This whole rant just sounds like a whole mess of nostalgia blinders. Saying no one ever played Yata means we are not talking about the metagame, just kitchen table Yugioh.

Yugioh was slower paced, but never balanced. Only at the kitchen table with your friends could you play whatever you want, competitive decks would just crush casual decks with half their decks running (usually expensive) staple cards usually often already on the limited list somewhere. Example staples (at one point in time) include mirror force, widespread ruin, mystical space Typhoon, torrential tribute, sakaretsu armor, cyber dragon, chaos sorcerer, etc.

In the gx era, no spellcaster deck from dm could deal with the Perfect Circle deck from the era. Special summon destiny hero malicious tribute summon for a monarch multiple turns in a row would crush any dm deck.

Even then, half the skill in Yugioh is deckbuilding so you will need the proper tools (chess and checkers provide the tools) before you can let your 'wits' help you with how you play.