All players create an account and log in, and after generating their game character, they automatically get a Duel Disc provided by the system as a beginner's gift.
The timeline for the opening of Linked World is set during the Duel City Arc of the original Yu-Gi-Oh anime. At this point, the Kaiba Company had just developed the Duel Disc, a card-playing divine artifact capable of projecting three-dimensional monster images anytime and anywhere. Generous Kaiba Company provided this new generation of Duel Discs for free to all "recognized" duelists.
Youyu confirmed that the time he reincarnated into was even earlier than the game's launch.
On the side of the commercial district's street, there's a billboard stating that there's still over a month until the Duel City tournament hosted by Kaiba Company, which also means there's about a month until the game officially launches and a large number of physical card players flood in.
Emmm...
...a month is too damn short, isn't it?
Isn't the usual reincarnation routine supposed to give you about three years to develop a bit, and then when players come, you can reap the benefits?
In a month, in this liver-damaging, hair-pulling game like Linked World, who knows if you can even put together a halfway decent card deck...
It's worth mentioning that many cards that are easily obtainable with physical cards are highly rare in Linked World. Even if you put in tons of effort and money, you might not get them.
For example, the Blue-Eyes White Dragon.
It's a card that will never be found in the system card pool. Until Youyu's crossover, no one had heard of a player obtaining it through a quest.
Though there's no concrete evidence, some even suspect that in this game, there might only be three Blue-Eyes White Dragons in the whole world, and they are all in the hands of NPC Kaiba Seto...
There are other rare cards too—like the Magician, though not as rare as having only a few in the world, they are still very hard to acquire and can't be obtained from the system card pool.
Simply put, in Linked World, some rare cards and decks are like the legendary manuals in martial arts games; acquiring them depends not only on player skill but also on luck.
As everyone knows, a card deck is the ultimate weapon in the Yu-Gi-Oh World, so naturally, not long after reincarnating into this world, Youyu immediately checked his starting card deck...
...And unsurprisingly, it was a set of Elemental Heroes.
Wow! Starting with an Elemental Hero set! Starting with the protagonist's deck, it must be really awesome, right?
...Hell no!
No "A Hero Lives," no "Mask Change," forget that, at least give me Sky Man?
Who in the hell would have the urge to be a hero without Sky Man?
(Note: Elemental Hero Avian, 4 stars, ATK 1800, DEF 300
Effect: When this card is successfully summoned or special summoned, you can choose 1 of the following effects to activate.
1) Destroy magic/trap cards on the field up to the number of "Hero" monsters you control, except this card.
2) Add 1 "Hero" monster from your deck to your hand.)
But forget about such powerful cards, the initial deck provided by the system doesn't even have a single fusion card. There's no point mentioning the powerful monsters that came out later; it seems like the entire deck doesn't even have a single effect monster.
In other words, it looks like he'll have to start from scratch and rely on the notoriously "Four Great (Feeble) Heroes" of Elemental Heroes to make his mark...
The Four Great (Feeble) Heroes refer to the early Elemental Hero cards used by the protagonist, Yuki Judai, in Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Avian, Burstinatrix, Clayman, and Sparkman. They are all Normal Monsters with no effects and low attack power, hence their glorified nickname by duelists...
Of course, there's nothing to complain about, since this initial deck was also chosen by Youyu himself when creating this account.
When players create a character, the system offers several different themed starter decks to choose from. However, players found through research that it doesn't really matter what you choose, as the starting decks generally only give you a bunch of mostly useless Normal Monsters.
These monsters are respectfully called "Normal Monsters" by duelists...
So why choose to start with Elemental Heroes for this account?
That's because at the end of his last video, Youyu promised his audience that in the next video, he would play a "pure" Hero deck. But who would have thought that before he could become a hero, he inexplicably crossed over with the account... (Giant Soldier of Stone warning.JPG)
However, Youyu has another advantage.
As a Reincarnator, he's aware of various anecdotes about the game from the opening until now, including some side quests triggered by players and certain hidden storylines.
He remembered that in his previous life, a player seemed to have triggered a one-time hidden storyline and received quite generous rewards, becoming a sensation among players and a top arena player across multiple versions.
Youyu carefully recalled and organized the various richly rewarding hidden storylines and quests he remembered, but most of them either had extremely difficult trigger conditions, required extraordinary luck, or involved very complicated procedures with hard skill requirements—
—you often need a powerful enough card deck to meet the conditions for completing the quests.
And some tasks and storylines could be very dangerous, potentially even life-threatening.
What? You say a card game could kill someone?
That's exactly it.
In the Yu-Gi-Oh World's worldview, there are extraordinary powers in existence, the most well-known of which across the Yu-Gi-Oh series is the "Darkness Game."
The Darkness Game is said to be an ancient magical ritual passed down from Ancient Egypt that those with supernatural powers can initiate.
This power can work on any game with rules and to determine victory or defeat, any type of game, such as cards, mahjong, chess, or even coin flips.
However, among all these types of rituals, the game of Duel Monsters is the one where the magic's efficacy is the strongest. The Darkness Game based on Duel Monsters often involves the participants' souls and sometimes goes beyond life and death, being considered a forbidden game.
In the Yu-Gi-Oh World's worldview, there are actually quite a few people who possess dark powers, and it's not as straightforward as the few shown in the anime originals.
Each Yu-Gi-Oh anime series centers around the protagonist, so what the audience sees is only what's observed from the protagonist's perspective in each generation.
But in reality, this is only the tip of the iceberg of this worldview. The story of Yu-Gi-Oh involves gods and demons, the human realm and Netherworld, time travel, dimensional barriers, and more.
Actually, around the world, various levels of Dark Ability Users have always been dispersed, and the inheritance of this ancient magical ritual has never been interrupted over thousands of years.
This is precisely what makes the gameplay of Linked World so rich. Players don't necessarily have to revolve around the protagonist group to participate in the main storyline; other regions may also trigger other plot quests not found in the anime.
However, among these Power Users, some are strong and some are weak. The strong ones, like Millennium Item holders, can even communicate with the Netherworld and traverse time and space. As for the weak ones...
...they might just be able to force players who lose a game to bark like dogs, that's about it.
For players, it doesn't really matter; although their game character might die in a Darkness Game, they can still be revived. The worst loss for a player would be failing the corresponding quest.
But for Youyu now, it's a different story.
Though he still has the game's interface, he's now an NPC character template; who knows if he could revive if he dies in a Darkness Game.
So, considering the worst-case scenario, he doesn't plan on touching these dangerous quests for now.