an errata for Firewall went out in the OCG where it has hard once per turns on its effects and also it can now only special summon cyberses instead of. Anything.
I know a lot of people hate erratas and I'm kind of in agreement since it's very common for them to make nerfed retrains, but Firewall has a special status as being a protagonist ace card (even though though they quietly abandoned firewall in Vrains because they realized it was too OP and would've removed a lot of the duel tension)
So it probably doesn't look that great when the most iconic card of one of the anime series is forbidden because let's be honest no one cares about Decode Talker
Even after all this Firewall Dragon is the face of the Link Summoning mechanic, so yeah i'm not a big fan of erratas due to it being inconsistent with the other policy of "let's make new, nerfed retrains of op cards" but in this case I'll make an exception
same, the entire reason Firewall is broken is because it's not once per turn but I guess they wanted to go the extra mile to make double sure it's no longer broken
there's just been too many cases where they don't put once per turn clauses on cards because they thought the card/its archetype was bad (see: Lunalights, Grinder Golem) then years later a new mechanic comes out that makes these cards broken
I can see why people would argue for Decode Talker but I firmly believe that Decode Talker's rise in Vrains was solely due to the fact that they realized they couldn't keep Firewall due to the fact that it was. You know. Overpowered.
I can't even fucking remember most of Decode Talker's appearances because the times it did show up were so underwhelming and unimpactful I would argue that Linkuriboh is more iconic than Decode Talker
linkuriboh actually 1) manifested some kind of personality and interaction, even if it was generic kuri-kuri and 2) was basically one of ai's last surviving remains of cyberse world when he came back to find it destroyed so it has that Emotional Connection(tm)
A good analogy I did see was that Decode Talker is more like the Junk Warrior equivalent of Vrains except for the part where Junk Warrior is way cooler- I mean
the most personality decode talker ever manifested was when it beat the shit out of go's monster in the ring one time and did that fuckin come at me bro gesture
Same here, like Junk Warrior had very few appearances but the times it did show up were impactful, because Junk Warrior was an important manifestation of some of the messages and themes of 5D's
And to this day people think of Junk Warrior when they think of Synchros, maybe second after the Signer dragons, but the Synchrons and Junks are still considered forefront examples of Synchro summoning
and listen. i know that yusei had a Stardust Problem post season 2 but like that made it all the more impactful when he was like "actually, i'm going to win the final duel of the season with junk warrior instead so"
yeah the Stardust Problem was notable though to be fair, at the time, Stardust legitimately was one of the best Synchro monsters in the game so I CAN'T FAULT HIM FOR NOT USING LITERALLY ONE OF THE BEST CARDS OF THE ERA SO MUCH
Salamangreats are probably what people think of first, and not because it was it was a better IRL card game strategy (though that helps), but because code talkers just made like. No impact at all. People only talk about Accesscode Talker and only because it's a good card in the IRL card game.
that aside I still think it's hilarious how almost every major character in Vrains EXCEPT the protagonist had a memorable strategy that made an impact on the TCG
part of me always wonders if Takeru got introduced as a sort of secondary protagonist because of Yusaku's absolute lack of any personality and almost nonexistent character development
seriously though Vrains really looks like it underwent the 5D's S2 treatment where they had to scrap whatever they were originally going to do and scrambled to come up with some kind of replacement
like man the entire huge dangling plot thread about Sol Technologies being a super shady company ruled by a shadowy corporate board of executive sure went nowhere
I still laugh that they put that one executive lady in the OP and she only shows up for one episode to get stomped in a duel that didn't even happen onscreen
She is capable of making independent decisions, even if she is programmed to always be loyal to be Revolver and his cause, she can still make her own choices.
Revolver's thing was he did not want any AIs to have ANY independence at all because it leads to things like your roomba rebelling you and leaving you to clean up your empty apartment that has nothing but like a bed and a desk yourself
they nerfed it into the ground, but they're bringing back Firewall Dragon
kuri-kuriand 2) was basically one of ai's last surviving remains of cyberse world when he came back to find it destroyed so it has that Emotional Connection(tm)come at me brogesturethe trash adds up, maybejust like he did in the plot!ais cannot be trustedrevolver:
except this one, because i artificially created her with no willpower or brains