| 1 | [[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ff_record_keeper.png]] |
| 2 | [[caption-width-right:350:[[TagLine Defend your legacy]]. [[labelnote:Top row, left to right,]][[MissionControl Dr. Mog]], [[TheHero Tyro]], [[FromStrayToPet P'soon]], [[BarrierMaiden Elarra]][[/labelnote]] [[labelnote:Bottom row]][[GadgeteerGenius Cid]], [[MeaningfulRename Namingway]], [[JurisdictionFriction Shadowsmith]], [[TheSmartGuy Wedge]], [[TheBigGuy Biggs]][[/labelnote]]]] |
| 3 | |
| 4 | ''Final Fantasy: Record Keeper'' is a {{Freemium}} game for mobile devices that's based on the [[RunningGag mythril-munchingly popular]] ''Franchise/FinalFantasy'' games. It is the second game of this style in the series, following ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyAllTheBravest All the Bravest]]''. |
| 5 | |
| 6 | The story centers around a great kingdom whose livelihood thrives off a library of records, and within those records, which take the form of paintings, are the tales of brave heroes of the past (a.k.a. stories of past ''Final Fantasy'' games). All is well until one day, the paintings mysteriously begin fading, throwing the entire kingdom into chaos. Dr. Mog, the head librarian of the kingdom, believes something is afoot, and enlists his finest protégé, the [[TitleDrop Record Keeper]] [[PlayerCharacter Tyro]], to restore the paintings and save the kingdom. To do so, he must travel into the realms of the paintings attuned by Dr. Mog and relive the struggles of the past stored within the records. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | ''Record Keeper's'' dungeons are paintings that represent various ''Final Fantasy'' games and related enemies. The bulk of the content are Realm Dungeons, which have players fight in recreations of iconic battles of the games [[AdaptationDistillation in a rough retelling of the game's events]]. An expansion of this idea are Record Dungeons, where the player controls a party combined of their protagonists and that game's characters and actually plays through the game's events on a short map they explore and watch cutscenes that recreate the events of the games. The other regular content is weekly Challenge Events, timed events that are themed around a few particular characters and tend to be accompanied by relic banners spotlighting them. Other events may also rotate weekly, including events where the player can play them repeatedly to collect tokens to exchange for items, events where the player can fight a particularly powerful boss from the realm being spotlighted in the current Challenge Dungeon, and events where the player must fight a gauntlet of enemies with entirely different parties, or a single party that must have the endurance to beat multiple bosses. As the metagame has evolved, these rotating weekly events became primarily a means to give newcomers a way to recruit characters, and all players a way to stockpile resources to upgrade their party. |
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| 10 | The "endgame" content is permanent and varied. These include Nightmare Dungeons, {{Puzzle Boss}}es that require clever strategy to defeat; Magicite Dungeons, a series of bosses based on ElementalRockPaperScissors that need elementally-focused teams to defeat; and Cardia Dungeons, where each dungeon is themed around a particular realm and the player must bring their best fighters from that realm or suffer stat penalties for off-realm characters. Magicite and Cardia dungeons are tiered in levels of power, with Cardia also being divided into Dream, Torment, and Dreambreaker dungeons, each harder than the last.[[note]]Torments were originally called Nightmare Dungeons in Japan and the Nightmare Dungeons were Abyss Dungeons. Since Nightmare Dungeons was in use in English when Nightmare Dungeons began began in Japan, they were renamed Torment Dungeons and the ThemeNaming was lost.[[/note]] There's also the Labyrinths, where the player must bring three parties to explore a corridor of paintings variously containing treasure, stat boosts, debuffs, and enemies. The Labyrinth has continued to grow every few months with a rotating list of equipment to be found and new bosses added, which are a mix of element-focused and realm-focused. Aside from Nightmare Dungeons, the objective with all of these dungeons is to beat the enemy as quickly as possible to reap the most rewards for your victory; a win in under 30 seconds is usually the best time the game will ask for. |
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| 12 | Gameplay in ''Record Keeper'' uses the old-school Active Time Battle System. Players control a party of five characters, each able to equip two abilities with a limited number of charges, and they can also equip Materia, divided into two types (Legend and Record; Legend Materia is character-specific, Record Materia is universal) that grant passive abilities like a chance to dualcast commands or increase the potency of attacks. The player can support their party with Magicite, the game's SummonMagic, or a Historia Crystal, a different type of SummonMagic that focuses power into heroes from a particular realm rather than calling a powerful monster. Characters can be upgraded with Motes, Crystal Water, and Magia to improve their stats and expand their ability pool. The game's LimitBreak system is Soul Breaks, which are learned by acquiring a relic that contains that Soul Break. Characters can equip up to ten Soul Breaks and their effects tend to nudge them into specific playstyles. Characters often have a degree of overlap but still usually have something unique they could bring to a party. For example, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Cloud, Zack, and Angeal]], are all [[BlowYouAway wind]]-elemental characters, but Cloud excels most at dealing heavy damage with attacks that can break the damage cap, Zack lacks raw power but can lower the enemy's resistance to wind attacks, and Angeal can help keep the party alive with support healing and barriers to reduce the damage the party takes. |
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| 14 | Although the game expects players to keep up with the PowerCreep, as most gacha games do, the manner in which these dungeons are structured and their mechanics designed means that fully built characters are not necessary, a single good relic can be enough for a character to carry their weight. Considering that many characters now have ''dozens'' of relics, the developers thankfully don't expect you to have all of them. Older relics are no longer even offered on some banners and are made available in an in-game shop, where players can trade for them with currency earned entirely in-game. While these Relics and their associated Soul Breaks are outdated, they're not obsolete and can be useful to fill in a character's kit with a key element they were missing. This means that ''Record Keeper'' averts AllegedlyFreeGame very effectively: you won't always get the relics you want to clear the latest content, but with a bit of luck on the gacha and patience to let Power Creep sink in, eventually you can get what you need, likely just in time for the next tier of content to release and keep you pushing on. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | The playable cast spans the entire ''Final Fantasy'' franchise, including sequels to the numbered titles, and side games ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyType0'', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics'' and its spin-offs, ''VideoGame/WorldOfFinalFantasy:'', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyDimensionsII:'', and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyBraveExvius''. The character roster is just shy of 250 characters, each with their own equipment draw, ability pool, and Soul Breaks with associated relics. |
| 17 | |
| 18 | The global version of the game [[DefunctOnlineVideoGames shut down]] on September 30, 2022. The Japanese version is still active. |
| 19 | |
| 20 | [[folder:Recruitable Characters (Sorted by Synergy)]] |
| 21 | ->'''Note:''' Characters in italics are, as of March 2022, available only in Japan. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | * '''Core''' |
| 24 | ** '''[[OriginalGeneration Record Keepers]]:''' Tyro, Elarra, Dr. Mog, Biggs, Wedge |
| 25 | ** '''Job/[[DubNameChange Core]]:''' [[MightyGlacier Warrior]], [[StoneWall Knight]], Monk, RedMage, BlackMage, Magus, WhiteMage, Devout, [[SummonMagic Summoner]], [[EverythingsBetterWithSamurai Samurai]], Dragoon, [[CastFromHitPoints Dark Knight]], [[MagicKnight Spellblade]], Viking, Berserker, Ranger, [[FragileSpeedster Thief]], [[MagicMusic Bard]], Ninja, Gladiator |
| 26 | * '''I (and Mobius)''' |
| 27 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI I]]:''' Warrior of Light, Garland, Sarah, Matoya, Master Monk, Thief |
| 28 | ** '''[[VideoGame/MobiusFinalFantasy Mobius]]:''' Wol, Echo, Meia |
| 29 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyII II]]:''' Firion, Maria, Leon, Minwu, Gordon, Leila, Ricard, Josef, Guy, Emperor Mateus, Scott, Hilda |
| 30 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII III]]:''' Luneth, Arc, Refia, Ingus, Desch, Onion Knight, Cloud of Darkness, Aria Benett |
| 31 | * '''IV series''' |
| 32 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV IV]]:''' Cecil Harvey (Dark Knight), Cecil Harvey (Paladin), Kain Highwind, Rydia, Rosa Joanna Farrell, Edward Chris von Muir, Yang Fang Leiden, Palom, Porom, Tellah, Edge Geraldine, Fusoya, Golbez, Cid Pollendina, Rubicante, Barbariccia |
| 33 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIVTheAfterYears IV: The After Years]]:''' Ceodore Harvey, Ursula |
| 34 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV V]]:''' Lenna Charlotte Tycoon, Galuf Halm Baldeison, Gilgamesh, Bartz Klauser, Faris Scherwiz, Exdeath, Krile Mayer Baldeison, Dorgann Klauser, Famed Mimic Gogo, Xezat Matias Surgate, Kelger Vlondett |
| 35 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI VI]]:''' Terra Branford, Locke Cole, Celes Chere, Mog, Edgar Roni Figaro, Sabin Rene Figaro, Shadow, Cyan Garamonde, Gau, Setzer Gabbiani, Strago Magus, Kefka Palazzo, Relm Arrowny, Leo Christophe, Gogo, Umaro |
| 36 | * '''Compilation of VII''' |
| 37 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII VII]]:''' Cloud Strife, Barret Wallace, Tifa Lockhart, Aerith Gainsborough, Red XIII, Yuffie Kisaragi, Cait Sith, Vincent Valentine, Sephiroth, Cid Highwind, Reno, Rufus Shinra, Rude, Elena |
| 38 | ** '''[[VideoGame/CrisisCore Crisis Core]]:''' Zack Fair, Angeal Hewley, Genesis Rhapsodos |
| 39 | ** '''[[VideoGame/DirgeOfCerberus Dirge of Cerberus]]:''' Shelke Rui |
| 40 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII VIII]]:''' Squall Leonhart, Rinoa Heartilly, Quistis Trepe, Zell Dincht, Selphie Tilmitt, Irvine Kinneas, Seifer Almasy, Laguna Loire, Edea Kramer, Raijin, Fujin, Kiros Seagill, Ward Zabac, Ultimecia |
| 41 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX IX]]:''' Zidane Tribal, Garnet Til Alexandros XVII, Vivi Ornitier, Adelbert Steiner, Freya Crescent, Quina Quen, Eiko Carol, Amarant Coral, Beatrix, Kuja, Marcus |
| 42 | * '''X series''' |
| 43 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX X]]:''' Tidus, Yuna, Wakka, Lulu, Kimahri Ronso, Rikku, Auron, Jecht, Braska, Seymour Guado |
| 44 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX X-2]]:''' Paine |
| 45 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI XI]]:''' Shantotto, Ayame, Curilla V Mecru, Prishe, Lion, Aphmau, Zeid, Lilisette, Naja Salaheem, Arciela V. Adoulin |
| 46 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII XII]]:''' Vaan, Balthier, Fran, Basch fon Ronsenburg, Ashelia B'nargin Dalmasca, Penelo, Gabranth, Larsa Ferrinas Solidor, Vayne Carudas Solidor, Reks |
| 47 | * '''XIII series''' |
| 48 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII XIII]]:''' Lightning, Snow Villiers, Oerba Dia Vanille, Sazh Katzroy, Hope Estheim, Oerba Yun Fang, Serah Farron, Cid Raines, Jihl Nabaat |
| 49 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII2 XIII-2]]:''' Noel Kreiss |
| 50 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV XIV]]:''' Y'shtola Rhul, Thancred Waters, Papalymo Totolymo, Yda Hext, Minfilia Warde, Alphinaud Leveilleur, Cid nan Garlond, Haurchefant Greystone, Estinien Wyrmblood, Ysayle Dangoulain, Alisaie Leveilleur |
| 51 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXV XV]]:''' Noctis Lucis Caelum, Gladiolus Amicitia, Iris Amicitia, Prompto Argentum, Aranea Highwind, Ignis Scientia, Cor Leonis, Lunafreya Nox Fleuret, Ardyn Izunia, Ravus Nox Fleuret |
| 52 | * '''Tactics series''' |
| 53 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics Tactics]]:''' Ramza Beoulve, Agrias Oaks, Delita Heiral, Ovelia Atkascha, Mustadio Bunansa, Goffard Gaffgarion, Cidolfus Orlandeau, Rapha Galthena, Marach Galthena, Meliadoul Tengille, Alma Beoulve, Orran Durai |
| 54 | ** '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyTacticsAdvance Tactics Advance]]:''' Marche Radiuju, Montblanc |
| 55 | * '''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyType0 Type-0]]:''' Ace, Deuce, Trey, Cater, Cinque, Sice, Seven, Eight, Nine, Jack, Queen, King, Rem Tokimiya, Machina Kunagiri, ''Kurasame Susaya'' |
| 56 | * '''"Beyond"''' |
| 57 | ** '''VideoGame/WorldOfFinalFantasy:''' Reynn, Lann, Tama, Enna Kros, Seraphie |
| 58 | ** '''VideoGame/FinalFantasyDimensionsII:''' Morrow, Aemo, Wrieg |
| 59 | ** '''VideoGame/FinalFantasyBraveExvius:''' Rain, Lasswell, Fina |
| 60 | * '''Franchise/KingdomHearts:''' Sora, Riku, Roxas, Axel |
| 61 | [[/folder]] |
| 62 | |
| 63 | Note that due to frequent updates (the Japanese version is always about six months ahead of Global), game features mentioned anywhere may not yet be available in your version of the game, weren't available when you used to play it, or may even be outdated in your version at this point. |
| 64 | |
| 65 | !''Final Fantasy: Record Keeper'' provides examples of: |
| 66 | |
| 67 | [[foldercontrol]] |
| 68 | |
| 69 | [[folder:A]] |
| 70 | * AbortedArc: Many of the games that make up the Realm Dungeons stop just short of including the FinalBoss of their respective titles, and sat that way for years. It wasn't until the game's sixth year that some of them finally got around to finishing the title. |
| 71 | * AbsurdlyLowLevelCap: The standard level cap is only 50 and you can reach it fairly easily, at which point you can use Memory Crystals to raise the cap to 65, 80, and finally 99. You have abundant resources to raise dozens of characters this high, and long-time players have raised the entire roster to 99 long ago. However, the late-game content has evolved to the point that Level 99 characters are just assumed, so they'll still pose a great challenge. In lieu of raising the level cap, the developers introduced ways to boost the stats of characters further (Crystal Water, Magia, Record Boards) even once they hit Level 99. |
| 72 | * ActuallyFourMooks: The generic bosses in Cecil's event become this in the Elite versions of the bosses. |
| 73 | * AdaptationalBadass: A number of characters who are usually noncombatants are made combatants here and can hold their own against others. Notable of the group is Minfilia, who is quite notable for being quite useless among the player base of ''Final Fantasy XIV'', but is given a powerful supporting Paladin specialization with high ranks in White Magic, Knight, and Support. |
| 74 | * AdaptationDistillation: ''Record Keeper'' essentially acts as a summary of every game, with the permanent Realm dungeon exploration being condensed into only fights and stories being reduced to a short blurb before and after each dungeon. |
| 75 | ** Some time-limited events summarize the Realm dungeons, which are already distilled versions of the game they're based on. ''Legendary Plunder'' is one for the FFVI realm (with the only divergence being Phoenix Cave at the end) while the ''A Planted [=SeeD=]'' event is one for the FFVIII realm. |
| 76 | ** The 2018 new addition, Record Dungeons, are ''yet another'' example of this trope. This time, Tyro and Elarra are inserted into the plots of the various main games, but are treated as InUniverse characters (for example, new recruits to AVALANCHE or Returner-aligned spies in the Gestahlian Empire) helping the main protagonists follow the timeline (while avoiding disrupting them) in corrupted paintings. Not even Tyro nor Elarra fully understand how distilled their adventures are, as sometimes they bounce from one time period to another in an instant (for example, from helping Terra join the Returners to the next half of the game in the World of Ruin, recruiting Terra again in Mobliz). |
| 77 | ** For some reason, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Rocket Town and Wutai]] are combined. |
| 78 | * AfterCombatRecovery: Only when you clear (or retreat from) a dungeon. You can also heal at the camp between stages for a Mythril, though this is never worth it since the same Mythril could be used to revive your party, restore your ability uses, and get a temporary stat boost on top in case you do end up dying. |
| 79 | * AllThereInTheManual: Many Soul Breaks grant the user a SuperMode, and very rarely is it explained in the Soul Break text what that Super Mode actually ''does''. Fortunately, the manual is in-game, though awful to navigate due to the game's massive cast of characters meaning the list is ''very'' long to scroll through. |
| 80 | * AndYourRewardIsClothes: A Wardrobe Record feature was introduced via an update, which allows players to collect alternative outfits for existing characters, then change them at will. These alternate outfits are typically based on the characters at different points in time in their home game or home series, such as Garnet's SignificantHaircut and Cloud and Tifa's ''Anime/FinalFantasyVIIAdventChildren'' uniforms. A notable exception to this rule is Tyro's "Black-Robed Keeper" outfit, which is based on the Black Cloaks from the ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' series. |
| 81 | * {{Antepiece}}: The Dream dungeons act as this to the Torment Dungeons. They have the same mechanics as Torments -- a visible timer, boss gains power and resistances if your party has characters not from its realm -- and many of the Dream bosses are designed to fight in a manner similar to the Torment bosses of the same realm. However, the Dream bosses are much easier than the Torment bosses, giving the players a taste of what to expect from the Torments. |
| 82 | * AntiFrustrationFeatures |
| 83 | ** When a dungeon contains a boss, the game will give you a rundown of the boss's strategy, including elemental affinities, what status ailments can work on it, powerful attacks it will use and when, and so forth. This gives you ample warning to prepare your party appropriately for what's to come. As of the November 2017 update, players can now view this in the Pause menu during combat. |
| 84 | ** Most status ailments will wear off over time if you don't heal them, so you don't have to bring Esuna to every dungeon for fear of {{Mook}}s that may have status attacks. When a boss prominently uses status ailments, the game warns you about it. |
| 85 | ** Many of the bonus Challenge Dungeons, including multiplayer Raids, Torment Dungeons, and Jump Start Dungeons, don't deduct the Stamina used to challenge them until you actually complete them, as they usually take a lot of Stamina to complete but are so difficult that you may not be up to the task. This also means no penalty for fleeing the dungeon to change up your party before trying again. |
| 86 | ** In multiplayer Raid battles, if a player disconnects, the party leader will assume control over their characters; even if all three disconnect. However, if the leader disconnects, the battle is forfeit. |
| 87 | ** If you collect the Wardrobe Record for a character you don't have yet, you'll also get that character's Hero Record in conjunction with their Wardrobe Record. |
| 88 | * ArbitraryHeadcountLimit: A classic ''Final Fantasy'' trope, applied once more here with 5 characters maximum. This limit is especially noticeable during Record Dungeons, where more than 6 characters are clearly involved in a fight (and, in fact, they can be switched in and out before the battle) but only 5 are active. |
| 89 | * ArbitraryMissionRestriction: Dungeons have a "Mastery" ranking system, judged by damage taken, KO'd party members and number of actions taken. All boss stages are ranked on whether ''any'' party members were knocked out, with additional requirements like "exploit X's weakness to [[ElementalRockPaperScissors a certain element]]", "inflict a certain [[StatusEffects status effect]] on X", "defeat X before it uses its SignatureMove", etc. |
| 90 | * TheArtifact: |
| 91 | ** The Core classes. They were designed as {{Crutch Character}}s, offering diversity in your roster in the early game when you have limited characters, and could be phased out once you got more options, because the Cores have terrible stats and poor ability pools. While this was useful in the game's early days when new characters came out slowly, these days Challenge Events often give out five characters at once, the permanent Newcomer Dungeons let you recruit several ''VII'', ''X'', and ''XIII'' characters, and Realm Dungeons give out a variety of characters generously and early. This all leaves the Core characters useless even to new players, with their only purpose being for {{Self Imposed Challenge}}s and to collect powerful Record Materia from them. They eventually got thrown a bone in the 4th year when most of them got updated to have full coverage of their main ability school, though they're still {{Joke Character}}s. |
| 92 | ** The weekly Challenge Events used to be used to introduce new characters and give you a chance to get old ones, since at the time the Realm Dungeons only gave out characters at limited intervals. Later, they also became a good sources of Orbs and Motes as higher difficulties were added with such rewards. However, these days the Realm Dungeons throw characters at you quickly, Power-Up Dungeons and Mote Dungeons allow easy ways to farm Orbs and Motes, and new characters come out very sparingly -- this leaves Challenge Dungeons with little purpose. This was fixed with the addition of Artifacts and the Record Lab, with Challenge Dungeons now rewarding Artifact Stones and Anima Lenses to trade in for equipment. |
| 93 | ** ''Record Keeper'' splits the two versions of Cecil into two distinct characters, Dark Knight Cecil and Paladin Cecil. For some reason, he is the only one to have this distinction, as any character with multiple forms or abilities just becomes a CompositeCharacter or has some abilities ignored outright, while alt forms are added as Wardrobe Records. What's even weirder is that future ''Final Fantasy'' mobile games ''kept'' this distinction, with Cecil being split up in both ''Brave Exvius'' and ''Opera Omnia'' as well. |
| 94 | * ArtificialBrilliance: Without specific targets designated, characters will pick targets based on the AI attached to the ability they're using, and it's mostly pretty competent, to the point you very often don't need to pick targets yourself and can trust the computer to do so. HP-restoring abilities will auto-target the party member with the lowest HP percentage, status-healing abilities will auto-target a party member with status ailments, and status buff abilities target characters who don't already have that buff. On the offensive front, most damaging abilities target enemies with the lowest HP percentage, status-inflicting abilities will target an enemy without that status already (presuming there is one), and Dispel will auto-target any enemy with stat buffs. |
| 95 | * ArtShift: Fairly common, especially in the case of earlier games that have received {{Updated Rerelease}}s. The game constantly swaps between showing 16-bit battle graphics and screenshots of the game in question, which may look completely different (or in the case of V and VI, [[AvertedTrope not at all]]). Most prominent is the first three games, which do this threefold: The in-dungeon backgrounds are from the {{Updated Rerelease}}s, the music is 8-bit, and the battles are 16-bit. |
| 96 | ** ''FFII'' dungeons are odd about this: some enemy sprites are taken from the 16-bit versions of the game, while others have their Famicom sprites redrawn in 16-bit. |
| 97 | * AscendedGlitch: Of a sort. In ''Final Fantasy IX'', there was a small oversight that allowed stat gains earned by GuestStarPartyMember Marcus to transfer over to Eiko. In this game, Marcus can be used to unlock "Eiko Legend Motes", which can in turn be used to increase Eiko's stats, and were the first such Motes to be created. |
| 98 | * AssistCharacter: Roaming Warriors. They are characters selected and outfitted by other players, and can be chosen and taken with you into dungeons. While you have a Roaming Warrior equipped, you can use that character's equipped Soul Break twice per dungeon. If you like a particular Roaming Warrior, you can Follow them, which will make them show up on your Roaming Warriors list very frequently and available for use once per day. |
| 99 | * AwesomeButImpractical: |
