Video Game / Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction

Someone's got to embark on a dangerous mission to find Yami Yugi and save the world from destruction — and all eyes are on you!

— The manual

Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction is a Yu-Gi-Oh! video game for the Game Boy Advance, and a sequel to Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards. It is an Alternate Continuity to the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime, taking place shortly after the Virtual World arc with Noah; thus, it can be considered an alternate story for season 4.

The plot starts off when the Millennium Puzzle goes missing. Your character, along with Yugi and Joey, sets out to find it. And it appears other Millennium Items are also missing. The group soon finds the cause: a man named "Sol Chevalsky/Taiyou Tenma" plans to resurrect Reshef the Dark Being, an Ancient Egyptian Sealed Evil in a Can. The only cards powerful enough to stop him are the Egyptian God Cards, but they have been sealed in stone. To awaken their power and seal Reshef away, you must collect the Millennium Items.

And it's not going to be easy. Another thing about this game? It's Nintendo Hard with Loads and Loads of Loading. Despite this, for some fans the story is enough to keep going, and it makes an interesting alternative to the DOMA arc of the anime.

---

Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction provides examples of:

• Achilles' Heel: Despite being overpowered, Slifer the Sky Dragon and The Winged Dragon of Ra have their weaknesses. Slifer can be trapped by Dragon Capture Jar, while Ra's ATK and DEF are greatly reduced if you're playing on a Sea Field. Also, Ra's Battle Mode can be beaten over by Perfect Machine King who gets 1000 ATK and DEF for each Machine monster on the field, including Ra and itself. Also, Slifer, Ra and Obelisk can get powered down a lot by cards such as Shadow Spell, destroyed by a stronger monster or removed by another Ra/Obelisk’s destruction effect.
• Action Girl: Mai Valentine and Rebecca Hawkins, who are the only named female duelists in the game. You can't duel Téa, Serenity, or Ishizu.
• Adaptational Badass: Bandit Keith is at his best in this game. In the manga, he was a washed-up has-been who lost to a rookie in spite of cheating, and the anime version of him was cooler but not by a large margin. In this game he leads the Neo Ghouls in taking over Domino, kidnapping Ishizu, and seizing the Winged Dragon of Ra, which he then duels the player with. Even after he loses the duel, he then gets you to hand over Slifer anyway, and is only defeated when Ra fries him with lightning. And even then, he's promptly possessed by Reshef, gets back up, and breaks the Millennium Puzzle, which lets Para and Dox steal the pieces and capture Yami Yugi.
• Adaptational Heroism:
  • The main story has one of the nicest versions of Shadi on record, who implores you to save Pegasus and the world from Reshef, advises you not to hate Pegasus, and if you refuse to hear his Info Dump he understands.
  • The Big Five, while still not particularly good people, are not the villains that they were in the anime, and are even accepted back into Kaiba Corp as low-level employees as a result.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted with Yugi, Yami Yugi, Bandit Keith and the Puppeteer of Doom, who have unique left/right poses and walking animations.
• Arc Villain: Bandit Keith and the Neo Ghouls invade the town of Domino for a few chapters before moving back to the main threat, Chevalsky and Reshef.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • The computer will always attack your cards if they are face down unless their monsters have 0 Attack. This will happen even if you use a card to cover up previously seen monsters.
  • If you use a card effect to see your opponent's hand, the AI will prioritize using cards you haven't seen, even if the card they just drew is worse than what they already had. They also play monsters in order of deck cost. If you control a Forest monster and your opponent has a hand with one weak Fire monster and three strong Wind monsters, they will continue to summon their Wind monsters.
  • For the first turn of a match, if the AI scans your hand and sees you have an attribute advantage monster, they'll usually place their monster in face-up attack mode, letting you see which monster to use (though they sometimes play traps along with it).
• The Artifact: In The Sacred Cards there were numerous Ritual Monsters who needed specific tribute monsters on the field and Ritual Spells to be summoned, but in exchange these monsters were Divine Attribute, unable to be countered by any other Attribute. In this game the Ritual Monsters remain but their Ritual Spells (barring three) are removed, thus a seemingly random collection of otherwise normal monsters exist in the game that are designated Divine and have an exorbitant deck cost (which is actually substantially increased) for no apparent reason.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Several minor characters from the early manga appear as duelists, with Hanasaki even driving off a Neo Ghoul by himself.
