My Tag Force Adventure

There are people hyped about Saikyou Card Battle!

And there is Ken Sir

Re-visited my old and golden days of Yugioh, where my journey started in Tag Force GX.

The Tag Force installment continues til Tag Force Special, where interaction with other NPCs were minimised and there weren't much walking and talking. There were improvements with the game interface and the mechanics though, as the game mechanics got updated etc. (E.g Ignition Effect). But as we witness Tag Force 4 being limited to a 2D interface, I felt the game slowly lost its appeal.

So I started with a Aqua deck, filled with Normal Monster. Taking on the protagonist characters were tough, as I lacked staples such as Mystical Space Typhoon and Heavy Storm. Remember, this is the 2006 era, dominated by cards such as Future Fusion and Premature Burial. Nobleman of Crossout was at 1, and Upstart was semi-limited. To put things in perspective.

So I hunted and found an Obelisk Blue dude named Nova which was playing an Exchange with the Spirit deck, and had no other aggro win condition apart from that. Subjecting myself to a 50-duel long gaming experience, I went 100% victory against him and gathered some Battle Points (BP).

My decklist changed a couple of times at first, to include better options and more powerhouses.

Spending the BP on cards, I managed to get hold of some staples and better card options.
Next up, I proceeded to invest in sandwiches, which is an in-game item to improve your player's relationship with NPCs. I went ahead to please Zane, as I felt that the Cyber Dragon's archetype OTK capabilities were one of the top tiers in the game. Long story short, I managed to get Zane's affection level to increase, and I could access his cards via a pack in the store, that was unlocked.
I only had one Cyber End Dragon though, and couldn't open another one despite going ahead for 2 boxes worth of packs. Now I have so many Gatling Ogres (Qty 52) sitting in my trunk. ZZZ

All done in a single day.  Whee.
As I dueled more and my in-game duelist level increases, more packs were unlocked in the store as well. Buying more also got other packs unlocked, and soon, as the requirements were filled, I had plenty of packs unlocked and I proceeded to farm for more BP to purchase more packs.

Sunday was reserved for tag dueling, to quote Zane's words. I managed to spend about 3 days in that location, farming for BPs. With Cyberdras, it was quite quick with the constant OTKs.

 Term Test 1 came. And there were plenty of simple questions. I managed to get Five out of Five, and I recalled always incorrectly answering '3 per limited card' since I didn't comprehend what a Limited Status meant as a kid. (I was 12). With Cyber Dragons, I passed the practical dueling test with flying colours. All hail power bond. Next day, an email came in and I got 100%.
(The removal of the email interface contributed to my disappointment in staying committed to the future installments.)

 

Moving on, days passed (in-game days) and I managed to secure three partners, after weeks. I worked towards their seven hearts quest simultaneously for all three.

• Zane
• Alexis
• Jaden

Jaden was because I just dumped all my sandwiches to him LOL. Zane likes simple, and Alexis likes sweet. So whatever that wasn't both, went to Jaden (Fried Shrimp, Noodles, Hamburger etc). And yes, thumbs up for not being a picky eater Jaden.

Family-zoned

And I proceeded to go for Misawa next.
Damn this is starting to feel like a courting game, where the player has to go after girls for his future romance. Reminds me of the Harvest Moon game I played when I was around 10 too. That was on GBA though.

There was also the cool Misawa vs Princeton duel by the two AIs. Princeton lost to Sakurestu Armor LOL.

This is my Cyber Dragon decklist should anyone be interested. lol. Not sure WHO would, though. Mostly it is just random 'out' cards. Double Solemn because I can, and because there were Snatch Steal everywhere. Didn't bother making it optimum, since it won me plenty of games against the AIs. Win ratio was about 77.3%

I found this group of six people calling themselves the Elemental Lords, cause they claim to excel in their ATTRIBUTEs with their specific ATTRIBUTE decks. I call them free money. I won them 10 times and got their decklists (three of which was on my train ride during my journey to the Rank-Up League).

