History VideoGame / BladeAndSoul

Players can choose from four races based off TheFourGods: the human-esque Jin, the lithe Yun, the goliath Gon and the diminutive Lyn. Your race determines which class you can choose from. ''Blade & Soul'''s combat is halfway between a traditional MMO "skill bar" and a FightingGame, encouraging you to string together increasingly-ludicrous combos and defend yourself with well-timed counter-moves.

A new game, or rather, a technical upgraded of the game in Unreal Engine 4, was announced in 2017 alongside Blade and Soul Revolution. A [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6YIwJsGTVk showcase trailer was released in 2018]] featuring upgraded visuals. News of it is rather lackluster for two years until [=NCSoft=] announced in 2021 showcase and [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuz6l1zv-f8 another trailer]] confirming it's playable in mobile and consoles.

* FiveRaces: Well, technically four, but still; Jin are Mundane, Gon are Stout, Yun are High (Wo)Men, and Lyn are a mix of Fairy and Cute.

** [[spoiler:Ilsim's betrayal, and subsequently the fall of Brightstone Village, could've been avoided if the mayor had just told Ilsim that Iksanun was his father. Sadly, not only does the mayor fail to tell Ilsim until he's dying, but he does so ''after'' [[FaceHeelTurn Ilsim just]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero killed Iksanun]].

* BadassTeacher: [[spoiler: The player character becomes one after the timeskip as the new ]]

* ClusterFBomb: The aptly named Foul-Mouthed Granny in the Harvest Square who curses every time she speaks. It's hilarious especially hearing the beeps whenever she talks.

* CompositeCharacter: Getting skills from the Kung-fu Master and Force Master and combining the two together with making the Soul Fighter class.
* CoolOldGuy: Master Hong, Iksanun the Realmwalker, and Dochun from Bamboo Village, to name a few.

* CounterAttack: Several melee classes are built around precise use of your Block/Parry/Counter skills.

** A good part of the Cinderlands is being terrorized by a power-mad Stratus Army colonel, General Yonkai

* CriticalExistenceFailure: Getting to zero health will make your character drop to the floor and can only slowly crawl away to safety or sit up and heal. Unless they are hit one more time then they are truly dead until they resurrect or wait for another player character to resurrect them.

* DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou: [[spoiler:It's revealed in Act 3 that Ilsim is the illegitimate child of Kuwin and Iksanun. Mayor Taywo and Kuwin knew this, but kept Iksanun out of the loop. He had to come to that conclusion himself. Iksanun tells the player (before the realization) that it's dangerous for someone like him to get too close to anyone because his enemies could exploit those possible relationships, which is exactly what Jinsoyun does. So, chances are that if Iksanun had known about his son with Kuwin, he would've either been more helpful during the attack at Brightstone Village (the one that occurs 15 years prior to the story) or done a better job at keeping to his creed to stay far away from the village, period.]]

** Koldrak is a better example, with trillions of health that has a 50 min enrage timer[[note]] Players have actually realized that it doesn't have an enrage timer[[/note]]. Players must pick up ice that will boost their damage and must avoid his devastating fire.

** Justified, since only a few can purge the Dark Chi without getting infected, most NPC's know they are out of their league against fiends and can only rely on the Player Character. The best thing soldiers can do is HoldTheLine against the never-ending onslaught of fiends until Cricket kills them all or closes the gate. That said, it doesn't mean the other NPCs will just stand by and watch Cricket do all the work.

* HopelessBossFight: Your first and second fights with Jinsoyun are this. Even if you successfully killed her by miracle, the cutscenes act that you lost to her.
* HugeGuyTinyGirl: Jinsoyun and Gubong. Also [[spoiler: Yunsang and Juwol, with Juwol only reaching Yunsang's waist.]] Poharan and her grandad Hae Mujin also count.

* TheIngenue: Namsoyoo. [[spoiler:But BeneathTheMask, she's more like TheVamp]].

* MasterSwordsman: The Blade Master and Blade Dancer classes.

** All the Naryu Automatons are this, with the added caveat of being resistant to StatusEffects.
** The Silversteel crew is made up of [[AndIMustScream mechanized humans who are connected to a network, unable to feel anything and can only obey orders.]]
* TheMedic: Soul Fighters and Summoners are the closest ones the game has.
* McNinja: The don't-call-it-a-ninja Assassin class, with actual magical stealth abilities.

