I like the
Yu-Gi-Oh! series, including the manga. I have nothing against the card game considering the fact that I first heard about
Yu-Gi-Oh! from the
Duel Monsters anime. However, I do like the one-shot games (which show why Yami is the king of "games" and not just Duel Monsters), and I do understand how people feel considering that the manga went from focusing on a whole bunch of different games to one game. Of course, I don't really mind as much since I like the game, but it is amazing how much the series changed. Of course, Kazuki Takahashi wasn't planning this. Still, he wrote the manga... XD
Of course, the anime took things steps further. They made a second series of
Yu-Gi-Oh! and added
"Duel Monsters" to the name. DDD was changed to DDM (M standing for monsters). Yugi and Joey duel in Duelist Kingdom. They changed the Yami Bakura's Monster World thing to a Duel Monsters game. They added 50+ episodes of two filler arcs for more dueling (of course, those anime filler arcs are my most favorite, ironically). Of course, I still like the anime, but I think I like the way the manga handles things a little better.
Not to mention, when it switched focus on Magic and Wizards, the manga started to perform alot of retcon all of a sudden (Sugoroku saying he's the one that found the Sennen Puzzle in the Memory Arc. while in Volume 1 he said that a team of archaeologists found it, with the last one who died saying "A Game of Darkness". The explanation in Volume 1 was much more interesting to tell the truth). I blame the huge amount of popularity Magic and Wizards got when it was first showcased in the manga (which was supposed to be a ONE SHOT-ISH GAME and/or it's last appearence being in Death-T). IIRC, the last misc. game we had (and the only one) during the card games' reign in the manga was Ryuji's Dugeon Dice Monsters (who's plotline was horribly botched in the anime).
Unless you consider Sugoroku and those two Egyptians to be archaeologists. (Wait a minute... they weren't.)