Japan OCG: July 2003
North American: March 2004
(CHAOS Format)
It's been a long time since I logged one of these.
I was looking forward to going through this one in particular. Prior to my indulgence in the modern Yugioh complexities and philosophies to the duel- I did have a few attempts in trying to figure out myself how Yu-Gi-Oh played. The 'chain' mechanic always stood out to me as a weird, WEIRD system compared to the neolithic 'War' simulator of games like Dark Duel Stories and Forbidden Memories that I grew up with, effects and the legalities of specific wording on cards always eluded me. I never quite got why ritual and fusion monsters were the way they were (lo and behold the problem was that these were just poorly made mechanics from the get). 7 Trials was the first game where I decided to tackle this first hand, back around 2018-2019. I would usually just play this on VBA during class in between note takings, but to little avail. I played it a couple of times and tried to just jam a deck together but didn't quite get it still.
5 years later and I was pretty excited to see how exactly I'd feel about this game now that I have a better understanding of the card game- as well as how other games in the series progressed. However, even a modicum of preparation would have been enough for me to have noticed one of the details standing out on the main box art for this title- Black Luster Soldier: Envoy of the Beginning. We'll cover this shortly but it was a pleasant surprise to me when charting these out that this game in particular would be the game to chart a new course in the meta as far as the video games were concerned.
Since the last time we talked about the YGO format, a lot of key cards were released, but ultimately I don't think I talked about the meta since the games didn't really lend themselves to expressing the format (or in some cases, the card game itself) in an interesting manner. For what it's worth, Yu-Gi-Oh itself doesn't really get REAL interesting until several years later, but in a retrospective manner it is satisfying going back and seeing how the game evolves, seeing what cards warp the meta and the way we think about molding decks. However when these games can’t even make the intermediate steps in the meta worth talking about I’d rather spare my time.
There’s a lot of cool tech cards and sets I could go into detail on, as I did skip over Magician’s Force and Dark Crisis in this gap between WC04 and 7 Trials. However this game already has a lot to deal with so I’ll only go into the key cards from these sets or anything I used pretty consistently in the game.
(Magician’s Force)
I never saw it here, but Magical Scientist sees its debut here- a powerful FTK tool that attempts to spam out fusion cards that could be launched at opponents with the help of Catapult Turtle; he has remained banned since 2005 and will likely never come off. Several ‘Spell Counter’ cards debut here including the card drawing tool Royal Magical Library and the multi-faceted Breaker the Magical Warrior (most known for that scene from the anime).
(Dark Crisis)
Not too much here, a lot of archfiend support and the ‘Guardian’ archetype (an archetype with very little modern support except a Pug that literally just got announced). Skill Drain was introduced here and remains a strong floodgate, negating all effects that are activated on the field. Vampire Lord was a pretty good mini-boss, requiring one tribute but able to send opponent’s cards to the graveyard and was able to special summon itself from the graveyard if destroyed by an opponent’s card effect. Sakuretsu Armor I sadly didn't see but is one of the cooler, more consistent removal traps- destroying a monster that declared an attack on you. The only card I was able to get and use pretty often was D.D. Warrior Lady, a monster that helped banish itself and a card that attacked it or vice versa.
While mechanically early Yu-Gi-Oh still remains fairly simple, the power dynamics of certain cards remained so basic that once the meta did evolve certain older cards began to shine so incandescently that basic cards were too powerful to keep around without limitations. The limbs were always there, but a core was necessary for things to take off. It would only be a matter of time before the competition would taste it.
