Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories FAQ

Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories FAQ

Q: What are you trying to do?
A: Beat Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories as quickly as possible without using card duplication. FM uses the same cards as the Yu-Gi-Oh TCG but has different rules.

Q: What rules are different?
A: The main one is that you must play exactly one card per turn. However, you can combine cards (including magics and traps) to make stronger ones. A single summon is often a combination of 3-5 cards from your hand. At the start of each turn, you draw until your hand has 5 cards. Because of this, it's often useful to "toss" less useful cards. Also, high-level monsters do not require tributes to summon, so cards such as Blue-eyes Ultimate Dragon (4500 ATK) and Gate Guardian (3750) and are nearly unbeatable without magics and traps.

Q: What are you playing on?
A: ePSXe, an emulator for PS1 games.

Q: What is the world record?
A: 3:15:05 by WindsSunrise1.

Q: What is your goal time?
A: Just a PB would be nice for now. Aiming for a lower time would require taking risks that decrease my chance of finishing at all. I'll get there eventually.

Q: This game has a ton of RNG, right?
A: Yeah, it makes Pokemon look really tame. An average run probably takes 6-7 hours with perfect execution, and a god run finishes in less than 3 hours. The main cause of this variance is the difficulty of the late-game duels. You can't consistently beat the likes of Heishin 2 and Seto 3 without spending 4-5 hours farming, and of course it's just faster to spend minimal time farming, try to get god RNG, and reset if you don't get it.

Q: What makes the late-game duels so hard?
A: The AI cheats. The toughest opponents have 16-20 cards in their hand, even though the board only shows 5, and even weaker opponents have 8-14. The effect is massive; for example, if Seto 3 had a 5-card hand with 3 BEUDs in his deck, he would have a 24% chance of drawing one. In reality, he's 57% to draw one, and he'll always play the strongest monster available. Also, the final 6 fights must be done in succession without saving. With an average deck at the 3-hour mark, each try at the final 6 has about a 2% success rate.

Q: So the strategy is just to get lucky?
A: Yes and no. While any deck that can be obtained in a few hours requires amazing luck to beat the game, proper routing and execution save a ton of time. The main strategy is to fill your deck with cards that support Twin-headed Thunder Dragon (2800 ATK). These include Dragon and Thunder cards that fuse to make THTD and magic cards that boost its ATK/DEF by 500. Having the right distribution is important; while magics are necessary to win harder duels, they don't speed up the easier duels, and they're much harder to obtain. Both your starting deck and opponents' drops are random, so you must adjust your route throughout the run to give yourself the best chance to finish it quickly.

Q: Why farm for cards when the endgame is all luck?
A: Two reasons: 1) Farming allows every duel, not just the hard duels, to be completed faster. Think of it like fighting an optional trainer in Pokemon to save turns on later fights. 2) The first 60-90 minutes of farming are really efficient. You're mostly replacing bad cards in your deck, rather than trying to win a specific card, so each duel has a decent chance of giving a decent drop. Also, you get star chips for winning a duel, and several useful cards cost 55 star chips or fewer. Once you've purchased these cards, star chips don't help as much.

Q: Why are you farming Rex for so long?
A: You win star chips really quickly because it's easy to earn the top rank (S-POW), and I almost always want to buy Umi (55 chips) for the late game. Also, he gives a variety of good cards that speed up the world tournament and later farming duels. Falling behind in a tournament duel can waste a lot of time because opponents will play stronger cards when they have the edge (fusions, Raigeki, Swords of Revealing Light).

Q: What do you look for in a starting deck?
A: The main requirement is an equip that works on THTD. That can be Dark Energy, Beast Fangs, Invigoration, Dragon Treasure or Horn of Light. It's about 20% to get one of those. I'd also like to see Raigeki, Umi, at least 1 Dragon, at least 1 Thunder, and good early-game fusion material, but I'll settle for slightly less. You always start with exactly one equip magic, one field magic, one of Dark Hole/Raigeki, and 37 monsters.

Q: What are the icons on the left?
A: From top to bottom: number of dragons, thunders, equips, fields, traps, Meteor B. Dragons and Megamorphs. Runners rarely farm for the latter two because they're really hard to get, but they're the best obtainable cards in the game.