For what it's worth, VRAINS also gave us the only protagonist with the dubious honor of getting his ace monster on the banlist (lol Firewall), so, uh... Yeah. That said, even 5Ds had some crazy stuff; Yusei was basically running Junk Doppel by the end of 5Ds, for example. Arc-V had Yuya pulling off Performage shenanigans like nothing else, iirc.

And then... I think Yuma did stuff? I don't know.

I get that pushing the RP in a direction too close to actual dueling is a problem, but Yu-Gi-Oh! as a game has gotten exponentially faster even starting from 5Ds onwards, and a lot of archetypes do just tend to pop off if you draw well. It's not like there aren't grindier decks, and the intent isn't to push for something closer to the game itself rather than using it as a means to an end, but still.
(Also, fwiw, if Judai got modern HERO support, he'd probably also be wilding out with boards.)

Regarding progression: I mean, if you limit pack availability, I think it becomes possible to progress that way? If you take the Satellite-esque path, that's an... Option, but I'm not sure what direction you want to take that because of the emphasis on Synchro + Speed duels.