Video Game / Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel

Yu-Gi-Oh! Cross Duel was a Turn-Based Strategy Card Battle Game in the Yu-Gi-Oh! series, developed by Konami for iOS and Android devices. The game soft-launched in Canada, the Netherlands, and in Hong Kong on July 7th, 2022, with a full worldwide release on September 5, 2022.

The story of the game begins when Seto Kaiba announces to the world that he and his company, KaibaCorp, have invented a new style of dueling called "Cross Duel", and to that end, Kaiba issues a challenge to elite duelists across the world to conquer the Cross Duel. As one of the lucky invited, you are thrust into the world of Cross Duel, a virtual reality stadium called "Virtual Battle City", and must now team up with and challenge familiar faces from across the Yu-Gi-Oh! multiverse in pursuit of the title of "King of Games".

Unlike most modern Yu-Gi-Oh! video games, Cross Duel only vaguely resembles traditional Yu-Gi-Oh!, with players pit against each other in 4-player free-for-all or 2v2 tag battle duels, or 4 players cooperating against a powerful raid boss in Raid Duels. Players are linked to each other via three Monster Zones, which are connected to other players via tracks on the field. During each Main Phase, players draw a card to add to their hand, upon which they can Summon monsters and set Traps on the field that are activated when Monsters interact with them. The Main Phase is followed by the Battle Phase, where players can play Spell Cards, then Monsters summoned to the field begin to move on their designated tracks towards their opponents. If a monster encounters another monster, they will battle by subtracting each others' applicable ATK/DEF stat from both combatants; a monster with 0 ATK/DEF remaining is destroyed, while a surviving monster uses its remaining stats for the next battle. If a monster approaches a player's empty Monster Zone, they will attack directly, inflicting damage to their Life Points while adding their Life Points to your own. The ultimate goal of each Duel is to have the highest LP after either a set turn limit or at the end of a turn in which a player's LP hit 0.

The game features appearances by characters from the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime franchise, spanning all series up to Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS. Players can ally with these characters and join them in 1-Player Mode, teaming up with them to tackle their unique stories in Tag Battles. New cards can also be acquired from a gacha, whereupon they can be powered up by teaching them skills to bolster your deck and unlock newer, more potent strategies and combinations.

On March 28, 2023, Konami announced that the game would shut down effective September 4, 2023. An event was held for players to obtain an icon and Gems in Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel based on the number of days they logged in to Cross Duel.

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This game features examples of:

• Armor-Piercing Attack: Monsters with the Pierce ability can deal a direct attack immediately after destroying a monster in DEF Position if that DEF Position monster is in front of another player.
• Artificial Stupidity: The Tag Duel AI seems to be programmed to use battle position-changing Spells (like Block Attack and Enemy Controller) as badly as possible. They'll more often than not use those cards to foil an attempt at a direct attack by themselves or the player by changing a low-ATK enemy monster to Defense Position, or simply switches a monster into the position with the higher points and thus completely losing a battle that would otherwise be an easy stomp. Same goes for Sword and Shield, which the AI treats as always being a negative effect even when switching a monster's stats simply makes it stronger in its current position. Taking these cards out of a deck given to a tag partner is heavily recommended as a result.
• Asteroids Monster: The "Storage" ability first used by VW-Tiger Catapult and XYZ-Dragon Cannon puts their summon materials in storage after they are summoned; when the monster is destroyed, the stored materials return to your hand, ready to be summoned again on the next turn.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Raid bosses can have weak points that can be attacked by the player the weak point is facing, allowing their monster to deal bonus damage.
• Auto-Revive: The Reincarnation skill allows a monster to return to the owner's hand when destroyed, but only once as its skills are then negated. Elemental HERO Neos's unique skill is an enhanced version of this which allows him to return infinitely, and after reviving at least once, he gains Speedy Summon (can be summoned for 1 less Tribute at the cost of 1000 ATK/DEF) and, with the upgraded skill, Superspeed, allowing him to get back into the action even faster after dying. Stardust Dragon also deserves special mention for giving Reincarnation to all your Level 3 or lower monsters for as long as it's in play with its Master Skill, allowing for We Have Reserves levels of attrition.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Just like in the card game, Exodia the Forbidden One has a skill that lets it gain an Instant-Win Condition: while in play, it has a counter that increases at the start of the Battle Phase if you drew a Normal Monster that turn, then at the end of the Battle Phase, you win if the counter is at 5. However, having to use Normal Monsters means you don't get to enjoy the benefits of monster skills while your opponents do, and it takes at least a whole five turns (and that's if you don't lose a turn on the win-con by drawing a Spell or Trap) to complete the win condition. Given that duels end automatically after eight turns, there's a very real chance that the duel has been decided before then. And of course, when you pull out an instant-win card during a four-player free-for-all, you're very much making yourself a target for three people that probably have better cards than you.
• Bait-and-Switch: The cutscene for unlocking Luke as a partner has him apparently declaring the player to be his perfect tag partner unprompted. However, it soon becomes apparent that he's actually talking to himself and planning to make himself his own tag partner until the player interrupts.
• Boring, but Practical: While Special Skills can give high-rarity monsters various powerful and unique effects, it's still possible to just stick them with normal Skills and use them like any other monster if its Special Skill doesn't benefit your deck. Exodia the Forbidden One is a particularly notable example; while its instant-win Skill is Awesome, but Impractical, it's still played frequently for the non-unique ATK Support skill, which buffs all your other monsters on summon while Exodia itself provides protection against attacking monsters.
• Boss-Arena Idiocy: Zaborg the Thunder Monarch has a very high HP pool for a raid boss and no weak points, but also starts with four crystals in play that will deal huge damage to the boss when destroyed; when all four are gone, Zaborg will also be stunned and become fully vulnerable. However, the crystals also have high health, requiring multiple monster attacks to break.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Skills have different icon colors depending on their function: pink denotes Special and Master Skills (which are unique to a monster), blue icons are buffs, red skills are offensive skills that debuff enemies or deal damage, yellow is for skills with non-statistical benefits, white is for immunity skills, purple indicates Raid Skills, and black is for negative skills applied as debuffs.
• Counterspell: Traps like Shield Handler or Riryoku Field function this way, reacting to certain effects by giving your affected monsters immunity to those effects and thus causing the effects that triggered them to fizzle.
• Discard and Draw: Certain monsters have Special Skills that give them incredibly powerful attributes. However, equipping these skills may turn them into a different card type, such as a Ritual, Fusion, Synchro, Xyz, or Link monster, which are more difficult to summon compared to Tribute Summoning. Certain cards, like "Blue-Eyes White Dragon", "Elemental HERO Neos", "Odd-Eyes Pendulum Dragon", "Sevens Road Magician", and "Multistrike Dragon Dragias", are not saddled with this limitation, but their own drawback lies in not being able to return to the hand if destroyed.
• Field Power Effect: Certain skills and card effects can convert Lanes into Terrain, giving monsters with the appropriate skills a stat boost and enabling various other effects.
• Flavor Text: Monsters that would traditionally be Effect Monsters start as vanillas in this game until they are taught Skills. Much like Normal Monsters in the real card game, they are given lore text here, much of which is unique to Cross Duel.
• Flunky Boss: The Monarchs (which serve as the bosses of Raid Duel mode) will summon their respective Vassals to harass players in battle.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Red Dragon Archfiend and Summoned Skull have unique skills whose effects apply to all Defense Position monsters on the field. Note that this includes themselves, meaning that it's possible to make a player's Red Dragon Archfiend self-destruct by simply using Block Attack on it. Similarly, Trickstar Candina's unique skill will burn the player that summoned her if they use Spells or Traps as it applies to all players.
• Later-Installment Weirdness: Cross Duel has very little in common with the standard Yu-Gi-Oh! card games or modern games that mostly serve as simulators, bringing to mind the older, more experimental video games from Konami's early relationship with the franchise.
• Limited Move Arsenal: Monsters can unlock up to 5 slots for equipping skills. However, in 4-player Duels, Ace Monsters can only use up to 3 skills and other monsters are limited to 1. If you equipped more skills than you're allowed to use, only the leftmost will take effect.
• Magikarp Power:
  • Focus decks are based on this, as most monsters with Focus start out relatively weak (including the Ace of the strategy, Number 17: Leviathan Dragon, whose 2000 ATK is paltry for a monster that requires 2 materials). However, the Focus skill increases both ATK and DEF on the user every turn, and Leviathan Dragon not only grants Focus to all your monsters but also increases the stat gain with its Master Skill, allowing for massive point gains across the board.
  • Wizardry grants your monster ATK and DEF every time you play a Spell, which can result in an unassuming monster suddenly getting explosive stat growth if its controller happens to have some spells in hand and then proceeding to dominate its lane.
  • Similarly to Wizardry, Cohesion buffs the user's ATK and DEF each time you summon a monster, allowing you to build up huge threats by just Zerg Rushing your opponents.
• Microtransactions: You can pull new cards from an in-game gacha, which, of course, also accepts real money.
• Ms. Fanservice : While Asuka/Alexis was always this due to her revealing uniform but this game also has her breasts jiggle during her summoning cyber blader.
• Multiplayer-Only Item:
  • 4-player matches start with a Bonus Card in the middle of the field for players to fight over, with the first to reach it with a monster (or if multiple players reach it simultaneously, the one whose monster survives the scuffle) getting to use it. The cards obtained this way (such as Dark Hole, Mirror Force, and Monster Reborn) are Purposely Overpowered and cannot be put into a deck, and thus cannot be used in other modes.
  • Raid Skills are very powerful compared to regular skills, but only take effect in Raid Duels where you're fighting a boss with tens of thousands of hit points.
• Mythology Gag:
  • When summoning an Ace Monster, the monster's stats will be displayed on-screen using the appropriate animation from its respective anime series. For example, summoning "Blue-Eyes White Dragon" will use the stat display from the original Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, while summoning "Sevens Road Magician" will use the one from SEVENS. If the monster isn't associated with any series, it uses a default animation matching the aesthetic of Cross Duel.
  • Quite a few Special Skills and Master Skills have some reference to their original effects or their support cards. For example, Dark Magician's Master Skill dealing 300 damage to all opponents each time its owner plays a Spell brings to mind one of its upgraded forms in the card game, Dark Eradicator Warlock, whose effect dealt 1000 damage each time a Normal Spell was played.
    • One of the skills Winged Kuriboh can learn is Curse, which prevents the monster that destroys it from dealing battle damage, similar to its own effect in the card game.
    • In the absence of their signature 200 LP burn damage effects, the "Trickstar" archetype instead revolves around the Snipe skill, which emulates their effect in the card game by dealing 200 damage to the opponent on the opposite end of the track they are summoned to. However, Trickstar Candina does have a unique skill that replicates her effect in the card game (deals 200 damage to any player that activates a Spell or Trap).
  • Unlike the other characters, who represent themselves in Cross Duel, characters from Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS use the designs and names of their online avatars rather than their real personas, since Virtual Battle City takes place inside a digital world like VRAINS. Playmaker's entire motivation for participating in Cross Duel revolves around weeding out Knights of Hanoi that have infiltrated the datascape.
  • While they're not named in-game, the Raid Duelists are characters taken from Yu-Gi-Oh! OCG Structures and its tie-in video game, Saikyo Card Battle.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: The AI opponents in Tag Duels can have multiple copies of the same card in their decks, while players cannot.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: Cross Duel recycles generic NPC artwork from the Tag Force series for its own generic NPCs.
• Not a Morning Person: If playing in the morning, certain partner characters will make quips implying this of the player. On the characters' side, Shark's morning quote in particular sounds like he really needs some coffee.
  Zuzu: Watching you Duel, I thought you were invincible. But seems you have one weakness: mornings.
• Pragmatic Adaptation: Due to the vastly different ruleset, a few summoning mechanics were tweaked.
  • Ritual Summoning does not require a Spell Card, since Spells are strictly played only during the Battle Phase. They now only require the player to Tribute one or more Monsters whose total Levels are equal to or higher than the target's.
  • Fusion Summoning also does not require Spells. To make it distinct from Rituals, Fusions require a set number of monsters fulfilling a specific condition, rather than a fixed number of Levels. Additionally, Rituals and Fusions require their materials to be on the field; they cannot use monsters from the hand (although you can summon a monster and then immediately use it as material right after during the same Main Phase, although on-summon skills of monsters used as material this way do not trigger).
  • Tuners do not exist as a subtype, so Synchro Summoning only requires any combination of monsters whose total Levels are equal to that of the monster being summoned. Unlike Ritual Summoning, you must tribute at least two monsters minimum for Synchro Summoning.
  • The requirement to Xyz Summon a monster is still the same - you simply need two monsters with the same Level on the field. However, the Materials are sent to the Graveyard instead of being attached to the summoned monster.
  • Pendulum Summoning functions almost completely differently from normal Yu-Gi-Oh!. To Pendulum Summon, you must summon Monsters with the "Pendulum Scale" skills, which come in Red and Blue flavors. Once you have a Red Scale and a Blue Scale, you can expend these to Summon any Level 5 or higher monster without Tributing once. Pendulum Monsters are also not a distinct card type and only appear on the card artwork for flavor.
  • Link Summoning works almost the same, save the addition of a "Link Arrow" Skill that allows a regular monster to be treated as two materials for a Link Summon. However, Co-Linking works by checking if a Link Monster used as Link Material for a Link Summon has matching Link Arrows with the target; if it does, the resulting Link Monster's DEF is boosted by the material's ATK stat.
  • Maximum Summoning uses any two monsters in your hand as materials instead of requiring specifically the other two components of the Maximum Monster. Additionally, Maximum Mode does not exist, and a Maximum Monster summoned this way can still be put in Defense Position.
• Regenerating Health: The ATK Supplement and DEF Supplement skills, which regenerate some of a monster's original ATK and DEF respectively at the end of each Battle Phase, function as this given that a monster's ATK and DEF effectively also serves as a health pool.
• Relationship Values: You can gain Trust with your partner character by playing the game. Increasing trust levels with each character gives various rewards.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Blue-Eyes White Dragon. Due to its Master Skill and summon materials being completely generic, it doesn't support any gimmicks but also doesn't force you to build entirely around it, and said Master Skill - destroying any one monster upon being summoned - is both simplistic and capable of completely ruining someone's day when paired with Blue-Eyes's signature high stats (the highest base ATK in the game on release, in fact, tied with Red Dragon Archfiend).
• Stop Poking Me!: Poking your partner character on the home screen enough will eventually annoy them.
  Kaiba: Show some respect for the president of KaibaCorp!
  Shark: You should stop doing that. For your own sake.
  Yuga: Ouch! Poking me is not gonna make me drop any special items!
• Super-Speed: Present as an actual skill that, fittingly, causes a monster to move faster than normal. The effects are particularly notable when scrambling for the Bonus Card at the start of the game (if your monster has Superspeed and your opponents' do not, your monster will reach it first and swipe it) or when traversing the middle lane to avoid running into monsters from the players beside you. What makes it especially dangerous is when a monster gets two stacks of Superspeed, allowing it to cross a full lane in a single Battle Phase to land a surprise attack on an unsuspecting player.
• Weaksauce Weakness: Link Monsters have no DEF to begin with, making them incredibly susceptible to cards like "Sword and Shield" or "Block Attack" that forces them to use their DEF stat. They can only gain DEF by Co-Linking, which requires using another Link Monster as Link Material and requires both monsters to have compatible Link Arrows. Decode Talker and Firewall Dragon can also circumvent this with their unique skills, which gives them immunity to position changes on summon if you have Link Monsters or monsters with Link Arrow in the field or Graveyard.

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