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Ebail
Ebail
So continuing where we left off.

See I never ended up buying a Red-Eyes deck. At the time it came out I was on a hiatus from the game so I missed out on farming any gems I'd use on it and instead focused on packs. I mean I'm not surprised they didn't include a Jack and Carly love confession. Maybe if Carly wasn't coming back for more roaming events I could have seen it happening. Not having any time is also a possibility. Either way they really did drop the ball with no Yusei and Kiryu interaction. Yeah it didn't make much sense. Like it was confirmed as a virtual world where Kaiba revived Yami Marik so it's not like it had to be a world where Yugi and Yami Yugi still shared the same body and thus couldn't duel.

Yeah you're right, I forgot about the delay. And I mean if you take away all the flashback episodes we didn't need and the series would be what, 10 episodes shorter? I mean there's still a chance that they will pull that card when Yusaku defeats Ai (because of course he will) and Ai will say that was his true agenda all along, because as you said it would certainly fit with how they both felt and interacted together since season 2. It would at least give more depth to them instead of this route that shows it was better for Yusaku when he said Ai was just his hostage and didn't care about him.

You're right there. If anything we'll get the standard bits of peace. Everyone coming to again and seeing Varis who was with him, Zaizen waking up and Aoi crying as she hugs him, Onizuka being surrounded by the kids again, Emma and her brother deciding to live their life together, ect. Standard generic stuff probably. Valid point there. That's why the characters felt overall useless to me though, because all of their plots ultimately went nowhere. Aoi, Onizuka, and Spectre could have easily just been replaced by other AI and it wouldn't have even made a difference honestly. At least then it could have furthered the AI and human bit more.

It's fine, naturally you're entitled to be upset about people disliking what you loved so much. I think we've all been there before. At least you can be happy about Vrains ending regardless. To kill time until the new series we should go back and watch Arc-V together! Nah I'm just kidding, I wouldn't suggest that haha. But yeah that's cool that now you'll have an extra half hour to watch something you'd prefer more.
Hidden Mew
Hidden Mew
I usually just buy the structure decks. They aren't too expensive and I prefer saving gems for the packs and other accessories. I think that the dub kept in Jack's love confession, but I know that they didn't do that when Carly died again, so that was probably one reason why that didn't happen here. We'll have another Carly event, so they could change the outcome. At least this will give some much needed attention to the pairing, so that's pretty neat.

I think that there were six or seven recap episodes, so taking those episodes out would leave Vrains with 113 or 114 episodes, which is pretty pathetic. It just shows how rushed the series has been even further. They could possibly still go that route for Ai, but I get the impression from the preview that he basically wants Yusaku to kill him due to how strong his grief over the other Ignis' deaths. I don't think that would work too well, but it might at least explain a bit as to why they suddenly made Ai a villain. To give Vrains some credit, Ai being the final villain isn't a terrible idea. I think it needed better setup and the writing is still pretty sloppy, but he may not end up being the worst final villain of a Yu-Gi-Oh! series. He's no Zarc by any means, but he does have personality and a personal connection to Yusaku, so he'll still be a step up from Don Thousand in that regard.

Not only do their storylines ultimately go nowhere, the characters just have so little impact on the plot. Aoi is just the token female lead. She got some token victories, but she is primarily used for angst and hyping up new characters for Yusaku to defeat. Her desire to become stronger in order to protect people is meaningless when she never gets a meaningful victory. Onizuka's character derailment subplot was especially pointless. He just reverted to his season one personality for his last duel of the series and we aren't going to see much, if any, of the result of his so called redemption. Spectre feels really pointless as a Lost Incident victim. They wanted to give more context for his relationship with Revolver, as well as possibly avoid having to create a new character as Earth's origin, but it just really didn't go anywhere. Making the cast full of AIs would have worked nicely with whole conflict between humans and AIs, but they probably still would have felt so pointless. They could have just made the series primarily about Yusaku, Revolver and introduce Takeru earlier, even though that would have probably changed too much of his backstory and season one in general. I have never seen a Yu-Gi-Oh! series care so little about most of its cast or be so against introducing new characters.

