I Finally Beat Forbidden Memories

Yu-Gi-Oh! Forbidden Memories has haunted me since I was a kid. I could go on about the vibes of ancient Egypt, the foggy 3D graphics, or the gorgeous synth soundtrack, but what’s really haunted me is that I never beat it. I’ve returned to it multiple times throughout my life, yet I’ve been defeated each time.

So in 2024 I vowed that I’d finally beat the game by the end of the year. In August I finally cracked it, and it only took me…

… 34 hours. Oh.

What’s up with this game?

I’m just going to assume that anyone reading this remembers how Yu-Gi-Oh plays.

• Forbidden Memories follows a facsimile of the basic rules and says sod it to the rest. It plays like you did on the school playground.
• The game features a story mode and a free play mode. Your cards/deck are shared between these game modes, and in free play you can duel against anyone you’ve beaten in the story mode.
• Winning a duel awards you with a card. You also are awarded up to 5 star chips depending on how well you did, which are used to purchase more cards.
• The key gimmick of Forbidden Memories is the fusion system. On your turn you can select any of the cards in your hand and fuse them together to create a stronger card.

Wait what–

Yeah, you read that right. You can just select any card and fuse them together. See?

Any card?

Yes. Kinda.

There are rules to fusions based on the card/monster type and how many points it has¹. If the cards are incompatible, only the last card you selected will be played.

I can’t understate how this simple idea turns an otherwise mediocre game into something so captivating. The meta-game of figuring out the best fusions will keep you returning to the game, and nothing beats the feeling of winning a duel because you gambled on a successful feature. This feature alone helps turn any weak deck into something formidable.

… Although you’ll eventually clock on to the one fusion that matters the most. But I’ll touch on that later.

Anything else worth mentioning?

The game also has this weird rock paper scissors thing. When you play a monster card you assign it a symbol that can give it a 500 point buff/nerf.

Honestly it’s a bit of a pain to deal with and not worth remembering as a whole (the game tells you if you have an advantage or not before an attack). But often utilising the 500 point buff is one of the few ways you’ll get past Labyrinth Wall or Millennium Shield’s 3000DEF.

So how did it take 34 hours to beat?

The game is hard and is a complete slog to get through.

• The AI cheats. Enemies know what face-down cards are and can change out the cards in their hand for more powerful ones.
• At the halfway point, opponents will casually play cards like Meteor B. Dragon (3500ATK).
• You only gain up to 5 star chips in a duel. Decent cards cost >100 star chips, good cards >250. Have fun grinding in free play.²
• Certain cards only drop if you beat a duel in a certain way, some of which are ultimately arcane.
  • For a S-Tec rank (useful for spell cards), your opponent needs to lose by running out of cards.

• This game is RNG hell. Even with a stacked deck there’s no guarantee you’ll get good cards in your first hand, and good luck unlocking that one card you want when it has a <0.5% drop rate.

But again, this game’s difficulty and the fact I never beat it is why it cemented itself in my mind. I knew going into this that it’d be an uphill struggle, but at this point the difficulty is just alluring.

And how did you beat it?

Blimey, where to start.

1) That one fusion

Ah yes, what I mentioned earlier. Despite the vast amount of card fusions available, there’s one that’s a cut above the rest: Twin-Headed Thunder Dragon

With its 2800ATK and 2100DEF, it’s a beast. And everyone who’s played this will tell you the same thing: This is the card you need to learn to fuse because of how viable it is.

To fuse it all you need is to fuse a dragon type with ≥1600ATK and a thunder type - remember that you can fuse other dragon cards into one with ≥1600ATK!

Now it’s no Blue Eyes, but mixed with an equip it might as well be. Add on a complimenting field bonus and you’re set… Until Gate Guardian, Ultimate Great Moth, etc show up.

2) Grinding. A lot of grinding.

