History YMMV / EpicBattleFantasy

** Rainbow Rafflesia has a healing skill that removes status ailments and stat debuffs, buffs its M. ATK and M. DEF, and applies '''maxed''' Bless status. This means the player can't [[StatusBuffDispel Dispel]] its buffs and must instead gamble on Magic Attack/Defense debuffs to get rid of them (just as a reminder, most bosses in this game have 50% resistance to all stat debuffs, and this resistance hinders the success chance of debuff effects). Especially if the boss uses this skill again before Bless expires.

** The crows. They have high evasion and an accuracy-lowering attack. If all of your party gets debuffed, they'll take a lot longer to defeat.

** Rainbow Rafflesia has a healing skill that removes status effects, buffs its M. ATK and M. DEF, and applies '''maxed''' Bless status. This means the player can't get rid of its buffs, especially if it uses the skill again before Bless expires.

* CompleteMonster: [[spoiler:[[GreaterScopeVillain The Devourer]] is a [[EldritchAbomination being from another dimension]], the creator of the universe, and the BigBad of [[VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy5 the fifth game]]. [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill Hating the idea of free will]], it sent Cosmic Monoliths onto the Earth to act as its "defense system" that would allow it to kill the heroes and summon itself if they were destroyed. The Devourer was also responsible for the deaths of many in Redpine due to the Monoliths turning wildlife aggressive. In the final battle, the Devourer reveals that it created Akron — who attempted to end all life — and Godcat — who tried to eradicate humanity — as earlier attempts to dispose of the party, before deleting the Earth because the Devourer viewed it as ruined.]]

** ''[=EBF5=]'' brings us a bomb class. Every turn they just count down, and when their count reaches 0, the party gets wiped out in a spectacular explosion:
*** 'Nuclear Bomb' is exactly the same thing as in ''[=EBF2=]'', dealing massive fire damage and burning everyone. Unlike then, here it appears as a regular enemy among other turrets, and usually there are ''two'' of them.
*** 'Earthquake Bomb' does obscene earth damage to one character (basically a KO unless you're horribly overlevelled) before exploding for slightly lower party-wide earth damage. The initial attack cannot even be absorbed due to being only 25% Earth based, though the second one can.
*** 'Acid Bomb' does massive party-wide poison damage and inflicts Burn. On higher difficulty, it inflicts Scorch, which gradually decreases your maximum HP.
*** 'Shockwave Bomb' does massive wind damage and to everyone and [[StatusBuffDispel dispels the survivors' buffs]].

** Voodoo Dolls from ''[=EBF5=]''. Easy to deal with, as you should have enough holy-elemental attacks on you by that time, but damaging them damages their PC equivalent even when in backup, so there is good chance a one hit kill on them will also one hit kill their PC counterpart.
* GoddamnedBoss: The boss battle against Anna in ''5'' isn't really challenging, especially if the player exploits her lack of resistance to Weaken, but her ability to heal large chunks of her own HP coupled with the Air Strike weather frequently tossing her Medipacks can make her deceptively frustrating to wear down.

* SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments:
** If you return to Greenwood Village after enough story events, some of the villagers will give free items to Anna.
** In ''[=EBF5=]'', in one part of the final area, you'll find a crowd composed of some of the [=NPCs=] whose quests you've completed. They've all come to cheer you on in your efforts to save the world, as well as give you extra crafting items.
** Oddly enough, the OptionalBoss[[spoiler:, God, has words of encouragement in His BossBanter, and tells the party that He's proud of them if they get far enough into the fight]].

** The Turrets and Flybots from ''[=EBF5=]'' come with a move that reverses buffs into debuffs. They ''love'' it to do just after you applied Temper or Star Power. Hope this won't happen during the associated OptionalBoss Fight. On the other hand, catch Red or Yellow Flybot and you can do the same.
** [[spoiler:God's limit break takes a turn to charge, after which you are hit by a gigantic spirit bomb that deals immense magic damage in the form of a hail of small hits to everyone, backup included. This means it won't proc [[LastChanceHitPoint Morale]], and that if a character is auto-revived, chances are it will immediately die afterward. On higher difficulties, your backups are almost certainly dead, and if you do not take a lot of defensive countermeasures, [[TotalPartyKill so is the rest of your party]]...]]

