History YMMV / YuGiOhDuelLinks

** The very first Goha Rush Festival was utterly plagued by Luke players running pure Dragon decks with his infamous Dragonic Resonance Skill. Dragonic Resonance is an obscenely powerful skill in early ''DL Rush'' as it only requires the user to only have Dragon Monsters in their deck and control a face-up EARTH Effect Monster with either 1500 or more ATK or 1300 or more DEF, a pitifully easy statline to hit considering there are a whopping four different cards that meet these conditions. Its effect to grant any two monsters with 2300 ATK or less that you control an extra 500 ATK is disgustingly potent for breaking boards as boss monsters top out at 2500 ATK, and it also has the added bonus of boosting the target monsters' Levels by 4, which allows you to dodge conditionals and restrictions that limit what you can do with lower level monsters such as "Sportsdragon Pitcher"/"Sportsdragon Slugger" or "Music Princess's Recital".

** Launch ''Rush Duel'' essentially boiled down to a race of "whoever draws [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Multistrike_Dragon_Dragias Multistrike Dragon Dragias]] first wins". Dragias is one of the best monsters in the game even in modern ''Rush'', being a 2500 ATK beater that can attack twice if it destroys a monster by battle. It has a great natural statline that is only rivaled by four other monsters, and due to the lack of decent monster removal like [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Dark_Revelation Dark Revelation]], once Dragias hits the field it is very difficult to get off. Double attacking is an extraordinarily potent quality in ''Rush'' as it is capable of breaking stalemates of your opponent setting three monsters and passing by punching through a defensive line, which can be further accentuated if you manage to get [[https://yugipedia.com/wiki/Pierce! Pierce!]].

** "Apologems" is used every time there's server maintenance or just said at even the slightest annoyance on the game as a way to try to get free gems.

* TaintedByThePreview: The announcement of Rush Duel format coming to the game was initially seen as an interesting addition by some parts of the playerbase...until the official presentation for it at Tokyo Game Show 2023. Konami not only announced that Rush Duels will use the same currency (gems) as Speed Duels, but the first Main Box of the new world will entirely be focused on Rush Duel content, leaving Speed Duel format in a much longer, more stagnating metagame as well as a possibly longer content drought, as Konami is ''very'' selective about what cards are allowed to come to Speed Duel format. It's enough to where now some believe that splitting the playerbase between Speed and RUsh formats so heavily could result in the game shutting down like ''Cross Duel''.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The way how Sugoroku/Solomon Muto was implemented in ''Duel Links'' received a lot of complaints, due to the lack of good event rewards and level-up rewards he would bring, his lackluster skills, how his Duel scenes and Event Story scenes are too similar to each other, his event bringing very little to the narrative, and his only summoning animation being for Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which is also used for four other Legendary Duelists (the two versions of the Kaiba brothers). He also isn't a JokeCharacter like Scud and Tristan, which is also why his reception is so harsh. While the lack of new summoning animations is justifiable, some people still wished The Legendary Exodia Incarnate would have received one, since Solomon has voice lines and skills associated with Exodia cards and the unlockable playmat and sleeves that come with him has The Legendary Exodia Incarnate on it, and after Blue-Eyes it's the next best thing to be a Signature Monster for him. Speaking of voice lines, some fans have expressed their disappointment about him not having voice lines for newer support cards of some of the classic monsters, like Gaia or Black Luster Soldier). The player base feel that the inclusion of Solomon is that of a "filler character" who was shoehorned into the game because DM World gets one every year, but given how already full DM World is, this has led to some people wish to move past DM World and concentrate on other worlds that aren't DSOD World or 5D's World.

* EpilepticTrees: The fact that the Paradox Brothers, who were not able to be challenged at Jump Fiesta like Yami Bakura, Yami Marik, and Pegasus, were added opens up endless possibilities for other characters from the manga or anime to be included as well. Spinoffs are also speculated, as Para and Dox appeared in ''Anime/YuGiOhGX'' as well as the original series. This was later confirmed with the addition of characters like Arkana and Bonz and a new ''GX'' world.

** Level 50 Celina is armed with a ''full power'' Lunalight deck, including all the cards that players don't have access to. This makes it really easy for her to bring out her Fusion monsters (particularly, her Leo Dancer, which is an untargetable and indestructible 3500 ATK monster) and steamroll your deck. Even at Level 40 her deck is almost at full power. Most players have to bring Extra Gate, an unsearchable Spell card (so you better hope you open with it or get it before she summons any Fusion) to counter her deck and farm her drops.

