Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: Nightmare Troubadour is the first time that the Yu-Gi-Oh dueling card game has appeared on the Nintendo DS. You can build a deck out of more than 1000 cards, including three exclusive trading cards that come with each game. The bottom screen represents the card game area, utilizing full touch capabilities, and the upper levels displays characters as they battle in full 3D. Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters: Nightmare Troubadour also supports wireless play, letting you challenge your friends to a duel or trade cards wirelessly.
Also in series
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I played this one A LOT. I think I appreciated that every monster had a 3 model, which I don't think any of the other handheld games did at the time, or since?
Se n fosse minha fraqueza em brincar com vários tipos de decks já largava na hora
unnecessarily grindy, the duels are slow as hell, and the cardpool is pathetically shallow. there is no reason to ever play this.
It's just fun to play to pass the time since it was before yugioh got overly complicated, the graphics are so basic and kinda shit but its just fun and games
Japan OCG: November 2004
NA TCG: March 2005
(GOAT era...with some caveats)
All things considered this is an interesting distinction from some of the other card simulators, despite not having any weird gimmick like Duelist of the Roses. This one has more of a story and relies on a lot more story/event checkmarks than prior 'beat X duelists so many times'-type progression. This game leans a lot heavier on covering certain aspects/characters of the anime that just never get shown in these games, such as a segment based around characters from the virtual world arc (Sadly nothing from the Waking the Dragons arc). Sometimes this focus on story leads to neat in-world gimmicks like facing off with Gozaburo during a self-destruct sequence but in-game its represented as the effect of 'Final Countdown'- a spell card with an alternative win condition where the player that activated it automatically wins after 20 turns have passed. Other times it'll focus in on two important characters having a duel- meaning you have to watch two pretty bad AIs autobattle.
Similar to Stairway to the Destined Duel much of your adventuring is based on a map screen, however this time around rather than going district by district- you’re given free range on a new fangled ‘touch screen’ to explore. Mostly this just means you’re dragging a cursor around that goes off as you ‘near’ a duelist in the city. It’s fine, although any duelist on the field will be anonymous until you’ve beaten a specific duelist so many times- at which point they’ll ask if you want to friend them and they’ll reveal themselves on the map anytime they're around. The funky thing is this isn’t truly consistent as certain duelists take more duels to friend you and others just wont warm up at all so there’ll be certain dweebs that’ll just hide around throughout the game. The game’s also got a LOT of really shoddy translation errors- any time you get tired and have to head home for the night your protagonist monologues:
“Let’s already return.”
and heads home. Any attempt to go back outside is then met with:
“I will not go out because slowness today.”
Very strange.
The main issue, much like certain prior games, is- say it with me: "The card variety..."
It's not even terrible here but it takes a long while to get certain cards and its not entirely based on the normal progression of the games, moreso its own made up variety packs. Prior games have done similar 'themed' packs like for ritual monsters and spells but here you have packs that'll have the main gimmick be like 'strong flip monsters' or something more arbitrary. Adding to this is starting with a quite terrible deck- lot of generic beat sticks so you have to morph some kind of synergy based off this and the starting few packs, mostly relying on the usual 'war' Yugioh stratagem and some jank removal cards like <House of Adhesive Tape> (christ) for a while. Eventually as you level up and get access to more packs you will start to get the usual outlines of a deck, although certain things still confused me. Why is there such an immense banlist yet a lot of cards on said list are still regularly pullable? It's such a troll move to pull something like 'The Forceful Sentry', only to see it on the banlist. After a certain tournament you’ll be given the allowance of ‘1 Forbidden card’ per deck which is neat, but this banlist in general isn’t ideal (philosophically speaking, at least- i mean Raigeki banned but not Snatch Steal? What was 2005 Konami smoking?).
Even stranger is how elusive some of these cards. I mentioned 'befriending' a duelist prior, revealing them on the map but after dueling a few times after that- they may offer a card to trade with. Some of these are just plain bad but others are like…trade an Obelisk the Tormentor to Kaiba to get the only Raigeki in the game? Obelisk is already a weird card since you might have to trade a copy of Slifer to Yugi based on what god card Ishizu gives you. Also there’s just a LOT of cards not included in the final game. I’ll get into what point in the meta this stands at but this should be the near end of GOAT format but there’s a lot of deck types you just can't make because certain cards weren’t included. Where the hell were my Blade Knights??
The game isnt all that hard theres only a few times I felt as though I misplayed or didn't draw a great opening hand, but it certainly feels as though you're ill equipped throughout a good chunk of the game. It takes a lot longer than I would have liked to get access to backrow removal that wasn't 'Armed Ninja'. Namely there were two opponents that regularly appeared in the midgame to thoroughly challenge me, the first being Yami Yugi- which feels appropriate. His deck has a lot of the best cards in the game and a lot of synergy for his Dark Magician boss monsters, especially honing in on Dark Magician of Chaos- a spellcaster that banishes any monster it destroys and, on summon, can bring a spell you've used back to your hand. The second, and more infuriating is Rebecca. Her title of “USA Champion” feels appropriate, sure but not in a way I particularly want to deal with. Gravity Bind is the big ugly trap card in the room this time around- a floodgate card that prevents monsters leveled 4 and higher from attacking whatsoever. Not too bad if you have backrow removal but if not you have to wait for its arrival, all the while contending with her strategy to bypass both Gravity Bind and any strong monsters still on your side of the field. Gravity Bind effects count for the person playing it, however for Rebecca this isn't an issue as she has Servant of Catabolism(? sure ?), a level THREE monster that's able to attack life points directly without needing to go through your somewhat beefier monsters.
At the very least, you can certainly decline any match she offers as she doesnt count towards any story progress but man does running into her suck. The last two story duels in-game are also pretty funky but neat as they require you to beat (or in one case, Draw) your opponent with a certain condition. To elucidate on the eclectic difficulty curve of this game- the final boss is NOT all that hard, I had him pinned 3 times over. I say 3 times because it wasn’t until the 3rd time that I was able to draw the specific card I needed to beat the game AND had the board set up in a manner that allowed me to summon said card (spoiler alert: yeah you HAVE to use a god card to beat the final boss or it doesnt count).
This time around I decided to theme my deck more around the 'light' attribute, using mostly equips and some left field cards like 'Hoshninngen' to beef them up. The deck mostly revolved around Thunder Nyan Nyan as the aggro, being one of the first 1900 ATK cards I could get multiple copies of- strong ATK but it comes at the caveat that if you summon any non-Light monster it gets destroyed. Paired well with other cards like Dunames Dark Witch, White Magical Hat and Shining Angel but there's a few DM-era Light cards still missing from the game to keep it from being infallible. Mirage Dragon and Blade Knight would have been incredibly nice but
for some reason these just aren’t included whatsoever despite having been well in the meta at the time this game was released. It was a neat theme to abide by but it took a long while to be consistent with the theme- still had to use some weirdos like Muka Muka or (level 5 2550 atk dude) to fill in gaps. Also added a lot of cards that milled the opponent in an attempt to garner the 'Deck Destruction' bonus points. Added Silent Magician LVL 4 and some stalling cards in an attempt to boost that card up in spell counters so it could level into Level 8- not super useful/intuitive to bring out but it was nice having a boss monster that was sorta on theme. Took a while for good, beefy monsters to pop up like Airknight. Additionally, I was really hoping to see how the ‘Magician’s Valkyria’ lock would happen in game but never got the chance to see it happen.
(also idk something here made me feel like my pulls here were way better than a lot of other games)
So what's new in Nightmare Troubadour card wise? Since 7 Trials to Glory and the rise of Chaos format, quite a lot of change has occurred to the format. However not necessarily with regards to new cards in the format, but in how we value cards- meaning the first dedicated banlist, for cards deemed too powerful for play. 7 Trials utilized a rotating banlist not based on anything but certain cards already thought to be pretty powerful. Here we have the first truly ‘banned’ cards going forward and man is this a fucky set of cards to start getting banned. Yu-Gi-Oh still hadn’t been truly ‘figured out’ by now so there’s a lot of cards still legal here that should really have seen more limitations while other banned cards were probably healthier in my opinion.
As fear as actual SET releases go, quite a large jump from 7 Trials' place in the meta as 4 major sets dropped since. In addition the OCG-TCG finally converged by this point, meaning both utilize the same naming conventions for sets and generally will have the same card sets. Ancient Sanctuary, Soul of the Duelist, Rise of Destiny and Flaming Eternity all released and several cards from these sets ARE in the game…how many of them I used or even saw is another question. I really hope we get to a point in which this stops being the case but the early-mid game reliance on so many of the same ‘core’ cards we’ve been seeing since Eternal Duelist Soul has gotten rough. Part of me is somewhat dreading the shift into GX era games as this is when YGO hits sort of a dead zone when it comes to interesting ‘meta’. If you wanna know the initial tidings of said dead zone, the aftermath of ‘Chaos’ format is the place to go. The four sets I mentioned earlier aren’t terrible, but it takes a while for a really good set to break what feels like a sophomore slump for Yugioh.
(Ancient Sanctuary)
-The ‘Agents’ see sorta niche play, although mostly for fairy support afaik.
-King of the Swamp would later be an important staple for fusion decks, seeing use to this day but dont use it here please.
-Enemy controller is kind of like a legal Change of Heart but requires a tribute.
-Zaborg The Thunder Monarch is easily the most useful card in this set. I played a light deck. Guess what card isnt in this game!! Why the Monarchs have eluded us this far in this journey idk but they’re so cool, why cant I use them
(Soul of the Duelist)
-LV monsters are such a shame. They’re meant to be these monsters that evolve as they stay on the field, but that's the issue. Generally monsters dont stay on the field long enough consistently to justify the effort to evolve these dudes. It’s kitschy at best.
-Mobius the Frost Monarch. No Monarchs
-Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke. Again, why are all the neat light monsters just not in this game wtf.
(Rise of Destiny)
-Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. : (
-Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive is a weird ass card but hey its a draw 1. Slightly better Skelegel.
-Harpies’ Hunting Ground isn’t like a meta card or anything, only if you decide to play Harpies- oh hey I play Harpies I like this card. The mandatory Spell destruction effect is funny though, meaning if no other spell cards are on the field and you summon a harpy you have to destroy the hunting ground. It's weird.
-Divine Wrath. Kinda bad Solemn Judgment is still a negate ig.
(Flaming Eternity)
-Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys is super cool looking and has a pretty good destruction effect but requires a really specific condition of being destroyed to proc this effect.
-Granmarg the Rock Mo- actually this is the one Monarch yall can keep its okay
-Phoenix Wing Wind Blast is pretty useful to send certain cards back on top of the deck, especially if this outs a big dude or something obnoxious
-Rescue Cat gets REAL useful in later formats, bringing out two Beast monsters when cat is sent to GY. Sadly this doesn’t mean too much until the extra deck becomes useful.
There are other notable cards throughout these sets, but mostly a lot of…weaker versions of cards that just recently got banned or stuff that has yet to be good OR stuff that just isn't in the game. It’s a huge shame considering how explosive Invasion of Chaos was but a lot of this was still R&D I can only assume juggling ideas to see what works.
Nightmare Troubadour isn't the worst simulator I've played thus far, far from it but it's definitely the one that takes the most chugging before it gets tolerable- and it does get more tolerable. Comparing this to the prior game I covered- 7 Trials, I do think I'm more impressed here despite the somewhat slower start. 7 Trials acts much more like an all encompassing simulator, bringing in all these cards, having a lot of pretty unique packs from the get and just honing in on the amount of battling you can do- but it's not a very interesting way to progress to that point in the end game. Meanwhile, Nightmare Troubadour on the contrary has this pretty unique storyline and this feeling of building a unique, holistic deck- although the game itself doesn't have all the pieces I would like. It's missing way too much for me to just pass off, and a lot of these cards would have been REAL nice to have considering the build I was going off of. Still, it's not too hard of a simulator when going through the main game, so having a deck with Axe of Despair equipped Hoshiningen might work for you as well.