** In [=EBF5=], the Frozen Valley. It is the SlippySlideyIceWorld in this game, with both sliding blocks puzzles and sliding PC puzzles, sometimes both at once. Combat wise, there are many annoying enemies, minibosses such as Mammoths and Defenders, one literal BossInMookClothing and of course Viking Monoliths. The kicker? Behind the literally last enemy in the valley before the screen with the boss, featuring the Defender of course, you'll find Spiky Boots, that allow you to walk on ice as you please, which would be ''incredibly'' useful at the start of this level!

** Oddly enough, the BonusBoss[[spoiler:, God, has words of encouragement in His BossBanter, and tells the party that He's proud of them if they get far enough into the fight]].

** The Turrets and Flybots from ''[=EBF5=]'' come with a move that reverses buffs into debuffs. They ''love'' it to do just after you applied Temper or Star Power. Hope this won't happen during the associated BonusBoss Fight. On the other hand, catch Red or Yellow Flybot and you can do the same.

* ThatOneBoss: So many, that it has [[ThatOneBoss/EpicBattleFantasy it's own page]] now.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The enemy versions of some skills, ''especially'' [[spoiler:The Dark Players' {{LimitBreak}}s]].
** [[spoiler:Dark Matt's Annihilate does a massive amount of damage, when the exact same Limit Break does next to no damage when used by Matt.]]
*** [[spoiler:Possibly justified due to Matt's Annihilate having a higher chance to instantly kill compared to Dark Matt's.]]
** [[spoiler:Dark Natalie's Black Hole does not do damage to her, while when Natalie uses it, the party takes a very small amount of damage with a chance of instantly dying. Note that Dark Natalie, like all bosses, is completely immune to instant death. Fortunately, Dark Natalie not taking damage from it means it doesn't heal her at all, since she absorbs darkness.]]
** [[spoiler:Dark Lance's Nuke does not burn him, while Lance's Nuke burns the whole party.]]
** [[spoiler:Dark Lance's Unload and Dark Matt's Legend don't apply ATK down or Tired on them respectively, allowing them to spam these moves without consequence.]]
** [[spoiler:The enemy version of Supernova used by Dark Natalie and the Destroyer don't damage or burn their side, unlike ''your'' party's version.]]