  • The Millennium Guardians appeared for only a page in the manga, but are given greater roles here.
  • Compared to their minor roles in The Sacred Cards, Yugi and Joey get a lot more to do and tag along for a majority of the game.
• Audience Surrogate: Your character represents you and is best friends with Yugi and Joey as he becomes a better duelist.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Many powerful cards that require two or three tributes. Due to the general power difference between your deck and opponents' decks, cards that only require one tribute are the safest option.
  • Adjacent to that; the Egyptian God cards. Once you have one on the field you have basically won. However, if you have the resources to summon one, you likely could have won without it, anyway. Their only real benefit is their zero deck capacity cost.
• Back from the Dead: The Winged Dragon of Ra's Phoenix Mode, Vampire Lord, Different Dimension Dragon, and Dark Flare Knight can return to the field after they're sent to the graveyard. Discarding them from the hand is a very powerful move to summon strong monsters.
• Badass in Distress: Because the Millennium Puzzle is taken, Yami Yugi ends up captured, and the plot centers on getting it back to call him out. He drops the Distress Ball fast when he's rescued, however, as he unleashes the power of Ra on Bandit Keith and incinerates him with a lightning bolt.
• Big Bad: Reshef is the main villain of the game and the ultimate force the heroes must defeat.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Sol Chelvalsky and Bandit Keith. While the former is the Big Bad of the whole story, the latter interrupts your battle against him by attacking you and Domino City with the Neo Ghouls. Then it turns out Reshef himself was controlling Sol/Pegasus and is the real Big Bad.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Bandit Keith is a threat, but he's mostly a distraction from your efforts to stop Sol from reviving Reshef.
• Bittersweet Ending: Reshef has been sealed away once more and Keith and the Neo Ghouls have fled, but Ishizu says Reshef may one day rise again, and Pegasus was sealed away with Reshef to stop his return. The Egyptian God Cards are hidden away to prevent such a recursion.
• Bonus Dungeon: The Hall of Eternity, where you can battle Yami Yugi, Yami Marik, Yami Bakura, the mind-controlled Joey, Noah Kaiba, Pegasus, Shadi, and Paradox (Simon Muran, not Paradox the time traveler). Also a Brutal Bonus Level, as these opponents start with at least 30,000 LP and won't hesitate to cheat.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • Mammoth Graveyard has an average 1200/800 statline, but its continuous effect powering down your opponent's monsters lets it, and the rest of your deck, win a lot of straight fights in the midgame.
  • Joey drops a lot of good cards that are pretty much essential to make it through the early game. Particularly, he has Baby Dragon and Time Wizard, the latter of whom can turn a Baby Dragon on the field into a Thousand Dragon. It is easily the easiest big beater to get early on, though the combo will start to taper off once duelist start carrying more monsters over the 1200 ATK line.
• Boss in Mook Clothing:
  • After the Neo Ghouls leave town, every NPC in Domino can be rematched with upgraded Decks. Hanasaki, in particular, experiences a great spike in power.
  • Duke Devlin, who doesn't even consider himself a duelist, is one of the toughest opponents early on and can even give you trouble in the endgame. His lategame strategy revolves around using Soul of the Pure, Hourglass of Life, and Darkness Approaches to repeatedly power up his monsters and heal off the LP cost for its effects, while picking off your stronger monsters with effects rather than battle. He also carries cards like Raigeki, which wipes out your field.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • After being kidnapped, the next time you see Mokuba, he's been brainwashed by Reshef. Kaiba won't duel him, so your character does instead.
  • The ending reveals Pegasus has been under Reshef's influence the whole time.
• Broad Strokes: While the game is mostly based on the anime, and makes several direct references to it, particularly the Virtual World arc, several manga characters appear, leading to oddities like the Puppeteer of Doom from the manga and the Mimic of Doom from the anime existing in the same world. On the other hand it can't be canon to the anime, since the Big Five are still alive and have physical bodies, and the whole point of the Virtual World arc was that they didn't have their own bodies anymore.
• But Thou Must!:
  • When Bandit Keith takes Ishizu hostage, refusing to hand over the Millennium Items will have him threaten her and move you back to the choice box.
  • Refusing Ishizu's request to seal the God Cards has her warn you about becoming like Pegasus and moving back until you agree.
• Calling Your Attacks: Yugi, Joey, and Kaiba order their signature cards to attack if they manage to summon them.
