History VideoGame / PuzzleAndDragons

* MrFanservice: There are many fans of the Okuninushi and Phantom God Odin lines. The male Dragonbounds Gadius and Typhon aren't slouches in the physique departments either. Chester and Ishikawa Goemon are the only male cards represented in the PAD Island event and are requisitely shirtless, while Awoken Ra shows up in the June Bride event in similar minimal attire. And Anubis and Set fill the role for the Furry-inclined.

** The third ''Series/KamenRider'' collab gives us a more platonic example in the form of [[Series/KamenRiderRevice Revi & Vice]], who can amp up damage like crazy when they transform[[note]]they change the board to 7x6, giving more Orbs to match[[/note]].

** Some transforming units will charge allies' Skills by a certain value before assuming their second form; thus, if you have a unit like the [=GungHo=] collab's "Bovine Priestess, Audunbla", your skills aren't completely forfeit.

** Pompurin has a leader skill that guarantees 3.5× ATK at a cost of halving your healing. Two of these leaders will give you 12.25× ATK, but your RCV is reduced to 1/4.
*** Pompurin was later buffed to have a guaranteed 4× ATK bonus at the cost of halving recovery strength, but also added a 5× ATK multiplier if you match all 5 attribute orbs in a single turn, making him 400× ATK when paired with itself.

** [[LiteralMetaphor And then there's Satan]], who has a leader skill that's great for Devil teams. He also has ''three dark row enhance'' awakenings. He also has an active skill, "World's End", which is (for that point in the game) THE most powerful nuke in the universal Monster Book, as it damages his enemies for 300× his ATK value, for up to 366,000 damage (732,000 on light based monsters) without + egg modifiers for the Ultimate Evolution form, "King of Hell, Satan". With +99 ATK eggs, he can do ''over a half million damage'', much more than what will be possible with Rebel Seraph Lucifer's "Morning Star" (see YMMV page for his damage value). That same attack will turn your whole board into dark orbs, taking full advantage of his three Dark Row Awakenings. However, the same active skill also has HPToOne properties. And he has -9999 RCV, meaning that Heart Orbs are useless since they can't heal the team.[[note]]You need at least 1 RCV ''total'' in order for Heart Orbs to heal.[[/note]] That doesn't prevent users from putting in a fully awoken "Fertility Deity, Evil Ceres" in the team as an insurance policy. [[note]]She has a bind reducer, an auto heal and two bind resists as awakenings. In addition, she has a full recovery active skill.[[/note]]

** In a similar vein to Himura above, "Stasis Norn, Planar"[[note]] the evolution of "Anamnesis Norn, Planar", only available in the Heroine Rare Egg Machine event [[/note]] gives you 3x ATK for each cross of Fire or Dark orbs, and an additional 2.5x ATK ''and'' RCU if you get 6 or more combos, meaning that her max multiplier solo in a standard board is 67.5x, or '''4556.25x''' with two of her. Make it a 7x6 board, and the multiplier goes up to a staggering '''''3,321,506.25x ATK''''' with two of her. Did we forget to mention that her ability not only gives you a board of Fire, Dark, and Heal orbs, but gives you 3 combos ''for free?''

*** As prizes for clearing the new Story Dungeons in the game, players obtain new unique evolution materials that can be used to evolve the "star" of that story dungeon. So far, the Story Dungeons (which grant new evolutions) have starred the former God Fest Exclusives "Red Dragon Caller, Sonia", and (green) Odin, along with all of the Five Elements and "Great Witch of the Stone Fists, Zela". On top of being given entirely new skills, their card art is also animated (except for the Five Elements).
** Super Reincarnation Evolutions are evolutions of Reincarnation Evolution monsters (older "Pantheon" Gods) that change up their Leader and Awoken Skills to make them relevant in gameplay, again. To evolve these cards a Reincarnated monster must be at max level, and the materials to evolve them include a Spirit Jewel, a Diamond Dragon Fruit, an Ancient Tri-God Mask, and two evolution Gems: one will always be an Event Medal - Rainbow's Gem (obtained from clearing monthly Quest Dungeons or Ranking Dungeons) and the other will be Gem of a mythologically-themed dungeon boss from a series of increasingly difficult Descended Dungeons (these monsters need a Diamond Dragon Fruit of their own as well as 4 other unique evolution Gems, some of which need their own unique Evolution gems, to evolve). Their card art is animated like the Mega Awoken Evolutions.