| 100 | ** An update [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2 gave Yuna "Guns" as a possible Weapon option]], but since she's a WhiteMage, she actually has no use for most of them, Tiny Bee or other magic guns notwithstanding. That said, Tiny Bee in and of itself also falls into this category, as it syncs up poorly with Yuna's designated role (White Mage/Summoner), and it's infamously in possession of what's commonly considered one of the worst Burst Soul Breaks in the game. |
| 101 | ** Reraise allows a character to instantly revive upon death, but it's a 6★ which means using Crystals to hone it, when there are many more 6★ abilities far more useful. That aside, many Soul Breaks cast Reraise on the entire party, and there's also many that cast [[LastChanceHitPoint Last Stand]] on the party, which is even better. |
| 102 | ** Dual Shifting to mode two when using DAASBs. While they add an extra break cap and other effects like instant cast, you only get a set number of turns when switching modes and it decreases the more times you using an ability in mode one. The exceptions are DAASBs that are one turn only but don't remove the mode one but add an extra effect after you use an ability after a shift. |
| 103 | [[/folder]] |
| 104 | |
| 105 | [[folder:B]] |
| 106 | * BackgroundMusicOverride: When you're in ''FFV''[='=]s "Big Bridge" Realm Dungeon, instead of having overworld music, battle music, and a victory fanfare, the famous "Battle on the Big Bridge" track from the game plays over ''everything.'' |
| 107 | ** The same goes for ''FFVII'' and ''FFIX'' which have dungeons that play "Aerith's theme" and "You're Not Alone" playing throughout everything. |
| 108 | * BadPowersBadPeople: The Darkness abilities. Every villain character has full 5★ access to them, and they include physical and magical attacks, often carrying PowerAtAPrice. |
| 109 | * BadPowersGoodPeople: |
| 110 | ** On the flipside, a multitude of heroic characters have access to Darkness abilities, including Leon, Dark Knight Cecil, Golbez (at least in TAY), Vincent, Edea, Jecht, Cid Raines, and Riku[[labelnote:*]]Although he ''was'' an antagonist in the first ''Kingdom Hearts'', [[DemonicPossession just not willingly]][[/labelnote]]. Also getting Darkness through Record Dive are Luneth, Shantotto and Basch. |
| 111 | ** Any sort of equipment from a villain can be equipped on anyone. Most notably the Carnelian Signet, which is an accessory that boosts +15 Attack and provides Fire resistance and can be equipped on anyone. In the original game it came from, it was used to blow up Rydia's village of Mist. This can make for some interesting combos, like slapping Kefka's cloak on Terra, the Masamune on Cloud, or Gilgamesh's hood on Bartz. |
| 112 | ** Estinien's Ultra Soul Break shows him tapping into the Eye and blood of Nidhogg, a genocidal, revenge-obsessed dragon from Final Fantasy XIV, to strengthen his abilities. |
| 113 | * BadassDriver: Laws of physics apparently don't apply to the Fenrir; in Cloud's first Burst Soul Break, Fenrir Overdrive, he manages to do several drive-bys with the Fusion Swords, then does ''aerial cartwheels on a motorcycle''. His second BSB, Cloud Cycle, combines this with CarFu, as he jumps off his bike mid-attack, has it zoom around driverless as he slashes at the enemy before finally having it crash into the enemy and explode as he finishes off the attack with a final slash. |
| 114 | * BalanceBuff: Naturally, being a gacha game where PowerCreep is a constant, this happens all the time. |
| 115 | ** Aside from new Soul Breaks, numerous characters have their ability pool expanded, either through Record Spheres and Record Boards or through game updates, giving them more versatility and sometimes changing their playstyle; for example, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Red XIII]] began as a generic support character, but a later update allowed him to use higher-tier Black Magic, increased his Magic, and he got [[DishingOutDirt earth-elemental]] Soul Breaks at the same time, turning him into an earth mage. |
| 116 | ** When Ultra Soul Breaks began rolling out, Burst Soul Breaks often had commands that dealt four or five hits, maybe more, while normal abilities tended to deal only two, making Bursts more appealing than Ultras in many circumstances. A third-year update buffed many abilities to have higher damage multipliers or deal more hits, making Burst commands mostly obsolete and not forcing players to try and combine Ultras and Bursts for maximum potential. |
| 117 | ** When Ultra Soul Breaks with Brave commands were introduced, they were lacklusters. Their gimmick is that Brave commands charge up as the character uses other commands, but it took three turns to charge the Brave command to Level 3 (which naturally is the most potent), making them unwieldy to strategize around, and since the Brave command only lasts a short time it was unlikely you'd be able to use it more than once. An update caused all Brave commands to begin at Level 2 after using their corresponding Soul Break, so they only took one turn to charge up, you had the option to use the slightly weaker Level 2 version if you wanted, and you could more feasibly get multiple uses out of them. |
| 118 | ** The earliest 6* abilities introduced in Nightmare Dungeons became almost entirely useless save for Meltdown, Valigarmanda, and Curada, as the rest didn't do much damage and didn't have useful effects. They later got updated in various ways to make them more appealing. Particular mention to Ultima, which was entirely useless since it only dealt three hits of non-elemnental damage in a metagame centered on elemental damage from abilities that deal at least four hits; with the buff Ultima became ''omni''-elemental, making it viable as a niche tool for several characters. |
| 119 | ** When Hero Abilities were introduced, several of the first were lackluster, being either of circumstantial use or not being that much stronger than normal 6* abilities in exchange for a dubious benefit like executing faster or granting a minor stat buff. Many of these characters later got a second Hero Ability that was on-par with the standard expected of later ones. |
| 120 | * BareFistedMonk: There are several, representing a majority of the games in the series. Josef, Tifa, Refia, Sabin, Galuf, Zell, Amarant, Yang and Snow fight with their hands and have access to Monk abilities, though they can all use weapons as well. |
| 121 | * BashBrothers[=/=]BattleCouple: Occasionally encouraged -- characters who were close in their original title may have Soul Breaks in this game that synergize particularly well together. |
| 122 | ** Scott and Hilda were an OfficialCouple; Scott has an Ultra Soul Break that gives him a Fire infusion, but only if Hilda is in the party. Gordon, Scott's brother who is implied will marry Hilda in his stead, has an additional effect on his Awakening if either Scott or Hilda are in the party and alive. |
| 123 | ** Terra is a Fire-elemental mage, while Locke is a Fire-elemental warrior. Locke's Soul Breaks tend to debuff enemies and lower their Fire resistance, while Terra's Soul Breaks buff her and infuse her with Fire. |
| 124 | ** Cloud is a Wind-elemental fighter whose Soul Breaks infuse him with Wind, and his USB "Ultra Cross Slash" grants him 100% critical hit rate. Zack is a Wind-elemental fighter whose Soul Breaks lower the enemy's resistance to Wind, and his CSB "Lucky Stars" boosts the Attack, Wind-elemental damage, and critical hit damage of allies. Together they two form a perfect combo with Zack's Soul Breaks acting to maximize Cloud's damage output. Angeal joined in later with dual-elemental Wind/Holy Soul Breaks that grant the party defensive buffs. |
| 125 | ** Squall is a powerful Ice-elemental warrior, and Rinoa is a powerful Ice-elemental mage. |
| 126 | ** Zidane and Marcus are both Wind-elemental thieves that can debuff enemies, but Zidane's Soul Breaks Infuse him with Wind while Marcus' lowers the enemy's Wind resistance. |
| 127 | ** Tidus is a Water-elemental fighter who has Soul Breaks to infuse him with Water, while Wakka is a Water-elemental fighter who has Soul Breaks that lower the enemy's Water resistance and debuffs their stats. |
| 128 | ** Serah, Snow, and Noel are Ice-elemental characters, Serah a mage while Snow and Noel are a warriors. |
| 129 | ** Tyro and Elarra became one with their fourth and second Ultra Soul Breaks, respectively: Tyro's boosts the party's critical hit rate more and more as he uses Support abilities, while Elarra's boosts the party's critical hit damage. |
| 130 | * BattleThemeMusic: Each game's own unique battle themes are reused when battling it out inside their respective portraits or dungeons. Boss battle music from each game is also retained as well. Initially, the victory fanfare was always the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'' fanfare, but a later update added the fanfares from each respective game which play within their portraits. |
| 131 | * TheBerserker: |
| 132 | ** Luneth's early Advance Unique Soul Break sacrificed defense for a massive boost in attack power. |
| 133 | ** There are Record Materias such as Fran's Seething Mist, which cause the character to start off every battle berserked. This is in reference to a specific battle in Final Fantasy XII where Fran loses control of herself and spends the entire next battle Berserked. |
| 134 | ** Gau's Soul Breaks are this. Rage locks his moveset into spamming the same attack over and over and over again. |
| 135 | ** The Heavy Combat school is based on this job along with the Viking Job. |
| 136 | * BlackKnight: Several such FF characters, like Garland, are playable here with their own gameplay quirks: |
| 137 | ** Leon can use 5★ Knight and Darkness abilities, plus 3★ Black Magic. |
| 138 | ** Dark Knight Cecil has his own character slot and unique gear, and the highest HP pool of any character. Golbez also technically counts, able to use 5★ Knight abilities and equipment like axes and heavy armor. |
| 139 | ** Gabranth is officially labeled a Paladin, able to use 4★ White Magic and 4★ Knight abilities. |
| 140 | * BlackMage: The core Black Mage, obtained in the early game, is quite useful, with a respectable magic stat that can help you clear early dungeons until you get someone better - and [[MagikarpPower he's still worth grinding to LV65]] for the Mana Spring Record Materias, which restore black magic ability uses when entering a new battle. Meanwhile, Lulu and Vivi are restricted to black magic, while Rinoa, Terra, Rydia and Maria can use every black magic spell in the game and more. |
| 141 | * BlowYouAway: Wind-type abilities, such as Aero Strike, Wind Slash, and Wind Jump. Tyro's Cyclone Grimoire is an aversion, as despite the fact that it aesthetically looks like a twister, it actually deals Non-Elemental Magic Damage. These are getting more numerous as they go on. |
| 142 | * BookEnds: The Global version's title screen on the last day of service is also its very first -- where Tyro carries a stack of books in a library, with Dr. Mog atop that stack. |
| 143 | * BoringButPractical: |
| 144 | ** Daggers. They're the most basic weapon type, tend to have stats lesser than other weapons, and most characters want other weapons because of Record Spheres that afford them stat bonuses when equipping weapons of a specific type. But the thing about Daggers is that ''every'' character can equip them, and several of them may boost Magic or Mind as its primary stat instead of Attack, which makes them viable in niche party configurations. Most physical-leaning characters can't equip Rods and Staves and most mages can't equip Swords, Guns, Spears, etc., but if you want to retool a physical attacker to be a mage or vice-versa, a Dagger can give them the stats they need to do it properly. |
| 145 | ** In multi-stage battles, you'll probably want to save your abilities and Soul Breaks for the bosses most of the time, so normal battle strategies will often consist mostly of just physical attacks and Auto-Battle. |
| 146 | ** Lifesiphon. It's a 4★ Combat ability that does mediocre damage, but charges the user's Soul Break gauge a large amount, making it highly useful on many characters. It has a counterpart, Wrath, as a 4★ Support ability. Even with a BalanceBuff to Soul Break gauge mechanics that makes other attacking abilities charge the gauge better, Lifesiphon and Wrath still see use in the name of conserving ability charges on the user's other ability. |
| 147 | ** Double Cut is a Combat Ability that deals two physical attacks, and that's it. It's cheap to create and hone, the damage is decent, and in strategies revolving around the Retaliate ability, it counts as two attacks, allowing you to proc Retaliate twice with a single move. Tempo Flurry is the 3★ Celerity version, which is a direct upgrade since it also has a 20% chance of inflicting Slow per hit. |
| 148 | ** Power Chain, a 5★ Celerity ability that does two weak hits and lets the user's next action cast instantly. Spamming Power Chain to build Soul Break gauge is almost as efficient as Lifesiphon, and using Power Chain to set up a Soul Break next turn is way faster than just casting the Soul Break itself and waiting several seconds for it to execute. |
| 149 | ** Quick Hit, a 5★ Celerity ability that casts instantly and does two hits of damage. It got an update in Flash Disaster, a 6★ Celerity that instantly deals three Lightning/Wind hits. As with Power Chain, spamming them is a way to efficiently keep the Soul Break gauge charging, and Flash Disaster is even more useful on Lightning and Wind-elemental teams. |
| 150 | ** Elemental Infusion Legend Materias, which start a character off infused with an elemental affinity. Nothing fancy, but this can be a huge boon to their damage output if they rely on elemental attacks, and thus considerably speeds up battles. |
| 151 | ** Attack replacement Record Materia, which change the normal Attack command into some ability. There are many that change the Attack command into some sort of area-of-effect attack, very useful for auto-battling lower-level content. |
| 152 | ** Edge's ''Eblan Doppelganger''. It's only a Super Soul Break, but it's one of the most useful in the game -- it casts instantly to grant the party Haste, Last Stand, and Blink, all extremely helpful status buffs. On many top-content teams, Edge sees use as a support character just for ''Eblan Doppelganger''. |
| 153 | ** Cloud's Ultra Soul Break, ''Ultra Cross Slash;;. It's pretty standard for a USB, and its EX Mode is relatively straightforward, giving 100% Crit, +30% Phys. Damage, and Overflow on non-Soul Break attacks. The last bit is the kicker, as it allows Cloud to burst vastly higher than other physical attackers and get maximum mileage out of single-hit Abilities where they would otherwise be less useful on other characters due to other characters being bound to the damage cap on normal Abilities. |
| 154 | ** Noctis's Super Soul Break, ''Gladiolus Link''. It deals six hits to a target, casts instantly, and removes charge time from the party's next action. The damage is negligible, but the true prize is the instant cast charge it gives the party, and it casts instantly itself, too. |
| 155 | ** Any Hero Abilities that only deal one hit but can break the damage cap. They may not deal as many hits and damage with most Hero Abilities paired with cap break soulbreaks, but the high multiplier of the single hit abilities paired with a chain will guarantee that it will break a boss with savage mode, even at savage mode level 3. |
| 156 | ** Any Hero Ability that imperils a target's elemental weakness. They're only for 5 seconds, but by that time the character with the Hero ability will use it again. Combined with a dualcast awakening, the imperils will add up. |
| 157 | ** Hero Artifacts earned in the Labyrinth give a SetBonus if a character wears all three of them. A universal effect among them is that the first attack or ability the wearer uses in a battle will charge their Soul Break gauge more than usual, and secondary effects are faster ATB charge time for their first turn, removing casting time from the character's first action, causing their first ability used to reduce the enemy's elemental resistance, and exclusively for White Mages, causing their healing skills to be more powerful for their first three turns. These effects are nothing flashy, but go a long way to helping a party build momentum faster or surviving early attacks without needing your White Mage to use a Soul Break immediately. |
| 158 | * BossBanter: Much of the pre-battle and mid-battle dialogue was retained for many bosses, although [[EasterEgg much of it will only show up if you have certain characters on your team when the boss is encountered.]] For example, if Cyan is on your team when you fight Kefka, he'll vow to avenge the people of Doma. If Terra is also present, she'll ask him why he used a mind control device on her. |
| 159 | ** Cid Raines. If you bring a party consisting only of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'' characters who are all Level 65 or higher, you will get to read a condensed version of the appropriate cutscene. The "condensed" version is ''two minutes long.'' This in a game where typical boss battles are about the same length, give or take. |
| 160 | * BossRush: A regular feature of "Challenge"-type events, and present in some regular dungeons as well. |
| 161 | ** In the painting "Dollet (Withdrawal)" and the "A Planted [=SeeD=]" event (Final Fantasy VIII), you have to fight the [=X-ATM092=] (also known as Black Widow) no fewer than four times in a row. |
| 162 | ** ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'''s "Pagoda Tower", which covers Yuffie's sidequest for her best Limit Break, tops the X-ATM fight and has you fight ''five bosses in a row''. |
| 163 | ** The first portrait of the Final Fantasy IX realm has a boss for each level: the Masked Man, Steiner, [[FlunkyBoss Steiner and some mooks]], and [[RuleOfThree Steiner]] and a [[OhCrap Bomb]]. |
| 164 | ** The end of the "To Slay a Sorceress" Event: you have to fight two bosses in a row, Seifer and Edea. The Elite version of the Event ups the ante and pits you against three bosses: Iguions, Seifer and Edea. Unsurprisingly, this is considered a difficult level; good luck trying to Master it on Elite[[note]]Not helped by the fact that getting Slow to stick on Seifer for a score bonus [[LuckBasedMission is tricky at best]][[/note]]. |
| 165 | ** Event + Stages, unlocked by clearing all of the Elite Dungeons in a particular event. Every single stage is a boss fight, although each boss has fewer HP than normal. |
| 166 | ** Giant of Babil, Part 1 in Final Fantasy IV consists entirely of rematches with the four Archfiends. Thankfully each one drops an Ether to keep you from running out of abilities too quickly. |
| 167 | * BraggingRightsReward: |
| 168 | ** Downplayed: Superbosses that come with festivals, the first and most famous being Nemesis, tend to reward nothing but gil on their highest difficulty. Nemesis did offer another reward though: on his first arrival, before any other superboss and certainly before devastating amounts of PowerCreep, players who beat him got their name and their conquering party enshrined in the official strategy website for that server. At launch, he was the hardest boss in the entire game, the developers advertised it as being impossible to beat, and were pleasantly surprised when some Japanese players did it anyway. |
| 169 | ** Conquest Battles in the multiplayer section of the game: incredibly difficult fights that are nearly impossible to do solo (especially since Magicites are disabled) at D350 level, but with only gil and bragging rights as the reward. Conquer Hojo (Infernal +), for example, advertises "tons of gil" (1.5m as a Mastery Reward, 1m as a First Time Reward, and 0.5m as a recurring Completion Reward). |
| 170 | *** The hardest difficulty levels of new superbosses starting from Omega and Conquest Battles starting from CPU also now give lv3 Lenses upon clearing them, making them worth beating for all players who still haven't gotten every single relic obtainable with them from the Record Laboratory, which consists of practically everyone in the entire playerbase. |
| 171 | ** Downplayed with the ''Kingdom Hearts'' events and the Keyblade-type weapons you can receive from them. Since only ''Kingdom Hearts'' characters can equip them, Keyblades aren't very useful except for raw power, but their stats are not particularly high compared to other weapons of the same rarity, and they possess no elemental damage boost like is standard for weapons. The second event gave the ''Shooting Star'' Keyblade, which boosts Fire, Ice, and Lightning damage, but Riku and Roxas are Dark and Holy fighters, so it's a weapon only useful for one character (Sora), nevermind that its stats are unusually low for a 6-star and there's no point to having a tri-elemental boost effect over a single elemental boost. |
| 172 | * BribingYourWayToVictory: You can spend money to buy Gems, which are used to increase inventory space, heal your party between fights and, most of all, try your luck at Relic draws in order to get better equipment. The Mythril you get from finishing dungeons for the first time, as a login bonus and from events serves the same purpose and is usually interchangeable, although the exact conversion ratio varies slightly depending on the context. |
| 173 | * ButterflyOfDoom: Discussed during chapter 1 of the Record Dungeons (Untrodden Paths) -- specifically, when Tyro and Elarra witness Nora Estheim's death in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII''. Elarra wishes to undo Nora's death, but Tyro warns her not to do so, as they're both instructed by Dr. Mog not to alter the events that happen within the corrupted paintings, lest it brings out horrific consequences. |
| 174 | [[/folder]] |
| 175 | |
| 176 | [[folder:C]] |
| 177 | * TheCameo: If you know where to look during the animation of Alma's Burst Soul Break, "Wisdom of Orbonne", [[https://i.redditmedia.com/zyq0sHT56UBq7iiqB7HvVIkUS7thKiszWtviZGSiqgQ.jpg?w=457&s=ba7aec58b5989aac653a9e2863898ca5 you can find Tyro hidden behind a bookcase.]] |
| 178 | * CantCatchUp: |
| 179 | ** Averted in terms of leveling. With the exception of Orlandeau in one specific event, all characters join your team at Level 1. However, the game is generous enough with Growth Eggs and a LevelGrinding dungeon open 24/7, that you can quickly get them up to Level 99. |
| 180 | ** Played straight in terms of Soul Breaks. If you're a central of one of the more prominent titles like ''VII'' or ''X'', you'll get new Soul Breaks on a fairly regular basis and they'll keep you useful in the late-game content for months to come. If you're a supporting character in a less-exposed game like ''III'' or ''XI'', you may have to wait ''years'' for new Soul Breaks, and what you end up getting will probably just put you on-par with everyone else who has been enjoying their new toys for months, and probably have more of them than you do, too. |
| 181 | * {{Cap}}: Damage caps at 9999 on any given hit. Attacks with the Overflow property[[note]]Overstrike Soul Break, Arcane Overstrike Soul Break, certain boss attacks, Cloud's USB EX Mode, single hit damage type Brave USBs, all Awakening Soul Breaks[[/note]] are able to bypass the 9999 limit and hit even harder, although the damage for Overflow attacks caps at 99999 instead. Awakening Soul Breaks have a lower overall cap at 19999 (the exception being Kain's at 29999), but they generally have a number of other boosts to compensate for it. If the character has multiple Soul Breaks that increase their damage cap, they can use all of them to increase it multiple times, 10000 points at a time. |
| 182 | * CasanovaWannabe: Edgar Figaro, in usual fashion. Elarra is quite offended by his behavior, but Tyro justifies it as Edgar being Edgar. |
| 183 | * CastFromHitpoints: |
| 184 | ** The combat ability Bonecrusher shaves off some of the user's health for a heavy physical attack. |
| 185 | ** Dark Knight Cecil's 'Gore-stained Blade' Record Materias, which increase the damage basic attacks do at the cost of some health. |
| 186 | ** Darkness abilities are mostly this (namely Crimson Cross and Sanguine Cross). |
| 187 | ** Various Soul Breaks, like most of Dark Knight Cecil's Soul Breaks (see a pattern?). |
| 188 | * CCGImportanceDissonance: |
| 189 | ** In the game's early days, the developers used signature and/or powerful weapons for each character for Soul Break relics. But as the game kept going and more Soul Breaks were added to characters, this obviously no longer worked for most of the cast. This results in oddities where weapons that were the strongest of their kind in their home games are outclassed by what in the home game was weaker, but here is more powerful. |
| 190 | *** One of the best demonstrations is Bartz from ''Final Fantasy V'', as he manages to zigzag all over the place with this trope. The Brave Blade is often portrayed in other spin-offs as his signature weapon, and was the strongest Knight Sword in ''V'', while the next-best swords were the Excalibur, Ragnarok, and Apocalypse (GBA only). Here they respectively hold a Unique, Super, Burst, and Overstrike Soul Break for Bartz. Meanwhile the Chicken Knife (ironically, the Brave Blade's much less useful counterpart) holds his first Ultra Soul Break, which was one of the best in the game for its time, and his other Bursts are on the Great Sword (a store-bought weak sword), the Grand Helm (a GBA-exclusive powerful helmet), and an armor based on his artwork garb. Then the Man-Eater (a mid-powered dagger) has his Arcane Overstrike, and his second and third Ultras are on weapons not in ''any'' version of the original game. Averted in one case with his second Awakening, which is on the Ultima Weapon, one of the best weapons in the GBA version of ''V''. |