* GameBreaker:
** To a certain degree, the Mog spell in the first game. It basically amounts to a free item being used on one of the characters, in a game where you have two opportunities to buy items with limited funds. Being one of the cheapest spells, it's very likely that Matt will get an Ether before he runs out of MP, effectively making the spell easy to spam.
** The Tera Drill spell does ridiculous amounts of damage to enemies with defensive buffs. Buff attack on whoever has it and even Akron goes down relatively easily.
** In the second game, getting Matt to learn Mana Leech. Almost any attack in which his sword makes contact with an enemy will give him between 110 and 130 mana ''for free''. Legend, his strongest physical attack, only costs 90 mana. Throw in a few Counter abilities, and enemies will be actively feeding Matt mana points.
** In the third game, a surprising amount of enemies can be afflicted with the Poison status, and since the game averts UselessUsefulSpell, this includes bosses. It's very easy to get 9 stacks on a boss and have its health slowly get drained for free. Many of the enemies that are immune to poison tend to be inorganic in nature, making them weak to [[InfinityPlusOneElement bombs]] instead — very few enemies can take both.
** The poison status condition from ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy 3'' requires elaboration. Poison in this game can stack; a level 1 poison isn't particularly noteworthy, but the poison damage is vastly increased for each consecutive level. By the time you reach a level 9 poison, you would have to spam {{Limit Break}}s just to deal more damage in one turn than the poison is doing. One of Matt's earliest learnable skills is Nettle, which causes this condition, and if you level Nettle up to level 3, you can get them to a level 3 poison with ''one'' use of Nettle. And one of the earliest weapons you can find is the Black Fang, which ''boosts the power of Nettle''. Worse, later on you can teach Lance the Poison Gas move, which inflicts level 3 poison on all enemies, and can sometimes do it twice for a level 6, in one shot. Even the final boss is not immune — in fact, being a BarrierChangeBoss, it has a state where it's ''weak'' to poison, and can sometimes start the battle this way. Stack him up to the gills with poison and tank and he'll lose ''tens of thousands'' of HP per turn. The only balance is that some of the enemies are immune to it, including most of the later bosses and the [[BossInMookClothing Monoliths]]. What ''really'' makes poison broken, though, is the way battles work in the game. Battles take place in waves, and once you kill all the enemies in one wave, the next one will spawn right away. If you use 2 characters' actions to KO one wave, you'll then have only one character to prepare for the next wave's attacks, forcing the player to be careful about eliminating waves too quickly. But if the wave is finished off with poison, which takes place between turns, you didn't have any characters use their actions — so you'll have ''all three'' characters ready for the next one, removing a large balancing factor normally inherent to the game. Poison was so broken that, when the game was released on Steam, its damage to enemies was nerfed by a full 30%.
** Lance's Airstrike special. It deals a large amount of damage to a single enemy, with a 50% chance of inflicting that damage to the entire enemy party. Note that the "run" command is ''much'' more effective than it is in most [=RPGs=]; you can run from any battle in the game at any time and come back to that same fight later, albeit with the enemies fully healed. So have Lance move first, if Airstrike targets a single enemy, run away, walk to restore MP, come back to the battle, try again, and repeat until the enemy party gets blasted to death or near-death. If this wasn't broken enough, consider that Airstrike uses [[InfinityPlusOneElement the rare Bomb element]], which is the weak point of ''almost every DemonicSpider in the game''. Then consider that Airstrike, at higher levels, gains a chance to replace its bomb with a much bigger one that deals almost double damage… and those same "run and return" shenanigans become even more valuable. And if that's somehow not enough, you can have Natalie move first, use her Bless white magic to increase Lance's damage by 70%, [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill and…]]
** Lance's hat and coat, along with the Army Jacket. Sure, they give some defense, but that's not why you want them. No, you want them because they have a chance to summon Lance's tank (a single powerful shot or eight inaccurate shots per enemy) and an Airstrike respectively between turns. For free. And they can stack. It is not unheard of for battles to end before you even had a chance to act because the enemy is buried under a barrage of tank shells, missiles and MoreDakka. Oh, and they resist Dark, so if you fully upgrade them, Cosmic Monoliths can't touch a character who wears both (sadly, one of the guys is screwed).
** In ''Adventure Story'', there is Mana Staff. Its basic attack is very weak; however, each of its attacks has a chance to drain MP from not only enemies, but also ''objects and projectiles''. This essentially provides unlimited healing and powers up spells.
** If Matt equips the Rune Blade in the fourth game, and forges it to the max level, AND if you give Matt most/all of the ham items to buff his attack, you can regularly attack enemies with skills that cost MP and more often than not, your MP will be filled up basically automatically. Also, the max level of the Rune Blade basically guarantees that Matt will syphon his targets, and makes him completely immune to be dispelled and syphoned himself. The Rune Blade also boosts the damage of holy skills. Not only ''that'', but he's just about guaranteed to counter, and he may casts a powerful skill called Glitter regularly, which is, again, boosted by the sword itself.
** ''VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy 4'' drastically nerfed poison to the point where it's ''under''-powered, and brought airstrikes to within balance, but it's not quite immune to having its own game breakers. By giving Lance the Solar Flare special (which reduces the enemy party's accuracy, with nothing in the whole game immune to it and almost nothing resisting it outside of chapter bosses) and combining it with Anna's Reflex ability (which boosts evasion for the whole party), it becomes practically impossible for the enemy to hit you at all. Both of these skills can be cast multiple times. Reflex carries over to the next wave, and while Solar Flare doesn't, it's fairly easy to let Lance hit the next wave with a Solar Flare before they can act.