(Chaos)
Chaos refers to a longstanding style of play since the titular set Invasion of Chaos, utilizing the combination of Light and Dark attribute monsters as fodder for stronger boss monsters- typically by banishing one monster from both attributes as cost from the graveyard. Over time, several waves of cards/releases would try to capitalize on this once dominating style of play, including the Synchro bosses Chaos Ruler and Chaos Angel or ever powerful support cards such as Collapserpent, Wyverburster and the now forbidden Eclipse Wyvern. It’s an incredibly popular, historical and potentially unstable theme of cards as even in the modern environment chaos pops up in decks like Dragon Link or engines alongside the Bystial cards. With regards to 7 Trials, there's only a handful of cards regarding specifically the banishing of a light and a dark- however this was enough to completely overtake deck design. Several of the best cards in the game up to this point were already either of the two Chaos attributes, so adding the new IoC tyrants just came naturally.
Previously I had mentioned the games cover card monster Black Luster Soldier: Envoy of the Beginning. By banishing a light and a dark, BLS could special summon itself, meaning you wouldn’t need to use your 1 normal summon per turn. On top of being a 3000 attack monster, BLS had two incredibly potent effects, with the only limit being you could only choose one to use once per turn. First, you can target 1 monster on the field and banish it outright, no graveyard needed. The only downside is BLS couldn’t attack the turn it used said effect. To make up for this missed turn, its second effect was that it could make a second attack that turn if it had attacked and destroyed a monster by battle. If your opponent had set up a strong enough wall or boss monster, BLS was enough to get rid of that set up and potentially step over most defensive cards the next turn it attacked.
The second of the two titans of the set, Chaos Emperor Dragon- Envoy of the End was an insane way to close out games and break boards. By banishing a Light and a Dark from your GY, you can summon one of these dragons down, an easy 3K attacker like BLS. However, whereas BLS was more of a beatdown-type boss, CED relies on a more specific- albeit potentially more potent effect to close out games. By paying 1000 LP, you can remove all cards from the field and both players’ hands to the graveyard and deal 300 LP of damage for each card sent there because of that effect. While it would take a ton of cards to deal FTK or OTK levels of burn damage- if at any point in the match 10 cards were anywhere in the hands or field when CED dropped- 3000 damage on top of the 3000 done during battle would be a massive blow to your opponent. It was often used alongside sangan and Yatagarasu as part of a strategy called “Yatalock” where your opponent was kept from drawing cards due to Yata’s recurring effect to skip the opponent’s draw phase. Naturally over time CED would see errata after errata to keep this kind of lock from happening, as well as nerfing the amount of burn damage done from that effect- but in its initial showing CED was an all too powerful boss to handle.
Invasion of Chaos as a whole still remains a strong release even outside of these two game warping bosses. For starters the Ojamas!...Alongside these chaos bosses was a miniature version of BLS specifically, named Chaos Sorcerer. It required the same cost needing a light and a dark, but was generally weaker in stats and only had the first BLS effect to banish- but was never as limited in its time and could be obtained more easily with regards to rarity. Ironically, Dark Magician of Chaos isn’t a chaos monster, it's just a 2 tribute monster- but its a damn good one, allowing you to reclaim a spell from the GY and banishing any monster destroyed by DMoC. Gren Maju is one of the other stand out cards despite its more niche showings. Namely it represents one of the other recurring themes in Invasion of Chaos; banishing a lot. Gren Maju is a fairly inconsistent but frequent flier in dueling as it’s a normal summonable monster whose effect is its ATK/DEF are 400 times the amount of banished cards you have. The other elemental attributes (earth, fire, etc.) also saw special summonable monsters that required a banish, although outside of Gigantes im not sure how often these saw play. Sacred Crane is a typical 1600 normal summon however if it's special summoned by any means, you’re able to draw a card. Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands would become a staple for any ritual deck once those started becoming tolerable…
Holy shit there’s a lot of good stuff from this set. There’s just a lot of easy to slap in cards that would define what would later be coined ‘GOAT’ format, a timeframe we’ll soon be entering. Berserk Gorilla, Ryu Kokki, Smashing Ground, Dimension Fusion, Compuls??? Fucking Compulsory Evac Device was in this set? Invasion of Chaos is way too good to describe. Older sets are just as groundbreaking but had the excuse that they were compiling a lot of stuff already from the OCG.