• Cast from Hit Points: The Hourglass of Life strengthens your monsters' Attack and Defense by 500 at the cost of 1,000 Life Points.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Ryou Bakura is the only character to not appear or get mentioned at all, with Yami Bakura appearing in a storyline cameo and a postgame dungeon.
• The Comically Serious: Mako, who refuses to duel Strings because he's weird.
  Mako: Can you do something about this person? I lack the skill to deal with such weirdness.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard:
  • The computer ignores the card limitations. Lategame duelists will have three copies each of cards like Torrential Tribute, Swords of the Revealing Light, Raigeki, Harpie's Feather Duster, Pot of Greed, Monster Reborn and/or Change of Heart while you can have only 1 copy of each in your deck. This becomes more visible with endgame opponents or those in the Bonus Dungeon.
  • Your opponents have infinite deck capacity and Duelist level, letting them quickly scale past what the player can feasibly accomplish, on top of having Divine monsters with a deck cost of 999.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The Puppet Master card. The description says it can summon zombies. It does not. It actually summons fiends.
• Confusion Fu: Marik's deck uses lots of strong monsters with varied attributes, so the usual strategy of filling your deck with monsters of a beneficial attribute won't work against him.
• Continuity Porn:
  • Almost every character from the first three seasons shows up, particularly Pegasus's lackeys from season 1 and the manga.
  • The Big Five are back and ask Mokuba for work. He provides them a job as Kaiba Land entertainers dressed up as their Deck Masters from the anime.
  • Many characters from the manga appear as NPCs, with Hanasaki in particular getting to dress up as Zombire to kick out a Neo Ghoul.
• Covers Always Lie: Yugi/Yami Yugi isn't the playable character, though he does tag along for the majority of the game.
• Crutch Character: In the early game, 1-tribute monsters are the way to go to secure a win. There are a large variety of 1-tribute monsters with below 1500 attack with low cost, a lot of which can be acquired from dueling against Duel Machine at Novice difficulty. These monsters eventually fall off, eventually replaced by other 1-tribute monsters such as Flame Swordsman.
• Damage Is Fire: All card battles end with destroyed cards bursting into flames, no matter what element destroyed it.
• Damsel in Distress:
  • Ishizu gets kidnapped near the end of the game.
  • Serenity gets kidnapped by the Big Five in the Kaibaman show. It's just a show, but you have to duel against Leichter anyway.
• A Darker Me: The dark duelists Chevalsky crystallizes retain their personalities and represent them at their worst.
• A Day in the Limelight: Since Yami Yugi is missing, Yugi duels on his own frequently.
• Demonic Possession:
  • After you defeat Bandit Keith in a duel, Reshef possesses him and makes him get back up. The added power makes Keith too dangerous to duel again, and he quickly gains the upper hand.
  • At the end of the game, you learn Pegasus is possessed by the spirit of Reshef.
• Developer's Foresight: If you beat the game without resurrecting Ra's Phoenix Mode, its Battle Mode will free Pegasus and seal Reshef instead.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: You're able to beat Reshef the Dark Being in a duel, though he still tries one last attack to avoid being sealed away.
• Disc-One Nuke: Flame Swordsman can be acquired from Joey, who is a relatively easy duelist to fight against right from the start of the game. At 1800 attack, it's more powerful than your other 1-Tribute monsters, making it an easily accessible, strong early beatstick, and its dinosaur-destroying effect helps when fighting Rex Raptor.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: The Millennium Puzzle is eventually broken into pieces. Para and Dox steal some of them, preventing you from saving Yami Yugi.
• Distressed Dude:
  • Yami Yugi is forced out of the plot due to the Millennium Puzzle being stolen and later broken, and recovering it lines up with the main quest.
  • Mokuba gets kidnapped late in the game, and you have to learn how to access Pegasus's Castle in order to rescue him.
• The Dragon: Sol Chevalsky is this to Reshef, working to revive him while also attacking the player when he can.
• Dragon-in-Chief: Sol leads the villains who want to kill/defeat the protagonist.
• Early-Bird Boss: Rebecca can be encountered and dueled at the KaibaCrop entrance very early into the game, when you barely have access to things better than your starter deck. If you put her off for too long she disappears and can't be challenged afterwards.
• Easter Egg: By inputting a certain code at Grandpa's Shop, Reshef becomes Goemon Impact.