** Cards introduced after the ARC-V era: A good chance to use some cards that weren't good enough in that era? Too broken for Duel Links, which doesn't mesh with slower demanding playstyles, such as Cyber Angels and Fur Hires? Or just terrible due to being part of an incomplete archetype, especially if the boss monsters are Link Monsters, an Extra Deck monster type not introduced in Duel Links yet?[[note]]The Mekk-Knight, Orcust, and World Legacy archetypes are offenders of the latter category.[[/note]]

** There is also the inclusion of ''ARC-V'' era archetypes in recent boxes. One side is happy that they can play the cards sooner, while the other side feels that it would actively harm contents for a future ''ARC-V'' world, as now important ''ARC-V'' characters don't have many cards left from their respective archetype, that can be used as drops and level-up rewards.[[note]]An example of this is Lunalight, as most of their cards were released in Judgment Force and Celina, a prominent character in ''ARC-V'', uses a Lunalight Deck; however, there were still enough left over for Celina to have primarily Lunalight cards as rare drops and level-up rewards when she was added to the game.[[/note]]

** The ZEXAL world does NOT play around. The AI has been reported at numerous levels using very dangerous Xyz monsters such as Tornado Bird, Castiel the Skyblaster, Evilswarms and full-powered Madolche with their hilariously broken Madolche Salon and Puddingcess combo. The AI also is able to make multiple, complex chains of moves with the cards in mind. Even Level 33 Standard Duelists, which are still easy to beat in other worlds, shows a clear improvement in Zexal world and Arc-V world, when they are using Xyz or Pendulum-based decks, cleverly using monster removal and stacking ATK boosting effect to easily clear your field and inflict large damage.

** In 2021 a reddit user under the name Elfoman became one after a string of successful leaks of the next main and mini boxes (For context, Konami changed the way updates work in a way that boxes cannot be datamined anymore). Because of this he rose to the level of master hacker in the eyes of the community.

** Jaden being the true master of magicians after an event gave him a Skill that belonged to Yami Yugi and related to Dark Magician.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The way how Sugoroku/Solomon Muto was implemented in ''Duel Links'' received a lot of complaints, due to the lack of good event rewards and level-up rewards he would bring, his lackluster skills, how his Duel scenes and Event Story scenes are too similar to each other, his event bringing very little to the narrative, and his only summoning animation being for Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which is also used for four other Legendary Duelists (the two versions of the Kaiba brothers). He also isn't a JokeCharacter like Scud and Tristan, which is also why his reception is so harsh. While the lack of new summoning animations is justifiable, some people still wished The Legendary Exodia Incarnate would have received one, since Solomon has voice lines and skills associated with Exodia cards and the unlockable playmat and sleeves that come with him has The Legendary Exodia Incarnate on it, and after Blue-Eyes it's the next best thing to be a Signature Monster for him. Speaking of voice lines, some fans have expressed their disappointment about him not having voice lines for newer support cards of some of the classic monsters, like Gaia, Black Luster Soldier or Summoned Skull (in fact he lacks voice lines for the latter two entirely). The player base feel that the inclusion of Solomon is that of a "filler character" who was shoehorned into the game because DM World gets one every year, but given how already full DM World is, this has led to some people wish to move past DM World and concentrate on other worlds that aren't DSOD World or 5D's World.

** There is also the inclusion of ''ARC-V'' era archetypes in recent boxes. One side is happy that they can play the cards sooner, while the other side feels that it would actively harm contents for a future ''ARC-V'' world, as now important ''ARC-V'' characters don't have many cards left from their respective archetype, that can be used as drops and level-up rewards.[[note]]An example of this is Lunalight, as most of their cards were released in Judgment Force and Celina, a prominent character in ''ARC-V'', uses a Lunalight Deck.[[/note]]

** Yuya's summoning chant for Odd-Eyes Raging Dragon is delivered in such a happy tone that people don't feel the hype they're supposed to feel, since in the anime, Yuya has always said the chant while he's [[SuperpoweredEvilSide Awakened]]. The lack of Yuya's Awakened state in this game also puts off some people from the immersion because Odd-Eyes Raging Dragon is supposed to represent Yuya's blazing and violent rage.