| 191 | ** Characters can fall victim to this too, with their prominence in the franchise not reflecting their power. |
| 192 | *** Locke, Edgar, and Sabin, are some of the most important characters in ''VI'', but are middle-of-the-road DPS units here. Mog, on the other hand, is an optional character in ''VI'' with almost no story significance, and has some of the best and most widely used Awakenings in the game. |
| 193 | *** From ''VII'', Cid and Barret are playable characters and are just kinda average here in their roles. Shelke, a supporting character from the ''Dirge of Cerberus'' spinoff, is considered one of the best Support characters in the game. |
| 194 | ** Attacks likewise can fall into this. Cloud and Tifa's second-strongest Limit commands in ''VII'' are Overstrikes in this game, and Barret, Aerith, and Cid's second-strongest Limits are merely Super Soul Breaks. |
| 195 | ** Later the developers attempted to "correct" this with weapons and Soul Breaks that reuse the name of an earlier one with a prefix or suffix added, such as "Ultima Weapon+", "Heaven's Cloud Nexus", "Modified Metal Knuckle", "True Muramasa", and so forth. Soul Breaks get the suffixes "True", "Awoken", "Apex", with the latter two in particular being tied to Arcane Dyad and Awakening Dyad Soul Breaks. This gives the impression that the weapons and Soul Breaks to previously bear the names weren't the "real" thing, or weren't being used at full potential. |
| 196 | * ChangingGameplayPriorities: Very much so. |
| 197 | ** Initially, players need to increase their stamina pool by completing Classic paintings, and will create new abilities only to complete quests and conditions to get Mastery in a dungeon (such as a Black Magic spell), without honing them too much since orbs are scarce, and you can just auto-battle most encounters. However, once you reach higher level Classic and Elite paintings, honing your abilities becomes very important in order to beat the bosses, and damage mitigation slowly but surely becomes mandatory in order to survive. Players then have to farm orbs during daily dungeons in order to be able to create and hone useful abilities, most of them 3★, starting with the Power/Armor/Magic/Mental Break abilities, Black Magic and Curaga. The next step includes difficult to hone abilities, such as some summons, 4★ Black Magic and 4★ Support abilities, such as the Breakdown ones. And the final step includes honing 5★ abilities, like Full Break, Thief's Revenge, and Saint Cross. Once you have all the abilities you need, priority will probably go to completing Record Spheres, which means delving into Mote Dungeons. |
| 198 | ** Farming Gil is mandatory at the beginning in order to be able to improve your abilities and equipment. Once you hit the end-game content though, you'll probably have enough money you don't need to worry about gil, until it's time to hone those Rank 5/6 abilities or equipment pieces. |
| 199 | ** The release of [=USBs=] and bosses with higher defense is intended as a shift from [=BSBs=] to abilities as your main source of damage: while abilities have a limited number of uses and may take a good number of hones before you can use them often enough for them to be useful, they generally have noticeably higher damage multipliers and a good number of EX modes that [=USBs=] provide are tailored towards specific types of abilities, some of which can't be found on that character's [=BSBs=]. |
| 200 | ** Also applies to the order in which you'll do dungeons. Early on you'll want to focus on the Classic Realm Dungeons and maybe dip into the Elite versions a bit. As you win your way up you can go deeper into Challenge Events and Raid Dungeons, and use the 3★ Motes from the latter to complete some first-tier Record Spheres. Eventually you'll plateau with a party of Level 80 characters, so it's time to start eking out wins against the "Ultimate" bosses in Challenge Events to win Memory Crystal Lode [=IIIs=] to push the party to Level 99. With that you can more reliably beat the 160 and 220 Raid bosses and start farming 4★ Motes from Mote bosses for second-tier Record Spheres. With lots of high-level characters and abilities, the next hurdles are Nightmaress, Magicites, and Torments, which bring additional complications along with the high power levels they expect from you. |
| 201 | ** The introduction of 6* Magicites heavily emphasizes characters with Elemental Infusion auras: without them, you'll only deal ScratchDamage to them due to their massive defenses and innate damage reduction, while with them, you not only deal 4-5 times the normal amount of damage to them depending on your Infusion level on top of the extra damage En-element gives you by default, but you'll also take less damage from some of their attacks, making any DPS-focused characters with no access to En-element practically useless for dealing damage to them. Each of them also has at least 1 attack that removes a layer of En-element from your party, further emphasizing sources of Enhanced Infusion both as a means of dealing more damage to them as well as making sure that you won't lose your En-element completely and need to use a Soul Break to regain it. |
| 202 | * CharacterSelectForcing: Invoked with the ''FFIX'' boss Valia Pira. It's Bloodstones gimmick from the original game was translated into ''Record Keeper'' as triggering one Bloodstone for each of your party slots that doesn't have a ''FFIX'' character in it. The more party slots without ''FFIX'' characters, the stronger its magic gets. If you didn't bring ''any'' of those characters, it then tops it off by [[OhCrap becoming immune to all elements.]] |
| 203 | ** On a more general level, this is what all new Torments are centered around: bringing characters outside of the intended realm is heavily penalized and the hardest difficulty is practically impossible to do with even a single off-realm character. As described below, the Crystal Tower also flat out prevents you from using the same character more than once, although you can use the same equipment and abilities for all of them. |
| 204 | * ChargedAttack: The Heavy Physical Ability School. Heavy Physical requires the player to gain stacks of Heavy Charge through the Heavy Charge or Grand Charge Abilities, or other methods such as Cloud's Sonic Break (KH) BSB Burst Mode. Corresponding Heavy Physical Abilities can be used, and the number of hits they inflict are based on the Heavy Charge Rank of the user, and Heavy Charge resets after the Ability is used, requiring the user to re-stack Heavy Charge Rank to make the most out of Heavy Physical Abilities. |
| 205 | * ClassicalElementsEnsemble: The typical Water/Fire/Wind/Earth quartet referenced through the series appears here. |
| 206 | ** The ''Final Fantasy III'' DS heroes each symbolize these elements, in keeping with the original game; Luneth is Wind, Arc is Water, Refia is Fire, Ingus is Earth. The Onion Knight meanwhile has magic-focused Soul Breaks that deal damage in these four elements, and his Ultra Soul Break lets him do a follow-up attack when casting magic of those elements. |
| 207 | ** Played with for the ''Final Fantasy V'' central heroes, who embodied one each of the elements in their home game. Galuf is Earth, which matches the home game, but Faris is Wind here while she represented Fire in ''V'', Lenna is a healer with no elemental affinity but is supposed to represent Water, and Bartz embodied Wind in ''V'' but has all four elements to himself here. A later event for ''V'' tried to rectify this; Faris and Bartz got new Ultras that give them Fire and a Wind focus, respectively, while Lenna got a new healing Soul Break that buffs the party's resistance to Water and Ice. Their new Soul Breaks are even named after the elements and particular virtue associated with them as spoken in ''Final Fantasy V'' when they were chosen as the Warriors of Light. |
| 208 | * ColonyDrop: Has almost become a RunningGag since the 3rd year of FFRK. |
| 209 | ** Sephiroth's iconic ability returns here with his Black Materia Soul Break. Sephiroth uses the Black Materia to call Meteor, which drops in from the sky and deals several hits of Dark magic damage. |
| 210 | ** Maria's Meteor XVI summons a massive meteor that does massive damage. Her OSB, [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0J9IRemkbpY Kerplode XXXII]], summons an even bigger meteor that's shown destroying the entire planet. |
| 211 | ** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyGoj5d7hTE Krile's later Overstrike]] tries to top Maria's OSB by showing her ''riding'' the meteor, which covers the entire screen when it lands. |
| 212 | ** [[https://ffrk-movie.static.sp.mbga.jp/soul_strike/10800200/20180331_agkTGL54nlo.mp4 Rinoa's Arcane Overstrike]] "settles" for dropping a comet on the planet, tilting it out of orbit, and causing permafrost on its surface. |
| 213 | * CombatExclusiveHealing: Did you beat the stage before healing your SquishyWizard? You'd better hope your healer has a full ATB gauge at the start of the next fight, since you can't use your healing spells in between gauntlets and healing at the camp costs Mythril. Slightly lessened by the fact that the last enemy in a wave can drop a healing powerup. |
| 214 | * CombatMedic: |
| 215 | ** Most White Mages can serve as this if needed, since White Magic offensive spells run off the Mind stat instead of Magic, and dualcasting Materia for White Magic spells are common. For White Mages with particularly effective Soul Breaks and depending on the attack patterns of the boss in question, it may actually be more practical to run an offensive spell over a Cure spell for faster Soul Break charging and contributing DPS. Some White Mages, such as Minwu, Arc, and others, have had Relics to shift them towards offensive White Magic instead of just healing. |
| 216 | ** On the flip side, many Paladin-type like Cecil, Ceodore, and Beatrix are focused on melee fighting but can also carry White Magic spells. Cecil is particularly notable because he got diversified as a magical Holy fighter with an appropriate dualcasting Materia for White Magic, and he has several Soul Breaks to heal the party. On the magical side, Yuna is a dedicated White Mage but has always been able to carry Summons when needed, and Rem has been a dedicated offensive White Mage from the start and has some support Soul Breaks. |
| 217 | * CombinatorialExplosion: With the absolutely massive amount of characters in the ''Final Fantasy'' franchise, ''Record Keeper'' gives fans the chance to beat up their favorite bosses with their ''Final Fantasy'' dream team. |
| 218 | * CommonPlaceRare: You can find Daggers, Swords, Rods, and Staves for miles around, but you know you've got something when you have a [[KatanasAreJustBetter Japanese sword]], a pistol, a harp, a hairpin, or god forbid a ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX sports ball]]''. |
| 219 | * ComplacentGamingSyndrome: [[invoked]] The developers force you to avert this. A lot of higher-level content have gimmicks that incentivize you to try different party set-ups to fight them all, if not outright forcing you to. A team of regulars will get you through Realm Dungeons and Challenge Events fine, but anything more difficult than them will demand adaptation. |
| 220 | ** Nightmare Bosses are {{Puzzle Boss}}es that expect you to bring teams able to play along with their gimmick based on a certain school of abilities; not doing so tends to be more difficult or outright punishing. |
| 221 | ** Magicite Bosses enforce ElementalRockPaperScissors hard and expect you to bring teams able to pick on their elemental weakness, since they resist all other elemental damage. |
| 222 | ** The second wave of Torment Dungeons have the bosses gain an escalating stat buff and resistance to debuffs and elemental damage for each off-Realm character in the party; for the optimal fight, you're expected to bring a party of five characters from the native realm. |
| 223 | ** The Crystal Tower event type forbid you from using the same party members twice in a run of the Tower, so (equipment and abilities aside) you need to be able to field four battle-ready parties to beat all four bosses the Tower pits you against. |
| 224 | * CompositeCharacter: The Warrior of Light for the Warriors of Light once again, as a holdover from ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy''. While the summaries for ''Final Fantasy I'' refer to the Warriors of Light as a group, the Warrior of Light still represents the whole of them. Strangely, his own character profile conflicts with this, as it refers to him as a single character. His profile also displays his "official art" as the 8-bit Warrior from the NES era. |
| 225 | * TheComputerIsALyingBastard: A somewhat minor but still annoying example regarding the Magicites: there's actually 2 different formulas for calculating their effects, with the main Magicite and half of sub Magicites' total stats being used to calculate the effectiveness of the stat-boosting passive abilities, but the actual combined stats visible on their stat screen is the main Magicite and 1/4th of the sub Magicites' total stats, which is what's used to calculate the power/duration of their attacks/buffs when summoned, when the opposite would be far more intuitive. |
| 226 | * ContinuityNod: Bosses are generally faithful to the original game, making them much easier to defeat the first time if you remember them well. You're encouraged to use equipment from the same games and rewarded if you can beat certain challenging bosses with it. |
| 227 | * CoolBike: The Fenrir, Cloud's personal ride from ''Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children''. If you have the 1st Fusion Sword, you can give it to Cloud to unlock Fenrir Overdrive, where Cloud boards the Fenrir and breaks out the Fusion Swords to utterly demolish enemies. |
| 228 | * CoolSword: Quite a few of them, including some character-specific ones, such as the Buster Sword and Masamune. |
| 229 | * CripplingOverspecialization: |
| 230 | ** Since you're limited to ten abilities total (two per member), a character who is very good at one role is often less preferable to a character who can easily fit multiple roles, such as offense and healing/mitigation. Even if a character is going to be doing the role of dedicated DPS, it can be helpful if they have the ability to bring something like Shellga or Power Breakdown to contribute more than just damage output. |
| 231 | ** This hit Aria in the game's early years. Her Soul Breaks all have the gimmick of making the party more resistant to Fire damage, so against a boss that prominently uses Fire, she's outstanding -- if they don't, she's subpar. Her later Relics transitioned her to a more generalist White Mage role. |
| 232 | * CriticalHitClass: Due to how critical hit mechanics in the game work, there's two sides of this trope. Critical hits do +50% damage normally, but some effects can boost that damage buff. Thus there's many characters who can boost critical hit ratio for themselves and/or allies, and many who can boost critical hit damage, but only a few can do both. |
| 233 | ** Monks. One of the first 5-star abilities, Exploding Fist, was slightly weaker than average but had increased critical rate. They have Elemental Rushes for Fire, Earth, Ice, and Lightning, with the same critical hit rate boost. |
| 234 | *** Refia, Zell, and the Master from the original ''Final Fantasy'' all have Burst Soul Breaks that boost their critical hit chance, while Refia and the Master have Ultras that boost critical hit damage, and Zell and the Master have Ultras that let them do chase attacks on critical hits. Refia and Zell also have Legend Materia that trigger on critical hits; Refia's boosts her Attack and Zell's gives him three turns of Quickcast. |
| 235 | *** Ursula, Galuf, Tifa, Amarant, Jecht, and Snow aren't as dedicated to the trope as those three, but still have several Soul Breaks to boost critical hit rate, and/or Burst Soul Breaks with Burst commands that have higher critical hit rates. Prishe gets a Soul Break that boosts critical hit damage instead. |
| 236 | ** Samurai later developed into this, with their elemental 5-star and 6-star abilities having a 50% critical hit chance, but only if the user has Retaliate status. |
| 237 | *** Cyan got a set of Soul Breaks similar to the Monks listed above; a Burst that boosts critical hit rate and an Ultra that boosts critical hit damage. |
| 238 | *** Firion, Gilgamesh, and Sephiroth, all have Soul Breaks that boost critical hit rate. |
| 239 | ** Prior to getting more dedicated Wind stools, this was how Cloud got by in the lategame -- he lacked a reliable Elemental Infusion, but his Ultra Soul Break ''Ultra Cross Slash'' gave him such significant status buffs, including 100% critical hit rate, that he could keep up anyway. |
| 240 | ** Similar to Cloud, Cidolfus Orlandeau. Until he gained his Sync, he lacked an elemental infusion, but his Ultra Soul Break and Awakening Soul Break give him a 100% critical hit rate. |
| 241 | * CrutchCharacter: |
| 242 | ** After the first tutorial dungeon, you're given the core Black Mage and White Mage, who unlike most other Cores are passable at their jobs and can serve the player well until they obtain a proper Black Mage and White Mage. |
| 243 | ** Zigzagged with Cloud throughout the overall game's history. He's the first named character and physical attacker the player receives, his skillset gives him strong and flexible options early on, and as a bonus he can unlock Rarity 5 Spellblades with Motes. As new tiers of Soul Breaks are introduced, Cloud tended to intro each one (Supers, Bursts, Overstrikes) and after a honeymoon period as the posterboy for PowerCreep, he ends up with an eventually-outdated Soul Break for its tier. Since the third year of FFRK (and after another honeymoon period of enjoying one of the strongest Ultras in the entire game), Cloud has settled into this trope once more as the game shifted toward Magicites while he's relegated a non-elemental skillset. Later Wind-based Cloud relics attempted to break him out of this trope and settle him into a more conventional Wind DPS role. |
| 244 | ** Zigzagged with Burst Soul Breaks. If you lack the resources to craft and hone abilities for a character, you'll often find yourself relying on their Burst to give them a way to fight in longterm battles, since Burst commands have infinite charges and fighting with them will probably recharge the Burst in time to cast it again. However, Burst commands tend to have lower power than normal abilities, and use up Soul Break charges that could be used for more powerful Ultra Soul Breaks, which increasingly have additional effects that trigger when using certain abilities but (for assorted, complicated reasons) don't synergize well with Burst abilities. However, this is not a universal rule, as many characters have Burst Soul Breaks that remain powerful in spite of their PowerCreep, and they can keep up with Ultra-favoring characters just fine; Cid Raines and Vaan are two of the most famous examples. |
| 245 | * CutAndPasteEnvironments: The game is generally good at averting this, as there are a large number of backgrounds, and within the same realm, unless the following addendum is applicable, the same background is usually never reused twice, unless two dungeons take place in the same area for plot reasons. However, generic areas such as "caves" and "underground passageways" tend to recycle the same two or three backgrounds for convenience's sake. The daily dungeons are particularly guilty of this. |
| 246 | [[/folder]] |
| 247 | |
| 248 | [[folder:D-F]] |
| 249 | * DamageSpongeBoss: |
| 250 | ** NORG in the first Balamb Garden event. Its Elite form (way back when they were a big deal) had 160,000 HP and spammed defense buffs. There was no Dispel in the game at the time, and one of the two relics that could negate the defense buff (and the only one who could negate the resistance buff) only lasted 10 seconds. He did not resist KO, but that was only a small chance of happening with Zantetsuken. |
| 251 | ** Old D300 Torment Belias, with a grand total of '''937,554''' HP, and accompanied by three adds with 234,536 HP ''each''. And those adds were effectively a TimeLimitBoss. Belias was ''beefy'' (D300 boosted Belias' HP by 407k compared to D250, and the mobs had an extra 63k each); the D300 Gigas Torment in comparison barely had an extra 250k HP across all three giants to compensate for the Jump Start mechanics and the difficulty jump over the D250. |
| 252 | ** The Bahamut D300 Old Torment sums this trope up. This boss was a tank - he had over 800,000 HP. To make matters worse, once he had only 30% HP remaining he countered ''almost every single attack'' with Curaja, which healed over 9,000 of the HP back. Anything that wasn't a summon, Soul Break, or Dance was countered with a 9.3k heal in the era before Ultra Soul Breaks existed. |
| 253 | ** A couple of old event bosses fit squarely into this category, such as Norg ("Balamb Garden" event) and JENOVA (Elite painting and "The JENOVA Project" event). |
| 254 | ** Yiazmat (Transcendent) from Autumn Fest 2018 cranks it up and beyond by copying its HP to the T from ''Final Fantasy XII''. All '''50,112,254 hit points''' worth. However, to counteract this, players can break the damage cap by default and characters will periodically enter the Awaken SuperMode that multiples their damage output by 10x, halves damage taken, and doubles ATB and cast speed. |
| 255 | * DanceBattler: An entire school of abilities, usable by characters such as Mog, Lenna, Rikku, and Penelo. |
| 256 | * DepartmentOfRedundancyDepartment: |
| 257 | ** Character outfits appear as equipment, in different, overlaping parts. For instance, "Kefka's Guise" is merely the base robes, there's also "Kefka's Cloak" and "Kefka's Gloves", ''and'' "Kefka's Plume" appears as an accessory. Sephiroth has "Sephiroth's Coat" and "Sephiroth's Glove", as well as "Executioner" for his pants that frequently appear as a separate outfit for him, and "Hero's Belt" is an accessory that is the belt from his ''Dissidia'' design. |
| 258 | ** There are four different versions of the Buster Sword: Cloud has the ''VII'' version as well as the ''Kingdom Hearts'' version wrapped in bandages, Zack has the ''Crisis Core'' design, and Angeal has the "Hewley Buster" which is just the ''Crisis Core'' Buster Sword surrounded by feathers. |
| 259 | * DepletedPhlebotinumShells: Machinist abilities in a nutshell. It can be inferred that Gun-based SpellBlade abilities run off of these as well. |
| 260 | * DeviousDaggers: Daggers are a common weapon, usable by every character. Among them are the [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Maneater]] from ''Final Fantasy VI'' and the Danjuro from Final Fantasy XII. If you pull a mage dagger, like Triton's Dagger or the Dagger of Resolve, then anyone becomes a battle mage, especially in realm. |
| 261 | * DualBoss: |
| 262 | ** Biggs and Wedge in Final Fantasy VIII. Biggs appears alone, and will be joined shortly by Wedge. It is strongly advised to not attack Biggs while waiting for Wedge, since he will counterattack and regenerate his health when Wedge arrives anyway. |
| 263 | ** Magissa and Forza in Final Fantasy V. Magissa appears alone as well, but calls in Forza after a while. |
| 264 | ** Ultros and Typhoon in Final Fantasy VI. |
| 265 | ** The Shiva sisters, Nix and Streya, from Final Fantasy XIII look like one, but you are fighting them as a single entity, and you can only attack Nix. |
| 266 | ** Black Waltz No. 1 and the Sealion in the "Princess of Alexandria" Final Fantasy IX event. Black Waltz No. 1 will cast Blizzard on Sealion if it runs low on health, or summon another Sealion if it dies. You won't win the fight unless you off Black Waltz No. 1 first. |
| 267 | ** Steiner and Bomb is something of this, except Steiner is completely oblivious of the volatile monster behind him. The Bomb is something of a [[TimeLimitBoss faux-time limit]], as it will Self-Destruct when it grows large enough, dealing damage to the entire party and Steiner. Not only will the damage knock your party off its feet if you're not properly prepared, you need to finish Steiner before Self-Destruct activates for a bonus objective. |
| 268 | ** Gilgamesh and Enkidu make their appearance in both V dungeons and events! Finishing Enkidu off first elicits a humorous misunderstanding from Gilgamesh at the end of the fight. |
| 269 | * DiminishingReturnsForBalance: The soft/hardcaps on main damage stats work this way: once you reach the softcap, any additional increase to that stat has a much lower overall effect and no stat can be boosted more than 2.5 times its base value. |
| 270 | ** The Magicite passive bonuses also function this way: any extra copies of any given passive skill only have half the effectiveness of the previous copy, rounded up, meaning that if you have 5 passives that give 10% more damage to an element each, the total damage increase isn't 50%, it's 10+5+3+2+1 or just 21%, meaning that stacking any passive past 3 copies generally isn't worth it. |