• Egopolis: Seto Kaiba's stage show, Kaibaland.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: There are two circles of this — Fire > Forest > Wind > Earth > Thunder > Water, and Shadow > Light > Fiend > Dream. These types override ATK and DEF scores and automatically guarantee a win for the superior type. For example, any Fiend will destroy any Dream monster regardless of type. This becomes a lifesaver because it's one of the easiest ways to win the game, as most opponents will use monsters with the same attribute between them. Your opponent uses largely Shadow cards? Stack your deck with Dream cards and a few traps and spells to stop attacks and destroy monsters in case they get out a monster that isn't Shadow, and you win. Only Divine monsters are exempt from this.
• 11th-Hour Ranger:
  • Obelisk the Tormentor is the last Egyptian God Card that you get in the main story, since Kaiba claims it the moment you resurrect it. The moment you obtain it, the remaining plot-important opponents are the final bosses.
  • Yami Yugi reappears to encourage you before you duel Reshef.
• The End... Or Is It?: Ishizu says Reshef will probably never rise again, and the last thing you see before the credits is Pegasus's ruined castle, then the still shot of him from the opening with the evil grin.
• Epic Fail: When dueling Bandit Keith, he can and will tribute three monsters to summon the Winged Dragon of Ra... in Sphere Mode. A Divine Monster with 0 Attack and Defense. This is even funnier if beforehand, his monsters had been defeating you. (Even worse, a Divine Monster cannot defeat any other monster using the Attribute advantage house rules, making it completely worthless.)
• Evil Is Burning Hot: Among the first things seen in the story are shots of Reshef and Chevalsky surrounded by fire.
• Evil Versus Evil: Bandit Keith and the Neo Ghouls vs Sol Chevalsky and his servants.
• Eyepatch of Power: Sol Chevalsky sports a golden eyepatch.
• Face–Heel Turn: The Big Five become evil again when Rare Hunter defeats Kaibaman. But when you defeat him, the Big Five become good again.
• Fake Difficulty: Beating duelists barely raises your deck capacity by 1 or 2 points, and you get next to zero money beating a duelist. Cards at the card shop cost a gigantic sum, and selling cards barely gives you any money. To top it off, your life points don't restore in between duels unless you go back to your house to recover, which can be a massive, out of the way trip at certain points in the game. All this results in a game with loads and loads of Forced Level-Grinding if you even want to get past the intro.
• Fake Ultimate Hero: Kaibaman (who's actually Roland) is unbeatable in his stage show, but when he runs into the Rare Hunter and really duels, you have to bail him out.
• Fighting a Shadow: The illusions of Espa Roba, Bonz, Weevil, Rex, Mako, and Mai.
• Forced Level-Grinding: The Deck Capacity and money gain rate in this game is reduced to a tenth of its predecessor's, making it very difficult to actually use the new strong cards that you've just won without spending an hour or two every now and then repeatedly dueling whoever's available.
• Fusion Dance: Inverted with Dark Flare Knight. In the real life game, he's a fusion of Dark Magician and Flame Swordsman. In this game, when the Dark Flare Knight is sent to the graveyard, it Comes Back Strong as Mirage Knight, and when the turn ends, he's de-fused into his original two forms. The game itself has no Fusion Monsters.
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: The Chevaliers have no backstory other than that Master Chevalsky turned them into what they are.
• God of Evil: Reshef is a Dark Being who plots to create a world of darkness and destruction.
• Gotta Catch Them All: All seven Millennium Items are needed to free the Egyptian God Cards.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Obtaining the power of Ra's Phoenix Mode requires you to input a password at Grandpa's shop. The password is not hinted at at all in the game aside from Marik saying there must be a secret behind its power, and was only officially revealed on the Japanese website for the game. The password is 51404976 and only takes effect after you defeat Paradox in China.
  • The Robot Monkey sidequest triggers by visiting the game shop, then Domino Pier, and finally visiting KaibaCorp. If you fail to activate it by the time you defeat the Paradox Brothers in China, you miss out on the sidequest for the rest of the game.
• Heel–Face Turn: Marik Ishtar actually gets to show his off in this game, which he couldn't do in the previous one.
• Heroic Bystander: When the Neo Ghouls attack Domino City, everyone is either panicking or losing badly to the thugs... except minor manga character Hanasaki, who dresses up as the superhero Zombire to stop them. He actually manages to take one out.