** Another example, Amon. Shown to be a strong, wise devil owl in the first evolution. Then his first uvo had him with become a beefcake, similar to Ultimate Gigas, while retaining some of his sophistication. His ultimate uvo did away with the wiseness and went with him hulking out. That frost demon may had something to do with it, though.

*** THEN comes Amon's Super Reincarnated form, which zigzags this trope; he starts off as "Super Reincarnated Amon", which has the classic bookworm look for him. Use his first Skill, though, and he changes into the aptly-named "Unrivaled Muscleman, Amon", which more closely resembles the aforementioned uvos.

** Ultimate God Rush, Ultimate Hera Rush, Ultimate Devil Rush, Ultimate Dragon Rush, and Ultimate Yamato Rush add a new level: Legend-Plus. The bosses of each level have pre-emptive strikes that make things more difficult, such as requiring 6 or more combos to do any damage, an out-of-the-gate 31 thousand HP damaging attack, or turning the whole board into poison. And god forbid you don't kill them fast enough, because most of them have attacks that only come out if you leave them with a certain amount of HP remaining, such as one with a 100% player HP reduction. Unless you plan ahead of time with a defensive move, you're SOL. And then some of the bosses have Passive Skills that activate if you try to one-hit KO them; often resulting in an immediate health restoration (and a restored Passive Skill) or a status condition that screws you over once they do die.

*** The Bonus Attack Awoken Skill was designed with this in mind. By matching a column of Heal orbs, 1 extra point of damage is dealt after all of the other damage is calculated, CherryTapping the Boss to defeat. Super Bonus Attack does ''2'' extra damage ''and'' doubles your card's base attack for matching 9 Heal orbs in a 3-by-3 square.

** Subverted for a handful of dungeons with conditional restrictions. For example, Zhang Fei Descended requires all monsters to either have a Physical or Attacker type. Prior to version 7.6, this only counted the main types, meaning if you used a monster whose secondary type only matched the requirement, it was a no-go. The same held for dungeons that required the player have every Attribute on their team such as Noah Descended, meaning that each of the monsters had to have a different main Attribute. With version 7.6, these dungeons took into account the sub-Type and sub-Attribute, allowing players omre leeway in building teams. A third type of conditional restriction took into account monster rarity and monster Cost, forcing players to come up with teams of weaker monsters in order to clear the levels. For example, the Ragnarok Odyssey Ace dungeon had a 4-star limit and Gaia Descended had a cost 14 limit. Sometime after the release of version 8.6.2, the Type and Rarity/Cost restrictions were lifted, and changed to a new Enhanced condition (originally introduced for Yamatsumi Descended), meaning the player's monsters that match the condition get a 1.5× boost to their HP, ATK, and RCV.

*** As of Version 8.1, all monsters considered vendor trash (3-stars and their evolutions) have been dropped from the Rare Egg Machine (no more Golems, no more Healer Girls, no more Mystic Swordsmen) as they can be adequately farmed from dungeons. And Version 8.1 gives players the option to sell their duplicate monsters for Monster Points, which can then be traded in for rare evolution material monsters (rarer monsters net more MP), new Latent Awakening TAMADRAs to add additional Awoken Skills, and extremely rare (and therefore extremely expensive) exclusive monsters.

** For the gameplay itself, this trope also works in both ways. Number of Combos (and thus, attack power and healing amount) are based on players' skills, but falling blocks can either allow you to get healed, get another combo to activate Leader Skills...Or screwing up your strategy (when using Ishikawa Goemon[[note]]5 times the attack power if the current HP is lower than 20%, 25× ATK with two Goemon leaders[[/note]], stalling for skills or trying not to get the enemy at a certain HP percentage, for example).

** Hell, "Paradise Celeb Hera-Is". Hell, the PAD Island collaboration features popular female monsters in bikinis and such, with the exception of [[MrFanservice Chester]].

** The new Godfest Exclusive Fujin '''negates all absorbs''' for one turn, but has a long cooldown to balance. Certain other units have similar effects, but the skill "Murderous Glass" which belongs to "Sacred Bovine Beast, Audunbla", gets special mention for you being able to fire it off once every ''six turns''.

** Zeus shows up in several dungeons, notably his own former Descended dungeon, Endless Corridors, and Starlight Sanctuary; all unevolved. He'd later get upgraded right to Olympios form in True Endless Corridors and Stratios form in Ultimate God Rush, then downgraded to Awoken form for the alternate version of Starlight Sanctuary. His Ultimate Evolutions get degraded in the Ultimate Arena, being in the same pool as his Dios, Vulcan, and Mercury forms in battle 17.

* {{Roguelike}}: The game recently introduced a new type of dungeon that was originally described as a "Roguelike", but that name was soon changed to "Legendary" before being renamed "Special". Player monsters are all set at level 1 upon beginning the dungeon, and after each battle wave is completed, the player's monsters level up depending on their Team Cost value and also how many turns they took to beat an enemy wave. This means that by the time they reach the boss battle, the super powerful, super rare, and super expensive monsters will probably not be max level. Battles aren't randomized, per se, as each round is preset, but just like the rest of the game a random choice of certain monsters will appear.

* SixthRanger: "Green Skydragon, Elysium", "Blue Flamedragon Muspelheim", and "Chaos Blizzard Dragon" to their respective themes. They all lack evolutions that the main members have, they share elements with one of the other members yet they share skills with one of the other members of their families, and they are semi-rare "invade" encounters in their respective dungeons (Hera-Is Descended for Chaos Blizzard Dragon).

* ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: There're absolutely no point of not evolving all the monsters you have...Except if you're preparing for Condition Limited Descended Dungeons. Many high-end monsters and/or teams are barred from entrance due to their types, high costs and/or rarity, making their "useless" counterparts have chances to shine.

** Then there is the special event timed Annihilation level versions of Descended dungeons, which give you between ''90 seconds to two minutes'' to complete dungeons that usually take five or six, and are levels that have guaranteed stallers on at leas one floor. In return, these dungeons have a guaranteed Snow Globe invade on a floor.

* VictoriasSecretCompartment: Well, one of the birds seems to reside in "Green Essence Sorceress, Armadel"'s cleavage.

** Locked orbs, depending on how you play the board. Those orbs cannot be changed into something else, with the exception of Orb Refresh, and ONLY Orb Refresh. Kali's active skills, both of them, will not change locked orbs. This can either spell disaster, or it be a boon if, for example, you are missing certain orbs and you need to save certain orbs for skyfalls. Locked orbs make it easier to "store" orbs off to the side. And to make matters worse, resident {{Superboss}} Hexazeon and many monsters thereafter are capable of locking the entire board in one attack. However, unlocking orbs is now a somewhat common RequiredSecondaryPower for newer orb changers.

** A boss may also obscure your Orbs by darkening them (again, potentially resisted with an Awoken) or placing clouds over those spaces (again, potentially resisted with a Super Awoken). Momentary darkening can also be undone by moving an Orb across the board.

* PungeonMaster: Dear god, "Maleficent Phantom Dragon King, Zaerog∞", in both of his dungeons. Especially after he transforms, he loves to make puns on his name while attacking. Which is also all the fitting for a {{Dungeon|Master}} [[Pun Master]].

** Sonia Gran and Zeus & Hera. Both have a 50% resolve, so that means one-shotting is not an option. If you happen to "one-shot" them, they will simply heal. Or in the case of Zeus & Hera, Zeus will use Wrath of God while Hera heals.

* VisualPun: As of late, the developers are fond of these. Some examples include

** One of the later Gung Ho Collabs features "Ama no Murakumo", whose being a person instead of just a sword isn't really explained. His active skill, "Kusanagi", creates a 3-orb-long column of clouds somewhere on the board, using a BilingualBonus[[note]]Ame-no-Murakumo-no-Tsurugi = "Heavenly Sword of Gathering Clouds"[[/note]] to execute one of these.

** Others might immobilize a segment of your board's Orbs with a golden strip (commonly just called "tape") lasting a certain number of turns. Some monsters have Super Awoken Skills that resist it.

* SkillGateCharacter: Boo Mario/Luigi, whose abilities let you do heavy damage if you make combos of three or more attributes, let you shuffle orbs for 6 seconds, and change all of your orbs to three specific colors.

* IAmNotWeasel: ''Nobody'' recognizes Syrup as a dragon when they first see him. Most people guess that he's a bunny. Probably because Syrup doesn't look like a stereotypical dragon.

* ItsAWonderfulDeath: A rather unique variant, as losing the final battle [[spoiler:to Enigma will lead to the player waking back up in Tamer HQ as they usually do... But with everyone gathered at the medbay in hopes of the protagonist's recovery, with Syrup in particular believing that they might have died as a result of losing.]]

* FloatingContinent: As a result of Paradox's usage of Arkvelza's power, various continents of the world are turned into this.

* LeaningOnTheFourthWall: At one point, Rivera is fishing for compliments and asks you who made her who she is today. One of the potential answers is "[=GungHo=] Online Entertainment". She's never heard of them.

%%* FloatingContinent: The various continents of the world are turned into this.

** Many rare monsters like the early Medal Exchange units gained ultimate evolutions later on. They usually seem pretty powerful, right? Surprise! To unlock most of them, you need to use ''the unit's own Evolution Gem''. Not the current unit - ''the goal unit''. These Gems can usually only be obtained from a VERY difficult Supergravity dungeon that pits you up against beefed-up evo materials with only 1% of your normal ATK stat. That red dungeon, "Athena Descended"? That's being ''generous''.

*** Certain monsters' Leader Skills will toss a Cherry Tap's worth of damage when certain conditions are fulfilled, although monsters like "Ferocious Flame Dragon Warrior, Grigory" take the cake by using this opportunity to throw out ''seven digits'' of bonus damage. Might not seem like much, but it's still a big hit for a Resolve breaker.

** The game plays in both ways. On the one hand, many powerful monsters can only be acquired by the aforementioned pulls, but you can still get many useful ones via normal gameplay, especially [[HarderThanHard Descended Dungeons]]. If you're skilled enough, you won't even need to spend any Magic Stones for that. Skill upgrades, however, completely fit this trope. One can fill up Skill Levels by powering up with ''only'' that amount of monsters...Or feeding dozens of monsters ''without'' even raising one Skill Level.

** The Endless Corridors aren't actually endless; it's only 50 battles. Same thing for True and Mythical Endless Corridors; they're only 30 battles.

** Myth/EgyptianMythology: Either as humanoid PhysicalGods, straight up animals, women with UnusualEars, or [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent muscular wolf men]]. Esoteric and MemeticMutation deity Medjed also appears...as a cutesy fusion with the game's would-be mascot Tamadra.

** WesternZodiac: The Mechanical Star Gods and the Steel Star Gods represent the signs of the Zodiac, with each member named after a major star in the constellation. Ophiuchus shows up in a Descended Boss, and several other constellations appear in the Mechdragon, [=CyberDragon=] and [=CyberBeast=] series

*** Version 13.0.1 added a fourth floor of Ultimate Arena officially called "Three Hands of Fate", but everyone calls it "Arena 4". Several floors feature "Alt." versions of enemies, and the "boss" this time isn't one of the two versions of Kali but one of the three Norns. Other things thrown in your way are a guaranteed King Tan, one of the three new "animated" Evo materials, colored Predras, a chance at one of the Radar Dragon Callers, and the final prize being one out of the five Snow Globe Dragons evolved and at Lv.Max for experience fusion.

** When the Crystal Defenders Collaboration was updated in 2015, they added the Juggler, a monster that induced BrokenBase because of its easy Leader Skill: make two Healing Orb matches for a 7× ATK (which is 49× ATK when paired with a friend). The only monsters that had come close to this (and above it) were heavily reliant on 9 or more combos in a single turn (Anubis, Kushinadahime, and Robin from the ''Batman'' collab). On top of this, Juggler seems to have been designed to exclusively compliment Pandora, another popular monster. Complaints prompted the dev team to say they weren't changing Juggler, but they would be adjusting other monsters and introducing new monsters to match Juggler's viability.[[invoked]]

* PungeonMaster: Dear god, "Maleficent Phantom Dragon King, Zaerog∞", in both of his dungeons. Especially after he transforms, he loves to make puns on his name while attacking. Which is also all the fitting for a {{Dungeon|Master}} [[IncrediblyLamePun Master]].

** The only card to have this is Wolyafa. It looks like she's sitting on her bell-hammer. Except, she's not and Ragnarok Online players [[InnocentFanserviceGirl know why]].

