I only watched the first thirteen episodes, so I can't vouch for anything past that, but in my opinion it worked the best as a story out of any of them, and the duels tended to be more interesting too. But I felt like I was on the same wavelength as the writers/director/whatever, so I may just be overestimating it.
I decided to play a few duels against randoms and pulled off an anime-tier finisher by summoning Black Rose Dragon, and then negating its effect with Clear Wing Synchro Dragon to boost its atk high enough to exact zero my opponent through one of their monsters. Then I felt like I was actually decent at this game, so I figured I'd post about it so that Yakumo can crush my self-esteem.