Yusaku is calm and collected most of the time. Outside of Duels he is shown to be standoffish, reserved, and somewhat anti-social. He prefers to distance himself from others and doesn't usually interact with people, not even remembering his classmates' names after a month in school. When  Yusaku shows some level of autism as when [[Naoki Shima]] tried to be friendly with him, Yusaku casually admitted being lonely and friendless and inadvertently irriated insulted Naoki with his observations, then he didn't react to even realize that he had irritated Naoki storming off. He is also completely indifferent that "Playmaker" is seen as a popular hero, nor was he interested in Go Onizuka's background information. Despite his introverted and cold nature, Yusaku is good-hearted, kind, and is in well terms with Shoichi Kusanagi. He refuses to let others get close to him and join his fight against Hanoi out of concern that they may get hurt.

Ignis sees Yusaku as a partner, but Yusaku considers Ignis to be nothing more than an object he needs to gain the upper hand against the Knights of Hanoi. He threatened to delete Ignis in order to challenge a Knight, and ignored his pleas not to go back to VRAINS. Yusaku is rather rude towards Ignis and often doesn't let him talk. Nevertheless, Ignis supports Yusaku in his Duels, though and Yusaku does listen to ignis' advice when he claims needs to do so out of a desire for survival.

At first, Yusaku was indifferent to Go who considers his alter-ego, "Playmaker", to be his rival. At first, Go was mad at Playmaker for stealing his spotlight (even though Yusaku didn't care at all about Playmaker's reputation) and this grew worse when the children at the city orphanage, which he volunteered and donated to, started seeing Playmaker as a hero instead of him. After defeating him, Yusaku acknowledged Go as a worthy opponent and started to respect his dueing style, and even admitting to have enjoyed Dueling him. When Shoichi suggested recruiting Go for their fight against Hanoi, Yusaku objected by saying that he doesn't want Go to face this kind of danger.

Yusaku uses a '''[[Cyberse]] Deck'''. His main strategy involves using methodically calculated moves to overwhelm the opponent with [[Link Monster|Link Monsters]]. His early turns are usually slow, with him setting up his bigger combos for later while analyzing the opponent's strategies. Once his field is set up, he performs multiple [[Link Summon]]s at once to finish off the opponent, . His winning moves usually by involve powering up his "[[Decode Talker (anime)|Decode Talker]]".