** Hela's Staff, one of Natalie's weapons, enormously increases her Magic Attack — higher than any other weapon in the game — at the cost of also reducing her HP and MP, and having a chance of cursing Natalie every round. Covering Natalie with the evasion strategy mentioned above makes her GlassCannon status a non-issue, and since the curse condition only affects defense and leaves offense untouched, and MP is restored between battles, none of these supposed balancing factors actually matter all that much. Natalie has a Dark-elemental multi-target attack called Pulsar, which is the strongest multi-target attack in the game that isn't a LimitBreak. The Hela's Staff is a Dark weapon, and in this game, that means it boosts Dark-elemental attacks by 1.5x on top of the boost to Magic Attack that Natalie is already getting. Natalie can also equip dark armors on top of this, both of which give the highest boosts any armor gives to the Magic Attack stat. And she can cast Charm in battle to temporarily increase her own Magic Attack by 70%, which applies to all of the above boosts, while having an ally cast Screamer, which lowers the enemy party's Magic Defense. Combining all of this, it's quite possible for Natalie to wipe out an entire enemy wave in [[HarderThanHard Epic mode]] with a single cast of Pulsar after only one turn of set-up, and then do exactly the same thing to the next wave, and so on until all the enemies are dead.
** As far as the {{DLC}} goes, most of the extra skills and weapons you get are generally useful, but not so useful that they obsolete the other options in your inventory. There is, however, one DLC skill that breaks the game wide open: Plasma Cage. Its in-game description: "High-accuracy magic that stuns the target." Note that unlike almost every other skill you have, it doesn't say that it "may" cause this status effect, but that it ''will'' — as long as the enemy isn't immune to Stun, Plasma Cage will prevent any actions from them for two rounds. And it '''stacks with itself'''. By having one character spam Plasma Cage, and spending the other two characters' turns buffing, you can guarantee a ridiculously buffed party for the next round, while you can casually pick off the current round at your leisure once your party is buffed to the cap in practically everything. The high accuracy preventing evasive enemies from stopping this tactic is just the icing on the cake.
** In ''Bullet Heaven 2'', [=NoLegs=] has the Shooting Star sub-weapon. It fires continuously in place, lasts much longer than any non-toggleable weapon, and you can have several of them active at once (unlike the toggled weapons, where you can only have one at a time). By picking up a diamond or heart to recharge your weapon at the right time, you can end up firing nine streams of bullets at once counting your primary weapon. You can either scatter the Shooting Stars around to hit everything onscreen or concentrate them in one spot to deal obscene damage — bosses can lose half their health within a second to the latter.
** ''[=EBF5=]'' introduced TheVirus status. It is basically the same thing as poison, being under the same immunity and dealing poison damage, except it multiplies by itself and spreads on all enemies should you infect someone with it. The damage from both the Virus and the Poison ''stack''. This becomes a very efficient way to deal with all enemies which have high health and do not outright nullify or absorb poison, something that applies even to [[BonusBoss Bonus Bosses]] (for example the entirety of the Miniboss Rush can be defeated on [[HarderThanHard Epic]] difficulty using only this strategy). The only disadvantage is the Virus spreads on your characters as well, but most weapons supplying Virus also supply some Poison resistance, so with right build you can turn it into Regen.
** In ''5'', the Invisible and Enchant statuses will make the target immune to one type of damage, but twice as vulnerable to another. If you know a boss's HP threshold for their ultimate attacks or know what their LimitBreak is, getting these one of these statuses on the whole party can allow them to NoSell the attack. If you inflict one of these statuses on an enemy and stack other damage increasing ailments on them, you can do far more damage than usual with a LimitBreak.
** In ''5'', the Viking Monolith summon can cast haste on the entire party, and one piece of equipment can randomly summon it.
** ''5'' has Anna's fully upgraded Spark Shower and Frost Flurry attacks, which stun or freeze the enemy on impact at 120% success rate against a single target for both attacks, 50% against the entire enemy party for Spark Shower, and 40% against the entire enemy party for Frost Flurry. Combined with the Alchemist's Bow, the level 3 Blue Elephant, and the level 5 Red Dress, Anna has astonishing reliability with these two skills, routinely breaking through 80% resistance against single targets and 50% against enemy parties; she can easily stunlock nearly the entire enemy team and render most trash mobs helpless.
** The [=v2.0=] of ''[=EBF5=]'' introduces Equip Remix, which significantly changes properties of equipment. Consequently, some pieces of it became this:
*** Green Goliath was an uninspiring gun which, while powerful, had serious drawbacks — it reduced accuracy and evasion and inflicted Tired status on Lance that reduced them further, while accuracy was one of Lance's highest stats. In Equip Remix, instead it boosts the strength and magic by much less, but its drawbacks get removed and most importantly — it grants charge to Lance ''each turn''. This essentially means he can spam Hyperbeam each turn without charging, which is an [=AoE=] attack with 300 base damage when fully maxed. The weapon has also no element, meaning you have not to worry about enemies absorbing the attack, and with flairs Hyperbeam can be used to inflict status effects such as curse to all enemies. The only drawback is you have to defeat [[MarathonBoss Neon Valhalla]] to acquire it.
*** Devil's Fork is located in the first bonus dungeon and fully maxed — which you probably can do right after getting it, since it requires Lava and Big Lava slime as materials, which you can capture in the same dungeon — summons randomly Mouse Slime, Slime Bunny, and big Lava Slime. The first is essentially a weak electric attack that stuns anything not completely immune to stunning. Slime Bunny grants Regen to everyone for 5 turns. Big Lava Slime does massive fire damage to one target. Even more, it completely shields Matt from ice, fire, and poison damage, essentially negating all [=DoT=] damage as well.
*** Star Hammer is even more of an InfinityPlusOneSword than it was, since instead of boosting [=NoLegs'=] defenses, it raises his evasion (his best stat), it stuns on hit instead of dispelling, and it has a chance to randomly summon God. Yes, [[BonusBoss that]] [[KillerRabbit God]].