* SetBonus: Some monster's Leader skills only activate if you have certain other monsters as your subs. Most of these are MythologyGags to a Series' Mythos, such as Jord and [=GROdin=], and Zhou Yu with ether Sun Quan or Xiao Qiao. Aamir is the biggest example, requiring you to have a Dark and Wood Carbuncle in your team in return for 5× ATK (at least until his ultimate scrapped the carbuncle requirement and switched it to Zuoh). Santa Claus built onto this by requiring Snow Globe Dragon Rouge, Vert, and Blanc for 5× ATK.

** "Awoken Dancing Queen, Hera-Ur": Her preemptive move is called "HOT Hera Tunes". What does that does she do to your board? Why, she makes it rain Fire and Jammers. Get it? [[DontExplainTheJoke Hot... Fire? JAM-mers?]]
** As mentioned before, when "Crystal Dragon Queen, Linthia" sees Sylvie, she says "Sorry, I'm tired of seeing your face!" by obscuring the board.

** Bomb Orbs go off if they're not matched, not only taking off 25% of health per unmatched bomb, but destroying any orbs in the same row and column of the bomb, which can cause orbs to not be matched. They share the same resistance as Jammers.

** With the PAD Academy's newest event comes a special group of students collectively known as GEARSTEP. The boss of their title dungeon is able to create Barbed Orbs, one of several newer gimmicks which ''inflict damage when you move them''. Yes, even by passing over it with another Orb.

** The game plays in both ways. On the one hand, many powerful monsters can only be acquired by the aforementioned pulls, but you can still get many useful ones via normal gameplay, especially [[NintendoHard Descended Dungeons]]. If you're skilled enough, you won't even need to spend any Magic Stones for that. Skill upgrades, however, completely fit this trope. One can fill up Skill Levels by powering up with ''only'' that amount of monsters...Or feeding dozens of monsters ''without'' even raising one Skill Level.

* NintendoHard: How apropos of the ''Super Mario Bros. Edition''. Many have noted the vastly higher difficulty of the enemies, even in comparison to ''PADZ''. This is mitigated somewhat by the better leader monsters the game gives you.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: King Boo and Petey Piranha are classified as EliteMooks rather than Bosses, so you'll still encounter them as enemies even if they're in your party.

** Pompurin has a leader skill that guarantees an ATK×3.5& at a cost of halving your healing. Two of these leaders will give you a ATK×12.25, but your RCV is reduced to 1/4.
*** Pompurin was later buffed to have a guaranteed 4×ATK bonus at the cost of halving recovery strength, but also added an ATK×5 multiplier if you match all 5 attribute orbs in a single turn, making him ATK×400 when paired with itself.

** "Ultimate Lifeform, Doomsday"'s leader skill gives 3× ATK for Attacker types, but reduces total HP to 1/2. Having a double Doomsday leader team gives you 9×ATK for Attacker type, but gives you 1/4 HP, making this kind of team a total GlassCannon.

*** Then he gets a Reincarnation Evo in "Satan Void". Satan Void's Ultimate Evolution, "King of Perdition, Satan Void", has an even higher ATK than it's last form at 2666 (3,161 with +99 atk egg), meaning its "Vanishing World" deals ''a whopping 948,300 (1,896,600 to Light Monsters)'' and changing the board to dark orbs to exploit it's 5 Enhance Dark Att awakenings.

*** Fenrir got a buff and now his max multiplier is '''ATK×2025''' under the same circumstances as above.

** "Collab Magazine", a card in the ''Weekly Shonen Magazine'' collab, is an extremely rare Dungeon drop, and needs the 5 Manga Volume skill-up cards to evolve from the "White Book". Its leader skill makes all cards on the team have an automatic ATK×8 multiplier, so long as all of those cards are ''all'' from the ''Magazine'' Collab lineup.

** For the gameplay itself, this trope also works in both ways. Number of Combos (and thus, attack power and healing amount) are based on players' skills, but falling blocks can either allow you to get healed, get another combo to activate Leader Skills...Or screwing up your strategy (when using Ishikawa Goemon[[note]]5 times the attack power if the current HP is lower than 20%, ATK×25 with two Goemon leaders[[/note]], stalling for skills or trying not to get the enemy at a certain HP percentage, for example).