* {{Nerf}}:
** The Warlock class got hit by this. After its initial release, warlocks have insane bursting capabilities coupled with life regeneration that made the class a viable fighter in PVP. This came to a situation in the 2015 korean tournament where a wild card Warlock [[CurbStompBattle eradicated other competitors and won]] so fast that a patch was released in December 2015, hitting the class so hard that many declared warlocks nearly unplayable in PVP. The class is hit yet again with the release of the 3rd spec, which lowered the overall damage of the class.
** When elemental skills were separated, this forces players to choose between one element to use for skills. This slightly narrowed down skill trees for classes. Unfortunately, Soul Fighters unintentionally got the worst of it due to its hybrid style, crippling nearly half the skills it needed for its playstyle.[[note]]Before the patch, players can set skills with different elements, i.e a warlock's dragon helix skill which is shadow, with bombard, which is ice.[[/note]]It went from one of the best PVP classes to one of the least used class.

* NinjaMaid: The Devotion outfit. Bonus points if an Assassin class is wearing it.

* PirateGirl: Pretty much all the female Blackram. Tae Jangum, Poharan, and Yoen-Hwa Lin to name a few.

** Yunma Fei never told anyone she was actually the Talus Princess, which caused many of the Skyhaven Resistance soldiers to turn against her for lying to them when she most likely had her own reasons why she didn't tell them.]]

** To some extent, characters like Junghado and Ku Yang could fit into this trope.
** [[spoiler: Maybe Dodan after he finally overcame himself and changed hairstyles, as well as behaviour.]]
** All the male (especially Jin) players if that's what you're going for. Sites such as Blade & Soul outfits [[https://bns.mmo-fashion.com/darigon-cardinal-gates/ have]] [[https://bns.mmo-fashion.com/eighto-windweide-2/ their]][[https://bns.mmo-fashion.com/aoi-soha/ fair]][[https://bns.mmo-fashion.com/rhiss-spirits-rest/ share]] of nice male crickets.
* Psychopomp: The Keepers are, beings invisible to the human eye that guides the death to the gates of the afterlife. Only Cricket can see them and they are usually found in the In-between, places where the dead are stuck until they move on. One such Keeper vouches for Cricket's heroic deeds after saving the Spirit Realm.

* ReallyRoyaltyReveal: [[spoiler:Commander of the Skyhaven Resistance Yunma Fei is the princess of the Talus Dominion. When you first meet her, she holds her own very well against the Skyhaven traitors before you arrive on the scene.]]
** Then it's revealed that [[spoiler: Namsooyu is Yunma Khan's first child and is Yunma Fei's half-sister. Since she is Namsolyn's daughter, she's the rightful heir of the Stratus Empire.]]
* ReverseGrip: Warlocks hold their razors like this.

* SharingABody: The quests 'Desperate Priestesses' is about a matter like this.

** This is not a complete list.

** Looking at the four Guardians, Jiwan is the only female Guardian.
** The major character of the Talus Dominion consists out of Yunma Kahn, Junghado, Yu Chun, and lastly Yunma Fei, which is why this trope applies to her.
** If you chose to make a male cricket Sister Jinyung is the only female attending the Hongmoon school.
** Purely looking at Jinsoyun's subordinates we have Gubong, Lusung, and smurfette Yura.

* SkillGateCharacter: Summoners in [=PvP=]. It's one of the easier classes to control in the game with slow but hard hitting attacks, healing skill, and a cat that can tank for them. But in [=PvP=], more experienced players can easily counter their attacks, their healing skill deliberately only heals a fraction of their health, and the cat's limited AI is easily exploitable by classes who rely on counters. It's telling that in official tournaments it's extremely rare for a summoner to be in the finals.
* SomeDexterityRequired: Unlike other MMORPG games, the combat requires players to chain combos really fast while dodging the enemy attacks at the same time, akin to fighting games. Certain classes even need a good connection in order to be able to attack at all. Since most enemy attacks are telegraphed at lower levels, it can jar a player once they reach bosses that react in a split second.

** For characters, Zulia was named Julia when the English localization of her part of the game was released, but quickly changed to Zulia after a patch or two. It's even lampshaded in the game by one of the Blackham Mauraders.

* StartOfDarkness: A flashback sequence reveals exactly how Jinsoyun got started. [[spoiler:And the game ends up being one for ''you'' when your character embraces the Dark Arts in the need for revenge]].

* StatusBuff: Warlock soulburn, Kungfu Master and Assassin Critical buff.