| 271 | * DubNameChange: Any of these that were present in the original games is present here. There are also some new ones; for example, the "Job" characters in Japan are known as "Core" characters elsewhere. Tyro is also known as Deci[[note]]As in, the "Dewey Decimal" system, or with an alternate spelling Deshi, Japanese for "student"[[/note]] in Japan, and "History" and "Force" in the Japanese version were converted into the much more sensible "Classic" and "Elite" in the international version. |
| 272 | ** The various {{Bonus Dungeon}}s were also renamed between versions, some of them somewhat pointlessly: Abyss Dungeons are now called Nightmare Dungeons, Nightmare Dungeons are now called Torment Dungeons and the Full Throttle battles are now called Jump Start battles. |
| 273 | * DubInducedPlotHole: The "Final Fantasy 30th Anniversary" dungeons put players up against the first boss of every realm dungeon, with the boss representing ''Record Keeper'' being the final boss of the first Event Dungeon, the [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Dark Knight]]... which was Japan's first event dungeon. Global's first event dungeon was based on ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', which left some players confused. |
| 274 | * EarlyBirdCameo: Biggs and Wedge first appear in the limited-time, higher-difficulty "Pharos at Ridorana" event that was part of the Autumn Festival 2018 event in Global [[note]]or its equivalent Spring Fest in Japan[[/note]]. They properly introduce themselves to the protagonist in the permanent Record Dungeons, which have a set lineup and can, eventually, be accessed by all players. |
| 275 | * EarlyGameHell: Downplayed over time thanks to quality-of-life improvements. Some of the earliest players (but not launch players, some of whom benefited from promotions giving them Warrior and Tidus at the very beginning of the game) had to slog through the early game with only Tyro, Black Mage, and White Mage as playable characters. Core Characters (besides Tyro, who remains situationally useful) such as the two mages were fragile and died in a few hits. There was little character variety and some were gated behind limited-time, permanently missable content. There were no guaranteed 5-star items per Rare Relic Draw (there are now), dungeon rewards were limited, some Realm Dungeons are still poorly balanced with misleading difficulty, and the Roaming Warrior system was limited or even non-existent for a while.\ |
| 276 | \ |
| 277 | Nowadays, it's fairly easy to start the game. Characters are thrown at you at an alarming frequency (i.e. some characters are unlocked ''multiple times'', turning into Growth Eggs) throughout Realm Dungeons (which number at over 800) and have preset Roaming Warriors that are useful, if old. Event Dungeons still allow the classic Roaming Warrior summons, allowing players to one-hit early bosses with Overstrike Soul Breaks. There's even a set of Newcomer Dungeons for even more Growth Eggs, character unlocks, and upgrade materials. Characters can be summoned at any time with a plentiful and steady (though still technically time-limited) supply of blank Hero Souls and blank Memory Lodes. Finally, the Acolyte Archive makes the process even easier via sets of guided-tutorial missions that give rewards on their own, and when all the missions in a given book are complete, the player is given a free Relic Draw with a specialized drop pool with a selectable relic from another pool, giving everyone access to a number of useful staple Soul Breaks, including party buffs, healing [=SBs=] and a guaranteed Sentinel's Grimoire, the latter of which is actually the only possible relic in the free draw you get it from to stress its importance. Another feature that lets new players catch up faster than before are the revamped Newcomer banners, which cost less than 1/3rd the price of a normal 11x draw for the first time, only have Soul Breaks from BSB and up and there's one for every official realm in the game. |
| 278 | * EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: In the game's first couple of years, Soul Breaks could be a bit more erratic with their effects, usually in the name of staying true to the attack or scene that was their inspiration. Later in the game's lifetime the metagame shifted to focus on each character having an elemental affinity or two, and their older Soul Breaks often don't gel with the Soul Breaks they got later. For example, Terra has ''Trance Flood'' as a Soul Break and her initial Burst Soul Break had Fira and Watera as its Burst commands, largely to tie into her having Flood as an attack in ''Dissidia''; these days she's a pure Fire character. |
| 279 | * EasterEgg: |
| 280 | ** Certain Soul Breaks will have a slight change in their animation if you use certain Dress Records. |
| 281 | ** Prompto's Ultra Soul Break, Trigger Happy, ends with Prompto taking a selfie with the enemy party. If you have Noctis in the party when the USB is cast, Noctis will also appear in the selfie. |
| 282 | * ElementalPowers: Characters usually specialize in one via their Soul Breaks and sometimes associated Relics and Record and Legend Materia. Many Soul Breaks come with Elemental Infusion (boost damage from attacks of the matching element) or Imperil (lower enemy's resistance to the element) effects to encourage team synergy, Imperiling enemies with an elemental weakness that everyone can pick on. Chain Soul Breaks further the idea, adding a damage multiplier to attacks of a particular element that increases every time damage of that element is inflicted to an enemy; with an entire team of fighters armed with elemental attacks, this is a significant increase to their damage output. |
| 283 | * ElementalRockPaperScissors: Sometimes this is encouraged, if not outright mandatory, to achieve a "Mastery" ranking for a level. The Magicite dungeons in particular are set up like this: each of the 6 Magicite bosses has a weakness to a specific element, and once you defeat one, you gain Magicite of that element, allowing you to use it against the next boss in line: the summon effects of the boss Magicites also follow this weakness pattern, not only doing damage that matches the intended boss's weakness, but also protecting you against that boss's main element. |
| 284 | * EverythingsBetterWithSamurai: Samurai is one of the ability classes in the game, specializing in fire- and ice-elemental damage, buffing themselves while dealing damage and having high critical hit rates which can be further increased by having the Retaliate status in effect. |
| 285 | * ExcusePlot: The game does have a story, which the opening sequence details, but it's really just a justification for allowing players to re-enact their favorite moments from the series with dream teams of their favorite characters. The addition of Magicite Dungeons marked the start of an aversion to the trope, as there ''is'' a story arc going on with them that plays out as the player completes the Dungeons, and they hint at a BigBad SealedEvilInACan lurking on the horizon. The later addition of Record Dungeons further saw an aversion to the trope, with a story told through full sprite-based cutscenes instead of just character portraits talking back and forth. |
| 286 | * FightWoosh: A dramatic zoom in and 16-bit sound effect plays whenever you start a stage within a dungeon. |
| 287 | * FireIceDuo: |
| 288 | ** Locke specializes in Fire, while Celes specializes in Ice, and both have Holy as an off-element. |
| 289 | ** Played with for Squall and Rinoa; they started off as Ice characters, but Rinoa expanded into Earth and Squall into Fire, allowing them to achieve this dynamic in a muddier way. This also means that Squall can achieve the trope himself with his dual Fire/Ice focus. |
| 290 | ** Balthier has Fire while Fran uses Ice. |
| 291 | * FireIceLightning: |
| 292 | ** As usual, the iconic Fire, Blizzard and Thunder spells are present, alongside their upgraded forms and Summon/Spellblade equivalents. The Machinist ability class has "Offering" and "Snipe" abilities in the three elements as well. |
| 293 | ** Like usual, Valigarmanda is a Summon that deals tri-elemental Fire, Ice, and Lightning damage. |
| 294 | ** Matoya and Montblanc specialize in tri-elemental magical Soul Breaks. Palom and Shantotto focus in Lightning and Vivi specializes in Fire, but they also each get several Soul Breaks that incorporate the other two elements for at least the initial damage. |
| 295 | ** Steiner and Sora specialize in this as SpellBlade users, with their Soul Breaks dealing tri-elemental damage, and Sora even has three Legend Materia that grant him Haste and Elemental Infusion for each of them. The 2018 Autumn Fest brought Cloud his Cherry Blossom attack from ''Tactics'', which deals tri-elemental damage. Ignis has Analysis Sting which deals tri-elemental damage. |
| 296 | ** Delita and Dr. Mog take it up a notch with Soul Breaks that deals Fire, Ice, Lightning, and [[HolyHandGrenade Holy]] damage. |
| 297 | * FireWaterJuxtaposition: |
| 298 | ** Edge focuses on Water, while his archenemy Rubicante of course uses Fire. |
| 299 | ** Tidus specializes in Water, while his ArchnemesisDad Jecht specializes in Fire (and Dark). |
| 300 | * FixedDamageAttack: The Cactuar summon always does a fixed 1000 points of damage and all summon attacks in general have an unique "minimum damage" stat which prevents them from doing under a specific amount of damage which is the lowest they can deal per hit. Some boss attacks also always deal a fixed, usually high amount of damage which can be a good or a bad thing and the Fabula Mage Roaming Warrior attack useable in Magicite battles and all 6* Magicites deal a fixed 99999 points of damage on use and a fixed 30000 damage on their followup attacks. However, a select few things can increase or decrease the damage done by even these otherwise fixed damage attacks, such as Realm Chains which affect all forms of damage belonging to that realm regardless of type or source and any and all boss damage reduction barriers, whether innate to them or granted by a Rage Mode. |
| 301 | * {{Flanderization}}: |
| 302 | ** Characters who had only a vague association with some sort of elemental force in their original game have their association with it ramped up here for purposes of giving them an elemental affinity to theme their Soul Breaks around. |
| 303 | *** ''Final Fantasy II'', the Sunfire was kept in Kashuan, so its Princes Gordon and Scott become dedicated Fire-elemental characters here. |
| 304 | *** Rydia in ''Final Fantasy IV'' had a multitude of Eidolons, but her iconic one is the Holy-elemental Mist Dragon; here her story associations with Leviathan and Titan result in her being a Water and Earth Summoner, and of her three Holy options, two of them associate her with Asura, not the Mist Dragon. |
| 305 | *** The ''Final Fantasy V'' Gogo was found in the Sunken Walse Tower and thus is a Water-elemental character here. This trope is oddly inverted to the core cast of the game, though -- Bartz has a focus on all four elements, Faris is Wind, Lenna is a White Mage, Galuf is Earth, and Krile is Fire; in the original game Bartz was Wind, Faris was Fire, Lenna was Water, and Galuf was Earth which he passed on to Krile. A fourth-year ''V'' event gave them several Relics in these themes to nudge them into their original elemental affinities. |
| 306 | *** In ''Final Fantasy VI'', Fire was Terra's innately learned spells but she could learn all spells like every character, but this game makes her a pure Fire mage (unit her shift towards Wind), most likely because one of the last spells she could learn from leveling up was Meltdown. Locke's only association with Fire was a connection to the Phoenix Magicite; here he's a Fire-elemental fighter and several of his Soul Breaks evoke Phoenix imagery. Strago's staring Lores were Stone and the Wind/Water-elemental Aqua Breath but he otherwise had a wide variety of Blue Magic abilities; here he's a focused Water-elemental with Wind and Earth as secondary elements. Edgar had several Tools in his game, one of the first of which was the Poison-elemental Bio Blaster, and thus he's a Poison-focused character here with a secondary focus on Fire and Lightning. Sabin had multiple elemental Blitz commands, but he's tied more heavily to the Fire element due to the Rising Phoenix Blitz, probably because it's one players get a lot of use out of in his home game.[[note]]Oddly, another Blitz of his is Razor Gale, which was Wind elemental; here it's a non-elemental Soul Break.[[/note]] |
| 307 | *** Cloud had one Limit that involved Wind, that being Finishing Touch. Here Wind is his dominant elements, along with Darkness thanks to ''Kingdom Hearts'' relics. Zack had no Wind association at all, but became a Wind character here for the BashBrothers trope. Yuffie had no real elemental focus in any of her Limits, but Leviathan is the guardian deity of Wutai, so Yuffie is a Water-focused character. Vincent had four transformations, each with their own elemental attack. But being that Galian Beast is the one he begins with, here it's the only transformation he exhibits and he's a Fire-focused character for it. |
| 308 | *** Squall is an IceQueen personality known for being cold and detached, so he gets Ice as an element here, and then Rinoa and Laguna also became Ice for their connection to him. Irvine had Flame Shot and Zell had Burning Rave as Limit attacks, and Fire is their main element here. |
| 309 | *** Ramuh featured prominently in a story sequence in ''IX'', but had no significance when it finished other than being the first Eidolon Garnet could summon in normal gameplay; he's the focus of most of her Soul Breaks here, that build her as a Lightning-elemental character. Vivi had a wide array of Black Magic spells in his home game, but one of his iconic moments in the first disc is fighting the Black Waltz with a Fire spell, so he gets to be a Fire-focused mage here. |
| 310 | *** The ''Final Fantasy X'' cast is an odd case of the entire cast being Flanderized, due to the title's prominent usage of water imagery -- Tidus, Wakka, Rikku, Kimahri, and Paine are all Water-elemental fighters, and Lulu is an Ice-elemental mage who has Water as a secondary element. |
| 311 | *** In ''Final Fantasy XII'', all Quickenings were non-elemental, but plenty had elemental imagery that allows for this trope. Balthier's first Quickening is Fires of War, so he becomes a Fire-elemental character (his other Quickenings were Water and Earth). Fran's third Quickening was Ice, so she gets Ice as her element here. Basch has no particular association with Holy in his original title, his Quickenings implied a Dark and Fire connection, but here he's a Holy Knight with a few Dark options. |
| 312 | *** ''Final Fantasy XV'', Ignis had the Fire-elemental Sagefire for one of his Techniques, but his other Techniques, including his own gameplay style in his DLC episode, had a FireIceLightning theme focusing on exploiting elemental weaknesses. ''Record Keeper'' makes him a Fire-focused character with a couple options for tri-elemental damage. |
| 313 | ** Like ''VideoGame/DissidiaFinalFantasy'', several characters who were [[TheRedMage Red Mages]] in their base games are made either pure physical attackers or pure mages. Even Squall and Lightning, who can use low-mid-tier Black and White Magic abilities, don't have even any unique relics that increase their Magic or Mind. |
| 314 | ** Characters tend to be sorted into possessing elemental affinities based on their job and nothing more. ''Record Keeper'' treats Wind as the primary attacking element of the Thief ability school, with Fire as a less-common element, so most Thief-type characters get Wind or Fire-elemental Soul Breaks, like Thief ([=FF1=]), Faris, Locke, Zidane, Marcus, and Vaan. Repeat for every ability school -- anyone that was a Knight in their original title, or even just acted like a Knight in-story, gets Holy as their primary element here, such as General Leo, Beatrix, Basch, and a large majority of ''Tactics'' characters. |
| 315 | *** This trope then works against game balance when a character's implied elemental affinities don't gel with their ability pool. By far the most infamous example is Ward, whose Burst Soul Break grants him infusion for Earth, but he's a Dragoon character and Dragoon abilities focus on Lightning and Wind. On the upside though, if enough characters like this exist, the developers may just go with it and expand the ability class to include more elemental options -- Monk abilities are mostly Earth and Fire, but the presence of a handful of Ice and Lightning-themed Monks (Snow and Josef, Raijin and Prishe) means that Monks get a couple options in those elements too. |
| 316 | ** As far as ''Record Keeper'' is concerned, the only notable thing about Josef is his HeroicSacrifice. His first relic Soul Break, Noble Sacrifice, KO's him to provide a large Attack buff to the remaining party; his first Record Materia, Self-Sacrifice, boosts Attack and Defense while causing Sap on the user. His second relic Soul Break? Avalanche, alluding to the cause of his death. His third? Hero's Snow Field. Where he died. His second Legend Materia? Triggers at critical health to heal the entire party by 55% of their maximum health and give them Last Stand, but it gives Josef a 15 second Doom timer. Its name? Fitting End. |
| 317 | ** An odd case comes from Hope and Vanille of ''[=FF13=]''. While Vanille had higher Strength and HP than Hope in their home game, here Hope has the higher HP and Attack while Vanille is a typical WhiteMagicianGirl. Also, their roles are reversed - Hope is the Black Mage, while Vanille is a White Mage. |
| 318 | * FlunkyBoss: Some bosses will be accompanied by enemies. Depending on the boss, the enemies themselves could qualify as minibosses. |
| 319 | * ForcedLevelGrinding: Not present for the most part, but Events are very blatant about this. Many events have an Elite Dungeon or a BossRush whose boss requires a certain character to not be [=KO'd=]; what this means is that [[ViolationOfCommonSense you have to bring them anyways]] and they must survive, and Raising or Reviving them doesn't count. However, the character in question is almost always a character that was just released for that event, except for encore events. In the cases of Elite or EX, you ''will'' need to powerlevel them to at least Level 50 if you want even a chance of that character surviving the encounter. |
| 320 | * FragileSpeedster: Tidus has above-average Attack and a great Speed stat, but his Defense and Resistance stats are noticeably lower than the average Warrior-type character, which prevents him from holding his ground in long fights without reinforcement. Tifa and to a lesser extent Lightning also fall into this category. Most Thieves and Ninjas, despite having the ability to attack from the back row, are these. |
| 321 | [[/folder]] |
| 322 | |
| 323 | [[folder:G-K]] |
| 324 | * TheGambler: While card-wielders Setzer and Ace technically count, they have different party roles, with Setzer as a debuffer, and Ace as a mage centered on fire spells. Their Soul Breaks do have lucky elements - two of Setzer's Soul Breaks have a small chance to double their hit count, while Ace's Ultra Soul Break gives him chances to follow up all fire attacks with any of three powerful fire spells. |
| 325 | * GameBreaker: [[MythologyGag Referenced]] and [[InvokedTrope invoked]] by Cidolfus "T.G. Cid" Orlandeau, the infamous GameBreaker from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics''. He can use every relevant Physical skill in the game[[labelnote:*]]5★ Combat, Spellblade, Knight, Samurai and Celerity and 4★ Darkness[[/labelnote]], with solid stats overall and one of the highest Attack stats in the game. His Overstrike Soul Break has a 15x damage multiplier and grants him a buff that cuts his casting times to a third; his Burst has strong holy and dark commands and one-shots anything not immune to Instant Death. However, it's not hard for other characters to catch up and Orlandeau, while effective, is just one character in a game reliant on proper team strategy. |
| 326 | * GameplayAndStoryIntegration: |
| 327 | ** Galuf is an Earth-elemental Monk while Krile began as a Fire-elemental mage. Krile later got Earth-elemental tools, reflecting how in ''Final Fantasy V'' she inherited Galuf's skillset to take his place in the party when he died. |
| 328 | ** In the Record Dungeons, Terra's Soul Break when fighting Humbaba is "Finding Love", whose name and animation directly references the scene immediately afterward, where she realizes her feelings for the children of Mobliz and that they gave her the will to fight to defend them. |
| 329 | * GameplayAndStorySegregation: The cutscenes involving the main cast don't take into account if you've seen other scenes with them or not. Particularly when special dungeons accompany the quarterly Fests that have cutscenes, it's possible to view a conversation between Tyro, Dr. Mog, Elarra, Biggs, and Wedge, when the player hasn't yet progressed enough in the Magicite and Record Dungeons to meet them yet. |
| 330 | * TheGenericGuy: The "Core" classes are pretty much job archetypes from the series, with the exception of Tyro, the PlayerCharacter. Story characters from other main titles are usually way more powerful, with better weapons, armors and selection of abilities, not to mention better stats. |
| 331 | * GlassCannon: Generally, [[BareFistedMonk monks]] and [[BlackMage black mages]] depend purely on their attack power: mages rely on abilities with limited stock, and monks can only wear light armor for defense. |
| 332 | ** Several characters, like Locke, Tifa, Tidus and Lightning have great speed and attack stats, but still have more trouble taking damage than dishing it out. |
| 333 | ** Vivi is the best black mage in the game, but has the lowest defense and HP. His second Record Materia also boosts his magical power, but further lowers his defense and resistance. |
| 334 | ** Vincent, despite his Core-level defense, is one of ''the'' strongest mages, with access to black magic, summons and Darkness abilities. |
| 335 | * GoodPowersBadPeople: |
| 336 | ** As of his release, Exdeath was the fourth-strongest Black Magic user in the game. He also has White Magic 5★ and a higher Mind stat than any non-5★s, including the core White Mage. |
| 337 | ** Gabranth, a major villain in ''FFXII'', can use 4* Knight abilities aside from 5* Darkness. |
| 338 | ** Heroes' equipment can be equipped on villains too. Terra's pendant can be used on Kefka, and Cloud's Guise can be used on Sephiroth. |
| 339 | ** Gaffgarion is a DarkKnight, with abilities to match. His Burst SB commands, both dark-elemental, heal his teammates and restore their ability uses while still damaging enemies. |
| 340 | * GuestFighter: Sora and Riku from ''Franchise/KingdomHearts'' appear as playable characters that could be permanently unlocked during a limited time crossover event. |
| 341 | * GuideDangIt: |
| 342 | ** Certain bosses get "out of reach" from melee attacks, and can only be hit with magic or ranged physical abilities. It's not easy, though, to figure out which physical abilities are ranged without common sense or TrialAndErrorGameplay. |
| 343 | ** The mechanics behind how buffs and debuffs work are never explained. Any buff or debuff that affects a specific few stats will overwrite a previous buff or debuff affecting the same stats (with a few exceptions, like the Bard's abilities). For example, an ability that lowers Attack and Magic will overwrite a buff to Attack and Magic, and will stack with a second buff that boosts Attack and Defense. Understanding this mechanic is critical to properly countering enemies that buff themselves or debuff the party; you need to be able to buff/debuff the same stats they do. |
| 344 | *** Many Soul Breaks have effects worded like "raise the user's Attack a large amount, and Defense and Resistance a moderate amount". This kind of wording taken with knowledge of buff/debuff mechanics would make you think "so the Soul Break buffs Attack, and also Defense and Resistance." You would be wrong: a Soul Break like this raises Attack, Defense, and Resistance all as one buff, and all the same amount for that matter. |
| 345 | ** Infamously, many buffing/debuffing abilities in the game have horribly vague wording, like "increases Fire damage a large amount/a significant amount/a significantly greater amount". The game never explains the potency of these kinds of effects in a manner that can be understood how they compare to each other. |
| 346 | * TheGunslinger: Characters who can equip Guns, like Lightning, Irvine, and Sazh, can be this if you give them one. Unfortunately, since Guns are [[CommonplaceRare incredibly hard to come by]], this makes the latter two, who can only use Guns as an alternative to Daggers, [[CripplingOverspecialization difficult to use unless you're lucky enough to get your hands on one]]. |
| 347 | * HarderThanHard: |
| 348 | ** Each daily dungeon, Collector event and Survival event has 6 difficulty levels: Easy, Normal, Hard, Heroic, +, and ++, the latter usually (with Sunday being the exception) being drastically more difficult than the others, but dispenses much better prizes. |
| 349 | ** Events typically feature challenging extra stages after you clear the regular stages, each of which is labelled with an increasingly exaggerated difficulty title. You start with [[BossRush EX]], then you go onto [[{{Superboss}} EX+, EX++, EX+++, Ultimate, Ultimate+ and Apocalypse.]] |