On my second to fifth day of playing was mostly farming, moving on with the storyline, and gathering cards. I also attended the term test 2. But got 90%, because I think I got the last question wrong. Think it is Dorothy. lol

At about Day 6 of playing the game, 47days to the in-game tournament, I witness many characters changing their decklist, which got me interested in doing so too. I battled Lioside, with a Chaos ritual deck, and decided to make that my next target. I could only battled him during lesson time, so I skipped classes 10 days in a row. I lost some games, but ultimately was able to secure the decklist. I didn't have many cards though, so it kinda ended up as a wild goose chase. I could have done it via the internet, but decided to relive my childhood days of suffering due to the lack of online resources at my disposal.

Princeton was my next targeted player to make partner. (Sounds like I wanna marry him.)
Couldn't do so til he returns as part of the storyline, so I decided to kill time by gathering Golden Egg Sandwiches. It continues to elude me, so in a bid to clear sandwiches, due the limit of 10, I decided to throw all my unwanted sandwiches to the next dumpster.....

While pleasing Syrus, I managed to gather the third and last component for Blair's revelation. The others from Alexis and Zane. Might as well.... So I exposed Blair but couldn't make her a partner since I had to clear the game at least once first.

So for 10 in-game days straight, it was

1. Buy sandwiches til I get Golden Egg
2. Dump remaining ones to Syrus
3. Keep top-graded ones for Princeton
4. Duel Lioside after skipping Class

Princeton returns and enters Slifer Red. I secured the decklist of Lioside about the same time as his return.
Princeton turned out to be less picky than I thought. Gathering five Golden Eggs also made everything easier. I fed him like stuffing a pig, giving him the 'okay' sandwiches and the Golden Eggs, raising him to six hearts within a day, and got him as a partner the next day.
Syrus got the remaining sandwiches and went up by two hearts to the seven, completing the quest for him too.

Only left main character that isn't tournament legal is Chumley..... Think I am just gonna leave it at that. He lost every duel in the anime lol. With 31 more days to the tournament, I only have the school festival and the third term test to look forward to. I ended at that for my Day 6 gameplay.

Third term test came and go. 100% score.

 Then all that is left is the School Festival. After that I just ended everyday in anticipation for the Part 2 Main Event

 Day 7

Here is where I met into a small problem. Technical issues.
Well, first off, continuing on with the gameplay, I completed the school festival and was left with 20 boring days til the tournament starts. So I ended each day doing nothing, til I completed part 1.

ONLY TO REALISE I CAN'T PROCEED.

The thing is, I haven't been saving in-game. Always using the PPSSPP save state function. Hence it kinda created a discord between the save data and the save state. I tried to google and solve it, but couldn't find a way to resolve it. There were people offering help and all, but I couldn't wait.

So I took a shortcut. I went to GameFAQ, downloaded a save file with everything unlocked, and downloaded that save data to my PPSSPP. Now I got many more things unlocked, except that my player name got changed from Ken to Kaze. Well, at least I got to continue on with Part 2. Bummer tho... But I did get the entire card database.

Well, for Part 2 of the game... THE TAG FORCE TOURNAMENT. This was what I was looking forward to. The betting of medals, finding the weakest prey. :D

First thing first. I didn't like the decklist they had. So I went back to Part 1, to get Lioside's decklist (AGAIN!). I used the Ancient Gear Beast deck the original user put together. (It doesn't follow the restriction though.)
So another 10 days of doing nothing but waking up to skip class, just to fight Lioside begins.
(I am lazy to search and put the cards in one by one so I am really keen to have a decklist to just load.) The Ancient Gear deck wasn't that consistent. There were a couple of bad hands. Although their effects were really handy. I worried less about traps.  I could almost swear the dice rolls were rigged.... Lioside had Zorc.

Halfway through, after losing thrice, I swapped my decklist to one with 80 cards named [Colossal Power]. There were a couple of Forbidden cards in it. So I guess I don't have an excuse to lose with OP cards like Monster Reborn and Mirror Force, for that meta. He even put in three Reborns after lifting the banlist via cheats.
Halfway through, I started to get cloggy hands but I survived. But I changed the decklist to minimise dead hands.

Then it hit me that I probably can't import the decklist over if I can't save in-game.... And Lioside's deck is getting disappointing... So I ended up wasting more time.

But I tried and realised that at least now I could save in-game.