** The 5D’s characters have their ace cards (save Leo, whose box just gave players his Power Tool Dragon, though eventually crept up when Life Stream Dragon was added) locked behind a Skill that adds two Tuners and one copy of the ace dragon to the Extra Deck. These Skills screw up deck consistency (unless you build around it) and force players to fatten up their decks for no reason. Trudge's Skill is even worse because it removes all OTHER cards in the Extra Deck just to run one Goyo Guardian, making it worthless. While Jutte Fighter itself is fine for a generic Tuner monster, players still don't see this as a fair enough trade-off. At least, until Konami updated Trudge's Skill in May 2019 to no longer remove all the other Extra Deck cards. Later skills that give ace monsters at least provide other benefits than just adding the cards to your deck.

** During the WCS campaign of 2023, the widespread of Orcust decks became a common complaint, as the pure variant was not only very strong and didn't require any character-specific skills to be played (although Ishizu and Keith were commonly used because their skills), but its engine was generic enough that the Orcust engine was used in all kinds of different decks, e.g. Odd-Eyes/Pendulum Magician, Onomatopoeia, HERO, Code Talker, etc. Also, during that campaign, Konami asked the players to guess which characters would be most commonly used during that campaign, with the vast majority picking Yuya, Yuto and Yugo because of the immense popularity of Odd-Eyes/Pendulum Magician decks and Speedroid decks at that time.

* TheyWastedAPerfectlyGoodCharacter: The way how Sugoroku/Solomon Muto was implemented in ''Duel Links'' received a lot of complaints, due to the lack of good event rewards and level-up rewards he would bring, his lackluster skills, how his Duel scenes and Event Story scenes are too similar to each other, his event bringing very little to the narrative, and his only summoning animation being for Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which is also used for four other Legendary Duelists (the two versions of the Kaiba brothers). He also isn't a JokeCharacter like Scud and Tristan, which is also why his reception is so harsh. While the lack of new summoning animations is justifiable, some people still wished The Legendary Exodia Incarnate would have received one, since Solomon has voice lines and skills associated with Exodia cards and the unlockable playmat and sleeves that come with him has The Legendary Exodia Incarnate on it, and after Blue-Eyes it's the next best thing to be a Signature Monster for him. The player base feel that the inclusion of Solomon is that of a "filler character" who was shoehorned into the game because DM World gets one every year, but given how already full DM World is, this has led to some people wish to move past DM World and concentrate on other worlds that aren't DSOD World or 5D's World.

** Not the character himself, but more the way how Sugoroku/Solomon Muto was implemented in ''Duel Links'' received a lot of complains, due to the lack of good event rewards and level-up rewards he would bring, his lackluster skills, how his Duel scenes and Event Story scenes are too similar to each other, his event bringing very little to the narrative, and his only summoning animation being for Blue-Eyes White Dragon, which is also used for four other Legendary Duelists (the two versions of the Kaiba brothers). He also isn't a JokeCharacter like Scud and Tristan, which is also why his reception is so harsh. While the lack of new summoning animations is justifiable, some people still wished The Legendary Exodia Incarnate would have received one, since Solomon has voice lines and skills associated with Exodia cards and the unlockable playmat and sleeves that come with him has The Legendary Exodia Incarnate on it, and after Blue-Eyes it's the next best thing to be a Signature Monster for him. The player base feel that the inclusion of Solomon is that of a "filler character" who was shoehorned into the game because DM World gets one every year, but given how already full DM World is, this has led to some people wish to move past DM World and concentrate on other worlds that aren't DSOD World or 5D's World.

** Most of the SignatureMon-themed card sleeves and playmats require you to play as the corresponding character 100 times or summon said monsters ''hundred times'', respectively, to unlock them. The progress can be quickened if you own multiple copies of them, but since most of them are UR, and since ''5D's'' World, almost all of the Signature Monsters have to be bought from boxes, this can get very costly. For many players, they will either only have one copy or have to rely on skills that add those Signature Monsters to their decks. While many of modern Signature Monsters are relatively easy to summon, difficult to summon monsters like Water Dragon or Elemental HERO Divine Neos makes unlocking their playmats not easy. What makes this worse is that monsters with restricted summoning conditions as well as Extra Deck Monsters ''have'' to be summoned by their preferred methods to make it count for the mission progress, so cheating them out without summoning them the proper way will not help you to speed up the progress. Monsters that do not have summoning conditions, however, can be summoned in any way and it will count to the progression of the mission.

** Almost no-one expected Lumis and Umbra to be added as characters, as most of their cards had already been added to the game and they hadn't appeared during the first Battle City event. This ended up being a pleasant surprise for most however as there was some genuine effort behind their inclusion, with all new sprites for the duo (since they hadn't appeared in Tag Force unlike every other playable character) and a nice animation if they to summon Masked Beast Des Gardius, [[AnimationBump who is notably more animated than the other monsters]].