* IdiotPlot: In ''[=EBF4=]'', Anna and others know how powerful the game's {{MacGuffin}}s are. And yet no one stood guard over them. Considering they were stolen by the ''weakest enemies of the game'', one must wonder if it was intentional.
** Also, if Anna didn't suspect Matt as the culprit entirely based on FridgeLogic, the original trio wouldn't have been dragged into the plot in the first place.

* FandomEnragingMisconception: Dismissing the ''Epic Battle Fantasy'' series as a ripoff of the ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' series will definitely annoy at best, if not push some [[BerserkButton buttons]] on that fandom. While it is an AffectionateParody of the latter series, the former series deviates by having a [[BetterThanABareBulb self aware]] nautre of its genre, as well as being contrastingly different styles.

* EnsembleDarkhorse: [=NoLegs=] tends to be popular among the fans. People even ask if he's going to be a playable character (and not just for the minigames). [=NoLegs=] was PromotedToPlayable in the ''Bullet Heaven'' games and ''finally'' became a fully-fledged party member in ''[=EBF5=]''.

* CompleteMonster: [[GreaterScopeVillain The Devourer]] is a [[EldritchAbomination being from another dimension]], the creator of the universe, and the BigBad of [[VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy5 the fifth game]]. [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill Hating the idea of free will]], it sent Cosmic Monoliths onto the Earth to act as its "defense system" that would allow it to kill the heroes and summon itself if they were destroyed. The Devourer was also responsible for the deaths of many in Redpine due to the Monoliths turning wildlife aggressive. In the final battle, the Devourer reveals that it created Akron — who attempted to end all life — and Godcat — who tried to eradicate humanity — as earlier attempts to dispose of the party, before deleting the Earth because the Devourer viewed it as ruined.