My sad confession is that I did not utilize either of the two boss monsters of the Chaos format. They're extremely rare! If I had thought about it I could have just cheated one in with the password machine but I didn't particularly enjoy the thought of doing that. I kinda wished Chaos Sorcerer was a more common occurrence but by the time I got around to these cards my deck was already sorted out. But man, what a set…surely the game itself can capitalize on this insane moment in the card game?
Well, eh.
(The part where I actually review the game)
The thing about this game is that despite how flexible Invasion of Chaos made a lot of deck builds, 7 Trials to Glory is actually fairly simple of a game. You control a character going from areas on the map similar to Sacred Cards, and you battle any and all NPCs you can- including a dog. If you go to sleep at your house, this saves the game and a day passes on the calendar.
Basically, this works way better as a game that you would have played on car rides than on an emulator in 2023.
Tournaments only occur and progress as the day passes so playing on an emulator means you kinda just have to rest a bunch once you have a good enough deck. Once registered for a tournament, you just have to wait until that day, compete, win and repeat for several weeks. It’s pretty simple. In addition most of the time you’ll probably just be fighting Tea Gardner during any time you want to grind for currency as you now buy packs rather than get them after each match. How much currency you get is based on certain factors such as amount of monsters destroyed or how much damage you deal- however Tea covers both of these fronts better than most other duelists due to having a deck dedicated to stalling and gaining health over time. There’s also a rotating banlist each week that you’ll have to take into consideration lest you face the wrath of Mokuba. Otherwise it's just a matter of going week to week to eventual bi-weeks worth of tournaments until you beat the game.
There’s not a whole lot of interest happening throughout, although I did like the tournament based on giving you a certain restriction for the upcoming fight. This ‘Limitation Tournament’ gives you a trainer you’ll be going up against but both players will be under such rule, including rules like “no spells” or “No equip spells”. Except Yugi, Joey and Kaiba who just violate the rules regardless, cheaters. Otherwise most of the tournaments are just your standard dueling fare.
But there is a post game!
Now you get to the truly 'strong' trainers, but by now it's a bit too late to start considering anything too new- the way regulations work in the Mystic Zone allows the player to forego most deck philosophizing and just go straight to the gutter slop EZ pass cheap handie handy Boosted Exodia deck. In this freeform, endless simulator- the final boss of this game is the 'Rare Hunter' character, one so lacking in depth that he never bothered thinking of a name for himself (ignore places that call him ‘Seeker’ i dont know where this came from). Beating him unlocks a version of his 'Boosted Exodia' booster deck for purchase, the near-perfect Exodia deck to use in the Mystic Zone as no regulations means you can run multiple copies of each part, more than a third of your deck filled with these autowin pieces and the rest just stalling and drawing cards. You have now reached the end point of 7 Trials to Glory- not much story left from an already thin game. All that you can really do now is just grind matches in the Mystic Zone battles and tournaments and get crazy cash to spend on more cards.
It’s weird. It’d probably be an excellent game to have as a kid who would need to save often and would see these maybe a bit more naturally. But as is it’s freeform nature was just lacking in too many places to be my favorite of the bunch despite its inclusion of one of the best sets in the meta. Being able to save up currency to buy a big number of packs is pretty fun but I’m not sure if I like it as much as the ‘card a pack’ rewards since in some battles you might not get enough currency for the pack you’re looking to buy. I don’t know, it’s definitely a fine game but it doesn't have the structure of some prior games to really push me to think about how I build my deck. Also while the rotating banlist is a neat idea there were a lot of points where I’d just forgotten that I had certain cards because I had forgotten they were unbanned a while back- it can get kinda confusing. Regardless, it's still a pretty solid simulator and I liked the new aesthetic for battles this time around.
I also still don’t really know what the 7 trials are?
North American: March 2004
(CHAOS Format)
It's been a long time since I logged one of these.
I was looking forward to going through this one in particular. Prior to my indulgence in the modern Yugioh complexities and philosophies to the duel- I did have a few attempts in trying to figure out myself how Yu-Gi-Oh played. The 'chain' mechanic always stood out to me as a weird, WEIRD system compared to the neolithic 'War' simulator of games like Dark Duel Stories and Forbidden Memories that I grew up with, effects and the legalities of specific wording on cards always eluded me. I never quite got why ritual and fusion monsters were the way they were (lo and behold the problem was that these were just poorly made mechanics from the get). 7 Trials was the first game where I decided to tackle this first hand, back around 2018-2019. I would usually just play this on VBA during class in between note takings, but to little avail. I played it a couple of times and tried to just jam a deck together but didn't quite get it still.
5 years later and I was pretty excited to see how exactly I'd feel about this game now that I have a better understanding of the card game- as well as how other games in the series progressed. However, even a modicum of preparation would have been enough for me to have noticed one of the details standing out on the main box art for this title- Black Luster Soldier: Envoy of the Beginning. We'll cover this shortly but it was a pleasant surprise to me when charting these out that this game in particular would be the game to chart a new course in the meta as far as the video games were concerned.
Since the last time we talked about the YGO format, a lot of key cards were released, but ultimately I don't think I talked about the meta since the games didn't really lend themselves to expressing the format (or in some cases, the card game itself) in an interesting manner. For what it's worth, Yu-Gi-Oh itself doesn't really get REAL interesting until several years later, but in a retrospective manner it is satisfying going back and seeing how the game evolves, seeing what cards warp the meta and the way we think about molding decks. However when these games can’t even make the intermediate steps in the meta worth talking about I’d rather spare my time.
There’s a lot of cool tech cards and sets I could go into detail on, as I did skip over Magician’s Force and Dark Crisis in this gap between WC04 and 7 Trials. However this game already has a lot to deal with so I’ll only go into the key cards from these sets or anything I used pretty consistently in the game.
(Magician’s Force)
I never saw it here, but Magical Scientist sees its debut here- a powerful FTK tool that attempts to spam out fusion cards that could be launched at opponents with the help of Catapult Turtle; he has remained banned since 2005 and will likely never come off. Several ‘Spell Counter’ cards debut here including the card drawing tool Royal Magical Library and the multi-faceted Breaker the Magical Warrior (most known for that scene from the anime).
(Dark Crisis)
Not too much here, a lot of archfiend support and the ‘Guardian’ archetype (an archetype with very little modern support except a Pug that literally just got announced). Skill Drain was introduced here and remains a strong floodgate, negating all effects that are activated on the field. Vampire Lord was a pretty good mini-boss, requiring one tribute but able to send opponent’s cards to the graveyard and was able to special summon itself from the graveyard if destroyed by an opponent’s card effect. Sakuretsu Armor I sadly didn't see but is one of the cooler, more consistent removal traps- destroying a monster that declared an attack on you. The only card I was able to get and use pretty often was D.D. Warrior Lady, a monster that helped banish itself and a card that attacked it or vice versa.
While mechanically early Yu-Gi-Oh still remains fairly simple, the power dynamics of certain cards remained so basic that once the meta did evolve certain older cards began to shine so incandescently that basic cards were too powerful to keep around without limitations. The limbs were always there, but a core was necessary for things to take off. It would only be a matter of time before the competition would taste it.
(Chaos)
Chaos refers to a longstanding style of play since the titular set Invasion of Chaos, utilizing the combination of Light and Dark attribute monsters as fodder for stronger boss monsters- typically by banishing one monster from both attributes as cost from the graveyard. Over time, several waves of cards/releases would try to capitalize on this once dominating style of play, including the Synchro bosses Chaos Ruler and Chaos Angel or ever powerful support cards such as Collapserpent, Wyverburster and the now forbidden Eclipse Wyvern. It’s an incredibly popular, historical and potentially unstable theme of cards as even in the modern environment chaos pops up in decks like Dragon Link or engines alongside the Bystial cards. With regards to 7 Trials, there's only a handful of cards regarding specifically the banishing of a light and a dark- however this was enough to completely overtake deck design. Several of the best cards in the game up to this point were already either of the two Chaos attributes, so adding the new IoC tyrants just came naturally.
Previously I had mentioned the games cover card monster Black Luster Soldier: Envoy of the Beginning. By banishing a light and a dark, BLS could special summon itself, meaning you wouldn’t need to use your 1 normal summon per turn. On top of being a 3000 attack monster, BLS had two incredibly potent effects, with the only limit being you could only choose one to use once per turn. First, you can target 1 monster on the field and banish it outright, no graveyard needed. The only downside is BLS couldn’t attack the turn it used said effect. To make up for this missed turn, its second effect was that it could make a second attack that turn if it had attacked and destroyed a monster by battle. If your opponent had set up a strong enough wall or boss monster, BLS was enough to get rid of that set up and potentially step over most defensive cards the next turn it attacked.
The second of the two titans of the set, Chaos Emperor Dragon- Envoy of the End was an insane way to close out games and break boards. By banishing a Light and a Dark from your GY, you can summon one of these dragons down, an easy 3K attacker like BLS. However, whereas BLS was more of a beatdown-type boss, CED relies on a more specific- albeit potentially more potent effect to close out games. By paying 1000 LP, you can remove all cards from the field and both players’ hands to the graveyard and deal 300 LP of damage for each card sent there because of that effect. While it would take a ton of cards to deal FTK or OTK levels of burn damage- if at any point in the match 10 cards were anywhere in the hands or field when CED dropped- 3000 damage on top of the 3000 done during battle would be a massive blow to your opponent. It was often used alongside sangan and Yatagarasu as part of a strategy called “Yatalock” where your opponent was kept from drawing cards due to Yata’s recurring effect to skip the opponent’s draw phase. Naturally over time CED would see errata after errata to keep this kind of lock from happening, as well as nerfing the amount of burn damage done from that effect- but in its initial showing CED was an all too powerful boss to handle.
Invasion of Chaos as a whole still remains a strong release even outside of these two game warping bosses. For starters the Ojamas!...Alongside these chaos bosses was a miniature version of BLS specifically, named Chaos Sorcerer. It required the same cost needing a light and a dark, but was generally weaker in stats and only had the first BLS effect to banish- but was never as limited in its time and could be obtained more easily with regards to rarity. Ironically, Dark Magician of Chaos isn’t a chaos monster, it's just a 2 tribute monster- but its a damn good one, allowing you to reclaim a spell from the GY and banishing any monster destroyed by DMoC. Gren Maju is one of the other stand out cards despite its more niche showings. Namely it represents one of the other recurring themes in Invasion of Chaos; banishing a lot. Gren Maju is a fairly inconsistent but frequent flier in dueling as it’s a normal summonable monster whose effect is its ATK/DEF are 400 times the amount of banished cards you have. The other elemental attributes (earth, fire, etc.) also saw special summonable monsters that required a banish, although outside of Gigantes im not sure how often these saw play. Sacred Crane is a typical 1600 normal summon however if it's special summoned by any means, you’re able to draw a card. Manju of the Ten Thousand Hands would become a staple for any ritual deck once those started becoming tolerable…
Holy shit there’s a lot of good stuff from this set. There’s just a lot of easy to slap in cards that would define what would later be coined ‘GOAT’ format, a timeframe we’ll soon be entering. Berserk Gorilla, Ryu Kokki, Smashing Ground, Dimension Fusion, Compuls??? Fucking Compulsory Evac Device was in this set? Invasion of Chaos is way too good to describe. Older sets are just as groundbreaking but had the excuse that they were compiling a lot of stuff already from the OCG.
My sad confession is that I did not utilize either of the two boss monsters of the Chaos format. They're extremely rare! If I had thought about it I could have just cheated one in with the password machine but I didn't particularly enjoy the thought of doing that. I kinda wished Chaos Sorcerer was a more common occurrence but by the time I got around to these cards my deck was already sorted out. But man, what a set…surely the game itself can capitalize on this insane moment in the card game?
Well, eh.
(The part where I actually review the game)
The thing about this game is that despite how flexible Invasion of Chaos made a lot of deck builds, 7 Trials to Glory is actually fairly simple of a game. You control a character going from areas on the map similar to Sacred Cards, and you battle any and all NPCs you can- including a dog. If you go to sleep at your house, this saves the game and a day passes on the calendar.
Basically, this works way better as a game that you would have played on car rides than on an emulator in 2023.
Tournaments only occur and progress as the day passes so playing on an emulator means you kinda just have to rest a bunch once you have a good enough deck. Once registered for a tournament, you just have to wait until that day, compete, win and repeat for several weeks. It’s pretty simple. In addition most of the time you’ll probably just be fighting Tea Gardner during any time you want to grind for currency as you now buy packs rather than get them after each match. How much currency you get is based on certain factors such as amount of monsters destroyed or how much damage you deal- however Tea covers both of these fronts better than most other duelists due to having a deck dedicated to stalling and gaining health over time. There’s also a rotating banlist each week that you’ll have to take into consideration lest you face the wrath of Mokuba. Otherwise it's just a matter of going week to week to eventual bi-weeks worth of tournaments until you beat the game.
There’s not a whole lot of interest happening throughout, although I did like the tournament based on giving you a certain restriction for the upcoming fight. This ‘Limitation Tournament’ gives you a trainer you’ll be going up against but both players will be under such rule, including rules like “no spells” or “No equip spells”. Except Yugi, Joey and Kaiba who just violate the rules regardless, cheaters. Otherwise most of the tournaments are just your standard dueling fare.
But there is a post game!
Now you get to the truly 'strong' trainers, but by now it's a bit too late to start considering anything too new- the way regulations work in the Mystic Zone allows the player to forego most deck philosophizing and just go straight to the gutter slop EZ pass cheap handie handy Boosted Exodia deck. In this freeform, endless simulator- the final boss of this game is the 'Rare Hunter' character, one so lacking in depth that he never bothered thinking of a name for himself (ignore places that call him ‘Seeker’ i dont know where this came from). Beating him unlocks a version of his 'Boosted Exodia' booster deck for purchase, the near-perfect Exodia deck to use in the Mystic Zone as no regulations means you can run multiple copies of each part, more than a third of your deck filled with these autowin pieces and the rest just stalling and drawing cards. You have now reached the end point of 7 Trials to Glory- not much story left from an already thin game. All that you can really do now is just grind matches in the Mystic Zone battles and tournaments and get crazy cash to spend on more cards.
It’s weird. It’d probably be an excellent game to have as a kid who would need to save often and would see these maybe a bit more naturally. But as is it’s freeform nature was just lacking in too many places to be my favorite of the bunch despite its inclusion of one of the best sets in the meta. Being able to save up currency to buy a big number of packs is pretty fun but I’m not sure if I like it as much as the ‘card a pack’ rewards since in some battles you might not get enough currency for the pack you’re looking to buy. I don’t know, it’s definitely a fine game but it doesn't have the structure of some prior games to really push me to think about how I build my deck. Also while the rotating banlist is a neat idea there were a lot of points where I’d just forgotten that I had certain cards because I had forgotten they were unbanned a while back- it can get kinda confusing. Regardless, it's still a pretty solid simulator and I liked the new aesthetic for battles this time around.
I also still don’t really know what the 7 trials are?