• Hope Spot: The Neo Ghouls have been defeated and all the Millennium Items are back! Then Bandit Keith breaks the Millennium Puzzle, a piece of it gets stolen, and Mokuba gets kidnapped. But the Egyptian God Cards are back to normal.
• Hopeless Suitor: Jean-Claude Magnum tries to propose to Mai again, dueling the player for her hand in marriage when she backs out of dueling him.
• Hostage for MacGuffin: Bandit Keith holds Ishizu hostage to force you to hand over the Millennium Items. When you then defeat him in a duel, he ups the ante and orders you to hand over your Egyptian God Cards.
• I Cannot Self-Terminate: Pegasus sacrifices himself to seal Reshef away, asking the player character to perform the ritual since he can't do it himself.
• Infinity -1 Sword: Of all 1-tribute monsters that have to be summoned naturally, Kairyu Shin is generally considered the best one. It can be farmed from Mako and has the same power and cost as Flame Swordsman, but its effect allows it to change the entire field into Umi, turning the field into its advantage while denying the opponent their own field effect. While it's already good as a 2340 attack beatstick, Umi affects useful cards such as Doron, Revival Jam, and Toad Master. All of these combined makes Kairyu Shin one of the most reliable win conditions in the game.
• Introdump: Ishizu drops the entire plot on you in the first two minutes of gameplay, explaining what Reshef is, why and how the Millennium Items disappeared, and how to resurrect and stop him.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold:
  • Weevil is portrayed as this. He gives up Insect Queen to help the player and decides to show up to greet the player (but he keeps insisting that it's to get his card back).
  • Rex Raptor as well, following up from his portrayal in the previous game.
• The Load: Téa and Serenity have minor sidequests where they need help, and you can't even duel them.
• Loads and Loads of Loading: This is one of the earliest Yu-Gi-Oh video games to incorporate continuous effects. Whenever a player makes a move, the game always checks to see if there are any permanent card effects that may need to be resolved and explained, even if there are no permanent effects active on the field or there's nothing new about the state of said effects, so the game takes about two-three seconds to visually scan the field for any effects it needs to resolve, and will then do so if it finds one. You may want to hold off adding Slifer the Sky Dragon to your deck, because if you summon him, when that auto-scan goes off, it will find Slifer, notify you of his effect and resolve it, even if there's nothing new about the state of said effect.
• Long Song, Short Scene: Chevalsky's castle runs about 4 minutes long. In the endgame you can reach him in 10 seconds.
• MacGuffin: The Millennium Items are required to resurrect the Egyptian God Cards, which are required to defeat Reshef.
• MacGuffin Delivery Service: Bandit Keith lets you collect the Millennium Items, then holds Ishizu hostage to force you to hand them over.
• Made of Iron: Bandit Keith is fried by Ra's lightning and gets right back up after being possessed by Reshef.
• Magikarp Power: The Winged Dragon of Ra has 0 Attack and Defense when you first receive it. It takes a plot-relevant battle to make it useful and a password not in the game to unlock its full power.
• Marathon Level:
  • After Domino Station is taken over by the Neo Ghouls, you face five of them in succession. Thankfully, they don't have as many Life Points as a regular duelist, 2,000 LP in fact.
  • A similar thing happens with the Millennium Guardians and Paradox in China. The five Millennium Guardians have 3,000 LP, but they are individually stronger than the Neo Ghouls. You also fight Paradox at the end, who sports a full 8,000 LP and is a tricky opponent.
  • The Chevaliers in the final dungeon have 10,000 LP. There are only three, but then you have to duel either Panik or Mimic of Doom, both of them having 15,000 LP.
• Meaningful Name: Sol Chevalsky's name can be broken as such: Sol (Latin word for sun) + Cheval (French for Horse) and Sky. There you have "Sun Skyhorse".
• Mighty Glacier: Slifer the Sky Dragon can easily have 11500 ATK, even if you're not enhancing it with other effects, but its effect causes Loads and Loads of Loading. It's also a Juggernaut, since it's nearly impossible to destroy it in battle.
• Mooks:
  • The Neo Ghouls, led by Bandit Keith.
  • The Millennium Guardians, led by Paradox.
  • And the Chevaliers, led by Sol Chevalsky.
• Mr. Exposition:
  • Ishizu, who dumps the plot on you in the first 2 minutes.
  • If you examine a painting of Shadi in Chevalsky's castle, Shadi himself appears and explains what happened in the backstory.
• Near-Villain Victory: Both Reshef and Bandit Keith come very close to winning; Keith loses because the Winged Dragon of Ra refused to awaken for him and fried him with lightning when he forced you to hand Slifer over. Reshef only loses because Yugi, Joey, and Kaiba team up and weaken him to the point where he's barely beatable. Even after you win, he then tries to take over Pegasus completely and almost succeeds anyway.
• Nerf: Compared to Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards, shop prices have been increased tenfold, selling a card only gets you 5% of the card's price as opposed to 50%, and opponents now give a tenth of the Deck Capacity you'd normally get from defeating them. This makes Level Grinding and Money Grinding really tedious. Certain potent cards also had their deck cost increased, but not by much.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The ritual to revive Reshef involves sacrificing the spirits and negative energies of defeated duelists. Meaning all those duels you fought in the game were helping him... as well as the duels you likely lost to get that far.
• No Fair Cheating:
  • In The Sacred Cards, an exploit to quickly increase duelist level was to fight a boss-type duelist that rewards 30 deck points, and then forces you to face another boss right after (Ishizu and Kaiba are a good example). Fight the second boss with no ante and lose on purpose, and you'll respawn in your house retaining the 30 deck points you won. Go back, face the first boss again, beat them, lose to the second, and repeat for quick level grinding. The developers seemed to have been made aware of this exploit, because when fighting any opponent who can be fought multiple times, they give you only one deck point.
  • Also, due to the way the game stores its data, resetting after losing a duel or turning the game off mid-duel will often see you start the match next time with the same opening hand. Though this can be used to your advantage since you know what to expect now. Some canny players have even used it to swap out their opening hands.
• Non-Action Big Bad: Due to being sealed away for the majority of the game, Reshef works through others.
• Normally, I Would Be Dead Now: After you defeat Bandit Keith in a duel, Yami Yugi fries him with lightning. Reshef immediately possesses him and makes him get back up, though after he's done using him he passes out.
• Not Completely Useless: Spells that only gain Life Points are typically looked down upon in general Yu-Gi-Oh! gameplay since they don't advance the board state or help you defeat the opponent. But, in this game, when your Life Points carry over to the next Duel, they give you the staying power to fight multiple opponents without needing to return to save each time. Their low deck cost also frees up more deck capacity to run stronger cards.
• Not-So-Harmless Villain:
  • Bandit Keith. In the manga and anime, he wasn't a major threat. In the game he steals the Millennium Puzzle, thus disabling Yami Yugi, and has the Winged Dragon of Ra on his side. Well, except said Dragon is in Sphere Mode. Also, he usurps control of the Ghouls from Marik, who controlled him in the anime.
  • Towards the end of the game, Panik and the Mimic of Doom realize that just because they lost a duel, it doesn't mean they can't keep dueling until they win. Joey steps in to hold them off while you and Yugi escape.
• NPC Roadblock: The Neo Ghouls will block off Domino Station and the Egypt Exhibition indefinitely until you get help from other duelists.
• One-Hit Kill: The Winged Dragon of Ra's Point-to-Point Transfer ability induces HP to One on its user, and then the opponent takes damage equal to the amount its user lost. With some LP gain you can inflict this on the opponent. Reshef also has the Winged Dragon of Ra, and its much higher starting LP total makes this ability lethal for most of the fight.
• Optional Boss: Three in the main story, all optional. If you visit Italy before beating the Paradox Brothers in China, you'll duel Jean-Claude Magnum a second time, who has a better deck than the first time. Second, at another part of the game, Tea is standing at the town square. If you talk to her, you'll have to deal with Johnny Steps and then Krump, one after another.
• Paper-Thin Disguise: As Sol Chevalsky, Pegasus ties his hair back, wears an eyepatch, and takes on a Punny Name alias. Nobody recognizes him until you get the Millennium Eye and see Chevalsky instead of Pegasus, cluing the cast into who he is. The strategy guide writer wasn't fooled, referring to Pegasus by his new name three times and refers to him by his regular name everywhere else.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • Mako Tsunami is the first themed duelist who you can rematch at will, and he stays true to that theme, which is Water monsters. With a deck stacked with Thunder monsters, you can take him out with minimal difficulty. He drops Umi, Power of Kaishin, and plenty of high-level Water monsters. Grinding against him lets you build your own Water deck with good cards for it, and anything you don't want can be sold for good cash, especially Fortress Whale, which nets a cool 2,000 bucks at the card shop.