| 350 | ** Magicites are designed to be the hardest persistent content the game currently has to offer: they have massive stats that can't be lowered to any meaningful degree with Breaks and require you to either completely focus on the element they're weak against, make use of strong non-elemental abilities to do damage or reduce their resistance to an element you can capitalize on the best. They also do massive amounts of damage as expected, with 3000-4000+ being the average amount of damage you take from 4* Magicites' strongest attacks even with full mitigation and resistance to their main element, and if you take too long to kill them, they become enraged and spam their strongest attacks every turn until either they or your party are dead. Finally, almost all of them have some kind of a gimmick that you need to prepare for in addition to having good sources of damage and healing, such as extremely powerful counters, being able to temporarily avoid your attacks, using StatusEffects that are hard to avoid due to having to use an accessory slot to reduce their massive damage, a LastDitchMove, a powerful opening move or reducing your offensive stats while increasing their own. 5* Magicites naturally take this to the next level, with much higher overall stats and an Enrage mode that they enter periodically, the effects of which depend on the specific Magicite, but it'll generally make them much deadlier and/or harder to deal damage to and can only be cancelled by attacks that deal 5-digit damage to them. |
| 351 | ** The revamped Torments make 3* and 4* Magicites look like a joke: their easiest difficulty is between 3* and 4* Magicites in difficulty, and the hardest difficulty has 2 million HP, double the HP of anything else in the game with massive stats to match, and using characters that don't match the Torment boss' realm is heavily penalized, with even a single off-realm character for the hardest difficulty outright halving the damage the boss takes and removing their elemental weaknesses entirely. Like Magicites, you only get a set number of turns to deal enough damage to them in each phase, or they'll use a move that results in a TotalPartyKill, which they proceed to spam every turn afterwards if you somehow survive it, and to even survive their normal attacks, you might need to forego element-boosting gear over armor that gives you the highest possible raw stats. Thankfully, beating them is intended as a long-term goal and there's a number of things that help a good deal with them: their attacks and what party members they target each turn is completely scripted, you have a permanent Wall status throughout the fight that lasts even through death, Dr. Mog provides you with an unique Chain Soul Break that lets you chain every attack regardless of type or element as long as the character belongs to the right realm and even if you're unable to beat the boss, you can still get partial rewards for every 10% of their HP you deplete. |
| 352 | * Dark Odin is yet another step up in difficulty that's harder than the new Torments: you can't fight him until you've beaten every 5* Magicite once, and he has a form corresponding to each element determined by what element you attack with at the beginning of the fight with different rewards for each form. In addition to massively powerful attacks that can't be generally be handled by a single healer without some form of assistance, he also has stacking Enrage modes that boost his damage, defenses and cast speed and each one needs to be stripped from him with multiple 5-digit damage attacks, and he also perioidically uses his Zantetsuken which deals a fixed amount of damage for every stack of Enrage he has, and at 3 stacks, it's a completely unavoidable TotalPartyKill: to further complicate this, he can also forcibly desummon your summoned Magicites with Gleipnir, depriving you of a reliable method of dealing said 5-digit damage to him. He also has 3 million HP, which is unrealistic to take down without at least an Awakening Soul Break or 2 or several people in the party having a reliable way to deal 5-digit damage on top of several Arcane Overstrike Soul Breaks, and like Torments, you only have a set number of turns in total to deplete his HP before he ends the battle by ejecting your party with Savage Warp. If you do manage to reduce him to 40% HP, he enters his final phase which is identical in every elemental form where he'll first reduce your party to critical HP and cancel their current turn with Gungnir, desummon your Magicite with Gleipnir and then give you 10 turns to finish him off while he first spams multi-elemental attacks on your party followed by using increasingly powerful Zantetsukens on your party, and if you're still somehow standing after the third one, he again uses Savage Warp to end the battle. Your main forms of mercy in this battle are the facts that he won't start attacking you until you use an elemental attack on him or around 5 seconds pass at which point he'll refuse to fight you and eject you with Savage Warp, allowing you to set up your buffs in peace and possibly hit him with your basic Attack once or twice to build up some extra Soul Break bar, and that his multi-elemental attacks in his last phase all deal 4 hits to your entire party, letting you gain a bit over extra 2 bars of Soul Break gauge from them to help you to potentially finish him off easier if you can survive them. |
| 353 | * HealerSignsOnEarly: The first character you have, Tyro, can equip White Magic (like everything else) and can easily handle healing. Completing the first tutorial dungeon immediately grants you the Core White Mage until you can get a proper one. Fortunately you can obtain Aerith off of the second dungeon's elite difficulty. |
| 354 | * HerdHittingAttack: Several attack skills and Magic (including most SummonMagic), but particular mention goes to the Bard's Zealot Record Materia, which gives the equipped character the ability to hit every enemy in the opposing party at the same time with the basic Attack command, but the damage per target is reduced. Orlandeau's God Amongst Men Record Materia also has the same effect, but it also gets slightly stronger the less targets there are, although it's still weaker against single targets than the normal Attack command. Leo's One Against Many likewise allows the basic attack to hit all enemies at the same time and unlike the above 2 examples, there no damage penalty, but to compensate, it has probably the longest cast time out of any attack in the game. |
| 355 | * HeroOfAnotherStory: The concept of the ''A Fateful Coin Flip'' FFVI event. The usual dungeon format of having a "Normal" and "Elite" version of the event on separate screens is abandoned in favor of separate stories for Sabin and Edgar, with dungeons specific to each based on their roles in the original game. |
| 356 | * HopelessBossFight: The battles against Beatrix in the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX'' realm are supposed to be this. Whenever she runs out of health, she uses one of her powerful Seiken abilities (either Stock Break or Climhazzard) before "dying". |
| 357 | * HPToOne: |
| 358 | ** The player version of Gravija. [[ContractualBossImmunity Don't expect it to be useful against pretty much every boss,]] though it's useful against stronger Elite Dungeon trash mobs when Instant KO isn't available. |
| 359 | ** In the [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX Alexandria Castle, Pt. 2]] boss round, Beatrix uses Climhazzard when defeated - but it's just for show. She can, however, use it in mid-battle; ''that'' will bring your whole party to 1 HP and destroy your Damage Taken rating. Thankfully. she only uses it if you wait enough turns. |
| 360 | ** Archaeoaevis uses Maelstrom to hit the entire party with this. Thankfully, it can miss individual characters, and it only uses it after it has gotten back up for the last time. Rushing it during this final phase can usually end the fight before it has a chance to hit a wounded character. |
| 361 | * IdiosyncraticDifficultyLevels: A standard for Event Dungeons. While the modern game also has straightforward numeric Difficulty ratings, there are also difficulty labels at the end of a title (which are further differentiated with + signs). Events typically differentiate a second set of battles (usually launched a few days after the first set of battles) as "Bonus Battles": |
| 362 | ** A set of violet-background fights are at "Ultimate" tier. Their numeric difficulty ratings range from 140 to 180. |
| 363 | ** A set of plum (or "more red-than-blue purple")-background fights are at "Apocalypse" tier, ranging from 220 to 260. |
| 364 | ** Superboss events love to add additional difficulties and colored backgrounds, replacing where Ultimate and Apocalypse difficulty typically stand, to note when special Roaming Warrior options provided by Dr. Mog are added instead of "standard" Roaming Warriors with simple effects such as a Sentinel Grimoire clone. |
| 365 | *** Enigmatic Orb has "Inscrutable", with red-and-purple bands. |
| 366 | *** Unparalleled Darkness has "Lunacy" difficulty with an orange background. |
| 367 | *** Cruelest Heretic has "Strife" with a slate background. |
| 368 | *** Fury's Roar has "Feral" difficulty with a gold background. |
| 369 | *** The hardest difficulty of each event, at a ??? Difficulty and replacing Apocalypse, is labeled "Transcendent" with a red background. |
| 370 | * IDontLikeTheSoundOfThatPlace: ''Nightmare'' Dungeons, a collection of faded Records buried deep underground beneath the kingdom that may hold a vital clue towards discovering the truth behind the faded Records. Each of the Dungeons are crawling with absurdly powerful and insanely difficult foes, but if you can restore the Records, you can gain the ability to create extremely powerful and rare Abilities, such as the 5th tier White Magic Curada, the Neo Bahamut Summon, and the almighty Ultima Black Magic. |
| 371 | * ImprobableWeaponUser: Not as prevalent as in some entries in the series, but usable weapon classes include books, dolls, musical instruments, gambling gear, and sports balls as well as more standard options like swords, guns, and axes. |
| 372 | * InfinityMinusOneSword: Thanks to the Record Synergy system, any weapon can become this in its respective realm. That puny 1★ ''FFIX'' Dagger with 4 Attack (20 at Level 10)? Watch as its Attack ''skyrockets'' to 74 in ''FFIX'' dungeons! |
| 373 | ** People were given the Excalipoor for April Fools' Day, which gave a stat boost of one. |
| 374 | * InfinityPlusOneSword: Characters with their unique equipment are guaranteed to steamroll enemies in their respective Realms. Terra's Enhancer has 82 Attack and 110 Magic at Level 20, nearly double in ''FFVI'' dungeons, and even more if combined with other Enhancers. Still, you have to be really lucky in the Relic Draw to pull that off; [[BribingYourWayToVictory or blow some money on the game,]] if the RandomNumberGod [[LuckBasedMission is in a good mood.]] |
| 375 | * JackOfAllTrades: Onion Knight fits this trope to a T. He can use any equipment (even books) and can use 5★ Celerity, Combat, Support, Ninja, Black Magic, and White Magic... with Record Dive. Until you complete enough spheres and level him up to 92 and onward, he is a MasterOfNone. |
| 376 | * JokeItem: [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV True to its source]], the freebie Excalipoor is this. It only gives one single point to all stats, never gaining any more no matter how far you upgrade it. Just to hammer the fact home, two out of three times (in Japan, Global only got one at the same time JP got their third copy) it was given out was on [[AprilFoolsDay April 1st.]] |
| 377 | * KaizoTrap: Some bosses unleash one last AOE attack upon defeat. In some cases, this is actually ''inverted'', with bosses immediately opening the battle with an attack (like Bahamut in the FF IV dungeons); in these cases, it's actually possible for the boss to be {{Unwinnable}} if the whole party enters the fight with low enough health. The Maliris 4* Magicite fight is the most notable example. |
| 378 | * KidHero: Some characters are young children like in their home games; Rydia and Hope have Wardrobe Records of their adult forms. |
| 379 | [[/folder]] |
| 380 | |
| 381 | [[folder:L]] |
| 382 | * LastChanceHitPoint: The Last Stand effect, granted by certain Soul Breaks, keeps a character alive at 1% HP if they take a hit that would otherwise knock them out. This status is generally preferable to skills and spells that revive characters, since it still protects you from dying against multi-hit attacks and you don't lose your buffs. |
| 383 | * LateArrivalSpoiler: Don't play this game if you don't want most of the plots of every main series ''Final Fantasy'' game (and ''then'' some) spoiled for you. |
| 384 | * LegacyCharacter: Once again, Mog and Cid. |
| 385 | * LethalJokeCharacter: Nowadays the game is balanced enough that most characters are taken seriously for whatever niche (however small) they occupy with their Soul Breaks, though some niches are significantly worse than others. Core characters, however, are still are a Joke Class with terrible stats and no relevant Soul Breaks. Still, some of the most daring players have tackled even Magicite dungeons with well-honed abilities and these terrible units -- Heavy Physical abilities, for example, are still nearly as deadly when used by the Viking as they are by another, objectively stronger unit. |
| 386 | * LethalJokeItem: |
| 387 | ** Realm Synergy will buff up even the most useless of equipment. See InfinityMinusOneSword. |
| 388 | ** On Halloween, players got the Pumpkin, a thrown 5★ item with a unique graphic. It's a powerful weapon, especially with a synergy bonus. Most importantly, there is a glitch that gives the weapon high Evade (seemingly stolen from the Witch's Hat, which has 0 Evade), which makes it very strong. |
| 389 | ** The Witch's Hat is useful even without Soul Breaks - it had high magic at the time and a shared Magic boost Soul Break. This is a common theme for holiday equipment - a candlestick had an AOE Cure and Santa's mittens had a small Boostga. |
| 390 | * LevelCap: |
| 391 | ** Characters start at a Level 50 cap, which can be expanded by possessing their respective Memory Crystals. A Memory Crystal bumps it to 65, Memory Crystal II bumps it to 80, and Memory Crystal III brings it to 99, which is the actual limit. |
| 392 | ** 1★ gear (weapons and armor) can go up to Level 3, 2★ gear can reach Level 5, 3★ gear can go to Level 10, 4★ gear can reach level 15, 5★ gear can go to Level 20, 6★ gear can go to level 25 and 7★ gear can go to level 30. 6★ and 7★ equipment can only be gained through combining. Any max level gear can be combined with another copy to increase its rarity and give it a new level cap of the corresponding rarity, and any given piece of equipment can be combined twice, adding a "+" to the name of the item each time. |
| 393 | ** Reforging allows 3★, 4★, and 5★ equipment to go up to another level. With 6★ equipment, 8★ is now a thing. |
| 394 | * LevelUpFillUp: Characters who level up in a dungeon get their HP and skill uses restored, which can be used to your tactical advantage if you don't want to use Mythril to do so. |
| 395 | * LightningFireJuxtaposition: |
| 396 | ** Edgar branched from Poison into a tri-elemental Poison/Fire/Lightning character. His Burst Soul Break comes with two commands; one is Poison/Fire and lowers the enemy's Lightning resistance, the other is the same thing for Poison/Lightning. |
| 397 | ** Braska, who has several Soul Breaks centered on Ifrit and Ixion, and thus they do dual-elemental Fire and Lightning damage. His default Soul Break is just Ixion, but he has Super Soul Breaks with just Ifrit. His Ultra Soul Break gives him periodic casting of "Firebolt Barrage" which deals dual-elemental damage. |
| 398 | * LimitBreak: Known in this game as Soul Breaks, every character, including the "Core" characters, has access to at least one. Most Soul Breaks consume two bars of the Soul Gauge, which can be built up by dealing or receiving damage. All Soul Breaks, except Shared ones, are tied to equipment until they're "mastered", at which point they become permanently tied to the character and (except for Uniques) provide a permanent stat boost. There are currently eleven types of Soul Breaks: |
| 399 | ** '''Default Soul Break:''' A character's starter Soul Break. Usually weak, rarely worth using unless you have nothing better. |
| 400 | ** '''Shared Soul Break:''' Permanently tied to equipment; can be used by any character. |
| 401 | ** '''Unique Soul Break:''' Specific to its respective character. |
| 402 | ** '''Super Soul Break:''' A buffed-up Unique, usually with higher damage potential and additional effects like buffs and debuffs. |
| 403 | ** '''Burst Soul Break:''' Activates [[SuperMode Burst Mode]] on entry, which buffs stats and replaces a character's Attack and Defend commands with exclusive abilities. |
| 404 | ** '''Overstrike Soul Break:''' An extremely powerful attack that can break the damage limit.[[note]]In the Japanese version, there is a single Overstrike "for" the non-playable [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Orthros]], treated as a damage cap-breaking Shared SB.[[/note]] |
| 405 | ** '''Ultra Soul Break:''' Adds powerful support effects. DPS characters have access to [[SuperMode EX Modes]], which usually outdamage [=BSBs=]. |
| 406 | *** '''Brave Ultra Soul Break:''' Similar in power to normal Ultra Soul Breaks but instead of an EX Mode, they instead allow the character to enter Brave Mode, which changes their Attack command to a Brave command which can be powered up by using abilities belonging to a specific school in 3 levels, the effects of which ranging from powerful single attacks that can break the damage cap, a large number of weaker attacks that also have a special effect, a party heal with a special effect to a variation of any of the above. Some Awakening Soul Breaks described below also possess a Brave Mode and these are generally set up so that a level 0 ability has an unique effect that other levels don't, mostly because due to the innate doublecast that most Awakening modes have by default will automatically follow a level 3 Brave command with a level 0 one. |
| 407 | ** '''Chain Soul Break:''' Applies a timed "chain" effect to offensive skills of a certain element to multiply their damage for each successive hit. These come in 3 main varieties: the first type deals damage on their own and gives some sort of party-wide support effect as well as a 20% boost to all damage of that element and the ones that don't give any supporting effects, deal twice the number of initial number of hits, while the second type trades the extra hits and damage for a strong party ATK/MAG buff, a 50% boost to all damage of that element and a higher max chain count of 150 compared to 99 of the older types of chains. There's also a third type of Chain Soul Break that's not as much of a direct upgrade to the second type of chain: they only have a max chain count of 99 like the first type of chains, but they retain the second type's ATK/MAG boost and larger base boost to elemental damage and in exchange for the lower max chain count, they cast instantly and also provide the party an additional 20% increase to the damage of that element, allowing the party to potentially deal more damage at lower chain counts but also having lower maximum overall damage during the chain. In addition to elemental Chains, there are also Realm Chains which have largely identical hitcounts and base damage boosts and instead of working off elemental damage, they instead boost all damage of characters belonging to that realm and the entry effect also either grants the party an Attack and Magic buff and Haste or an ATK/MAG/DEF/RES buff to counter Dreambreakers' perioidical Full Break and the removal of cast time for a turn. Yet another tier of chains are the Bond chains, which are given to DPS characters, are equal to the second type of chains in power, grant another buff to the party depending on whether they're elemental or realm chains (elemental chains grant a short duration buff of that element with its strength determined by the number of characters in the party with a matching elemental infusion, while realm-type chains grant a longer, weaker buff that can trigger up to 3 times for 3 different elements and works with every element), cost no SB to use, cast instantly, remove the caster's cast time for their next turn, can only be used once per battle, and when fully honed, also instantly fill the caster's ATB gauge after use. |
| 408 | ** '''Glint:''' A weaker type of SB that always casts instantly and provides a powerful support effect, usually a stackable elemental infusion or an ability damage boost. Costs one bar to cast and can be used up to three times per battle. |
| 409 | *** '''Glint+''' or '''Superglint''': An upgraded form of Glints with no immediately obvious distinction to the existing type other than the fact that they come from rarity 6* equipment and that their Soul Break type icon is blue instead of green like regular Glints: they generally have a similar effect to a Glint that character might already have, but they cost no SB gauge to cast and can only be used once per battle. Some common unique effects Glint+es have that normal Glints don't are casting Protectga, Shellga and Hastega on the party at the same time for healer-type characters and granting the character 2 Soul Break bars for characters who possess at least a second-tier Chain Soul Break. |
| 410 | ** '''Arcane Overstrike Soul Break:''' A stronger, multi-hit Overstrike SB with three overflowing hits or twenty weaker hits with an overflowing final hit. Takes three bars to cast, and can only be used once per battle. |
| 411 | ** '''Awakening Soul Break:''' One of the strongest types of Soul Breaks, they put the character into Awakened mode after use, which has the general effect of giving them a boost to their main element or school, increasing their damage cap, giving the character infinite ability uses for its duration and in most cases, letting them doublecast the effected abilities automatically. They also have other character-specific effects, usually consisting of followup attacks after a set number of ability uses. Like Arcane Overstrikes, can only be used once per battle, although they only require the default amount of 2 SB bars to use. |
| 412 | ** '''Dual Awakening Soul Break:''' The next step up from normal Awakening Soul Breaks, they only deal 7 hits on use but have an innate level of damage cap increase, making it easier to break Savage modes with them. Like their name implies, they work in two stages: they start off in Mode I after use, which generally has similar effects to that character's existing Awakening but with the doublecast being upgraded to triplecast and no infinite ability uses for their duration, which, while initially seeming like a downgrade, also makes them work properly with Syncs. Once in Mode I, you can switch to Mode II at any time, with the switch action itself being instant and filling the character's ATB gauge, meaning you don't lose any time when doing so: once in Mode II, the character generally gains another level or 2 of damage cap increase and another buff, but their triplecast is downgraded to a doublecast, which might not make the switch worth it for most characters. Unlike the default 15 second duration, the duration of Mode II is dependent on the number of turns spent in Mode I: if switched to after 1 or 2 turns in Mode I, it lasts for a maximum duration of 3 turns, with every turn spent in Mode I after that lowering the duration by 1, meaning Mode II ends after a single turn if switched to after 4 turns in Mode I, and after 5 turns, the option to switch isn't available anymore. Later Dual Awakenings have a different Mode II that only lasts for a single turn but doesn't end Mode I and generally has a powerful effect to make up for it. |
| 413 | ** '''Sync Soul Break:''' Essentially a combination of a Burst Soul Break and an Awakening Soul Break: they grant the character multiple levels of Elemental Infusion on use, increase their damage cap and grant the character special commands like Burst Soul Breaks do, except far more powerful and generally stronger than existing 6* abilities. Instead of granting the character automatic doublecast like Awakenings, they instead "sync" with the character's equiped abilities, meaning that after using one of the special commands, the character uses the ability that's in the matching slot as long as it matches the allowed ability school, which can result in powerful combinations: however, this means that for the duration of the Sync Soul Break, the synced abilities can't be used on their own and unlike Awakenings, abilities used via syncing them still consume their uses. If combined with an Awakening Soul Break, the ability sync is ignored and the special commands are doublecast instead. To further emphasize their power, Sync Soul Break relics are the first native 7* Relics and have an entirely new animation associated with them when pulled from a banner. |
