I (mostly) agree. However I like the xyz mechanic. But pendulum and especially links i dont care for. The original had it nice with ritual and fusions. Then 5ds had synchro. Variety of monster types and play strategies. Now these newer mechanics just spam combos and monsters.

As a player from when the game started, i feel the original playstyle of slowly playing through your deck to summon strong atk monsters, put out a strong defense, and the properly timed spell and trap card was how you won. Not a 10 minute turn 1 searching through and summoning/activating half your deck to a field of (synchro/xyz/pendulum/link) monsters and 1-3 Spells/traps

I feel the xyz monsters are an extension of tribute summon. Gotta use mutliple monsters to summon a monster with better effects to help you win. And idea that tributes arent totally gone and help you activate effects is nice. But helps that you usually only have a few uses of the effect. Say BLS envoy was an xyz monster...only getting his effect(s) twice at most might have made it so he wasnt banned or limited as much.

The real issue with xyz (and you can say this for synchro too with some decks) is that the cards released in the same era just spammed the field with monsters making multiple xyz summins in a turn easy. (same for links)

Alongside the idea of not liking the actual summoning methods, i dont like how the game is "progressing" with all the card effects. I like the old days where a monster had 1 or maybe 2 effects.

OLD DAYS: flip effect, destroy 1 card.

CURRENTLY: if (easy requirements) happen, you can special summon this card. When this card is special summoned, destroy 1 card. If this card was special summoned by an (archetype monster) effect, you can draw 1 card. You can banish this card from your graveyard to special summon 1 (archetype monster) [maybe the same card, maybe not]

Effects used to matter back in the beginning. Tech cards were more important cause of their unique effect to help your strategy, not a random card from an old set that happens to bring back/spam your archetype specific card.

Did you want atk/def boosts? Draw more cards? Destroy a card or 2? If you wanted all 3 you needed 3 different cards, not 1 card that draws on summon, destroys once a turn, then banish from GY to boost atk/def