So back to part 2. In a bid to continue on the path of nostalgia, I went ahead and selected Alexis as my partner, same as the first time I played the game. I started looking for more players who were willing to bet 4 or 5 medals, and rolled my eyes at players that were only willing to bet a single one.

Well, after selling my soul to the devil, time to redeem myself. I further modified the decklist and tried to keep within the restraints of the banlist. But found Fiber Jar's reset button effect too fun to give up. My hate for Snatch Steal drew me to the Horus cards.

Collecting 91 medals, I went ahead and joined the main event. First round was against the Paradox Brothers. Peace of cake.

Next level (quite literally, since I had to go up by a floor), I faced Chumley and Crowler. Never saw Chumley won a duel in the anime, made sure of that here too.

Third came the Syrus brothers. Part of me wanted to insert System Down into my deck, but nah... not worth my time. Decided to have some fun and changed my deck to another one. I randomly chose the Phantom Fiend deck.
Zane's Cyber Twin damaged us with a direct attack at the 2nd turn of the duel. Powerful traps like Magical Cylinder kept him at bay. Lightning Vortex got rid of the Fusion monster next. After that was pretty much grinding, and eventually victory.

Made it up to the roof of the tower. Chazz and Jaden awaits. I recall being intimidated as I found Jaden powerful when I was a child. Not anymore. GET YOUR GAME ON! Phone battery hits 15%, and urges me to charge it. But that can wait. Time to du- du- duel. I am ready for this! I am born for this!

But... Alexis took the limelight and OTK-ed by Snatch Steal and her fusion monster before my turn even arrived.
(.____.)

The whole process of gathering medals and climbing up the tournament ladder took a shorter time than I expected. I just pushed my way through, dealing the maximum damage I can, without the fear of overextending. I almost died to a Lightning Vortex once, but Magicial Cylinder saved the day.

Trivia: 

Always wondered what happened to Bastion back then. lol. maybe he got tossed aside like in the Anime? Since I got paired with Alexis, Bastion went MIA throughout Part 2. But I didn't understand that when I played it for the first time. And then he reappeared all of a sudden, with no soul during Part 3. xD


Part 3

Nostalgia is probably used more times than you can count in this article, yet I still can't describe the childhood feels I get when I see these old characters like Don Zalog and Tania.

I dreaded the duel with the Sacred Beasts coz I always lost when I played it back then. They were just so OP and I had weaker cards. Having to battle Kagemaru one-on-one also meant I couldn't capitalise on my partner's deck. But this time, it was quick and painless, of him. My dragon deck won me the two battles quickly. And I completed the storyline!

THE END

Followers of my twitter would have seen me upload and tweet screenshots from time to time. Ultimately, I couldn't resist a blog post describing my adventure. Felt that since I own a blog now, I should dedicate a long post of my re-visiting journey and compose an article. I didn't want to make it into a series, and thus, I decided to publish only after I have completed the gameplay once.

Evidently, this is a casual post. Readers who followed my articles long enough would realise that I didn't format the names of cards and people's names with bold or underlines. This article was more for sharing my journey, than for players to take note of the current game meta of 2016. In a moment of laziness, and wanting to publish this article faster, I didn't format the article. I included the screenshots I took throughout the game though, in order to not make the article into a sea of words.

Conclusion

It was a very nostalgic run for me. I started with the first installment when I first obtained my psp console, went ahead with the third (Skipped Gx Tag Force 2), then the fourth, fifth and finally Special (I skipped 6).

Tag Force made me felt like I was a student of Duel Academy, as I went through the gameplay as a character. Interestingly enough, I played the game BEFORE watching the anime. And I followed the anime ever since then.

(though I skipped ZeXal coz it felt like a first series rip off with Astral emulating Atem's role, 

and Yuma was untalented and unskillful, and probably the worst protagonist imo. 

Putting him after the awesome Yusei (combos and skills and all), 

was kind of a letdown.)

The occasional glitch.

The third installment shall be my next go-to game. I enjoyed the mini games, and reducing the 7 hearts quest to 4 hearts was less tiring. Lightlords is probably the top tier deck for that meta. I recall partnering with Blair and dominating the Sunday tournament, then proceeding to spend my winnings all at the store.

Time to roll the credits!!!

Other taken but unused screenshots, just gonna leave them here: