nothing will help you understand the necessity of consistency boosting in your deck in actual card games than playing this game.
I wanted to like this game and I think up until the finale gauntlet I actually did, but when you hit the gauntlet all of the games problems hit the forefront and it stops being fun little novel system and becomes incredibly frustrating uphill battle where you're force to choose between praying to rng or hitting an outrageous grinding and praying to more reasonable rng.
Being made in the early days of the YGO IP and concepts like "the game's rules" being far from set in stone, FM plays off a very barebones version of even early yugioh rules; there are no monsters with effects, you are limited to one card per turn, the list of spell trap cards are very limited, even things like "the graveyard" dont exist, fusions exists but it's a completely different system.
Ultimately the name of the game is making the strongest beatstick you can. There is a reason THTD is so memed in this game; it's not just the speedrunner efficient creature to build your deck around, it's just the second best creature the player can get in the game (the first being a creature with low drop rates and cant be fused into). Fusing in this game involves putting creatures over each other while playing them, and they will fused into a creature from predetermined list of fusions, often based on creature types and atk values. In turn, because the game is focused on making the beefiest beatstick between each player's decks, the game's deck building is focused on making sure you can turbo out the strongest fusion your deck, and hitting it up equips to make sure it stays above the rest. This is the only real way to make a deck, and focusing on thunder/dragons to pump out THTD because it's the best.
"But do i have to do that? surely I don't have to focus exclusively on one strategy if you want to beat the game" you uhhh kinda need to.
Early game not so much ( first zone > most of World tournament) you can get away going with what you got and hitting a gameFAQ page to find out what you can fuse . But the furhter you get in you're gonna find you're gonna hit what feels like breakpoints; if your deck doesn't have the ability to get past X amount of ATK points, you're very likely just going to lose.
It becomes very a blatant when you hit the 2nd to last section of the game, the mage hunt. Most of the final mages have some sort of big badass that they will likely play; and they're real badasses. If you don't have a way to beat past the 3750atk gate guardian, you're praying you draw one of your incredibly limited options for removal (again, you can play 1 card a turn, so dropping a removal also means you ahve to choose between removing threats or building your board, which I think is actually a fun gameplay decision but it does lead into the situation i'm about to describe) and pray that he doesn't drop another GG.
It's already difficult when approaching the mages, but the mage hunt is reasonable enough imo if you're atleast trying to build a strong deck and do a little grinding at Rex and isis (more on this later) you should be able to get through.
Not so much for the final gauntlet. it's infuriating. It's pretty well know that the gauntlet actually cheat; in particular they dont actually have 5 card hands. They have 20 card hands. Particularly in the final 4, a THTD with one +500 boost is not enough. that's just 3300 atk. every single one dropping monsters in the 4000+ range almost every turn; seto 3 statistically has like a 50% chance to drop blue eyes ultimate at 4500 on turn 1. If you want THTD to beat it, you need 1700 damage just to trade. 90% of the boosts in this game are just +500. You're starting to se the problems here right?
So how do you win?
1) you pray you get lucky. You can, sometimes opponents in this game will actually just give up. You can get away with this individuals fights, but the gauntlet requires 6-7 fights in a row and you get sent back to the beginning if you lose. You might get a freebie in your runs, but you can't bet on it.
2) you grind. you need an ultra consistent deck. Any fusion less than THTD is a brick, and you've got a tight clock when they're dropping 3000-4000 monsters a turn. Your THTD also needs buff, and 500+ are somehow too slow at the gauntlet, you want megamorph which is atleast 1000+. You also want removal, but literally the only good removal (outside of raigeki/BH you get in your starter deck) is widespread ruin, which is rare. If you really want an ace you want meteor B. Dragon, who is a big badass with just 1-2 equips can compuete with even the biggest of boys, which is also a very rare drop.
Did I mention you get 1 drop a duel?
if you play this game I highly recommend downloading the 5/10/15 card drop mode. I did it at 5 because i already felt weird modding a game the first time I play it. I disagree with that now, you should hit this bad bitch with the 15 card drop and save yourself a lot of time. I cant imaging hitting this game up at 1 card a duel, just mind numbing.
I've been hating a lot but I really think it's just the final gauntlet of this game that kills me. I was having plenty of fun going through it, especially if you do know whats good and where to look for it (i also recommend reading the speedrunnin guide for this game, the advice there is just as useful in a casual run), but the finale of this game feels like a brutal slot machine even if you grind out a deck to be as strong as you can get it and it makes me lose all my energy for the game.
Otherwise it's neat. It's got a remarkably good soundtrack, I'm always a sucker for early Duel Monsters era Takahashi art and designs, but the actual card game just lacks the depth to be much more than beatstick turbo, and the way they worked out the fact that there's technically only around 25~ necessary duels in the game is making it that many of the end game duelists simply do not fuck around and require a lot of grinding out the best to have chance at winning.
Still, on an kinda unrelated note, this game was technically the first in a trilogy with a reoccurring villain in all 3. The second, duelist of the roses, reused a lot of the systems of FM but was also a weird psuedo TRPG, while the third game, falsebound king, is a rts/jrpg hybird. I dont think FM is very good, and i also know that FK is not good at all, (idk about DOTR), I sorta miss when they were a lot more experimental with the YGO IP, especially as the actual card game these days has a fair amount of lore and interconnected stories that last multiple sets that you can build on. Aside from 1 weird 5DS racing game, everything since then have just been fairly accurate to the current relevant anime season or just stuff like duel links/master duel. Just go make your sky strikers game and make some weeb money you motherfuckers.
I wanted to like this game and I think up until the finale gauntlet I actually did, but when you hit the gauntlet all of the games problems hit the forefront and it stops being fun little novel system and becomes incredibly frustrating uphill battle where you're force to choose between praying to rng or hitting an outrageous grinding and praying to more reasonable rng.
Being made in the early days of the YGO IP and concepts like "the game's rules" being far from set in stone, FM plays off a very barebones version of even early yugioh rules; there are no monsters with effects, you are limited to one card per turn, the list of spell trap cards are very limited, even things like "the graveyard" dont exist, fusions exists but it's a completely different system.
Ultimately the name of the game is making the strongest beatstick you can. There is a reason THTD is so memed in this game; it's not just the speedrunner efficient creature to build your deck around, it's just the second best creature the player can get in the game (the first being a creature with low drop rates and cant be fused into). Fusing in this game involves putting creatures over each other while playing them, and they will fused into a creature from predetermined list of fusions, often based on creature types and atk values. In turn, because the game is focused on making the beefiest beatstick between each player's decks, the game's deck building is focused on making sure you can turbo out the strongest fusion your deck, and hitting it up equips to make sure it stays above the rest. This is the only real way to make a deck, and focusing on thunder/dragons to pump out THTD because it's the best.
"But do i have to do that? surely I don't have to focus exclusively on one strategy if you want to beat the game" you uhhh kinda need to.
Early game not so much ( first zone > most of World tournament) you can get away going with what you got and hitting a gameFAQ page to find out what you can fuse . But the furhter you get in you're gonna find you're gonna hit what feels like breakpoints; if your deck doesn't have the ability to get past X amount of ATK points, you're very likely just going to lose.
It becomes very a blatant when you hit the 2nd to last section of the game, the mage hunt. Most of the final mages have some sort of big badass that they will likely play; and they're real badasses. If you don't have a way to beat past the 3750atk gate guardian, you're praying you draw one of your incredibly limited options for removal (again, you can play 1 card a turn, so dropping a removal also means you ahve to choose between removing threats or building your board, which I think is actually a fun gameplay decision but it does lead into the situation i'm about to describe) and pray that he doesn't drop another GG.
It's already difficult when approaching the mages, but the mage hunt is reasonable enough imo if you're atleast trying to build a strong deck and do a little grinding at Rex and isis (more on this later) you should be able to get through.
Not so much for the final gauntlet. it's infuriating. It's pretty well know that the gauntlet actually cheat; in particular they dont actually have 5 card hands. They have 20 card hands. Particularly in the final 4, a THTD with one +500 boost is not enough. that's just 3300 atk. every single one dropping monsters in the 4000+ range almost every turn; seto 3 statistically has like a 50% chance to drop blue eyes ultimate at 4500 on turn 1. If you want THTD to beat it, you need 1700 damage just to trade. 90% of the boosts in this game are just +500. You're starting to se the problems here right?
So how do you win?
1) you pray you get lucky. You can, sometimes opponents in this game will actually just give up. You can get away with this individuals fights, but the gauntlet requires 6-7 fights in a row and you get sent back to the beginning if you lose. You might get a freebie in your runs, but you can't bet on it.
2) you grind. you need an ultra consistent deck. Any fusion less than THTD is a brick, and you've got a tight clock when they're dropping 3000-4000 monsters a turn. Your THTD also needs buff, and 500+ are somehow too slow at the gauntlet, you want megamorph which is atleast 1000+. You also want removal, but literally the only good removal (outside of raigeki/BH you get in your starter deck) is widespread ruin, which is rare. If you really want an ace you want meteor B. Dragon, who is a big badass with just 1-2 equips can compuete with even the biggest of boys, which is also a very rare drop.
Did I mention you get 1 drop a duel?
if you play this game I highly recommend downloading the 5/10/15 card drop mode. I did it at 5 because i already felt weird modding a game the first time I play it. I disagree with that now, you should hit this bad bitch with the 15 card drop and save yourself a lot of time. I cant imaging hitting this game up at 1 card a duel, just mind numbing.
I've been hating a lot but I really think it's just the final gauntlet of this game that kills me. I was having plenty of fun going through it, especially if you do know whats good and where to look for it (i also recommend reading the speedrunnin guide for this game, the advice there is just as useful in a casual run), but the finale of this game feels like a brutal slot machine even if you grind out a deck to be as strong as you can get it and it makes me lose all my energy for the game.
Otherwise it's neat. It's got a remarkably good soundtrack, I'm always a sucker for early Duel Monsters era Takahashi art and designs, but the actual card game just lacks the depth to be much more than beatstick turbo, and the way they worked out the fact that there's technically only around 25~ necessary duels in the game is making it that many of the end game duelists simply do not fuck around and require a lot of grinding out the best to have chance at winning.
Still, on an kinda unrelated note, this game was technically the first in a trilogy with a reoccurring villain in all 3. The second, duelist of the roses, reused a lot of the systems of FM but was also a weird psuedo TRPG, while the third game, falsebound king, is a rts/jrpg hybird. I dont think FM is very good, and i also know that FK is not good at all, (idk about DOTR), I sorta miss when they were a lot more experimental with the YGO IP, especially as the actual card game these days has a fair amount of lore and interconnected stories that last multiple sets that you can build on. Aside from 1 weird 5DS racing game, everything since then have just been fairly accurate to the current relevant anime season or just stuff like duel links/master duel. Just go make your sky strikers game and make some weeb money you motherfuckers.