As someone who never got into the Yugioh Arc-V anime, seeing the whole ‘Action Duel’ gimmick play out is really funny to me. Because when you get past all the vague and convoluted justifications (ludicrously advanced hard-light holograms), rules (you can kinda dodge attacks, among other things) and mechanics (we parkour now) and look at what was clearly the underlying concept/goal of all this: The monsters are effectively real now and you can interact with/ride them and do wacky stuff with that,
And I think what you’re left with is what the SHADOW GAMES should have been. Or at least what they should have ultimately developed into.
I mean just ditch the super convoluted ‘solid vision system’ justification and just use fucking MAGIC. This is just the shit that HAPPENS when a player has a millennium item or an Egyptian God or is partnered with some other exceptionally powerful monster spirit(s).
And instead of trying to make up actual rules and mechanics for all this, just go with how OG Duel Monsters handled all the other Shadow Games:
When fucking MAGIC gets involved, the actual ‘rules’ just start going out the fucking window.
Like that was exactly what MADE the Shadow Games so fun, creepy and interesting. The whole idea was that Duel Monsters was this modern ‘safe’ recreation of this ancient, dangerous game played with dark magic.
So when that same dark magic gets invoked into one of these games, suddenly the normal ‘rules’ just start not mattering so much. Suddenly you’re effectively in an old-school wizard’s duel and all kinds of weird and wacky shit can start happening.
And if that ends up being super one-sided because one player is doing wacky shit like jumping out of the way of attacks, using spells that aren’t even in their hand because they know the original incantations to cast them or coordinate strategies with their now fully-sentient and tangible monsters to combo effects that normally don’t work like that or just generally fuck with the opponent? All while said opponent has no fucking idea what is going on?
Well no shit, that’s always what was SUPPOSED to happen whenever some hapless regular person got roped into a Shadow Game.
And of course it’s what makes it all the more FUN when both players can invoke the old magic and we get a real old-school wizard’s duel.
In conclusion, take the concept of Action Duels with all their off-the-wall ‘ride your dragon into battle’ and ‘sucker punch your opponent with random direct attacks’ craziness, and combine it with the wacky ‘anything goes if I can justify it’ insanity from Duelist Kingdom, and boom, there’s the TRUE Shadow Games XD
Also, in hindsight it is REALLY disappointing that Yugioh basically immediately pivoted away from magic/fantasy after the manga/DM and started using generic sci-fi justifications for everything.