* GlassCannon: The ranged classes, particularly Force Masters and Warlocks are this.

* GirlsWithGuns: One word: Poharan. Soha is another famous example. Also female Gunners.
* TheGunslinger: The Gunner/Gunslinger class.

* HumanPopsicle: Force Masters and Kung-fu Masters have a skill that freezes them with ice if attacked. Force Masters have two versions of this, a party wide freeze and a self-freeze that heals hp when attacked.

* InhumanlyBeautifulRace: The Yun are described as graceful and beautiful and it does show off in the characters wandering around in the games. With a bit of patience and knowledge of proportions, you can make a gorgeous preset of any race, but it's remarkably harder to run into an ugly Yun than Gon. Although tastes may differ, many people have marked that they find Yun to be the prettiest among females. Other than that they often have to most graceful outfits, whereas Gon have the fanservice-y, Lyn the cute and Jin the well yeah, 'normal' ones.

* LaResistance: The Skyhaven Resistance. who has been fighting the Talus Dominion ever since they grew in power. Unfortunately the resistance was divided after the members learned [[spoiler: that their commander Yunma Fei was actually a Talus Princess, making them rebel against her.]]
* LastChanceHitPoint: Once your HP hits zero, you are given 80 seconds to crawl away and recover chi for 20 seconds. If you get hit one more time, you're truly dead and must ressurect to the nearest spawn point.

* MagicKnight: The Blade Dancer class combines swordplay of the Blade Master with the magic of the Force Master.

* MonsterClown: The last boss of the Naryu Labyrinth, Be Ido.

** A bug that allows players to pass through doors in dungeons, skipping trash mobs and heading straight to the boss room was discovered and players exploited this for speedruns, leaving behind other party members who didn't know this. Obviously this was resolved in a patch and players caught doing this were banned.

* PerfectPlayAi: The challengers in the Tower of Infinity are this, as their movesets are based on competitive Korean players and have the advantange of reacting at your key presses. Couple that with [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard their skills resetting after a few seconds,]] you need to have fast reflexes and connection or high gear to defeat them.

** To some extent characters like Junghado and Ku Yang could fit into this trope.
** Ryu would once he grew up.

* RandomNumberGod: The game's random number generator is a spiteful beast that hates you. It hates you even more if you don't spend real money. In fact, it's so evil no one can figure out what the real drop rates are. While it's far from the only game this evil, it's evilness has a purpose. to encourage you to spend money to mitigate it (special single use keys that remove the randomness from weapon chests). After you no longer need the item, it will then start dropping much more often. No one knows what the odds are supposed to be except the server owners and they aren't telling.

* RidiculouslyCuteCritter: The summoner's cats. Plus, you can dress them up in matching clothes with your character.

** The description of the horsemask in the Hongmoon Store is 'I used to wonder what friendship could be'. A lyric of the opening song of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

** Looking at the four Guardians, this trope applies to Jiwan.
** The major character of the Talus Dominion consist out of Yunma Kahn, Junghado, Yu Chun and lastly Yunma Fei, which is why this trope applies to her.

* WallCrawl: The final Windwalking skill allows players to walk on walls and other vertical surfaces.

** The Valindrians are composed of LadyOfWar Yuns who are more than capable of protecting Solak for many years. They did suffer a huge blow when the demons invaded their realm and caught them off-guard.

* CrapsackWorld: The elected government is often blatantly corrupt and in bed with crime, and people are willing to betray one another at the drop of a hat. The Viridian Coast sees the undermanned Bamboo Guard fighting a losing battle against the Blackram Raiders, who can attack small villages with near-impunity; a good part of the Cinderlands is being terrorized by a power-mad Stratus Army colonel, and the Moonwater Plains are the battleground for an active rebellion against the oppressive Talus government whilst in the grip of tribal struggles and dealing with the horrors of a demon invasion thirty years ago. And this is all in addition to demons and shades popping up everywhere, by the way.

* PoorCommunicationKills: Hoo boy. Plenty of moments come to mind, but the most memorable so far would have to be at the end of Act III. [[spoiler:Ilsim's betrayal, and subsequently the fall of Brightstone Village, could've been avoided if the mayor had just told Ilsim that Iksanun was his father. Sadly, not only does the mayor fail to tell Ilsim until he's dying, but he does so ''after'' [[FaceHeelTurn Ilsim just]] [[NiceJobBreakingItHero killed Iksanun]]. Also, Yunma Fei never told anyone she was actually the Talus Princess, which caused many of the Skyhaven Resistance soldiers to turn against her for lying to them when she most likely had her own reasons why she didn't tell them.]]
* PrettyBoy: In a cast full of beautiful ladies, Yu Chun seemingly caught the attention of many (mainly female) players. Although it was never stated in-universe, he seems to be rather popular among the players, being one of the male characters with the most fanart. He's also one of the few male NPC's to receive a unique look, unavailable in-game (unless you use mods, that is). In game he's also refered to as a dandy.

* QuickTimeEvent: Quite unusual for an MMORPG, if a boss uses an AOE or a one-hit kill attack, a prompt will appear to guide you when to use your iframes. This is disabled on 4-man parties.

* AchievementMockery: There's an achievement you can get if you die the first time. Not that bad since you will die sooner or later. You can also get an achievement for breaking your weapon in the middle of battle. You can get them in increments from 10 up to 1000[[note]] the highest count[[/note]] and if you are in a party, it will be shown on their combat logs.
* AdultFear: Children gets kidnapped a lot in the story and Cricket can encounter [[spoiler: the ghost of children who were not saved in time from the Ebondrake. Their circumstances are horrifying when you discover them (being turned into corrupting pillars, mutated into seeds that causes a ZombieApocalypse) that many wants to take down the Ebondrake no matter what.]]

* AlienSky: Whenever there is a Divine Mandate ritual attempted and failed, the sky will turn blood red and demons can fly out of a hole the blocks the sun's rays. Also, the Skypetal plains has a really WeirdMoon at night that somehow mutates every living thing there to monstrocities.

* AmazonBrigade: Though their effectiveness is questionable, Yonkai's personal guard unit is made up entirely of women.

* AnswerCut: Post TimeSkip and your [[spoiler:assuming Mastery of the Hongmoon School]], a discussion regarding training materials and where they could be found pops up. The student asks if you've searched everywhere, even under the rugs. Your dialogue choice more or less answers back "WhoWouldBeStupidEnough to hide something under a rug?" Cue the next quest prompt...

* AssistCharacter: Summoners get one in the form of their cat familiar, and the class revolves around combining the summoner's magic with the cat's abilities. Warlocks get a Thrall, a shadowy and intimidating spirit, to help them in battle. However unlike Summoners' cats, Thralls are only temporarily summoned before returning to their realm.
* AxCrazy: Anyone under the influence of Dark Chi.

* BadassLongcoat: Many of the outfits for both male and females. Shout-out to [[http://i.imgur.com/0mZTKEx.png/ the male Jin Warlocks.]]
* BadassTeacher: [[spoiler: The player character becomes one after the timeskip.]]

* BeamOWar: Of course. Cricket and Chundoon loves to use this in cutscenes.

* BigfootSasquatchAndYeti: The Angler Yeti in the Avalanche Den.

* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Whenever a character is being corrupted by Dark Chi, we can see the full transformation until they become a ghoulish like creature, and it's not pretty. Jinsoyun is a perfect example. in the last battle, she transforms to a winged creature and we get a gross closeup on her transformation.]]

* {{Bowdlerise}}: Some elements of the game's story were changed with the localization. For instance, [[spoiler:the use of time travel in the plot was changed to something more "mystical", though this resulted in other {{Plot Hole}}s cropping up (see BlindIdiotTranslation above)]]. Another example involved a sidequest involving a perverted and rather depraved peeping tom stealing the clothes of a woman while she bathes so she's forced to marry him (only for him to complain about the situation after the quest is over and blame the player [[NeverMyFault despite it being his request in the first place]]). This was originally played for comedy, but the sheer ValuesDissonance of the questline made the localization team change to appear less uncomfortable and seem less {{unfortunate|Implications}} towards western audiences.[[note]]Details of the quest can be found [[https://forums.bladeandsoul.com/topic/142278-blade-and-soul-is-being-censored-despite-them-previously-saying-otherwise/ here.]][[/note]]

* TheCasanova: Jang Ghibu, the first boss in Desolate Tomb, gives off this vibe complete with his two wives and a waltz-like a theme playing when you fight him.

* CameBackWrong: Everyone who is infected by the Dark Chi turns into a horned fiend that attacks friend or foe.

* DamageSpongeBoss: Dungeons above Ebondrake Lair have millions of health and require mechanics in order to chip away their health. Koldrak is a better example, with trillions of health that has a 50 min enrage timer[[note]] Players have actually realized that it doesn't have an enrage timer[[/note]]. Players must pick up ice that will boost their damage and must avoid his devastating fire.
* DarkActionGirl: Jinsoyun starts off as the BigBad that [[DoomedHometown decimated your home]], uses a corrupted form of Chi, and is generally feared and hated for her villainy by many people throughout the game. Her cohort, Yura, is similarly skilled (and deadly). The latest villain [[spoiler: Julia]] is also one, able to fight evenly with the player character.

* DealWithTheDevil: The player character joining [[spoiler: Mushin]] can be considered this.

* DoomedHometown: Heaven's Reach is obliterated a mere five minutes into the game.

*** [[spoiler: The end of Act 9 is also this. Mushin and Ryu have killed all the new Hongmoon Disciples except for Jinsoyun, leaving her and Cricket to grieve at Heaven's Reach.]]

* DullSurprise: Many people complain about Cricket's expressions during early videos showcasing the story. Bump into a boss? Cricket will smile. A friend dies? Cricket is crying, but they still smile. Though this depends on how you make Cricket's expression look during character creation, Cricket will still emote improperly in some scenes.

* EarlyBirdCameo: It's arguable whether this can be considered as an early bird cameo, but [[spoiler: most players can't recall Hajoon being part of the Hongmoon clan, as he had little to no role in the prologue. That doesn't mean he didn't appear, in fact, he's constantly there in the tutorial. Since you don't have a particular reason to start a conversation with him, some players who did talk to him, suspected that he'd get a bigger role further in the story, as most NPC's aren't voiced, but Hajoon was. He's also one of the only Hongmoon characters, where you have no business with during the prologue, unlike most others. Which is why most people can't recall his face when playing for the first time.]]

* EvilCostumeSwitch: a dark variation of the Hongmoon Student Uniform will drop after you defeated Mushin in a solo dungeon.

* FadingAway: This is how most onscreen deaths are shown, with their bodies fading away after they're brutally killed. Sometimes, there are many dead bodies laying around that doesn't fade, [[spoiler: but they're either corrupted with dark chi or will have a chance to turn into fiends.]] Confusingly, NPC's grieve on some coffins strewn around even if their bodies supposed to be faded away.
* FingerGun: Warlocks do this as one of their attack animations.

* {{Gainaxing}}: Oh dear, every single female character does this whenever they move. Special mention goes to [[spoiler: Julia,]] whose massive tits was censored for being [[UncannyValley so unnatural that its a miracle she didn't trip whenever she walks]]

* GlassCannon: The ranged classes, particularly Force Masters and Warlocks are this.Force Masters can dish out high amounts of sustained damage while warlocks have high burst capabilities that leave enemies dead within seconds at the cost of low defence. While Summoners have a cat companion that can tank for them and can heal both the cat and itself, the other two classes have to rely on moving around enemies or using escape skills to avoid being hit. Gunners rely on their hooks to dodge attacks and have a devastating attack that can hit for [[MoreDakka millions of damage.]]

* HereWeGoAgain: Act 6 is basically a inverted version of Act 1, with you the master instead of the student. It even ends with the school being attacked by an evil group and you falling of the cliff the same way as in act 1.

* HiddenAgendaVillain: Jinsoyun. All we know in her first appearance that she wanted to spread the dark chi everywhere and cause chaos.[[spoiler: Turns out that she wants revenge on Mushin for killing her master Jiwan, and she is willing to do anything to do that, even killing the other two masters so she can kill him. she is not interested in anything else and in fact was more than happy for you to kill her after killing Mushin.]]

* LightIsnotGood: [[spoiler:Julia]] wears a white outfit and fans, and is one of the most insane characters in the story.

** The Warlock class got hit by this. After its initial release, warlocks have insane bursting capabilities coupled with life regeneration that made the class a viable fighter in PVP. This came to a situation in the 2015 korean tournament where a wild card Warlock [[CurbStompBattle eradicated other competitors and won]] so fast that a patch was released in December 2015, hitting the class so hard that many declared warlocks nearly unplayable in PVP.
*** And yet again with the release of the 3rd spec, which lowered the overall damage of the class.

** Gunners were stupidly overpowered during its release, thanks to their high bursts that can penetrate defence, high mobility, and buff resets. In 6vs6, facing a gunner is usually an insta-kill thanks to their tab skill. Merely months later, the class was reworked and the tab skill now requires a certain buff in order to be useful.
* NinjaLog: The "Decoy" skill for the Assassin class.

* RapunzelHair: The standard haircuts mostly don't go past waist, but some premium hairstyles such as Gangplank do. Other than that, NPC's such as Poharan and most remarkably Jiwan have extremely long hair.

** Then its revealed that [[spoiler: Namsooyu is Yunma Khan's first child and is Yunma Fei's half sister. Since she is Namsolyn's daughter, she's the rightful heir of the Stratus Empire.]]

** Bunah is one among the new Hongmoon students whenever Soyun went missing.

* SpotlightStealingSquad: Well... It's not like it's really working out, but you could say Dodan and Chengun are going for this. Even though Cricket constantly has to save or help them, they'll always tell it was part of Dodan's plan.

** Dochun's son Dodan went from a wimpy coward that needs to be rescued a lot to a badass captain of Bamboo Village.

* TwentyBearAsses: The main quest mixes it up in places, but the side content is noted for being fairly bad about leaning ''heavily'' on this. It's alleviated a little by a few interesting bosses being mixed in there, along with the fact that once you hit 20+, you'll be able to mow through individual bears in a second or so.

NeedsWikiMagic badly.

** Empress Tayhu [[spoiler: creates a plague-like corruption in the western wing of the Dasari Palace, using the eyes of old people and children corrupted into blood lillies. Whoever is exposed to the two will be corrupted and go berserk.]]

** Several quests have names that reference various things. Examples include [[Disney/TheJungleBook "The Bear Necessity"]], [[Series/SayYesToTheDress "Say No To The Dress"]], and [[VideoGame/{{Gauntlet}} "Bamboo Guard Needs Food Badly"]].

** There's a quest called [[Disney/{{Frozen}} Let Him Go]]. The boss of the ice cave instance it's in is named [[Disney/{{Frozen}} Queen Yul-Sa]]. She says [[Disney/{{Frozen}} "Let the storm rage on." and "Do you want to build a snow woman?"]]
*** Another quest is called [[Disney/{{Frozen}} The cold never bothered me anyway.]]

* DarthVaderClone: [[spoiler: The PlayerCharacter could probably qualify Post-Act III. When you turn to Mushin's Corrupted Path, you receive a unique outfit: Pure Evil. It's very, very black. For the other criteria: Relation to TheMentor? Last student of Master Hong. FallenHero? Check. TheDragon to ''a'' BigBad? Mushin's student. Complex motives? [[WellIntentionedExtremist Stop Jinsoyun]], [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge and get revenge for Hongmoon.]] ReforgedIntoAMinion? Mushin's work too. Intimidating weapon? A lot of the weapons are PLENTY intimidating. Only thing missing is the {{BadassBaritone}}/{{ContraltoOfDanger}}, the helmet, and the cape.]]

* EvilAlbino: [[spoiler: Julia]] with a dash of [[AxCrazy]] on the side.

* BrainwashedAndCrazy: The Tyrian Cultists [[spoiler: for example they managed to get a bunch of innocent villagers attacking you after you tried to rescue them. The Ebondrake Cult managed to top them, with them corrupting the Grimhorns, Hae Mujin's fleet and some allies that the player character made. ]]

* {{Familiar}}: In the form of rather cute bipedal cats. Summoners can even customize their familar with costumes similar to the ones players can actually wear. The Warlocks can also summon an intimidating Thrall for a limited time.
* FingerGun: Warlocks do this as one of their attacks.

* BodyHorror: [[spoiler: Whenever a character is being corrupted by Dark Chi, we can see the full transformation until they become a ghoulish like creature, and its not pretty. Jinsoyun is a perfect example. in the last battle, she transforms to a winged creature and we get a gross closeup on her transformation.]]

* TheCasanova: Jang Ghibu, the first boss in Desolate Tomb, gives off this vibe complete with his two wives and a waltz like a theme playing when you fight him.

* ClusterFBomb: The aptly named Foul-Mouthed Granny in the Harvest Square who curses everytime she speaks. Its hilarious especially hearing the beeps whenever she talks.

* CompositeCharacter: Getting skills from the Kung-fu Master and Force Master and combining the two together with make the Soul Fighter class.

* EquipmentBasedProgression: The game doesn't feature any stat-based leveling aside from Hongmoon Levels, but will give a class-related weapon and and a set of accessories the player can upgrade.

* MechaMooks: All the Naryu Automatons are this, with the added caveat of being resistant to StatusEffects.

* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething: [[spoiler: The real emperor of the Talus Dominion, Yunma Khan and his daughter Yunma Fei before Khan was inprisoned below Zaiwei. And both still are, as they gathered a small resistance to fight Jinsoyun and take back the country.]]

** The major character of the Talus Dominion consist out of Yunma Kahn, Junghado, Yu Chun and lastely Yunma Fei, which is why this trope applies to her.

** Purely looking at Jinsoyun's subordinates we have Gubong, Lusung and smurfette Yura.

* SquishyWizard: Both the Force Master and the Warlock have low defenses to make up for their powerful ranged capabilities, though the Warlock does have access to a counter that blows the enemy away from them should it connect.

* SupernaturalMartialArts: Par for the setting.

* TogetherInDeath: [[spoiler: General Han Sirang let himself succumb to his wounds in order to be with the Earthseer Baymu, who died in act 2.]]

* ZombieApocalypse: Or a close enough variant. Dark Shaman Nekuro has been experimenting with dead bodies and has the ability to turn villagers into undead warriors. [[spoiler: He's also the cause of the undead invasion in Viridian Coast in Act 1 of the story line]]

** Rather worse here than in some other media, due to the fact that the the game's translation of Korean names is largely inconsistent with Revised Romanization (the official standard of Korean romanization). Furthermore, the game is inconsistent as to whether it separates surnames and given names. For example, using the rules of Revised Romanisation, "Jinsoyun" should be "Jin Seoyeon".

* AchievementMockery: There's an achievement you can get if you die the first time. Not that bad since you will die sooner or later, but you can get achievements based on how many times you die. You can also get an achievement for breaking your weapon in the middle of battle. You can get them in increments with 1000 the highest count and the if you are in a party it will be shown on their combat logs.

* EasilyForgiven: Soha forgives the player character after learning that her [[spoiler: brother (one of the Eight Masters) sacrificed himself to save the PC's life.]] She say that she understand why he did it.

* {{Magitek}}: The Naryu ruins is heavily guarded by magical traps and terracotta soldiers that attack intruders within, which is impressive since the ruins were said to be made 1000 years ago.
* ManInTheIronMask: Yunma Khan was inprisoned by Jinsoyun and forced to wear an iron mask until he was set free by cricket.

* MsFanservice: Race-wise, the female Gon are this. Many of the costumes have noticeable differences in appearance between race and gender, and more often than not, female Gon will have ''the'' most [[RuleOfSexy provocative]] designs, regardless of whether or not the costume in question was already {{stripperific}} beforehand.

** When elemental skills were separated, this forced players to choose between one element to use for skills. This slightly narrowed down skill trees for classes. Unfortunately, Soul Fighters unintentionally got the worst of it due to its hybrid style, crippling nearly half the skills it needed for its playstyle.[[note]]Before the patch, players can set skills with different elements, i.e a warlock's dragon helix skill which is shadow, with bombard, which is ice.[[/note]]It went from one of the best PVP classes to one of the least used class.

* TookALevelInBadass: Dochun's son Dodan went from a wimpy coward that needs to be rescued a lot to a badass captain of Bamboo Village.

* BeingEvilSucks: [[spoiler:A meta example. Originally, Act 4 presented you with a choice of either returning to the Hongmoon Way or fully committing to Mushin's Corrupted Path. The evil option gave you a cool outfit, but its exclusive abilities were less powerful than their Hongmoon equivalents. More significantly, the Corrupted Path locked you out of further story content and hard-capped your level at 50. This, along with the decision further segregating players into two ''more'' PvP factions, caused enough discontent that the choice was removed in later updates, and the Corrupted Path became the default, though tweaked so that the story continues and plays off of it]].

** The Warlock class got hit by this. After its initial release, warlocks have insane bursting capabilities coupled with life regeneration that made the class a viable fighter in pvp. This came to a situation in the 2015 korean tournament where a wild card Warlock [[CurbStompBattle eradicated other competitors and won]] so fast that a patch was released in December 2015, hitting the class so hard that many declared warlocks nearly unplayable in pvp.
** When elemental skills were seperated, this forced players to choose between one element to use for skills. This slightly narrowed down skill trees for classes. Unfortunately, Soul Fighters unintentionally got the worst of it due to its hybrid style, crippling nearly half the skills it needed for its playstyle.[[note]]Before the patch, players can set skills with different elements, i.e a warlock's dragon helix skill which is shadow, with bombard, which is ice.[[/note]]It went from one of the best pvp classes to one of the least used class.

** Another exploit was in the Whirlwind Valley Event, where players on the losing side would purposely disconnect in order to maintain their pvp ranking. Creator/NCSoft then released another patch kicking the disconnected players and declared that people caught doing this would never receive their items.

* TheCasanova: Jang Ghibu, the first boss in Desolate Tomb, gives of this vibe complete with his two wives and a waltz like theme playing when you fight him.
* CallToAgriculture: The player briefly considers throwing away their game-long goal to get rid of Jinsoyun at one point to become a farmer because it would be a simpler, less stressful life than being a martial artist. In the end, however, they decided that taking down Jinsoyun must be done and if they don't do it, no one else will. And the player character can also help the villagers in Windrest, where they can fish, grow wheats and raise pigs for their students.
* CameBackWrong: Everyone who is infected by the Dark Chi turns into a horned fiend.

* PerfectPlayAi: The challengers in the Tower of Infinity are this, as their movesets are based on competitive Korean players and have the advantange of reacting at your key presses. Couple that with [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard their skills resetting after a few seconds,]] you need to have fast reflexes or high gear and ping to defeat them.

* BareFistedMonk: The Kung-Fu Master and Soul Fighter class.

* PirateGirl: Pretty much all the female Blackram. Tae Jangum, Poharan and Yoen-Hwa Lin to name a few.

** There's a [[WizardOfOz brave lion, a tin woodcutter, and a straw man]].

** The Pot Dogs are named [[PlutoThePup Plu Tao]], [[ComicStrip/{{Peanuts}} Snu Pi]] and [[Franchise/DisneyAnimatedCanon Gu Fi]]

* PrettyBoy: In a cast full of beautiful ladies, Yu Chun seemingly caught the attention of many (mainly female) players. Although it was never stated in-universe, he seems to be rather popular among the players, being one of the male characters with the most fanart. He's also one of the few male NPC's to receive a unique look, unavailable in-game (unless you use mods, that is).

* DamageSpongeBoss: Dungeons above Ebondrake Lair have millions of health and require mechanics in order to chip away their health. Koldrak is a better example, with trillions of health that has a 50 min enrage timer[[note: Players have actually realized that it doesn't have an enrage timer]]. Players must pick up ice that will boost their damage and must avoid his devastating fire.

* BareFistedMonk: The Kung-Fu Master class.

* DamageSpongeBoss: Zakhan and Lord of the Flames in Ebondrake Citadel and Desolate Tomb respectively. Blackwyrm in Misty Woods is a better example, with 90 million health and is in the middle of two factions camps. It can only be claimed by one faction and has a one hit kill AOE attack. Raids usually last up to an hour, with players defending (read: dying) against its attacks and the other faction's attacks.

* GlassCannon: The ranged classes, particularly Force Masters and Warlocks are this.Force Masters can dish out high amounts of sustained damage while warlocks have high burst capabilities that leave enemies dead within seconds at the cost of low defence. While Summoners have a cat companion that can tank for them and can heal both the cat and itself, the other two classes have to rely on moving around enemies or using escape skills to avoid being hit.
* GirlsWithGuns: One word: Poharan.

* BadassGrandpa: Dochun, Hae Mujin, The Three Sages who guard Mushin's Legacy are some examples.

* BigBad: Jinsoyun. The Dark Lord who rules the Dark Realm counts as a BiggerBad. [[spoiler:Mushin of the Four Guardians later emerges as a rival BigBad, and the cause of Jinsoyun's StartOfDarkness (as well as your own)]].

* DownerEnding: [[spoiler:Act 3 ends with you becoming a FallenHero under the tutelage of Mushin]].
** [[spoiler: That's only half the story (which should really tell you how [[CrapsackWorld horrible]] the world of Blade and Soul is). Iksanun is killed by Ilsim, who then learns the truth from a dying Mayor Taywo, who [[DyingAsYourself kills himself before turning into a fiend]] like the rest of Brightstone Village (you even see his corpse disintegrate onscreen), which is now a fiend-infested hellhole like The Highland Necropolis. The shock causes Ilsim to catapult past the DespairEventHorizon at Mach 5 and allow himself to be surrounded and killed by fiends. ''Then'' the downer mentioned above happens.]]

* NoDamageSound: Upon using certain abilities, players are granted resistance frames, making a metallic clank sound and leaving a faded afterimage of themselves when struck, but remaining completely unharmed, as seen [[https://youtu.be/-aQ6DP4uAiM?t=20s here.]].