| 414 | ** '''Limit Break Overstrike:''' An even stronger variation of Arcane Overstrikes, these instead utilize an actual Limit Break bar that appears on top of the screen when someone in the party has one equiped: the bar fills up over time instead of filling up from using abilities or taking damage, taking roughly 25 ingame seconds to fill up fully, and using a Limit Break Overstrike will consume all of it. All Limit Break Overstrikes ignore the respective enemy defensive stat and in case of physical [=LBOs=], have a 100% critical hit rate, and all of them hit at least 4 times at minimum if they cover multiple elements and 5 times if they only cover a single element, although some of the later Limit Breaks can reduce the hit count to as low as 3 if they both hit multiple elements and provide another effect other than just damage. However, despite their defense-ignoring capabilities, their power can be highly variable and the amount of damage they do if used without first honing them or without sufficient Limit Break bars can be underwhelming. They can only be used once per battle per character, and when a party member casts one, the other party members cheer for them, much like in VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV where this style of Limit Break is taken from. |
| 415 | ** '''Limit Break Glint:''' Glints that use the Limit Break bar instead of Soul Break to perform, they take a single segment of the Limit Break bar to use and unlike normal Glints that only affect the user, they can provide similar effects to the entire party, such as granting everyone an Elemental Infusion. Some of them instead perform an Overstrike attack at no Limit Break bar cost and actually fill the Limit Break bar by 1 segment, letting you use them earlier. |
| 416 | ** '''Limit Break Guardian:''' Uses the Limit Break gauge to summon an Eidolon, which functions similarly to summons in VideoGame/FinalFantasyX: they take all the damage aimed at the party when they're present, they enter the battle with a number of status buffs in effect, both of their attacks are cast instantly due to their short duration, their LimitBreak ability is used automatically when the time limit expires or their run out of HP if it's not used before that and the number of available Limit Break gauges available when they're summoned determines their stats. |
| 417 | ** '''Arcane Dyad:''' Another variant of Arcane Overstrikes, they, like their name implies, essentially function like 2 Soul Breaks in one and provide more functionality than just "lots of damage all at once": the first use of one essentially functions like a Glint+ and costs no SB bar to use, providing the character a stacking En-Element, an increase of their damage cap and a status with no time limit that keeps track of number of attacks used or total damage inflicted. The second use takes 3 SB bars to use and essentially works like a 20+1 hit version of an Arcane Overstrike, but with each hit having up to double the potency of normal Arcane Overstrike hits and the weaker hits being able to deal up to 29999 damage each, both of these being determined by dealing enough damage or attacks after using the first part of the Arcane Dyad. Some Arcane Dyads are more supportive in nature and have partywide effects on use in addition to increasing the user's damage cap and having another effect on second use, at the cost of their finishers only being 10+1 hits and only having an innate maximum damage cap of 19999 for the first 10 hits. |
| 418 | * LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards: Significantly downplayed, but still in effect in a general sense. Physical attacks and their damage formulas have a relatively low cap on ATK that is easily reached by a single strong boost. Magical attacks will usually need multiple buffs to hit their full potential, partially because of the higher MAG cap, but will be rewarded proportionally for hitting these requirements. Early in the game's history this divide was more pronounced, due to limited ability hones and no Burst Soul Breaks (and the few Bursts that mages had at the time included powerful 6-hit Commands that required even higher MAG), but in end-game content today they are about even in power as more and more supporting relics and effects have been added to equalize them. Notably, the end game almost requires strong physical ''and'' magical teams for 5-star Magicite Dungeons. |
| 419 | * LightningBruiser: |
| 420 | ** Certain Legend Materia give characters Haste status when entering battle and removes the charge time from their first three actions, allowing them to rapidly strike enemies or, with a Record Materia to charge it up, instantly use a Soul Break. |
| 421 | ** Several characters have Soul Breaks that lower the casting time of their next action after using a certain type of attack, such as Lightning's ''Army of One'' doing so when she uses a Lightning-elemental attack. By continuously using Lightning attacks, this buff will stay applied with each subsequent attack, allowing these characters to quickly dish out pain, a strategy called "Quickcycle". |
| 422 | ** Terra and Vincent have Ultras that grant them EX Modes that include quicker casting time, and Trances that do as well -- combine them and they will execute commands almost instantly, and backed by their other Ultra and Trance buffs, they will be insanely powerful. |
| 423 | ** Zidane has a Trance that boosts all his stats and makes his Thief abilities cast instantly. Vaan has an Ultra, ''Cruelest Azure'', that grants the same buff and increases the damage of Thief abilities. |
| 424 | ** T.G. Cid has the mentioned Haste Legend Materia, one of the highest Attack stats in the game, and an Ultra Soul Break that grants him a 100% critical hit rate, an Attack boost, and he'll automatically dualcast Knight and Darkness commands. He can begin battle by using Lifesiphon three times and get his Ultra active before the fight hits the 10 second mark, and then he'll spend every turn attacking eight or more times, probably hitting the damage cap with each of them. |
| 425 | ** ''Everyone'' becomes this trope when equipped with the ''Thunder God's Might'' Record Materia, which triples casting time of all actions for the first 25 seconds of a battle. At that speed, a character will succesfully execute Soul Breaks faster than other characters get off their normal attacks. |
| 426 | ** Ninjas by default have faster casting time for their abilities, and Ninjas have infamous ability types that let them deal up to seven hits with one usage -- and a lot of Ninjas have dualcasting Legend Materia too. |
| 427 | * TheLoad: |
| 428 | ** This can happen to some characters (namely low-level party members and most of the Core classes regardless of level) in dungeons that are too difficult, as a player may have to focus time on keeping them alive instead of fighting the enemy. |
| 429 | ** Many of the final levels of a Challenge event have a bonus condition or Cid Mission that requires you to bring the new character from the event to the dungeon and make sure they aren't KO'd during the boss battle. Realm Synergy does help, but you'll wind up having to level grind the character in question anyways. Growth Eggs become quite handy in these situations. |
| 430 | * LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading: Needless to say, if you lack access to stable, high-speed internet, you will be hanging around the "Downloading..." screen a lot. The game tries to keep you occupied by showing a couple character profiles, and [[AllThereInTheManual you can only find the profiles for the Core characters, Tyro, Dr. Mog, and Cid on the loading screen.]] |
| 431 | * LostInTranslation: Special event dungeons, particularly the quarterly Festivals, often have a fight that gives a strangely specific amount of gil as reward. This is usually [[GoroawaseNumber because the written amount of gil in Japanese formed a wordplay pun]], often decoding to read some sort of congratulatory phrase. Since there's no real way to properly preserve this sort of pun in English, there is no attempt to, so the award comes off as an unusually specific, yet arbitrary amount of money. |
| 432 | * LuckBasedMission: |
| 433 | ** This being a {{Freemium}} game, there is a gacha prize machine for high-level equipment and Soul Breaks known as the Relic Draw that is based on chance. |
| 434 | ** Any score objective for boss battles based on getting a status effect to stick to a boss. |
| 435 | ** Not getting anyone killed by OneHitKill moves if they are present. |
| 436 | ** Any score objective for boss battles about killing them before they use a certain attack. |
| 437 | ** Any battle in which it is necessary to set up some mitigation[[note]]Catch-all term for Soul Breaks and abilities that either increase the player's Defense/Resistance and/or reduces the boss's Attack/Magic[[/note]] before the boss acts, especially for Ultimate battles in which you must avoid losing too many medals (including for Damage Taken) if you want Mastery. |
| 438 | ** Mote Dahaka was the definition of this. The boss is strong, but is unable to act and has its defense lowered at times when you hit it (as a nod to staggering in VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII). How to trigger it? Pray you do -- sometimes it staggers early and is never a threat, sometimes the opposite. |
| 439 | ** Bartz in A Worthy Foe (Ultimate+) is a particularly egregious example of this. No mitigator/healer with full ATB? Prepare to [[SaveScumming reset]], because Bartz always opens with at least two Monk Kicks that hit for 3000~4000 damage apiece on your whole party. |
| 440 | ** Nightmare Kaiser Dragon gets a special mention. It's not that bad, provided you have enough DPS to get through his third AOE spam phase. But mastering it? You need to hit two specific phases out of six. And if the gacha didn't give you Neo Almagest, a heal (or utility) with Magic Blink, or full Fire resistance accessories, you need to beat him in three phases to avoid his closing salvo. That's about a 20% chance of getting the phase set you need. It's unique in that there are no controllable factors to master the fight - you either get Water and Lightning or you fail. |
| 441 | ** Several metagame-level bosses slip into this, like the higher-ranked Magicites and Torments. Their AI script is 100% scripted and dependent on their HP thresholds, and they may have attacks to increase their resistance to a certain type of elemental damage or deal a fixed amount of damage to the party. And with bosses that increase their elemental resistance, they usually do so by 2 or more levels, which overwrites the typical 20% weakness; since a character is no longer hitting their weakness and doing neutral damage, they will gain less Soul Break gauge. With abilities that have a random chance to trigger an Imperil effect, and Legend Materia that have a random chance to trigger a dualcast effect, a follow-up attack, etc., triggering them at the right time can severely swing the tide of battle. This began to be downplayed as the game moved into its 6th year, with new Legend Materia that have a guaranteed chance to trigger (with more restrictions on how often) and Hero Abilities that have a guaranteed Imperil effect with a lower duration than normal, making battles more consistent. |
| 442 | * LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: |
| 443 | ** Shields are a subclass of armor that can be equipped. |
| 444 | ** Some Soul Break animations invoke this, like Tyro's Sentinel's Grimoire and its massive protective shield. Meanwhile, the Warrior of Light's Ultimate Shield has him leave his sword behind to ShieldBash his enemy multiple times and finish with [[ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill a giant one]] out of {{Hammerspace}}. |
| 445 | [[/folder]] |
| 446 | |
| 447 | [[folder:M]] |
| 448 | * MagicKnight |
| 449 | ** Some characters have "Hybrid" Soul Breaks and deal physical or magical damage, depending on if the user's Attack or Magic is higher. Such characters include Gogo, Vincent, Reno, Rude, and Vayne. While their innate stats may slightly lean them towards physical or magical builds, they're typically just fine with going the other way if you have the equipment for them, and their ability pool is versatile enough to accommodate them both ways. |
| 450 | ** Onion Knight became this with the advent of Burst Soul Breaks, with his Burst boosting the party's Attack and Magic and one Burst command is physical and the other is magical, and he later got two Ultra Soul Breaks that buff the party and himself, one helps physical attackers and the other helps mages. This was then downplayed to make him a pure mage, with his third Ultra, as well as his Arcane Overstrike, Awakening, and Synchro, focusing on magic. He returned to his roots in the fifth year with a new Awakening and Arcane Overstrike for physical attacks. |
| 451 | ** Lots of characters that are otherwise physically inclined can utilize at least some minor White or Black Magic. How good they are at it varies depending on stats and ability access. For example, Sephiroth and Lightning can use Rarity 3 Black Magic, but their Magic stats are terrible and there aren't any Rarity 3 Black Magic abilities worth using anyway. |
| 452 | *** Celes is able to use 3★ Combat abilities, 4★ Black Magic and 3★ White Magic, plus rods and staves for more magical power, on top of her innate 5★ Spellblade usage and the best Resistance stat in the game. However, all of her Soul Breaks focus on her physical attacks. |
| 453 | *** Golbez can not only use 5★ Black Magic abilities, but also 5★ Knight, 3★ Combat, and 5★ Darkness, and equip such gear as axes, heavy armor and shields. But the game focuses entirely on his magic side in Soul Breaks. |
| 454 | ** Ninjas by nature fit this trope in gameplay -- their 5-star abilities are split between magical and physical abilities, and Stitch in Time benefits both. While most Ninja characters are physically inclined, their Ninjutsu magic ignores Resistance on its targets, which compensates a lot for poor Magic stats. |
| 455 | ** Darkness abilities downplay this trope. There's lots of Darkness abilities in both physical and magical categories, but most characters who can use Darkness abilities are pretty clearly defined as either physical or magical based on their stats. Only Vayne has the stats to be fully capable in both. That said, the proper weapon with a good ATK or MAG stat still lets Darkness users run in their off-hand stat well enough. |
| 456 | * MagicMusic: The Bard class of abilities, available to the Bard (naturally), Edward, Kefka, Eiko, Rikku, Thancred, and Tyro. The instrument weapons available to these same characters also attack this way. Some Soul Breaks also qualify, such as Garnets "Song of Memories", both of the Bards "Valor Minuet" breaks and Mog's "Heroic Harmony". |
| 457 | * MagikarpPower: |
| 458 | ** [[MythologyGag As usual]], ''FFIII''[='=]s Onion Knight has ''terrible'' stat growth, struggling to reach 1000 HP and 50 in all stats when even the weakest mages at his level have about triple that. Level him up to 93, though, and his stats '''[[TookALevelInBadass skyrocket]]''', with a growth of 1000 HP and 40 in all other stats until level 99. With his wide range of usable abilities, you can build him into a better [[MasterOfNone Tyro]]; while he has innate 3* ranking in all usable ability types, he needs to get the unique event-exclusive Onion Motes to unlock their respective Record Spheres and reach 5*. |
| 459 | ** Several Burst Soul Breaks have mechanics that allow them to grow stronger after initially being weak. |
| 460 | *** One type, used by Firion and Reno, gives them a command that initially deals one hit, but each usage of it makes the next use deal an extra hit, stacking up to a total of eight hits. |
| 461 | *** Another type, used by Garland, Squall and Sora, has a primary command that only deals two hits, but gives them a stat buff that boosts the number of hits their secondary command deals, starting at four and rising to seven. Fusoya, Kefka, and Ultimecia, have magical variants of this idea; theirs max out at six hits. Raijin and Thancred have a variant where their secondary command grows stronger as the primary command is used, but loses its stacks of charge once it gets used. |
| 462 | *** Sabin's Burst command has a unique mechanic where it grants him a buff to Attack and Defense, and the buff increases each time he uses it again, stacking up to eight times. |
| 463 | *** Some commands deal more hits depending on the user's stats, a common one being used by Maria, Edea, and Papalymo, where it deals three-to-six hits depending on their Magic stat. Prishe has a variant where the number of hits rises depending on how many Monk abilities she's used. Warrior of Light and Gladio have once where the number of hits depends on their Defense stat. |
| 464 | * MagicStaff: In two flavors: Rods and Staves. Both increase the Magic and Spirit stats, but the former grants a bigger bonus to Magic, while the latter grants a bigger bonus to Spirit. Rods are mainly used by Black Magic users, Staves by White Magic users. |
| 465 | * MarathonBoss: |
| 466 | ** Some elite bosses take a ''long'' time to kill, especially if you have been unlucky with the gacha. Worse, HP bars were not visible in the Global version of the game for a while. |
| 467 | ** "Ultimate", a special type of Event fight that exceeds even [[{{Superboss}} +++ fights]], feature massively powered up [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast "Ultimate"]] versions of previous boss fights, now overhauled with [[DamageSpongeBoss enough HP to fill an Olympic swimming pool]]. |
| 468 | ** And "Ultimate+" bosses have even more. |
| 469 | * MarathonLevel: |
| 470 | ** Most portraits have 3 regular stages and a boss stage, but some are a lot longer. However, long dungeons tend to be broken up into several portraits to make it easier. |
| 471 | ** Survival events tend to be this. The key is to survive as many stages as possible on a suitable difficulty level, progressively multiplying the reward currency as you go. While every stage is just one battle, most of them are bosses, and Potions/Ethers are extremely rare. |
| 472 | ** The + bosses, and some higher levels, are a boss rush. |
| 473 | ** The Ultimate+ in Cait Sith's event was a marathon of three bosses from the Battle Arena. |
| 474 | ** All Torment fights function like this: before you fight the boss, you have to fight 4 or 6 waves of greatly-buffed normal enemies which can be a huge drain on your resources, meaning you need to manage them well before you fight the actual boss, although this also gives you a chance to build up your [=SBs=] and cast your buffs before the actual boss fight. Thankfully if it looks like you can't finish the boss battle and weren't in too bad of a shape at the beginning of it, you can S/L to redo just the boss fight instead of having to go through the entire gauntlet from the beginning. |
| 475 | * MassiveMultiplayerCrossover: The entire point of the game, which is explained by the characters and realms existing within records of famous events and battles. The game pulls from all areas from the franchise, from the first ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'', to ''[[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Compilation of Final Fantasy VII]]'', to ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'', making for one ''massive'' MassiveMultiplayerCrossover. |
| 476 | * MasterOfNone: |
| 477 | ** Many characters have absolutely ridiculous ability pools, but lack the stats to make much use of them or can't access the higher-level abilities. |
| 478 | *** The standout example is the titular Record Keeper, Tyro. He can equip ''everything'' in the game and use all abilities up to 6-star, but his stats are pathetic and his offensive Soul Breaks have poor damage. His Relics firmly cement him as a dedicated support character who excels at buffing the party. |
| 479 | *** Wol has aptitude in 9 ability pools, but only hits the top rarity in Support, Sharpshooter, and Heavy Combat, and lacks dedicated tools to be effective with the latter two. |
| 480 | *** Rikku has access to Support, Celerity, Thief, Bard, Dancer, Machinist, and Sharpshooter. But her very poor stats and lack of focus meant she wasn't all that useful with any of them. She eventually settled into a Water DPS role through Sharpshooter, but is still less effective in it than other characters and is more useful as a support character thanks to possessing a great Ultra Soul Break and two Chain Soul Breaks. |
| 481 | *** A lot of characters tend a couple ranks in Black Magic and White Magic, typically to reflect their home game where they had some degree of magical aptitude but it wasn't their specialty. The casts of ''II'', ''VIII'', and ''Type-0'' contain many such characters. The only White Magic spell below 4-star with any use is Dispel, so their magical aptitude is ignored to build on their dedicated roles. |
| 482 | ** For some characters, this hits in the era of 6* Magicites. Characters like Onion Knight, Bartz, Noctis, and Orlandeau, are able to do great DPS in multiple elements; Onion Knight and Bartz are a generalist Black Mage and Spellblader, respectively, and those ability pools contain multiple elements they can utilize, while characters Noctis and Orlandeau have access to multiple ability pools. However, 6* Magicites are highly resistant to damage unless a character has an Elemental Infusion, and while most characters like these ''do'' have one, it's typically just for one element. While they can still pull their weight in off-elements, they struggle to keep up and will probably be outdone by dedicated elemental characters. |
| 483 | * MasterOfAll: While Dr. Mog might not be the best character in the game when it comes to dealing magic damage, healing, buffing or supporting, he's still extremely competent in all those areas: he can cover half of the elements in the game with his Ultra, it buffs all 3 offensive stats in the game and stacks with almost every other buff in the game, the said Ultra has 2 different follow-ups depending on whether he's using Black Magic and Summon or White Magic, he has an instant half-cost version of Sentinel's Grimoire, he has Legend Materia to doublecast Black Magic, Summon Magic and White Magic and he can also Entrust others with his Soul Break gauge or break enemy stats if needed. |
| 484 | * MechanicallyUnusualClass: |
| 485 | ** Onion Knight begins with access to six types of ability, but only up to Rank 3. His Record Dive, like Tyro's, has twelve jobs in it, divided into two groups of six. As he masters his Record Spheres, he unlocks the ability to equip up to Rank 5 of his available abilities. Further, beginning each Sphere requires an Onion Mote, a stat mote unique to the Onion Knight that is acquired through certain ''III'' Event Dungeons. Then you get into his Legend Spheres, which have a unique layout, and instead of one weak Legend Materia and a strong one at the end, he has both his Legend Materia at the end and they're both great. |
| 486 | ** Sora is a downplayed example. He's perfectly normal until you get a look at his Legend Spheres, where he has ''four'' Legend Materia; the standard weak one in the middle of the grid, a strong one at the bottom of the grid, and it's flanked by two more with similar effects. |
| 487 | * MediumBlending: The game frequently mixes 16-bit graphics with animations that wouldn't even be ''remotely'' possible on 16-bit hardware. |
| 488 | * MetalSlime: Treasure Pots that appear in the daily and special event dungeons and the Cactaur variants that appear in special event dungeons. |
| 489 | * {{Microtransactions}}: The player can buy gems which can be used to increase inventory space, refill Stamina, give the Relic Draw a whirl, heal in the middle of a dungeon, or fully revive a defeated party with a buff added on top. Mythril shares the same purpose, but is handed out sparingly by the game through completing dungeons or as Login Bonuses. |
| 490 | * MistakenForRomance: In the Corrupted Painting, Aerith refers to Elarra as Tyro's girlfriend. Tyro is quick to protest, but Aerith points out that he's blushing as he says it. |
| 491 | * MistakenForSpies: When Tyro and Elarra arrive in the ''Final Fantasy VI'' Corrupted Painting, they are immediately confronted by Biggs and Wedge, who assume they are going with them to Narshe. After they encounter the Esper and Terra, Tyro, and Elarra are saved by the Returners, the latter two are assumed to be double agents who were secretly working against the Empire. Tyro is surprised by the sudden development, but he plays along to avoid suspicion. |
| 492 | * MoneyForNothing: While a beginning player might have Gil issues early on, it is given out in droves, especially during Orbfests and from Magic Pot dungeons, and every single thing that requires Gil also requires some other, rarer, consumable that will be the real limiter. Gil seems only to exist because it's so ubiquitous in the Final Fantasy games; after a while, you can pretty much entirely ignore your Gil total: while there are some common things that can cost a large amount of Gil to do such as converting a large amount of orbs to a higher grade or honing 5* or 6* abilities, you generally don't do either of those too often and in case you ever do run low on Gil, chances are you have a large number of weapon and armor upgrade materials lying around you can sell. Finally, each fest, which repeat every 3 months or so, has a Magic Pot dungeon with new rewards added daily, and one of them is always at least a 8-digit sum of Gil, which you have to go out of your way to purposefully waste for you have any chance to run out of it by the time of the next one is available in the following fest. |
| 493 | * MoneySpider: The enemies in the Gil daily dungeons. Other enemies can drop Gil sometimes, but you'll more often acquire Gil from dungeon completion bonuses and selling other items. |
| 494 | * MoreDakka: Irvine's Fast Ammo Soul Break, which allows him to unleash ten standard attacks upon random targets all in a single turn. It's even more devastating against single-target bosses, as this easily allows him to evade damage cap limits. The Machinist school in general specializes in this, as it has a non-elemental 10 hit ability Rapid Fire and 6 hit fire, ice and lightning-elemental Snipe abilities. |
| 495 | ** Most Soul Breaks are this now. Ones to note are Assault Rush (Zack), Element of Treachery (Balthier), and various other 8-hit [=SBs=]. Most damage-dealing single-target [=USBs=] and some more recent [=BSBs=] deal at least 10 hits by default, with some of them doing up to 12, 15, 17 or 18 hits, all damage-type Awakenings and Syncs deal 15 hits by default and the multihit variety [=AOSBs=] always deal 21 hits in total. |
| 496 | * MultiMeleeMaster: Firion and Gilgamesh, who have the largest selection of weapon options, making it easy to outfit them for Record Synergy. |
| 497 | * MusicalNod: Recurring music aside, a few original tracks for the game are reminiscent of classic tunes and jingles. |
| 498 | * MythologyGag: |
| 499 | ** Once again, there is a Cid. He's DemotedToExtra in this game, since he only appears when you pop open the Equipment or Ability menus. |
| 500 | ** Need a new name? Never fear, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Namingway]] is here! |
| 501 | ** A work in progress page of most of them can be found [[MythologyGag/FinalFantasyRecordKeeper here]]. |
| 502 | [[/folder]] |
| 503 | |
| 504 | [[folder:N-O]] |
| 505 | * NewGamePlus: The October 12, 2017 maintenance featured Renewal Dungeons, essentially a bunch of older Challenge Events reissued for new players that weren't around for their original run. Many of them became [[CurbStompBattle cakewalks]], thanks to stronger Soul Breaks and abilities, higher level caps and other mechanics that weren't available at the time. |
| 506 | * NiceJobBreakingItHero: After entering a Corrupted Painting and helping Cecil save Rosa from a severe case of desert fever, the Corrupted Painting suddenly erupts with magical energy and causes a huge explosion, which is depicted ''burning a hole straight through a mountain.'' When Dr. Mog arrives, he gives Tyro a hell of an earful after finding out what he and Elarra were up to. |
| 507 | * NoFairCheating: Like in his original game, the multiplayer battle against [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV Omniscient]] lets you cast Berserk on him, which stops him from casting magic altogether--but here, doing so will cause him to do 99999 damage with every attack, and you can't avoid it. |
| 508 | * NostalgiaLevel: The game could very well be renamed "Final Fantasy Nostalgia Level: The Game". The game lets you relive key boss fights with your favorite characters, with music from many Final Fantasy games playing all the while. Some characters and bosses (such as Ultros) will even repeat their iconic lines. |
| 509 | * NotCompletelyUseless: |
| 510 | ** Abilities and Soul Breaks that revive characters are very useful in CoOpMultiplayer battles where SaveScumming isn't an option, whereas in single player they're typically a sign of unfamiliarity with the system. |
| 511 | ** Status Ailments past the first few hundred Realm dungeons and other permanent content are much less useful as more and more time-limited bosses become immune to all of them. Still, whenever a new boss shows up with a weakness, expect players to break open the rarely-used ability glass. |
| 512 | ** Some Missions or fights in general are difficult enough that unconventional strategies are encouraged. A very common example in second year of the game's history was to look at the list of {{Magic Knight}}s, find someone with ''any'' magic access even if their natural stat was terrible, and then turn them into a mage since LinearWarriorsQuadraticWizards holds true at low-Relic/buff play. Darkness physical units turned into magical ones using Cid Raines' Burst Soul Break as a Roaming Warrior were very common. |
| 513 | ** Early in the game's lifespan, Shield was widely seen as an undesirable status because it only blocked one hit no matter how powerful it was, and other anti-damage effects (damage absorption barriers, damage-reduction barriers, Blink effects, just healing off the damage, etc.) were seen as more efficient. In higher-tier play, bosses began getting attacks that could not be avoided by Blink effects and were powerful enough to overwhelm absorption and reduction barriers, and this is especially problematic if the attack inflicts a dangerous status ailment (in which case it usually ignores resistance or immunity to that status ailment). Against such bosses Shield is actually a viable strategy to defend the party, because attacks that ignore Blink and/or status resistance ''don't'' ignore Shield. |
| 514 | * NotTheIntendedUse: |
| 515 | ** The strategy for Retaliate involves [[ViolationOfCommonSense attacking your own allies]] to proc it manually instead of negating and countering the enemy's single-target attacks. Retaliate doesn't discriminate between enemy and ally attacks, so the user will always strike the enemy. However, this tactic was later recognized in-game as a legitimate strategy. |
| 516 | ** The game includes a "battle reload" option as an [[AntiFrustrationFeatures anti-frustration feature]] that allows you to restart a battle from the top if your game crashes unexpectedly as opposed to simply losing the spent Stamina. However, there is no distinction between "unexpected crash" and "force close", so this feature is very commonly abused as a form of SaveScumming to circumvent bad RNG when a battle starts turning sour. Like Retaliate, this has become a legitimate strategy -- the game now has an in-game button in the pause menu to restart the fight as a convenience feature over closing the entire game, while still disallowing players from restarting if they lose their entire party. |
| 517 | ** Other than for a select few extremely difficult enemies that [[NoFairCheating flat out prevent fleeing]], any boss that has a 1 point stamina cost and who doesn't actively attack your party for the first 2 turns or so is susceptible to an exploit commonly called "hit and run", which involves attacking the boss normally for a turn and then fleeing the battle: since all your party stats are carried over between battles within the same dungeon, this allows you to build up your Soul Break gauges for your entire party at a negligible stamina cost and without having to use up any of your abilities or risk losing any HP in the process, allowing you to fight the boss at full SB bars, although naturally this can be extremely tedious to do since you need to repeat this up to 30 times to gain 3 full SB bars. |
| 518 | * ObviousRulePatch: When Dreambreaker bosses were added to the game, they had a mechanic where they inflict Full Break on the party when they phase change, heavily debuffing their ATK/DEF/MAG/RES. Dreambreakers allow players to bring one off-realm character without penalty, so most players chose Tyro, since he has an Overstrike Soul Break that buffs ATK/DEF/MAG/RES and thus players had a means to overwrite the Full Break debuff without chasing the new Relics coming out that had the same buffing effect. The developers caught onto this because later Dreambreakers began inflicting Stop when they phase changed and were given high enough MND that most off-realm characters who aren't White Mages would be stunned for several seconds (including Tyro). The Dreambreaker boss, Dragonking Bahamut, shutdowns Tyro entirely; if he is ever damaged by a Soul Break or Limit Break from an off-realm character, he instantly counters with Full Break. |
| 519 | * OneHitKill: |
| 520 | ** The more you advance in the game, the more enemies you will meet who can use attacks able to instantly KO a character, with Coeurls being the first ones to show up. |
| 521 | ** Break and Death do this to enemies, the former of which inflicts Petrify, which technically counts as a KO. Of course, [[ContractualBossImmunity not a lot of bosses are actually vulnerable to either.]] |
| 522 | ** Pressure Point is this for Monks, as it has a moderate chance of inflicting Instant KO, although if you whiff the instant death, you still get a hard-hitting attack for the effort. |
| 523 | ** The CPU's Globe 199 attack in "Giant of Babil, Part 2" in the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' realm. If you kill both the Attack Node and Defense Node before the CPU, it will use Globe 199, which will hit a single party member for [[TheresNoKillLikeOverkill 9999 damage]], defenses and armor be damned. |
| 524 | ** Yunalesca's Mega Death gets around this by dealing a guaranteed attack that deals damage equivalent to your max HP on any party member who isn't Sapped. |
| 525 | ** Once you get to the 2nd-strongest version of Nemesis, he gets Transcendent Ethereal Cannon, an attack that inflicts a guaranteed ''99,999 damage'' on a single target. Get as far as the final form, and he additionally gains Ruin Ultimate upon dropping below 40% HP, which is guaranteed 99,999 damage '''on all characters''' and cuts through Blink, and if you survive, your party gets Sapped just for it. |
| 526 | * OneSteveLimit: Averted in many, ''many'' cases. |
| 527 | ** Rydia and Garnet's Soul Breaks call on different versions of existing summons, stronger than just their respective Ability. Unlike the generic abilities, though, each of them have their Soul Break mimic a summon animation from its game; i.e. if Garnet summons Ramuh with the Storm Staff, he'll rise atop a giant rock pillar as in ''FFIX''. |
| 528 | ** There are 4* and 5* versions of the Rune Axe from ''FFIV''; the latter unlocks Golbez's Unique Soul Break. |
| 529 | *** Almost the case with the ''FFVII'' Masamune; the 4* version is named ''Masamune Blade''. |
| 530 | ** And then there are the [[LegacyCharacter legacy names]]; Dr. Mog and [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI Mog]], Dr. Cid [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV and]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII the]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII five]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyTactics playable]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV Cids]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV the mimics]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI named Gogo]] and [[SpellMyNameWithAnS (separated by one letter)]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyI Sarah]] and [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII Serah Farron]]. |
| 531 | ** The Thief in Core Classes and the ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyI'' Thief are separate characters with the same "name". |
| 532 | ** Thrown out the window with Record Board abilities, ''many'' of which share the same names as Soul Breaks the character has, even though they may have entirely different effects. |
| 533 | * OriginalGeneration: Tyro and Elarra are the only characters not to originate from a previously existing ''Final Fantasy'' title ([[LegacyCharacter Dr. Mog and Cid]] notwithstanding). |
| 534 | * OverlyLongFightingAnimation: It's no [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Supernova]], but some of the better Soul Break animations, especially Burst Soul Breaks, get ''absurd.'' |
| 535 | * OverratedAndUnderleveled: |
| 536 | ** Sort of, as every new character always joins at Level 1. However, the Realm Synergy bonus tends to make them immediately viable in those realms, and the experience boost from that also helps them catch up to speed easier. |
| 537 | ** No such luck for the "Core" classes however, who also tend to be overshadowed by named characters in their field. |
| 538 | ** Averted by Orlandeau, who is the only character in the entire game who starts at Level 50 if he was obtained during the event that first made him available. |
| 539 | [[/folder]] |
| 540 | |
| 541 | [[folder:P]] |
| 542 | * ThePaladin: The Warrior of Light, Cecil, Beatrix, Gabranth, and Agrias all serve this role, with access to all Knight abilities and high-tier White Magic. |
| 543 | * PauseScumming: Higher-level players tend to run endgame battles this way to reduce input delay and allow them to take time to consider different strategies, especially since it's easy to tap the wrong command by accident and because barring sources of Haste from Legend or Record Materia, everyone takes their first turn at almost the same time, which means you'll always lose some time when inputting the first set of commands in the battle. |
| 544 | * PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: |
| 545 | ** The Sunday daily dungeon, particularly on ++. After the latest update to Power-Up Dungeons on JP (and later Global), it became open 24/7. |
| 546 | ** ''Flan Fest 2015'' was an unintentional (and unfortunately, temporary) example that came in the Celes event, by way of a genocide of Flan. To explain, the format of this event was survival, where you could see what type of opponent was next in line to determine whether or not you wanted to continue. Through resetting until they showed up, the first match of Hard mode could sometimes consist of a pack of five Flan, which could then be killed by a single multi-hit attack. A champion rank victory against these unfortunate Flan would net a party 30,000 EXP for the cost of 4 stamina. The process of resetting then repeated until another pack of Flan appeared. Many players eschewed the ''intended'' rewards after getting Celes and instead took advantage of leveling, resulting in a good boost to many rosters' average level. |
| 547 | ** "Festival of Gold", full stop. Every enemy in this event was basically a MetalSlime, as they dropped oodles of EXP, Gil, and Upgrade Materials, with up to over '''70,000 EXP''' on Heroic for a single three-Round set. What made this even better is that all of the enemies were {{Glass Cannon}}s and dropped like flies if you got the initiative, even if you brought a Level 30 party on Heroic, allowing your characters (especially "Core" characters) to quickly burn through levels ''before'' the ridiculous number of Growth Eggs obtained from both rewards and enemy drops. |
| 548 | ** Averted completely with the "Festive Fantasy" event in December of 2015; despite claiming to offer "tons of EXP, Gil, and Orbs," the event only delivers on the latter two, while skimping on Experience. This has left many players rather angry. |
| 549 | ** Orb Fest, which give XP, Gil, Upgrades, and Orbs at a very efficient rate. Each one (except Festive Fantasy) was seen as some sort of PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling. |
| 550 | ** The low-level ''FFIV'' Fabul Castle realm dungeon has battles that cost 1 Stamina each, making it a perfect spot to grind Record Materia drops. While Record Materias are now piss-easy to acquire, the dungeon has gained new utility as it's now used as a farming spot for Magia Points, also due to the low Stamina cost. |
| 551 | *** The first dungeon on every Newcomer Dungeons happen to cost little more Stamina than Fabul, and enemies for some reason still drop 1* weapons. This makes it not only ideal for Magia farming, but also for ''Rainbow Crystal'' farming, as 1* weapons can be converted to Rainbow Crystals at the same rate as 4* gear, 5 to 1. Nice LoopholeAbuse there for Global players. |
| 552 | ** The Submerged Ruins 1 in Record Dungeons Chapter 2. It is by far the fastest way to level Tyro and Elarra up to the first max level which is 30. As shown [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHB2OHLgenE here]]. |
| 553 | *** The fight against Gogo in Chapter 5 is an even better version of this: you can win the fights against normal enemies with autobattle, and as described below, you beat Gogo himself by literally doing nothing. You can even do the whole dungeon on speed setting 5. |
| 554 | * PercentDamageAttack: |
| 555 | ** Gravity, which halves the target's current HP. [[UselessUsefulSpell Good luck getting it to stick on something you actually want to use it on.]] The boss version of Gravija reduces your party's HP to ''1/4'', and is used most infamously by [[ThatOneBoss Diabolos]]. The player version of Gravija is a subversion, since it simply [[HPToOne drops the target to 1 HP.]] Again, good luck getting it to stick on something you want to use it on. |
| 556 | ** Cripple, which is a Physical-type attack that reduces the target's HP by a quarter. |
| 557 | ** Spherimorph's Press attack cuts the party's HP by half. |
| 558 | ** Though you wouldn't know it at first, a good number of bosses have an attack that is secretly this, at least partially. It's mostly noticeable when a boss launches a giant attack on the party, and somehow, Lv. 45 and Lv. 12 characters are missing the same chunk of health bar. |
| 559 | *** Interestingly enough, most attacks of this type count as a type of instantkill attack, which means that you can avoid them by wearing accessories that resist KO. |
| 560 | * PinataEnemy: Magic Pots that are found in the revamped daily dungeons will drop the highest-ranked rewards that are linked to the dungeons themselves (e.g. Major Orbs). They are also relatively easy to kill. |
| 561 | * PlayEveryDay: You are rewarded with one Mythril and one other reward for each day you log in. There is also a rotating carousel of Power-Up Dungeons that let you snag rare Orbs and Crystals, and certain events give additional login bonuses that provide their own unique rewards. |
| 562 | * PowerAtAPrice: |
| 563 | ** Josef's Self-Sacrifice Record Materia boosts the user's Attack and Defense, but causes Sap on the user. His unique Soul Break, Noble Sacrifice, KO's him to give a massive attack boost to the entire party. |
| 564 | ** Ricard's Dragoon's Determination RM causes Sap like Josef's, but gives the greatest boost to Attack from any Record Materia. |
| 565 | ** Gore-Stained Blade I and II, Dark Knight Cecil's Record Materias. Both boost the equipped character's Attack, but eats at their HP when they strike. Gore-Stained Blade II in particular takes 5% of the user's HP when they attack, which would kill the user in 20 turns, [[CallBack the number of turns it also takes the Dark Knight to self-destruct in his boss battle.]] |
| 566 | ** Darkness abilities. Sacrifice something (like HP, defense, or cast Doom on yourself), and you'll get a stronger attack and/or an attack/magic boost. |
| 567 | * PowerCreep: |
| 568 | ** Soul Breaks in general, usually just in time for a new kind of Soul Break to come out. |
| 569 | *** Super Soul Breaks were explicitly billed as even stronger Soul Breaks than the Unique ones that came before. Then Burst Soul Breaks came that were even better and gave characters powerful Burst Abilities. |
| 570 | *** Initially averted when Ultra Soul Breaks first came out, as both Ultras and Bursts had their uses, but it kicked in over time. Ultras became designed to synergize with ability usage for increased DPS, and comboing them with a Burst is too slow since this demands the use of two Soul Breaks. Several Ultras have effects that depend on ability rank, for which Burst abilities count as Rank 1 |
| 571 | *** Averted by Overstrikes and Chains, though, as they were intended to provide tactical variance in Soul Breaks and not to supplant Ultra Soul Breaks as the dominant type. Overstrikes and Chains themselves then fell victim to this trope when ''Arcane'' Overstrike Soul Breaks were added that deal multiple hits, and a second wave of Chain Soul Breaks gives more buffs on cast, a bigger boost to elemental damage (50% instead of 20) and have a higher chain count (150 over 99). Overstrikes avoided being ''completely'' useless though, as Arcane Overstrikes need more of the Soul Gauge to be used and can only be used once per battle, while normal Overstrikes have no limit. Overstrikes then got rebalanced to only consume one Soul Break gauge, making them more appealing as a tactical tool. |
| 572 | *** The trope then kicked in harder than ever with the introduction of Awakened Arcane Overstrikes, which grant characters infinite ability hones for certain types of abilities, raises the damage cap of them to 19,999, variably makes them dualcast or cast much quicker, ''and'' gives the user specific individual buffs depending on the character. While Glints and Legend Materia will still be helpful, a character who you have an [=AASB=] for probably doesn't need lesser Soul Break types to pull their weight. Later came Synchro Soul Breaks, which give the same benefits of Awakenings but swapping the dualcast/quickcast buff for Synchro Abilities that automatically cast an equipped ability afterward; in practice this is usually about the same DPS as dualcasting, and Synchro abilities tend to have effects not found on normal abilities, making using them a good idea anyway. Awakenings are still far from being overshadowed yet though. |
| 573 | ** In the game's early days, Full Charge was a powerful ability due to hitting four times for heavy damage, and Crystals to craft and hone Omega Drive were rare. That isn't a problem now so Full Charge has been completely forgotten in favor of Omega Drive, and even Omega Drive isn't that impressive these days, to the point it had to be {{Balance Buff}}ed to act like Lifesiphon (charging the Soul Break gauge more than usual). |
| 574 | ** Perhaps the biggest sign of this trope is the Nightmare Bosses. When they came out they were designed to be the toughest challenges the player could face, {{Puzzle Boss}}es with high HP and unique fight gimmicks that demanded proper party set-ups and strategies to beat them. These days it's possible to just brute force your way through many of them and kill them in a few turns. |
| 575 | ** Ramza's Shout and Tyro's Sentinel Grimoire used to be game defining Soul Breaks; not so much anymore. |
| 576 | *** Shout was notable for giving the party Hastega and +50% ATK, a massive boon. These days Hastega-type Soul Breaks are extremely common, and many of them come with stat boosts attached. Ramza himself even got the Burst Soul Break Battle Cry, which is exactly like Shout but it casts a little quicker and gives Ramza Burst commands to go with it. |
| 577 | *** Sentinel Grimoire is a bit of an odd case. It's still very useful, but the game balance has evolved to the party it's necessary to survive top level content, so the developers give you a copy of the Relic that contains it through the Acolyte missions, Magicite and Mote dungeons give it to you as a Roaming Warrior, and the second wave of Torment dungeons treat the party as through its effects are permanently active. To keep Tyro himself from being outdone, though, he got Divine Veil Grimoire that is Sentinel Grimoire plus Hastega, Shellga, and Protectga. |
| 578 | * PowerFist: Fist weapons are this, and can only be used by Monk-like characters [[MyFriendsAndZoidberg and]] [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII one anthropormorphic feline.]] |
| 579 | ** Averted with monks like Jecht and Yda, who can use swords. |
| 580 | * PowersAsPrograms: Like in the [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII game]] they originated from, Record Materia functions this way, although instead of granting abilities to characters, it instead gives them passive bonuses to a specific stat or type of attacks, allow you to start a battle with a specific positive status or boost your abilities in a specific way, such as restoring ability uses at the start of the battle, replacing your normal attack with a stronger ability or giving you a chance to use abilities belonging to a specific school multiple times in a row; other perks RMs give are chances to double experience in battle and building up the SB bar by using normal abilities or the attack command, or taking damage. They are acquired by breaking a character's level cap for the first time at level 50, breaking it a second time at level 65 and then getting it as a [[RandomlyDrops random drop]] from a battle and getting the character to level 99. Some characters also have an additional fourth Record Materia that they get either randomly after breaking their level cap for the first time or by meeting a specific requirement. |
| 581 | * PowerUpLetdown: Noctis' Armiger Mode - activated by his personal 6★ Relic, Sword of the Father - cuts his cast times to a third and gives him a Stoneskin buff equivalent to 30% of his max HP. Unfortunately, taking enough damage for that causes Armiger Mode to wear off; with how hard bosses hit in this game, it's pretty useless without support casters. On the other hand, his Ultra SB grants him a 100% Stoneskin buff. |
| 582 | * PromotedToPlayable: Some characters who were {{Guest Star Party Member}}s in their home title, like Sephiroth and Beatrix, become this in ''Record Keeper''. Villains (or just antagonists) like Golbez, Exdeath, Kefka, Reno, Jecht, and Cid Raines are also available to use. |
| 583 | * PuzzleBoss: |
| 584 | ** Any boss who has a puzzle element in their home game usually has it implemented in Record Keeper in some way. This is especially notable with the XIV bosses as almost every boss in that game had some gimmick. |