I'm still so happy about Vrains ending though. It is both amazing and pathetic to see that this series end in such a rushed manner. I've been meaning to start another Arc V rewatch. I love the series to pieces, but it can take awhile for me to rewatch anything. I may start it either before or after Vrains wraps up.
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Ebail
Ebail
I'd probably do that if I felt like spending money on the game, but given how my interest for it comes and goes I never feel like it. I never did see the dub of it far enough so I'm not sure if they did, but either way hopefully when she does return they add more to it instead of just rehashing all the same lines and things again, and they push the ship further.

I mean you had to figure from early on there was a good chance Ai might be the final villain with how often they'd reference AI and humans being enemies. It seemed like they never really had any signs of showing a peaceful ending despite all the time of Yusaku and Ai working together. It just seemed like a too straightforward plotline from the beginning which is why I'm not too surprised they're running with it. I guess Ai will just die for the reason you said but it kinda won't leave any closure with Yusaku so I think the ending is going to be pretty sloppy. At least like you said though Ai is a better final enemy than Don Thousand and maybe even more so than Darkness. Darkness just felt kind of unnecessary.

The thing is with Vrains is I think they're trying to make it not seem like a Yu-Gi-Oh! When you watch any duel outside of Yusaku's for the most part they almost always start the same. Characters always summon the same monsters to start a duel here as opposed to other series where they'd use a variety of cards, and decks are more like a real life deck using multiple of the same cards just to fit an archetype. So while the characters are meaningless I think a lot of the problems also stem from how bad they made the duels be. They'd usually only mess in one different card at times to make things seem different otherwise the deck always was setup and used 100% the same from anyone in any duel. From the characters to the subplots, to the duels, everything just seemed off and didn't say Yu-Gi-Oh! to me aside from the fact that they used trading cards.

Yeah I hear what you mean about the rewatches. I can be the same way. I also sometimes start to watch something and then put off continuing to watch it. Also the being busy factor at times can play a part.
Hidden Mew
Hidden Mew
I can understand that. I've tried to avoid spending money on any of the other mobile games I have since I've already spent a decent amount for Pokemon Go and Duel Links. I'm still annoyed at Pokemon Masters having free and paid gems as being separate from each other. Duel Links makes it easier to farm for in-game currency than I've seen for any Pokemon mobile game.

I didn't really think of Ai becoming a villain before, but I think that was mainly because people thought that the chess pieces from SOL Technology would be the big bad villains for awhile. It does make sense given the whole conflict between AIs and humans, but it does seem a bit too rushed. I'd be pretty surprised if they actually have Ai or any of the Ignis stay dead. I'm still expecting them to all be revived somehow because Vrains doesn't really like having long lasting consequences. They are making a big deal about how the other Ignis are gone, but since almost the whole cast has died twice, I don't really buy into that notion. I might give Vrains some credit if they actually do keep them all dead, although it would still come down to the execution too. The ending is almost guaranteed to be sloppy given how sudden it is. I've never seen the rest of GX, so I don't know how Darkness really fares as a villain. I should get around to watching it one of these days, especially with the season being on Crunchyroll.

That's actually a big impression I've gotten about Vrains since it started practically. It feels like a Yu-Gi-Oh! series that desperately doesn't want to be a Yu-Gi-Oh! series. Instead of being about friendship or having characters work together to defeat a villain, it's all about Yusaku saving the day while everyone else is canon fodder. There are some friendships within the main cast, but they're largely isolated from each other. Yusaku doesn't really have any believable connections outside of Ai, Takeru and maybe Shoichi, but even then, it feels pretty surface level at best. Aoi still doesn't really have any believable connections outside of her brother. Outside of fighting the same villains, the group doesn't really feel connected. The theme of the franchise is basically friendship is magic, but Vrains actively goes against that since it is Yusaku who saves the day, not friendship or the bonds between different characters. Even when they tried to say that his bonds with the cast makes him stronger in season two, it fell completely flat. He has been overpowered from the start and he doesn't have a lot of strong bonds within the cast anyway. That is a good point about the duels themselves though. I hadn't really factored that in considering how rare it is we see someone besides Yusaku duel, but that does make their decks a bit more stale by comparison too.