NA TCG: March 2005
(GOAT era...with some caveats)
All things considered this is an interesting distinction from some of the other card simulators, despite not having any weird gimmick like Duelist of the Roses. This one has more of a story and relies on a lot more story/event checkmarks than prior 'beat X duelists so many times'-type progression. This game leans a lot heavier on covering certain aspects/characters of the anime that just never get shown in these games, such as a segment based around characters from the virtual world arc (Sadly nothing from the Waking the Dragons arc). Sometimes this focus on story leads to neat in-world gimmicks like facing off with Gozaburo during a self-destruct sequence but in-game its represented as the effect of 'Final Countdown'- a spell card with an alternative win condition where the player that activated it automatically wins after 20 turns have passed. Other times it'll focus in on two important characters having a duel- meaning you have to watch two pretty bad AIs autobattle.
Similar to Stairway to the Destined Duel much of your adventuring is based on a map screen, however this time around rather than going district by district- you’re given free range on a new fangled ‘touch screen’ to explore. Mostly this just means you’re dragging a cursor around that goes off as you ‘near’ a duelist in the city. It’s fine, although any duelist on the field will be anonymous until you’ve beaten a specific duelist so many times- at which point they’ll ask if you want to friend them and they’ll reveal themselves on the map anytime they're around. The funky thing is this isn’t truly consistent as certain duelists take more duels to friend you and others just wont warm up at all so there’ll be certain dweebs that’ll just hide around throughout the game. The game’s also got a LOT of really shoddy translation errors- any time you get tired and have to head home for the night your protagonist monologues:
“Let’s already return.”
and heads home. Any attempt to go back outside is then met with:
“I will not go out because slowness today.”
Very strange.
The main issue, much like certain prior games, is- say it with me: "The card variety..."
It's not even terrible here but it takes a long while to get certain cards and its not entirely based on the normal progression of the games, moreso its own made up variety packs. Prior games have done similar 'themed' packs like for ritual monsters and spells but here you have packs that'll have the main gimmick be like 'strong flip monsters' or something more arbitrary. Adding to this is starting with a quite terrible deck- lot of generic beat sticks so you have to morph some kind of synergy based off this and the starting few packs, mostly relying on the usual 'war' Yugioh stratagem and some jank removal cards like <House of Adhesive Tape> (christ) for a while. Eventually as you level up and get access to more packs you will start to get the usual outlines of a deck, although certain things still confused me. Why is there such an immense banlist yet a lot of cards on said list are still regularly pullable? It's such a troll move to pull something like 'The Forceful Sentry', only to see it on the banlist. After a certain tournament you’ll be given the allowance of ‘1 Forbidden card’ per deck which is neat, but this banlist in general isn’t ideal (philosophically speaking, at least- i mean Raigeki banned but not Snatch Steal? What was 2005 Konami smoking?).
Even stranger is how elusive some of these cards. I mentioned 'befriending' a duelist prior, revealing them on the map but after dueling a few times after that- they may offer a card to trade with. Some of these are just plain bad but others are like…trade an Obelisk the Tormentor to Kaiba to get the only Raigeki in the game? Obelisk is already a weird card since you might have to trade a copy of Slifer to Yugi based on what god card Ishizu gives you. Also there’s just a LOT of cards not included in the final game. I’ll get into what point in the meta this stands at but this should be the near end of GOAT format but there’s a lot of deck types you just can't make because certain cards weren’t included. Where the hell were my Blade Knights??
The game isnt all that hard theres only a few times I felt as though I misplayed or didn't draw a great opening hand, but it certainly feels as though you're ill equipped throughout a good chunk of the game. It takes a lot longer than I would have liked to get access to backrow removal that wasn't 'Armed Ninja'. Namely there were two opponents that regularly appeared in the midgame to thoroughly challenge me, the first being Yami Yugi- which feels appropriate. His deck has a lot of the best cards in the game and a lot of synergy for his Dark Magician boss monsters, especially honing in on Dark Magician of Chaos- a spellcaster that banishes any monster it destroys and, on summon, can bring a spell you've used back to your hand. The second, and more infuriating is Rebecca. Her title of “USA Champion” feels appropriate, sure but not in a way I particularly want to deal with. Gravity Bind is the big ugly trap card in the room this time around- a floodgate card that prevents monsters leveled 4 and higher from attacking whatsoever. Not too bad if you have backrow removal but if not you have to wait for its arrival, all the while contending with her strategy to bypass both Gravity Bind and any strong monsters still on your side of the field. Gravity Bind effects count for the person playing it, however for Rebecca this isn't an issue as she has Servant of Catabolism(? sure ?), a level THREE monster that's able to attack life points directly without needing to go through your somewhat beefier monsters.
At the very least, you can certainly decline any match she offers as she doesnt count towards any story progress but man does running into her suck. The last two story duels in-game are also pretty funky but neat as they require you to beat (or in one case, Draw) your opponent with a certain condition. To elucidate on the eclectic difficulty curve of this game- the final boss is NOT all that hard, I had him pinned 3 times over. I say 3 times because it wasn’t until the 3rd time that I was able to draw the specific card I needed to beat the game AND had the board set up in a manner that allowed me to summon said card (spoiler alert: yeah you HAVE to use a god card to beat the final boss or it doesnt count).
This time around I decided to theme my deck more around the 'light' attribute, using mostly equips and some left field cards like 'Hoshninngen' to beef them up. The deck mostly revolved around Thunder Nyan Nyan as the aggro, being one of the first 1900 ATK cards I could get multiple copies of- strong ATK but it comes at the caveat that if you summon any non-Light monster it gets destroyed. Paired well with other cards like Dunames Dark Witch, White Magical Hat and Shining Angel but there's a few DM-era Light cards still missing from the game to keep it from being infallible. Mirage Dragon and Blade Knight would have been incredibly nice but
for some reason these just aren’t included whatsoever despite having been well in the meta at the time this game was released. It was a neat theme to abide by but it took a long while to be consistent with the theme- still had to use some weirdos like Muka Muka or (level 5 2550 atk dude) to fill in gaps. Also added a lot of cards that milled the opponent in an attempt to garner the 'Deck Destruction' bonus points. Added Silent Magician LVL 4 and some stalling cards in an attempt to boost that card up in spell counters so it could level into Level 8- not super useful/intuitive to bring out but it was nice having a boss monster that was sorta on theme. Took a while for good, beefy monsters to pop up like Airknight. Additionally, I was really hoping to see how the ‘Magician’s Valkyria’ lock would happen in game but never got the chance to see it happen.
(also idk something here made me feel like my pulls here were way better than a lot of other games)
So what's new in Nightmare Troubadour card wise? Since 7 Trials to Glory and the rise of Chaos format, quite a lot of change has occurred to the format. However not necessarily with regards to new cards in the format, but in how we value cards- meaning the first dedicated banlist, for cards deemed too powerful for play. 7 Trials utilized a rotating banlist not based on anything but certain cards already thought to be pretty powerful. Here we have the first truly ‘banned’ cards going forward and man is this a fucky set of cards to start getting banned. Yu-Gi-Oh still hadn’t been truly ‘figured out’ by now so there’s a lot of cards still legal here that should really have seen more limitations while other banned cards were probably healthier in my opinion.
As fear as actual SET releases go, quite a large jump from 7 Trials' place in the meta as 4 major sets dropped since. In addition the OCG-TCG finally converged by this point, meaning both utilize the same naming conventions for sets and generally will have the same card sets. Ancient Sanctuary, Soul of the Duelist, Rise of Destiny and Flaming Eternity all released and several cards from these sets ARE in the game…how many of them I used or even saw is another question. I really hope we get to a point in which this stops being the case but the early-mid game reliance on so many of the same ‘core’ cards we’ve been seeing since Eternal Duelist Soul has gotten rough. Part of me is somewhat dreading the shift into GX era games as this is when YGO hits sort of a dead zone when it comes to interesting ‘meta’. If you wanna know the initial tidings of said dead zone, the aftermath of ‘Chaos’ format is the place to go. The four sets I mentioned earlier aren’t terrible, but it takes a while for a really good set to break what feels like a sophomore slump for Yugioh.
(Ancient Sanctuary)
-The ‘Agents’ see sorta niche play, although mostly for fairy support afaik.
-King of the Swamp would later be an important staple for fusion decks, seeing use to this day but dont use it here please.
-Enemy controller is kind of like a legal Change of Heart but requires a tribute.
-Zaborg The Thunder Monarch is easily the most useful card in this set. I played a light deck. Guess what card isnt in this game!! Why the Monarchs have eluded us this far in this journey idk but they’re so cool, why cant I use them
(Soul of the Duelist)
-LV monsters are such a shame. They’re meant to be these monsters that evolve as they stay on the field, but that's the issue. Generally monsters dont stay on the field long enough consistently to justify the effort to evolve these dudes. It’s kitschy at best.
-Mobius the Frost Monarch. No Monarchs
-Ninja Grandmaster Sasuke. Again, why are all the neat light monsters just not in this game wtf.
(Rise of Destiny)
-Thestalos the Firestorm Monarch. : (
-Dekoichi the Battlechanted Locomotive is a weird ass card but hey its a draw 1. Slightly better Skelegel.
-Harpies’ Hunting Ground isn’t like a meta card or anything, only if you decide to play Harpies- oh hey I play Harpies I like this card. The mandatory Spell destruction effect is funny though, meaning if no other spell cards are on the field and you summon a harpy you have to destroy the hunting ground. It's weird.
-Divine Wrath. Kinda bad Solemn Judgment is still a negate ig.
(Flaming Eternity)
-Sacred Phoenix of Nephthys is super cool looking and has a pretty good destruction effect but requires a really specific condition of being destroyed to proc this effect.
-Granmarg the Rock Mo- actually this is the one Monarch yall can keep its okay
-Phoenix Wing Wind Blast is pretty useful to send certain cards back on top of the deck, especially if this outs a big dude or something obnoxious
-Rescue Cat gets REAL useful in later formats, bringing out two Beast monsters when cat is sent to GY. Sadly this doesn’t mean too much until the extra deck becomes useful.
There are other notable cards throughout these sets, but mostly a lot of…weaker versions of cards that just recently got banned or stuff that has yet to be good OR stuff that just isn't in the game. It’s a huge shame considering how explosive Invasion of Chaos was but a lot of this was still R&D I can only assume juggling ideas to see what works.
Nightmare Troubadour isn't the worst simulator I've played thus far, far from it but it's definitely the one that takes the most chugging before it gets tolerable- and it does get more tolerable. Comparing this to the prior game I covered- 7 Trials, I do think I'm more impressed here despite the somewhat slower start. 7 Trials acts much more like an all encompassing simulator, bringing in all these cards, having a lot of pretty unique packs from the get and just honing in on the amount of battling you can do- but it's not a very interesting way to progress to that point in the end game. Meanwhile, Nightmare Troubadour on the contrary has this pretty unique storyline and this feeling of building a unique, holistic deck- although the game itself doesn't have all the pieces I would like. It's missing way too much for me to just pass off, and a lot of these cards would have been REAL nice to have considering the build I was going off of. Still, it's not too hard of a simulator when going through the main game, so having a deck with Axe of Despair equipped Hoshiningen might work for you as well.
grinding for cards if not fun, and i dont know why konami acts like it is