nerfed considerably. If you make a fusion in your hand, you can't summon the fused monster until the next turn, and if you make a fusion with a monster on the field, you can't attack with it until next turn. So you can only fuse 2 cards together instead of a full hand, and good decks can't just bring out Twin-headed Thunder Dragons all the time.
- On to effect monsters. If a monster has an effect, you have to activate it manually -- there are no continuous effects like Jinzo in the TCG. As example, I often use the effect monster Fiend's Hand in this run. Fiend's Hand's effect destroys itself and the opponent's highest ATK monster, which is useful in both winning and losing positions. You can only activate a monster's effect while it is face-down -- so you can either summon it and activate it immediately, or set it and use it at any point before it gets attacked. Once an effect is activated, a monster can't attack that turn
- Finally, magics and traps. Magic cards also must be activated manually and don't have continuous effects -- with one annoying exception being Swords of Revealing Light, which has a separate check in the code. Most magic cards are equips or monster removals. Different equips will boost different monsters' ATK and DEF by 500 points -- for example, Insect Armor boosts bug-type monsters, and Dark Energy boosts most monsters with a Shadow and Fiend alignment. Monster removals are like Raigeki, which destroys all opposing monsters, or Last Day of Witch, which destroys all opposing Spellcaster-type monsters.
- Traps are the most simplified cards, probably because of the layout on the Game Boy screen has limited space for them. You can only set one trap at a time, and it only lasts for a turn. Traps cannot be activated manually; instead, they're triggered when an opponent attacks -- such as Widespread Ruin destroying any attacking monster -- or uses a certain magic card -- such as Reverse Trap decreasing a monster's Attack when an equip is used on it.

Progressing in the game:
- Now that I've put in a few passwords, I can start dueling. You progress in this game by beating each duelist 5 times. Once you've beaten all the duelists in a tier 5 times -- so this stage is Tristan, Joey, Mai, Mako and Yugi -- you can advance to the next tier. There are four tiers in the main game, plus a fifth one that unlocks after the credits
- Tristan is the easiest duelist, so I take him on first. Every Tier 1 duelist is pretty easy -- it's almost impossible to lose a duel.

Deck-building strategies
- As I mentioned before, each card has a cost. This matters because you have a duelist level and deck capacity. Your duelist level starts at 15 and goes up by 1.6 (rounded down) after every duel. So 15, then 16, then 18, etc. If a card's cost exceeds your duelist level, you can't put it in. So since there are only 80 duels in the run, you'll never be able to add cards with the maximum cost of 255 like Raigeki. That's fine, because we don't really have the deck capacity for those anyway. Deck capacity starts at 400, and you have 40 cards, so on average, each card has only a cost of 10. Costs for normal monster cards are just its Attack + its Defense divided by 100. So you're looking at a deck full of monsters with less than 1000 Attack. Deck capacity goes up by 5 after every completed duel -- losses included
- Fortunately, it's pretty easy to fuse weaker monsters with each other to make stronger ones with 1200-2100 Attack. Some of the passwords I entered were for easily fusable monsters, such as dragons and females. Cards like Magician of Faith are really useful because they have three advantages -- low cost (7), easily fusable, and good alignment for the mid to late game.
- So throughout the run, I'll discuss some of my deck edits in more depth. Obviously, as my duelist level and deck capacity increases, I'll be able to add stronger cards, and duels will go a bit faster. However, my opponents will have stronger decks, so it will be more likely to have a really slow duel or lose one.

Dueling strategies:
- With the exception of the very early game, where you have to rely on fusions, the main strategy is just summoning 2-3 high-Attack monsters -- these are called beatsticks -- and brute forcing your way to victory. A lot of duels are just 5 direct attacks from beatsticks, or 4 if you draw Jirai Gumo (2200 ATK) and an 1800+ Attack beatstick. You can also speed up duels by setting monster removal traps -- I put in five to start -- as those will decrease the number of attacks and/or turns you need to win. An attack is roughly 5 seconds, and a turn is 8 seconds at best, so traps can speed things up considerably
- Now, because of the Alignment system, you have to be careful with your beatsticks depending on your opponent. For example, Jirai Gumo has the Forest alignment, and Joey and Yugi both run 3 copies of Flame Viper, which is a Pyro. So you want to avoid attacking a face-down monster with Jirai unless you know that monster is a bit weaker -- more on that later. Of course, you can also set a trap to protect a monster with an alignment disadvantage, but most opponents have a diverse set of alignments, and their summoning AI doesn't depend on your monsters, so you might guess wrong and waste your trap.
- So a lot of strategies depend on knowing your opponent's deck and their AI. If you don't adapt for your opponent, you could make a costly mistake -- and I did that at least once in this run

Duelist AI
- From what we can tell, every duelist has the same AI, which simplifies the learning process
- None of the duelists have traps
- Most duelists don't have many magics, so the most relevant AI is which monster the CPU will summon. For that, the CPU plays the monster with the highest combined ATK or DEF. If there are ties, it plays the rightmost monster in their hand. So if (CURRENT DUELIST) plays (MONSTER) from the leftmost slot, you know the rest of their cards are weaker. But if the next card they play is from the same slot in their hand, they topdecked it, so you have very little information.
- AI will tribute if it can, so for the opponents with 5+ tribute monsters, you often want to play around a tribute summon, especially if you can set a monster with an alignment advantage over that summon

(Run recap: Good luck except Yugi Dark Hole troll, questionable decisions on fusions (5-6 per fusion is relevant), Hourglass drop is nice, sub-57 is very good)

(Narrating duels: Revisit concepts you described, explain thought process)

Drops (discuss during downtime):
- Since you can enter passwords for free, and it only takes about 14 seconds to put one in, good drops aren't essential to the run. However, you generally get a few good ones, and your route should have some flexibility for them. The tricky part is that your deck capacity won't allow the best drops at all times. Sometimes I'll have a plan for a specific drop -- for example, in this run I got an Hourglass drop, which is the same cost as Morphing Jar, so I just removed Morphing Jar for it -- but other times you'll just need to improvise, as I did in Tier 3.
- (Difficulty of routing deck capacity in general; any time you want to change one thing in the route, everything else must be revisited, and many menus change too)

Other points:
- Resetting after 5th wins
- Discuss Tier 3 RNG