That's basically what happens with me. I get too busy doing something else or it's just harder for me to fit a rewatch into my usual routine.
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Ebail
Ebail
I mean there's nothing really wrong with it, afterall it is your money to spend, but either way you're right about the latter. That whole paid only gems is rather annoying and actually a reason why I haven't gotten into the game much. I figure why spend my time there when I can play my Dokkan Battle or Duel Links which make it perfectly easy enough to farm the ingame currency. The GO coins are especially bad. If you live in a busy area full if Gyms you're in luck, but living out in a quiet area? Guess you're outta luck short of spending money.

It did seem early on that the chess pieces could have been a major enemy but then they just seemed like something generic to me after a while. The only other reason I saw it maybe being Ai is the tendency in some of the series now to make a main hero be an enemy. Maybe not so much like Yuya, but more so like Judai and the Supreme King. As farfetched as it is I can see the other Ignis staying dead and when Yusaku wins, Ai somehow fuses with him similar to how Onizuka had that chip put into himself. Darkness was only about two episodes I think? Trueman, and Fujiwara were the bulk of the actual enemy, Darkness was basically just an added character to really get Fujiwara redeemed.

To me I feel outside of Ai, Yusaku's only other type of friend would he Roboppi, at least to me. Any other bond or "friendship" seems either forced, or only made because of everyone's revenge plots and not an actual bond. The only real close one after that could be Aoi maybe if they actually interacted more and didn't just form a friendship because he constantly saved her. Really though like you said no one really feels connected. Not outside of family anyway. It's funny because after how much Arc-V was about bonds, friendship, and working together it feels like due to not wanting to copy that or something Vrains did a full 180 and tried to get as far away from that as they possibly could. I especially noticed it in Season 2. Bohman always dueled the same, then so did Lightning, as did Takeru, then Aoi always set up her moves the same. Almost everyone aside from Yusaku, and Revolver to an extend was like this. Just makes all the duels feel the same just with different faces.

I hear you there. Tuesdays I'm off from work so if I can find time I watch stuff then, and Sunday's are sometimes my day to watch something too as I usually so a shorter day but now for the next 16 weeks I spend all Sunday just watching football so that eliminates that day for me.
Hidden Mew
Hidden Mew
Paid gems is such a terrible idea, especially when they honestly wouldn't need to force people to spend money on the game. Pokemon Go is much worse in that department though. Even if you do live in an area with a lot of Gyms, you can only collect fifty coins per day, so it's still going to take forever to actually save up enough money to buy almost anything. A friend of mine suggested that we could sell our items for extra coins, similar to how you can sell items at the Poke Marts in the main series games. It still might be difficult to get enough coins for the boxes, but that could possibly make it easier to get the clothing options for our avatars.

The chess pieces were pretty generic, but I figured that they wouldn't be the main villain after SOL Technologies became much less of a threat. Plus, they were barely mentioned after the first arc and they got rid of Queen pretty quickly too. Ai being the final villain wasn't a huge stretch in itself. It might work when they expand more on his motivation since I'm sure that there's more to it than just creating copies of himself, but it just lacks a good enough setup for it to work. I could still see them bring the other Ignis back to life somehow, but the idea of Yusaku and Ai merging together does sound plausible. I'm still kind of expecting Yusaku to turn out to be a living AI himself for some reason. Darkness always sounded more like the typical overpowered being of pure evil kind of villain.

I couldn't really buy the friendship between Yusaku and Roboppi. They had barely interacted throughout the series and his sad expression right before he had those flashbacks felt so emotionally manipulative. I definitely don't think he had any close connection with Aoi. I think I could count the times they met outside of Link Vrains on one hand. They easily have the worst chemistry out of all of the male and female leads, or at least tied with Yuma and Kotori in that regard. I thought that his friendship with Takeru was believable. It wasn't anything to write home about, but they actually spent time together outside of Link Vrains and knew who they were, so I think that helped in making their friendship more believable. I'd be able to find his friendship with Shoichi more believable if he wasn't just the tech support guy for most of the series and then they tried way too hard to make their duel emotional. That's exactly why Vrains feels like a Yu-Gi-Oh! series that desperately doesn't want to be a Yu-Gi-Oh! series. It would be jarring coming after any other series, but it's especially so after Arc V. It actively goes against the main themes of the franchise and actively seems uninterested in bringing the cast together in a meaningful way.
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Ebail
Ebail
Right? Like I know I keep going back and mentioning about Dokkan Battle but it's a good example for that. When they drop certain summon banners people love after a few days there's always an in game message about it being a top grossing game around the world and they give you a bunch of free stuff. I'm sure Masters would have no issues getting money spent on it like you said, because there's bound to be banners/summons/syncs that people really want and would spend money on trying to get without hurting free to play people. Well you're right about that, especially given it takes just 200 to increase the amount of Pokemon you can carry and item count. That's where most of my coins go. That's only 4 days but gotta make sure it's the full 50 every day. I'm not sure about the item selling idea though. I mean it is a great idea but I wouldn't see them allowing us to do that. Not with how many Pokestops are out there in some locations, and how easy it is to get items from them, albeit randomly. I could see them doing something though like being able to trade extra unneeded items for points or something towards other items you need like evolutionary ones.

They could have gone down the lines of the Chess Pieces trying to use the AI they were creating to take over the world or something like that. But then again with it only seeming like they were interested in the money they make as major shareholders that didn't seem plausible. Yeah hopefully in these last episodes we get a little more explanation as to why exactly Ai is doing this. It probably will just be him being lonely or something though. Yusaku being an AI himself was something I also thought of, and it would make sense looking back at his Link Sense and whatnot from when he faced Bohman. He was definitely overpowered but ultimately he just seemed like an extra addition just to increase the plot.

It's a shame really because this series really had the potential to showcase friendship so well. Every prior series everyone had at least one friend at the start of the series, or in the case of GX, would instantly make a friend. Vrains was all about all these people who had no comrades or no true companionship outside of any family. It could have been so easy for everyone to be brought together over time, but instead of that they just kind of tried to make us think there were bonds there when there weren't. I look back to when Ai went to "sacrifice" himself in the duel with Bohman, and stated about all the bonds Yusaku formed with others. As you said though he really didn't have any of those bonds. I guess we're just meant to believe all these bonds are true and strong with nothing to really back them up. What a mess the series has been.
Hidden Mew
Hidden Mew
I have bought a few gems already, but only some cheap ones and even then I haven't gotten any noteworthy results thus far. I was tempted to buy one of the monthly discounts, but then they gave a warning that I've already bought 300 gems this month and to not buy too much. While I understand that they don't want kids to spend a lot of money, it was pretty upsetting when the game is designed to where you have to buy gems in order to get anyone. You can farm the items relatively well, but the gems are pretty hard to come by. I have to increase the amount of Pokemon I carry fairly often too, although I do need to work on transferring some Pokemon to my Let Go games too. Yeah, I suspect that they wouldn't want to make it too easy to get coins, but they really need to make it easier to farm them. I still struggle trying to get Sinnoh Stones.

That plan for the chess pieces sounds plausible and I definitely got the impression that they were going to do something with Queen in the third season, but that obviously didn't happen. Ai did say that he was lonely and basically wanted Yusaku to choose how he dies, but given the preview had Lightning in it, I suspect that there's still more to it. The Link Sense was definitely a reason why I thought he could be a living AI. It might also explain his missing memories, although I'm not sure if they'll even bother to address that plot point. I wouldn't put it past Vrains to just throw that twist at the last minute. I still remember being confused as to how Yuma could be a part of Astral and that wasn't mentioned until the Zexal finale.

Vrains definitely had potential. The setup definitely could have led to Yusaku making more friends and opening up more as a result. Instead, everyone is still pretty much within their own groups. They'll fight against common enemies, but they still fight largely on their own. Not having the cast interact with each other too often, especially when few of them knew who Yusaku was for the bulk of the series, definitely didn't help matters either. That's why the whole scene you mentioned where Ai talks about their bonds fell so flat. Yusaku had barely interacted with Aoi, Emma and Akira, but apparently now they have such strong bonds. Much like the series itself, it just felt so hallow and empty. It has definitely been a soulless mess of a series.
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Ebail
Ebail
Wait seriously? They already tried to warn you to stop after only spending, what is it $3, in the game already? While that does make sense about wanting to prevent kids from buying too many, it doesn't entirely add up. If they were that concerned about people buying a lot of gems then they wouldn't have made paid gem summons a thing. Seems like they're just trying to cover up for themselves. Yeah I know what you mean there. I haven't bothered to transfer any Pokemon myself to my Let's Go game since December so that's been a problem. Same here, I think I've only ever gotten 2 Sinnoh Stones myself. Not exactly easy to work with when several Pokemon need them. I'd probably feel less annoyed if I came across other evolutionary items easier rather than having 6 King's Rock and almost none of the others.

Yeah the Queen, what another throwaway character she turned out to be. It's like why even bothered introducing her? Just so you had a second person who had a key to the system? Yeah I can definitely see them throwing in some kind of weird last minute twist like you said. Something that they use to try to cover up all the glaring plotholes they're going to leave, and unexplained things. I actually forgot that was a part of the Zexal ending. To be honest I had stopped watching it when they started to reveal all the Barian backgrounds were altered and such. It just had me feeling eh so I never bothered to see the ending exactly, just how Yuma won the duel and then the bit after it.

I mean that point is even further proven when Akira and Aoi meet Yusaku in the real world, where Akira tried to thank him and he just shrugged it off saying he was just fighting for himself and she was there. Really completely deteriorates Ai saying about how Yusaku formed many bonds. Like you said it was all just about common enemies. Nothing was a bond it was just them coming together to work together to stop someone then going back off on their own. A lot of wasted potential when, if they tried, people like Yusaku and Aoi could have had fantastic character growth.
Hidden Mew
Hidden Mew
I might have been about five dollars and I was going to buy one of the monthly deal packs, but it was still pretty annoying. At least they gave out a ton of free gems to make up for an error. I still wish that it was easier to farm gems in the game. I still have no idea why they made Sinnoh Stones so hard to get. I get evolution items from the seventh day Pokestop all the time, so making them so hard to get when so many Pokemon need them is just annoying. I could only evolve one of my male Ralts into a Gallade on a Community Day.

They also did announce a Dark Side of Dimensions World for Duel Links. I can't say that I'm too surprised given the leaks, but it is pretty disappointing. I could totally understand having a Dark Side of Dimensions event, but making a separate world for the movie just sounds like they're really desperate for more DM nostalgia. Not to mention it means that there will be a longer wait for an Arc V world, which is still pretty disappointing for me. Admittedly, maybe they wanted to use this to save on more time since like you mentioned before, they haven't done enough with the 5D's world or Synchro monsters to jump into Xyz monsters, but it leaves me pretty mixed. The trailer looked pretty neat and the idea of Skill chips sounds potentially interesting. I'd love a way to unlock Skills without hoping to randomly get one in a PvP match.

I think that they wanted to give Akira a different boss other than talking chess pieces. All she did before being defeated was look evil and pretty. She was involved with Onizuka's pointless subplot, so that didn't help matters. I don't think she would have been an interesting villain for the season, but a lot of people assumed that would be the case. I think that the second half of Zexal was better, or at least more interesting, than the first half. It doesn't make it worthwhile to sit through the whole thing, but it was more engaging at least. I still don't like Zexal, but I'd say it was overall okay at best.

The whole reveal for Yusaku's identity was a lot more low key than I expected it to be. That might have been the point, but it made me wonder why they had Aoi in the dark for so long. Being able to interact with Yusaku earlier knowing full well that he is Playmaker could have helped in developing their relationship. I've seen some people happy that Aoi's whole world doesn't revolve around Yusaku specifically, but being primarily connected to her brother isn't really much better.
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