  • The Millennium Guardians in China frequently drop the Divine-attribute monsters that sell for 2000 each, and also give you cards afterwards that you can farm and sell, on top of the third Guardian always giving you Giant Soldier of Stone that sells for a pretty penny. While they lack Mako's thematic deck to exploit, they each only have 3000 Life Points, so if you can get the hang of beating them, once again they provide a steady source of reliable income.
  • Shortly after expelling the Neo Ghouls from Domino City, Tristan's deck gets a few minor tune-ups but he's still just as easy to defeat. His ante rewards, though, are updated to include staple cards like Megamorph or Invisible Wire, which are reasonably powerful for their Deck cost and have good sale values.
• Permanently Missable Content: If you fail to activate the Robot Monkey sidequest, it's gone forever from that playthrough, and you can't duel the monkey in the Game Shop. Thankfully, any cards they would give you can still be obtained normally, and the robot monkey's payouts aren't all that impressive despite being an unlockable repeatable opponent.
• Physical God: The Egyptian God Cards can attack duelists in real life, as can Reshef.
• The Power of Friendship: A recurring theme is the connection between duelists and friends.
• Press X to Die: Challenging the Duel Computer in the KaibaCorp building lets the player pick between three difficulty settings. Selecting "Expert" pits the player against an opponent with cards on par with those used by the final boss. This can be done very early in the game.
• Purposely Overpowered: The Egyptian God Cards, with the exception of the Winged Dragon of Ra's Sphere Mode. All of them, except Ra's Sphere Mode, have extremely powerful effects and 4000 ATK and 4000 DEF. The God Cards are excluded from the Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors, and they're unaffected by destruction effects (aside from Helpoemer), even if you're holding them in the hand. To top it all off, they cost no Deck capacity, so including them in the Deck frees up space for your stronger cards. And unlike in The Sacred Cards, the Egyptian God Cards won't activate any destruction Trap Cards. The Winged Dragon of Ra's Phoenix Mode is by far the most useful due to how it can bypass the 3-tribute requirement that the other two mandate. This becomes Justified, as the game proceeds to pit you against a cheating AI in its final chapter, with opponents that start with over 8,000 Life Points in addition to their habits of spamming overpowered cards that the player is normally only allowed 1 of.
• Quirky Miniboss Squad:
  • The elite Neo Ghouls: Rare Hunter, Arkana, Strings, Lumis and Umbra.
  • Chevalsky's lackeys: Panik, Puppeteer of Doom, Mimic of Doom, the brothers Para and Dox, the illusions of Espa Roba, Bonz, Rex, Weevil, Mako and Mai, and the brainwashed Mokuba.
• Revenge Before Reason: Bandit Keith is so obsessed with beating Pegasus he doesn't care about Reshef or the threat he poses.
• Save Point: The computer at your house, which also refills lost Life Points.
• Save Scumming: The No Fair Cheating feature above can be turned into a strategy if you can pinpoint where the duel went wrong and try something different.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Reshef was sealed in a stone tablet. He's sealed again in the ending.
• Sealed Good in a Can: The Egyptian God Cards. Happens again in the story, then you resurrect them again, and then Ishizu seals them again in the epilogue. Fortunately, the last time doesn't affect your cards.
• Sealed in a Person-Shaped Can: Averted. Tristan is believed to be trapped in a Monkey Robot by Kaiba or Reshef, but he is just absent, and the weak Monkey Robot is coincidentally as weak as Tristan.
• Ship Tease: Mai and Joey as a couple is teased in the ending. Jean-Claude Magnum tries to marry Mai again, but she tells him she already has someone special, and leaves to check on him.
• Sixth Ranger: Espa Roba, Mai, Bonz, Weevil, Rex and Mako will protect Domino City against the Neo Ghouls if you help them. Also, you get their signature cards after winning against them in the rematches.
• Skippable Boss: When you arrive in Egypt, Odion denies you entry, saying that Marik is not willing to see anyone at the moment. As per Yu-Gi-Oh tradition you can challenge him to a Duel for the right to entry, or decide to come back later. If you pick the latter option, Marik personally invites you so you can proceed the plot without dueling Odion.
• Smug Snake: Several of Chevalsky's lackeys, as well as the Neo Ghouls.
• SNK Boss: Reshef has 40,000 LP, all three Egyptian God Cards, some of the strongest monsters in the game besides, and runs Limited cards like Torrential Tribute, Pot of Greed, and Swords of Revealing Light in threes. He can also see your hand.
• Spanner in the Works: Bandit Keith's meddling was explicitly unforeseen by Ishizu, and this ends up costing time to stop Reshef and leads to the loss of a Millennium Puzzle piece that puts the Pharaoh further out of commission until the end of the game.
• Spoiler Opening: The unskippable introductory cutscene shows that Pegasus, now sporting a new look, resurrected Reshef. The characters don't learn this until the fourth Millennium Item is obtained.
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: The first vision received from the Millennium Items is from the future-telling Millennium Necklace. It shows Reshef burning the world, and Yami Yugi, to the ground.
• Suddenly Voiced: Yugi, Joey and Kaiba speak, but only when you duel them.
• Superboss: The Hall of Eternity duelists begin the game with anywhere between 30,000 to 60,000 Life Points, have their Decks stuffed to the gills with game-breaking cards, ignore deck-building restrictions, and give immense deck capacity rewards and powerful cards should you somehow beat them.
• Take Over the World: The Neo Ghouls plan to do this. They start with taking over Domino City.
• Taken for Granite: The ritual to revive Reshef has the side effect of turning the Egyptian God Cards to stone, rendering them useless until they can be restored.
• That Man Is Dead: Sol Chevalsky claims this about himself. "I am no longer Pegasus. I am Sol Chevalsky!"
• This Is Unforgivable!: In the endgame, Yugi tells Para and Dox he will never forgive them for stealing the Millennium Puzzle pieces.
• Trap Master: Keeping consistency with his anime playstyle, Odion's deck now features a lot of Traps to support his few monster cards.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Dueling some opponents can come down to learning their deck and inserting counters specifically for them.
• Ultimate Universe: The game features both manga-exclusive and anime-exclusive characters, referencing events from both continuities as well as its prequel game.
• Unskilled, but Strong: In general, mid- to lategame opponents have monsters stronger than the player can hope to attain without extensive grinding, but are saddled by their Artificial Stupidity.
• Upgraded Boss: After driving the Neo Ghouls out of Domino City, every rematchable opponent (except Tristan) upgrades their Deck and becomes much more difficult than when you first Dueled them. When you're instructed to rematch your allies for special cards to proceed in Pegasus's Castle, they too have tuned up their Deck and are a lot more difficult.
• The Voiceless: Reshef only speaks in ellipses.
• Wakeup Call Boss: Panik is your first opponent who starts with an automatic Field spell in effect (Yami, which will get used a lot in this game), and you'll have to start wising up on monster types and attributes to keep up.
• Warmup Boss: Tristan, who has only very weak Monster Cards. In the late game, dueling him becomes worth your time as he gives out good cards with no change in his deck.
• Weak, but Skilled: The player themselves must adopt this playstyle to win the game. Unless you spend days level grinding, you'll never have half the deck capacity or duelist level needed to fill your deck with the strong monsters that will match the AI's cards in a fair fight. But you'll learn to compensate with low-level monsters with good effects, good Spell and Trap support for them, and exploiting the game's Artificial Stupidity and Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors mechanic to manipulate the field to your advantage.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Unlike the rest of Chevalsky's lackeys, the Puppeteer of Doom is only seen once, near the very start of the game. He's neither seen nor mentioned after that and only raises a ton of questions as to how the Duelist Kingdom went down in this game given that the Mimic of Doom is present as well.
• With a Friend and a Stranger: The main character (the stranger), Yugi, and Joey.
• You Shall Not Pass!: Your advance into Pegasus Island gets stalled by PaniK and the Mimic of Doom, then later by the Paradox Brothers. In both instances, after you first defeat them with the help of Yugi or Joey, they get back up and challenge you again, intending to continuously Duel until they eke out a win. To keep you moving, Joey takes on Panik and the Mimic of Doom at the same time by himself, and Yugi does the same with Para and Dox.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: It takes 2 Millennium Items to revive a God Card's power. Once you get six, you think Ra will resurrect as well. Nope. The Gods return to stone after that.
• Zerg Rush: Arkana uses this tactic on Mai, overwhelming her with endless duels against the Neo Ghouls by the time the player arrives. Keith's Ghouls later try this on Kaiba, with less success.

---