Really the first half of the game is mostly easy. You’ll have a few roadblocks, getting past Labyrinth Wall and Kaiba’s Blue Eyes White Dragon in particular, but both are manageable with an early deck. It’s everything else afterwards which isn’t

After the fight with Kaiba in the present, you find yourself back in the past. You have to make your way through 5 elemental themed shrines, each containing two duels against mages with a themed deck of cards. This is the casual player filter, the part of the game I could never beat as a kid.

To put it bluntly, you’ll need to grind cards and star points in Free Play for a few hours. Build up a more competent deck. Beat the Meadow Mage, quit out to Free Play, then duel him repeatedly for 200 or so times for him to drop a Meteor B Dragon.

Wh-

Yeah. That’s about 6–10 hours if you’re not speeding things up with an emulator. It took me 214 duels before he finally dropped Meteor Dragon (the lesser version of Meteor B Dragon). Thankfully I already had a Red Eyes Black Dragon from duelling Joey Jono 2nd a lot, so I could fuse Meteor B Dragon with both of those.

And then at 301 duels, I finally nabbed myself the top prize:

So what’s after the mages?

Oh, you know. A measly 7/8 duels in a row against the toughest characters, all decked out with multiple cards with over 3500ATK, no biggie. Hell, the Ancient Egyptian version of Kaiba has 3 Ultimate Blue Eyes (4500ATK).

I could get through the first four or so bosses with some good thinking, but Seto 3rd’s aforementioned Ultimate Blue Eyes..?

More grinding?

More grinding baby.

The multiple Meteor B Dragons were good, but not good enough. If I was going to seriously make it through the final fights I needed spell and equip cards, and that requires a special way of grinding.

When you win a duel you’ll receive a special rank based on how you did. These ranks influence what sort of cards you’ll unlock. For the best spell cards you’ll want to achieve an S-Tec (highest rated Technical win) against Pegasus.

For reference, an S-Tec requires that your opponent loses by drawing all of their cards. You have to wait out each individual turn and try not to lose any life points while your opponent goes through every card in their deck. This process takes at least 10 minutes if not sped up by an emulator.

So is that what you did?

Yeah, for about 15 minutes. Then I spent the next few hours repeating the final 7 duels over and over again expecting different results.

Insanity-maxxing worked.

To cut a boring story short, after some hours I managed to beat Seto’s Ultimate Blue Eyes with a clutch dark hole, then managed to slap 2 booster equips on a Meteor B Dragon.

The game’s final boss? Thankfully a pushover. With a deck of only monsters, all I had to do was be lucky he wouldn’t play Ultimate Blue Eyes or Gate Guardian. And thankfully for me, he didn’t. Victory was swiftly assured.

And with that, I finally beat Forbidden Memories.

Was it worth it?

Honestly? Yeah.

I know that it’s a trivial & useless thing to spend 34 hours of my life on, but with all the effort I poured into the game as a kid and my ultimate belief it was impossible… It was great.

And really it wasn’t all drab as it sounds. I’d only play if I had something else to do as well. Podcasts, YouTube videos, voice chats, etc. Having something to grab my attention while I went through the motions of duelling made it an oddly therapeutic experience.

Is there anything you wish you knew before this?

Oh god yes.

• When you start the game, your deck has a 50% chance of having Dark Hole (destroys every card on the field) or Raigeki (destroys all enemy monster cards). The latter is much preferred, and I struggled more because my deck had Dark Hole.
• There’s a mod/romhack out there that gives you 15 cards for winning a duel instead of just one. That would’ve saved me so much time.
• The strats. I spent so much time mindlessly grinding for certain cards when it turned out I should’ve played in a much different way.

Anything else?

Honestly… I had fun. I’ll probably find myself playing it again in the future, seeing if I can beat my current time, although I’m a long way away from the world record.

It’s also worth mentioning that upon completion, at the end of the credits I was presented with a secret code. According to a friend, it has something to do with its follow-up game, so… Maybe see you all after another 34 hours?

Aside from that? Eh, I’ll never beat Minecraft, and that’s okay.