** In [=EBF5=], the Frozen Valley. It is the SlippySlideyIceWorld in this game, with both sliding blocks puzzles and sliding PC puzzles, sometimes both at once. Combat wise, there are many annoying enemies, minibosses such as Mammoths and Defenders, one literal BossInMooksClothing and of course Viking Monoliths. The kicker? Behind the literally last enemy in the valley before the screen with the boss, featuring the Defender of course, you'll find Spiky Boots, that allow you to walk on ice as you please, which would be ''incredibly'' useful at the start of this level!

** In ''4'', there are quite a few in the factory. The Satellite dishes can cause Siphon on ''all'' your party members, locking them from using skills. The Laser turrets charge for one turn, the next turn they fire a big laser that '''will''' more often than not kill a character. Fridge turrets will pull a wet-freeze combo, landing status effects irritatingly often, while the rest of the enemies whale on you, and since we're dealing with bruisers with a taste for lightning here, getting hit while frozen or wet will most certainly cut a good chunk of your lifebar. The Drill Golem enemies hurt like no tomorrow. Did we also mention that these three enemies have TONS of health and take a long time to kill? Oh, and the Defender from the first game comes back, and it is a ''bruiser''. Suffice to say this is especially bad during the boss battle.

* CompleteMonster: [[spoiler:[[GreaterScopeVillain The Devourer]] is a [[EldritchAbomination being from another dimension]], the creator of the universe, and the BigBad of [[VideoGame/EpicBattleFantasy5 the fifth game]]. [[TheEvilsOfFreeWill Hating the idea of free will]], it sent Cosmic Monoliths onto the Earth to act as its "defense system" that would allow it to kill the heroes and summon itself if they were destroyed. The Devourer was also responsible for the deaths of many in Redpine due to the Monoliths turning wildlife aggressive. In the final battle, the Devourer reveals that it created Akron — who attempted to end all life — and Godcat — who tried to eradicate humanity — as earlier attempts to dispose of the party, before deleting the Earth because the Devourer viewed it as ruined.]]

*** Green Goliath was uninspiring gun which, while powerful, had serious drawbacks — it reduced accuracy and evasion and inflicted Tired status on Lance that reduced them further, while accuracy was one of Lance's highest stats. In Equip Remix, instead it boosts the strength and magic by much less, but its drawbacks get removed and most importantly — it grants charge to Lance ''each turn''. This essentially means he can spam Hyperbeam each turn without charging, which is an [=AoE=] attack with 300 base damage when fully maxed. The weapon has also no element, meaning you have not to worry about enemies absorbing the attack, and with flails Hyperbeam can be used to inflict status effects such as curse to all enemies. The only drawback is you have to defeat [[MarathonBoss Neon Valhalla]] to acquire it.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable:
** In ''[=EBF3=]'', it's entirely possible to walk into a bonus area, save, exit, visit the medals page, ''and delete all your medals!'' This causes the [=NPCs=] that guard the bonus levels (until you have sufficient medals) to reappear, blocking your '''exit''' instead of your entry! That's right. You can ''trap yourself in a bonus area'' unless you have a spare save from the same playthrough.
** ''4'' has the [[BrutalBonusLevel Battle Mountain]] [[ThatOnePuzzle ice puzzle]], which is difficult enough by itself, even with the NPC Walter's hint ([[spoiler:"The secret is...to...line up...the ice blocks...in a row..."]]). [[http://kupogames.com/2013/12/03/ebf4-permanent-game-over/ It's actually possible]] to ''[[{{Pun}} block]] yourself in the puzzle!'' Hopefully, unlike what's in the link, you'd be observant enough '''not''' to save in the middle if you've blocked your exit on all sides!

* UnwinnableByInsanity: