Personally, I'm of the opinion that the Yugioh card game has only gotten BETTER as time has gone on.
As someone who's played on-and-off since the very beginning, I can say with conviction that I DON'T miss the early days of the game. As a previous poster noted, the power level of cards was entirely unbalanced in the early days. 95% of the normal monsters in the game were entirely useless, and spells and traps were about 50% overpowered, 50% shite.
Banlists and the relative rebalancing of new cards has helped the environment tremendously. One of the things about Yugioh that I've always preferred over Magic is that cards never rotate out, any card you own is still totally usable, as long as it isn't banned. Thanks to this, old cards that were once overpowered are now at a more reasonable power level, and cards that were formerly useless have found new life with new purpose.
As for XYZ and Synchros specifically, I don't have any problem with them. Synchros are fairly neat, in my mind, they work like how fusions should have ALWAYS worked. Taking two monsters, and turning them into one, except without the cumbersome Polymerization card. XYZ are much the same, except they're sort of a replacement for Ritual monsters. Removing the cumbersome Ritual magic cards, and just using two or more monsters to summon a new one. It's all about streamlining things, and at the same time they add a new layer of strategy to the game.
Yeah, things have gotten a big convoluted along the way, with timing and priority and whatnot, but such hiccups are to be expected with a game THIS old with THIS many active cards in the card pool.
Oh, and Pinkie Pie is best pony.
As someone who's played on-and-off since the very beginning, I can say with conviction that I DON'T miss the early days of the game. As a previous poster noted, the power level of cards was entirely unbalanced in the early days. 95% of the normal monsters in the game were entirely useless, and spells and traps were about 50% overpowered, 50% shite.
Banlists and the relative rebalancing of new cards has helped the environment tremendously. One of the things about Yugioh that I've always preferred over Magic is that cards never rotate out, any card you own is still totally usable, as long as it isn't banned. Thanks to this, old cards that were once overpowered are now at a more reasonable power level, and cards that were formerly useless have found new life with new purpose.
As for XYZ and Synchros specifically, I don't have any problem with them. Synchros are fairly neat, in my mind, they work like how fusions should have ALWAYS worked. Taking two monsters, and turning them into one, except without the cumbersome Polymerization card. XYZ are much the same, except they're sort of a replacement for Ritual monsters. Removing the cumbersome Ritual magic cards, and just using two or more monsters to summon a new one. It's all about streamlining things, and at the same time they add a new layer of strategy to the game.
Yeah, things have gotten a big convoluted along the way, with timing and priority and whatnot, but such hiccups are to be expected with a game THIS old with THIS many active cards in the card pool.
Oh, and Pinkie Pie is best pony.