YMMV / Yu-Gi-Oh! The Falsebound Kingdom

• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • While defending a base, you still have the option to retreat, but there's no penalty for doing it; the enemy marshal is still pushed back a short distance, buying you a little time, with the one caveat being they aren't stunned before they can move again. It's possible to exploit this by retreating constantly, stalling them indefinitely to let your party heal up more, to let base defenses charge, or to let reinforcements arrive at the base or take out the enemy's stronghold. The only risk is the escape attempt failing, which leaves that monster without Action Points and the battle continues, but this will rarely happen unless there's a significant difference in levels.
  • Several monsters can inflict Paralyze with their normal attacks, letting them chainstun enemies for as long as they have Action Points. While the enemy's Action Points will remain since they can't take action while paralyzed, it's fully possible to KO them and render that a moot point. Unfortunately, enemies can do this to you, too.
• Complete Monster: Scott Irvine traps Yugi, his friends, and the Kaiba brothers in a multiplayer RTS game in an attempt to feed their souls to DarkNite, a wicked spirit, who will then Take Over the World. When the virtual villain Emperor Haysheen is defeated, Scott deletes him from the game and assumes his position, brainwashing Yugi's friends into attacking him or attempting to kill everyone in the game; if the player fails to free Tea or Joey, everyone is destroyed or Scott forces Joey to kill himself, gloating all the while. He additionally steals Mokuba's soul to blackmail Kaiba into fighting Yugi, adding that he'd kill the young Mokuba if Seto doesn't do as he says. When the heroes finally reach him, Scott reveals his plan and attempts to tribute their souls, and succeeds in killing everyone should the player fail. He also deletes other sapient NPCs from the game, and a prequel campaign reveals he was toying with an NPC version of Marik by manipulating him and making false promises of power. Cruel, merciless, and arrogant, Scott does everything in his power to achieve his goals and cares nothing for anything else.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Labyrinth Tanks. If they're the leader of a team, they move pretty fast, and once engaged in combat they hit very hard and are pretty tough to take down. It usually takes a few rounds of combat in order to take down a team with a Labyrinth Tank.
  • The Dungeon Worm is a very strong monster with a ton of action points, HP, and can cause poison. It's usually paired with a Beast Tamer, who will power-up its attack even further.
  • Fusion teams. Unless you can knock out one of the fusion components before they use Polymerization, they will always use it when about to be knocked out or when on their last Action Point, forcing you to face a high-level enemy that enters battle with full HP and a lot of AP, and your team probably isn't in the best of shape anymore. In the lategame a lot of enemy teams use fusion and it will quickly get frustrating.
  • When playing the campaigns at higher levels, enemy magic Magic users will make your life miserable. You can be assured they're packing some sort of group-hitting spell, either to inflict damage or to debuff you, possibly both.
  • If an enemy team has Fairy's Gift on it, Shoot the Medic First; they learn a group healing spell that's usually strong enough to fully heal the entire enemy team and they'll use it liberally to keep their two teammates healthy while they focus on fighting. And when enemy marshals with these teams respawn, they can and will use this ability to heal up their team, nulling the handicap of respawning at half HP. Finally, because this is an ability, not an item, you can't stall them until they run out of uses.
• Disappointing Last Level: In both Yugi and Kaiba's campaigns, because you're fighting within the circuitry of the computer system itself, all the paths in the last two levels are linear with a handful of bases between them, guarded by marshals that don't leave them. In the first, your monsters will end up just walking down a few hallways, beating the one stronghold blocking their path to the objective, and then move on to the final enemy, and the enemies you'll face aren't particularly powerful. In the actual final level, the final boss is right in front of you in a wide-open area, so you can surround the stronghold with your best teams and swarm it. There's not even a reason to drag the missions out, because the other strongholds in the area give a pitiful amount of money and have nothing of interest about them save for a single monster to recruit in Yugi's version.
• Game-Breaker: Several monsters are way too powerful.
  • Ansatsu is given to you for free when Bakura joins early in Yugi's story. It has amazing stat growths, lots of AP, and a surprising amount of health. Additionally it's tied with the Harpies for being the fastest moving monster in the overworld, making it one of the best monsters to lead a team. It's overall one of the all-around best monsters in the game, and considering how early it shows up, it could also be called a Disc-One Nuke.
  • The Illusory Gentleman joins Yugi's party fairly early into his campaign at Level 30, likely putting him on-par or above most every other monster you've got by now, and he's got good stats and will eventually learn Level 3 magic. Whomever ends up using him will likely find little reason to stop for the rest of the campaign.
  • Any team combination with a special attack - the Dark Magicians with Dark Magician Girl, the Gemini Elves, the Battleguards, or Mai's Harpie Ladies. These special attacks consume AP from all monsters involved in it and use up their turn, but they deal heavy damage to the enemy team and can often KO them in two rounds, or at least leave them heavily weakened. Add in a third party member to heal them and/or restore their Action Points in longer fights, and there's no reason not to just spam combo attacks each turn.
    • Particular mention to Mai's Harpies. Aside from the three of them having a devastating team attack, they're the fastest monsters in the field which makes them perfect for intercepting enemies or quickly seizing bases, and in battle they have good stats and a lot of Action Points, which will be boosted even higher if you put them on Mai since she has a very high bonus to AP. They also get a unique equip, Electro-Whip, which lets them paralyze enemies with their normal attacks so they can spam their team attack safely. Used properly, the Harpie Ladies can be one of the best teams in the game and roll over almost anything short of the Final Boss.
  • During Kaiba's campaign he recruits Ishizu, who comes with the Dunames Dark Witch. She eventually learns Status Guard, Level 5 Magic, and Lucky, and her attack does bonus damage against Dark monsters, one of the most commonly used types on enemy teams. With the right build she can solo entire teams.
  • If you input the Konami Code on the field of any mission, you'll get a small amount of money. What makes it a game breaker is that you can do it any time, in any mission, infinitely. Money is basically a non-issue since you can spam the code whenever you like to max out your wallet and then go nuts buying items.
• Goddamn Bats: Some enemies can inflict status ailments with their normal attacks. Poison will continually wear down your monsters every turn, Blind will cause them to waste Action Points with whiffed attacks, and Confuse will prevent them from doing anything from attacking, including passing their turn or using items. Enemies with Paralyzing attacks are the worst and depending on the exact monster may be dangerous enough to be Demonic Spiders, because they can and will chain-stun your party and render at least one monster helpless for several turns.
• Goddamned Boss: Bandit Keith's second fight if you're trying to get the rare monster. He's not too difficult, but Keith constantly charges you, meaning you have to flee from him repeatedly as beating Keith immediately ends the mission. Making it worse is that you have to do this twice if you want all of the monsters.
• Harsher in Hindsight: At one point in Yugi’s campaign, the Big Bad ends up turning Joey against his friends using mind manipulation powers^note along with Téa; Bakura, meanwhile, is Not Brainwashed and instead replaced with Yami Bakura, forcing Mai to engage with him in an "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight. Come Season 4 of the anime, their roles would be reversed.
• Low-Tier Letdown: Contrary to most other Yu-Gi-Oh! media, in this game Dragons are easily the worst monster type. They're intended to be Mighty Glaciers with high power and health but low Action Points, but Action Points are the major deciding factor in most battles since they determine how often monsters can attack; a Dragon having 1000 higher ATK than another monster won't mean that much if they can only attack half as much. The other issue is that most Dragons are Unskilled, but Strong, most of them having only one or two support abilities like Super Stamina or an Adept-type ability, and only four of them have a special move which in all four cases is merely a party-hitting attack. Finally, their equip item Dragonic Attack doesn't actually boost their stats, it just makes their attacks unable to miss, which will rarely happen anyway unless the enemy has Lucky or is defending; on the other hand there's a chance enemy teams may be packing Dragon Capture Jar, which paralyzes all Dragons on the field, or Dragonic Fury, which boosts the power of all Dragons but inflicts Confuse on them. There is a Magic that powers up all Dragons, but it's a Level 4 spell and no Dragons learn Level 4 Magic (only two even learn magic at all). The only way to get proper usage out of dragons is to build a team centered on fusing them (since a lot of Dragon-types in this game can fuse with other monsters) and/or partnering them up with a Magic-user to support them, and either way you're forced into specific team compositions that won't have a lot of staying power due to reliance on items and spells.
• Magnificent Bastard: Seto Kaiba is the CEO of Kaiba Corp and targeted by Scott to be drawn into the game. Initially acting as head of Haysheen's guards, Kaiba puts down rebellions against his rule but has no interest in actually being loyal to a virtual simulation. When he comes across Joey Wheeler and his Black Dragon Gang, Kaiba goads him into confronting him so his forces can destroy their headquarters, and actually acknowledges Joey's ability when he beats Kaiba. After Marthis frames Kaiba as a collaborator with the resistance, Kaiba goes rogue and takes command of Pegasus' rebellion for real, and leads them to victory after victory. In his campaign he eventually leads a coalition of marshals to the core of Scott's virtual world and destroys it.
• Player Punch: Many of the special Game Overs make you feel awful for losing, such as having Yami Bakura burn down Fizdis's hometown while her parents are in the city, and Scott forcing Joey to sacrifice himself if you defeat him without Mai.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Wandering monsters. While some locations are straightforward, most monsters are hidden in places on the map that are out of the player's way, and are nearly impossible to find without a guide. Some are even more difficult, requiring a specific marshal or a specific monster in the party that encounters them. And then there's Moisture Creature, who is a moving roaming monster.
• That One Level:
  • The 15th mission of Yugi's campaign, "Betrayal," gives you about 30 seconds to reach Jakhud before Yami Bakura does. Fail to make it, and it's an instant Game Over. Only a handful of monsters in the game are fast enough to achieve this, and once they beat Bakura to the town, they'll have to defend it against Bakura seconds later. If you haven't been grinding up Harpie Lady or Ansatsu (two of your best picks to outpace Bakura), you're gonna have a rough time of it.
  • Next comes mission 16, "A Lost Cause". The boss of the mission is Arkana, and true to form he'll challenge Yugi to a battle of Dark Magicians. It's pure Schmuck Bait, because looking at Arkana's team beforehand reveals his Dark Magician is at Level 99 and packing three Raigeki spells. On initial playthroughs of the campaign Arkana's Dark Magician can solo entire teams, and at least one will probably get wiped out tanking his Raigekis. On subsequent playthroughs with higher level monsters, Arkana isn't as intimidating, but his normal soldiers get more annoying; one of them has the Gemini Elves to spam their powerful combo attack every turn, and two others have Phantom Dewan and Invitation to a Dark Sleep, monsters that can paralyze with their normal attacks and chainstun your monsters to death. Oh, and Arcana's Dark Magician is flanked by two Invitation to a Dark Sleep, allowing him to do the same.
  • The 11th mission of Kaiba's campaign, "Going The Distance', only allows you to bring two marshals with you to help Kaiba, and the three of you are faced with seven enemy teams plus Scott, and many of them are packing medicine to heal themselves. The mission is simply long and difficult as you endure a battle of attrition with an enemy force twice your size, and to add insult to injury when you take the fight to Scott, it's not even really him, just a robot decoy he sent to distract Kaiba.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character
  • Numerous duelists from Duelist Kingdom and Battle City appear as marshals, including Espa Roba, Mako Tsunami, Bandit Keith, Bonz, Weevil Underwood, and Rex Raptor. After they show up and join your forces, they spend the rest of the game just being portraits in your marshal menu, with no unique dialogue or impact on missions, even in cases where you can bring them to recruit their signature monsters, or the mission terrain is suited for their preferred kind of card (for example, Mako joins up with Yugi after the mission where Yugi led his forces to cross the straight into the mainland.).
  • Kaiba's campaign starts with Mokuba and Marthis as his allies, and Marthis leaves quickly. This could be a chance to explore the dynamic of the Kaiba brothers in a different environment, perhaps portray Mokuba as The Strategist who comes up with plans, or have Kaiba mentoring his brother on how to handle himself on the battlefield. Nope - Pegasus joins very soon into Kaiba's campaign and he becomes Kaiba's Number Two, and Mokuba (of course) gets kidnapped halfway through Kaiba's story and doesn't return until close to the end.

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