| 585 | ** Cagnazzo in the Multiplayer Anniversary fight only takes a single point of damage from any attack. The trick is to let him continuously assault you while in his "Tsunami" phase until his protection wears off, at which point every attack deals overflow damage, but if you use lightning to knock him out of his water, like you're ''supposed'' to do in a normal Cagnazzo fight, it starts over. |
| 586 | ** The second wave of Torment bosses are a roundabout example of this. They don't feature any particular gimmicks to their fights, but their attack patterns are 100% scripted with no variables, allowing a player to predict which attacks they will use and who will be the target, so they can strategize accordingly. |
| 587 | ** Various fest superbosses are usually an example of this: |
| 588 | *** Ozma has 5 distinct phases with various properties such as magical and physical immunity and the Dr. Mog Roaming Warrior available for the fight can be used to counter each of them in some way, but you only get a limited number of uses that aren't enough to deal with all 5 phases and thus you must overcome most of them on your own. |
| 589 | *** Zeromus EG has an unique timer mechanic where the ingame timer starts at 30 seconds and it can be manipulated to count forwards or backwards by attacking the orbs present in the fight, with Zeromus also periodically doing so as well as speeding up the timer: depending on the current amount of time on the clock on a scale of 0 to 60 seconds, he takes more damage from magical and physical attacks, respectively, if the timer passes 15, 30 or 45 seconds, he uses an attack that Dispels your party and if it reaches 0 or 60 seconds, he uses a TotalPartyWipe attack. After you deplete his HP, he'll set the timer to count towards either 0 or 60, whichever's closer, heal back a part of his HP and destroy the orbs, meaning you only have as much time left as it takes for the timer to count to 0 or 60 to defeat him. The Dr. Mog Roaming Warrior unique to this fight can be used to freeze the timer to its current count for 3 seconds. |
| 590 | *** Bahamut Fury has a crystal accompanying him that starts at empty HP, and Dr. Mog's Roaming Warrior needs to be used to absorb the damage you take to refill the crystal's HP. Once you deplete Bahamut's HP enough, he hits your party with an unavoidable Stop status with practically infinite duration and then proceeds to kill everyone with Apocalypse Exaflare, but if you managed to restore the crystal's HP to full, it'll summon Phoenix that revives your party and heals them to full, at which point you can recast your buffs and resume fighting him normally. |
| 591 | *** Shinryu and Omega are a DualBoss with you fighting one of them at a time, with each of them perioidically attacking the other one which generally results in a TotalPartyKill if you're currently fighting the boss who's in process of attacking the other boss. To prevent this, you can use Dr. Mog's Roaming Warrior to swap between bosses whenever a warning message about the boss being enraged pops up, which can also be used to avoid any of their more annoying attacks if you know they're about to use one. Once you kill one of them, the other boss heals a portion of their HP and quickly starts spamming their TotalPartyKill attack, meaning you need to reduce both of them to low HP before killing one of them off in order for you to be able to beat the remaining one quickly enough. |
| 592 | *** Omega Weapon has multiple distinct phases, each with their own lifebar like Ozma and every phase uses a different Transcendent move that can be stolen with Dr. Mog's Roaming Warrior. Doing so will prevent Omega Weapon from using said Transcendent move for the rest of the battle, but every instance of him using it will be replaced with an unavoidable [[OneHitKill Death]] spell, the target of which will be determined by his current phase. These stolen moves can then be used against him in the final phase of the fight: they include Transcendent Aura, a massive stat buff to the party's ATK/MAG/DEF/RES and Haste status, Transcendent Meltdown, a massive stat debuff, Transcendent Curaja, a massive party heal and Last Stand and Transcendent Ultima, a guaranteed 99999 damage attack. You can only steal 2 of these moves in total, but it can be any combination of them, including stealing the same move twice. |
| 593 | *** Iron Giant takes reduced damage from all attacks that's reduced even further in his second phase and most of his attacks have short cast times, making him a LightningBruiser: to counter this, Dr. Mog's Roaming Warrior can be used to cancel his next 2 turns and it has no use limit, but each use has a 9 turn cooldown. Unlike the rest of the bosses listed above, the rest of his mechanics generally make the fight easier: he has a colored aura that doesn't do anything by itself other than to indicate what kinds of attacks he'll use and make it so that he can't shift to his second phase until he next changes his aura, and all of his worst attacks are indicated by targetting reticules appearing on the target(s) of those attacks, letting you know in advance when to either cancel his turn with Mog's RW or take other precautions against them. |
| 594 | *** Most of Proto-Ultima's attacks inflict Pain on your party members, a new status effect introduced in this fight: each stack of Pain increases all damage by 10% and it can build up to 10 stacks, meaning you take double damage from his attacks, most of which break the damage cap by default, which makes the default endboss strategy of having more than 9999 HP on all party members as a sole means of surviving any attack without Last Stand meaningless. Other than this, he's largely a straightforward fight, although potentially still a very difficult one. Dr. Mog's Roaming Warrior used in this fight removes all stacks of Pain from a single party member with the lowest amount of Pain stacks, which at first seems insufficient since it only has 2 uses, but if more than 1 party member has the lowest amount of Pain stacks and they're all equal, it affects all of them. |
| 595 | *** [[spoiler:Shadowsmith]] starts off the battle acting much like a player would, first by casting their own version of Divine Veil Grimoire and then spamming Lifesiphon. Once either 30 turns pass or they're defeated, they summon [[spoiler: Jord and Ullr]], which have various amounts of damage resistance depending on how much damage you dealt to [[spoiler:Shadowsmith]] in the first phase of the fight. Depending on how you deal with [[spoiler:Jord and Ullr]], [[spoiler:Shadowsmith]] either has the same amount of damage resistance as the previous 2 bosses or they have slightly less damage resistance than they previous bosses did but all of their stats are noticeably higher and they use their abilities in a different order and get a different amount of "mercy turns" during which they do nothing due to their fast ability cast time and maxed out Speed stat. Dr. Mog's Roaming Warrior used in this fight allows you to instantly remove either [[spoiler:Jord or Ullr]] from the battle without fighting them, and whether or you do so or not determines which version of [[spoiler:Shadowsmith]] you fight in the end, with the harder version being fought if you fought both of the previous 2 bosses. Another interesting detail about this fight is that any elemental damage resist reductions and stat reductions inflicted on the main boss in their first form are retained for their last form, letting you weaken the boss in preparation for the last phase. |
| 596 | ** The Nightmare Bosses are the biggest example of this: |
| 597 | *** Ultima Buster becomes immune to all magic and gains permanent Reflect, and counterattacks physical blows with a OneHitKO. You need to damage it by attacking the Mana Sphere it summons, the Sphere reacting in different ways to different elements, variably healing the party, damaging Ultima Buster heavily, or damaging itself heavily with some residual damage to Ultima Buster. Every few turns Ultima Buster absorbs energy from the sphere; when the sphere is destroyed, or if it gets to the fourth charge turn, Ultima Buster uses Nightmare Ultima to deal heavy damage to the party, depending on how much energy it absorbed before it attacked. |
| 598 | *** Demon Wall targets three of your party with a curse, and will eventually cast Nightmare Gravija on them. Attacking it with those three cursed characters will stall Nightmare Gravija and make it retarget the curse to start the cycle over. The two characters not targeted with the curse can get by attacking the arms, because if they attack Demon Wall itself it will cast Nightmare Gravija sooner. Attacking the arms with a cursed party member gets them hit with Annul to sap their ability charges. |
| 599 | *** Evrae Altana counters physical attacks and you lose medals for using black magic, so White Mages are the way to go. Casting Esuna on him to cure his Poison status stops him from using Nightmare Poison Breath, and he summons four mirrors to power up his Photon Spray in different ways, but you can cast Esuna or Dispel on them to nullify their power-up effects for a short time. Additionally, all enemies in the fight are treated as undead, allowing White Mages to deal proper damage to them with Cure spells. |
| 600 | *** Neo Bahamut counters Black Magic and physical blows, so you're supposed to bring summons to the fight. He cycles through Fire, Ice, and Lightning stages where he'll have a vulnerability to the opposing element (Ice, Fire, Water), but if hit with the element he resists he'll spawn an Energy Orb. Once he falls to half health he'll stop cycling and start spamming Megaflare and Gigaflare, while preparing to absorb the orbs to cast Nightmare Gigaflare. At this time the orbs become vulnerable, and if you can kill them all at once with a summon attack, they explode and damage Neo Bahamut. As a final twist, if you avoid hitting him with his resistance in the cycling phase and so don't spawn any Energy Orbs, he'll end the cycling phase with a Nightmare Gigaflare anyway. |
| 601 | *** CPU's Attack and Defense Nodes create barriers that greatly lessen the damage the CPU takes while also providing healing and attacking support. Using Break abilities on them can deactivate the barriers. The CPU itself also counts down to using Nightmare Quadruple Foul to cripple the party with Poison, Blind, Silence, and Sleep. The only way to stop it before the countdown hits zero is to kill both Nodes at once. However, the second time this happens it causes the CPU and Attack Node to spam their strongest attacks continuously, quickly wiping you out, so in practice it's a TimedBoss to beat the CPU in its second phase before it finishes the countdown. |
| 602 | *** The Tonberries move slowly towards your party and do more damage the closer they get, but depending on the color of the glyph they're currently standing on, any Stun, Slow or Stop-inflicting attack is guaranteed to work on them: the more turns the Tonberries were allowed to take in total, the stronger the King Tonberry's main attack. |
| 603 | *** Kaiser Dragon changes elemental weakness every few turns and a shift in weakness is followed by a powerful elemental attack: hitting the crystal that appears in the middle of the fight with an elemental attack greatly increases your party's defense towards that element and makes them weak towards the opposite element, but the crystal only has a limited number of a charges that're depleted when it's hit by elemental attacks and you need at least 3 charges by the end of the fight to be completely protected from Kaiser Dragon's LastDitchMove, Nightmare Meltdown. |
| 604 | *** The Guardian distributes a random number of target locks amongst your party, which indicate the current targets of its strongest attack. However, these target locks can be moved around by any action taken by a party member that has one, including healing an ally or attacking the Guardian to make it target itself. |
| 605 | *** Necrophobe spawns 4 barriers that cast a special version of Doom on 4 of your party members and greatly increase the amount of damage dealt and taken by Necrophobe: these barriers can be toggled on and off with a specific Break ability. |
| 606 | *** Atomos summons a random grouping of gemstones that he'll proceed to suck up and consume, which each one having a different effect on him. You can destroy the gemstones beforehand to prevent it, but they will react with a respective attack when you do so. |
| 607 | *** Valigarmanda summons orbs that you need to destroy to prevent him from using his strongest attack. He also gains a pair of elemental barriers that reduce damage from the respective element, with immunity to that element if both barriers are the same color: you can disable these barriers by attacking them with the element they're weak to, and if you disable both barriers at the same time, additional enemies are summoned that can use powerful attacks against your party if left alone, but they can also restore your ability uses if killed quickly enough. |
| 608 | *** Omega Weapon summons green and red Mana Spheres that allow him to use his strongest attack if left alone, but they react when attacked, depending on the physical position of the party member that attacked them. Green Spheres heal the party when KO'd by someone in front of them, or heal Omega Weapon otherwise; the Red Spheres deal heavy damage to Omega Weapon when KO'd by someone in front of them, but otherwise they deal heavy damage to the party member that attacked them. |
| 609 | ** Most Record Dungeon bosses are this since you need to use a predetermined party with fixed equipment, stats, abilities and Soul Breaks. There's always at least one {{Superboss}} per Record Dungeon update that generally requires you to use a very specific strategy to beat them, some of which are unintuitive at best and a borderline MoonLogicPuzzle at worst. |
| 610 | [[/folder]] |
| 611 | |
| 612 | [[folder:R]] |
| 613 | * RandomizedDamageAttack: If you use the Summoner and you need a particular summon, good luck getting Call II to actually do what you want. Downplayed with Call I, which only calls one of two Summons, and both are fairly weak. |
| 614 | ** Setzer's default Soul Break. Either does 1, 22, 33, 44, 555, or 6666 damage. |
| 615 | * RankInflation: Players are graded based on performance at the end of a stage, which takes the form of three ranks: Novice, Expert, and Champion. The number of Medals you earn at the end of a stage is compared against the total number possible, and you are ranked as a result. Novice grants the party only the standard EXP, Expert grants the party +50% of the earned EXP, and Champion grants double the earned EXP. |
| 616 | * RandomDrop: Enemies can drop equipment, Orbs or Gil; occasionally, two of those simultaneously. The last monster in a round may also drop a Potion to heal 10% of party members' HP, a Hi-Potion to heal 20%, or an Ether to restore one or two ability uses. |
| 617 | ** Several Record Materias are random drops obtained only with their respective character in the party. A few only drop in their corresponding realms, and even fewer will only drop through specific conditions. |
| 618 | * RareCandy: The different types of Crystal Waters gotten from beating Record Dungeons and missions relating to them can be used to increase anyone's base stats beyond their maximum, with each unlocked upgrade tier allowing you to increase any base stat by 10 and HP by 400. |
| 619 | * RazorWind: The Celerity ability Wind Slash presumably involves swinging your weapon so fast it fires a gust of wind to hit enemies. Unlike many physical abilities, Wind Slash is ranged, which allows a normal physical fighter to handle a target out of range if it's not immune to wind. |
| 620 | * RecurringBoss: Ultros is still at it in the ''FFVI'' dungeons, and no worse for wear. |
| 621 | * RedHerring: The Record Dungeon in Chapter 5 for the Gogo fight is set up like this: your entire party is equiped with a number of strong fire-elemental abilities and Soul Breaks, but all the enemies you fight before the boss are immune to them, one of them counters all physical attacks by Berserking your party and the only way to beat Gogo is to do nothing, meaning you never get to actually use any of the said abilities and Soul Breaks on any of the enemies. |
| 622 | * TheRedMage: |
| 623 | ** The TropeNamer is one of the available Core characters. |
| 624 | ** Gordon from has similar abilities, but can't equip rods, hindering his Black Magic potential. |
| 625 | ** Hope and Vanille both have access to at least 4★ Black and White Magic, with Hope favoring Black Magic and Vanille leaning towards White Magic. Both also have Summon Magic, though Hope's is 5★ compared to Vanille's 3★. |
| 626 | * RedOniBlueOni: ''Record Keeper'' Biggs and Wedge. The former is a rough-and-tough bulky warrior-type, while the latter is a kind, yet dedicated supporter. This is even reflected in their outfits; Biggs dresses in black with red lining, while Wedge dresses in black with blue lining. |
| 627 | * {{Retraux}}: |
| 628 | ** For all of the ''Final Fantasy'' games after ''VI'', as ''Record Keeper'' recreates them in 16-bit graphics. Averted for the SNES era games, which it borrows sprites and animations from, and inverted for the NES era games, as ''Record Keeper'' updates the sprites from those games to 16-bit, up from 8-bit. Record Dungeons take it one step further and go the extra mile by recreating signature scenes from new and old ''Final Fantasy'' games with the 16-bit graphics. |
| 629 | ** The ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsX'' collab event also does this for ''VideoGame/KingdomHeartsII'', as the collaboration also came with an online minigame based heavily on the Gummi Ship minigames from ''II'', where you pilot a Gummi Ship through hazardous territory while destroying Nobodies in your path. The mini-game features faithful 16-bit recreations of the Highwind and the ''Final Fantasy''-themed Gummi Ship models from ''II'', as well as sprites for all of the Nobody enemies in the original mini-game. |
| 630 | * RevenueEnhancingDevices: Gems. They can be purchased for real money, and basically function as Mythril substitutes when you lack enough Mythril. |
| 631 | * ReviveKillsZombie: In full effect here. Several enemies and bosses are weak to Holy damage, and when Dia or Holy isn't an option, a Curaga to the face also makes for a good substitute in most cases. If you can get your hands on Raise, you can turn practically all Undead-type bosses into a complete joke. Thankfully, due to the fact that a good number of characters rely on it as their sole source of healing, the usual effect of Drain attacks being reversed against undead enemies (ie. the enemy gets healed while the character loses HP) isn't present. |
| 632 | * RogueProtagonist: The ''Dissidia'' Cosmos event pitted players against several heroes of Cosmos, the lead protagonists of their games. Bartz, Zidane, Tidus, and Lightning have also reappeared as Ultimate bosses in events for their respective realms. |
| 633 | [[/folder]] |
| 634 | |
| 635 | [[folder:S]] |
| 636 | * SaveScumming: A very common practice if a player doesn't manage to fulfill some Mastery ranking conditions, a key party member gets killed early in the fight due to them being targeted repeatedly or being hit by an OneHitKill attack of some kind, or if your [=ATB=] bars start low enough and the enemy's start high enough for them to get multiple attacks in before you can cast your buffs. By exiting the game and closing the app, the player can reload any battle from its beginning. This form of save-scumming has been acknowledged and has become a feature -- there is now an in-game button in the pause menu to restart the fight as a convenience feature over closing the entire game, while still disallowing players from restarting if they lose their entire party. |
| 637 | * SchizophrenicDifficulty: An update in February 2018 reworked some of the ordering for Realm Dungeons to streamline them and make them easier to access. The result is that some of the Realms jump from difficulty to difficulty in the unlock chain, due to originally being released later but then rearranged to be unlocked much earlier. |
| 638 | * SelfReferentialHumor: Cait Sith's USB, "Danger Dice", which gives Protectga/Shellga/Hastega and hits the entire enemy party with Full Breakdown. Its animation? Cait Sith rolls three dice that turn up all 6's -- which proceed to turn into ''FFRK'' Relic Orbs that transform into 6★ Relic Orbs and plays the appropriate 6★ animation, complete with jingle. |
| 639 | * SerialEscalation: It's to the point of a RunningGag with Maria. Her Super and Burst Soul Breaks are Thunder XVI and Meteor XVI, reflecting the spell system of ''Final Fantasy II'' where spells capped at Level 16. Then she got her Overstrike and Ultra, Kerplode XXXII and Magma XXXII, going for double the cap at 32. ''Then'' she got Meteor Swarm LXIV, raising the bar to 64. |
| 640 | * SheatheYourSword: |
| 641 | ** Although not quite like the original boss, the fight against the Dark Knight from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'' can still be won this way. If you can or are willing to survive 20 turns, Cecil self-destructs instantly, netting the fight. |
| 642 | ** The battle against Famed Mimic Gogo demands this initially, as Gogo [[TurnsRed will go berserk]] if you don't "do exactly what he does", ie. nothing. Unlike his home game, you do have to actually fight him afterwards. Subverted in one of the event battles against him where instead of doing nothing, he casts powerful spells at you that you have to mimic if you don't want to anger him, but since you can't use any form of mitigation without angering him, most of your party will be dead by the time he's satisfied. This, in addition to actually having to waste your already limited ability slots on spells that you won't use past the beginning and the orb and money cost of creating said spells to begin with, means that the far more sane method of winning the battle involves just ignoring him and angering him on purpose before he gets any spells off, causing him to start buffing himself instead. |
| 643 | * ShieldBash: Warrior of Light's BSB, Ultimate Shield. Warrior of Light concentrates energy, then rushes the enemy with his shield seven times. On the final hit, Warrior of Light throws away his shield, grabs the Sentinel's Grimoire shield out of the sky and smacks an enemy on the head with it. |
| 644 | ** The Knight abilities Shield Bash, Aegis Strike, Guardbringer and Earthbringer all follow this motif. |
| 645 | * SimpleYetAwesome: |
| 646 | ** Cloud Strife is the second character acquired. He starts off powerful--with decent Defense and high HP and Attack--and stays powerful, with a well-rounded weapon roster and a great range of abilities including Spellblade. Unless you snag a 5★ Relic for another physical fighter, Cloud will be your go-to fighter for times to come. |
| 647 | ** Noctis's Soul Breaks grant him useful buffs for his Attack and other stats, cut his casting time, grant him anti-damage barriers and deal multiple non-elemental hits. With enough relics, Noctis can be a capable solo DPS. |
| 648 | ** Dark Knight Cecil can only use Combat abilities, but has one of the highest Attack stats, on par with Cloud and Squall, with a handy LifeDrain for a default Soul Break and the highest base HP total in the game. |
| 649 | ** Vivi can only use Black Magic, but has one of the highest Magic stats in the game to go with it. |
| 650 | ** Sephiroth can only equip daggers and katanas for weapons and can only use three useful ability schools, but is one of the best physical fighters with the highest Attack. |
| 651 | ** Tyro and Cloud have Record Materia that lets characters start dungeons with one full Soul Break bar, to give them an edge in [[BossOnlyLevel boss-only dungeons]] and higher-level content. |
| 652 | * SkillScoresAndPerks: Record Spheres and Legend Spheres work like this: using Motes grants a character permanent stat boosts, plus some minor buffs like elemental damage boosts, elemental or status resistances, and additional ability access. Completing Legend Spheres also gives the character access to their Legend Materia, the first of which usually boosting their main element or function to a moderate degree and the second one giving them a much stronger passive ability, such as giving them a chance to doublecast their main offensive ability type or healing spells, a possible unique follow-up attack for their main offensive actions, increasing the duration of their (de)buffs, starting the battle with a number of powerful statuses, cumulatively increasing their main damage stat with successive actions or being able to enter Trance at low HP as described below. |
| 653 | ** Upon mastering their Legend Spheres, a small but ever-increasing number of characters gain access to the Record Board, which can be used to further increase their stats to a significant degree: regardless of whether the character in question is a MightyGlacier or a SquishyWizard, they can expect to gain a minimum of 2000 extra HP, a cast time reduction and additional damage/healing boosts for their main ability school(s), a scaling buff to all their stats depending on the number of characters from their realm in the party, enough Magia experience to let them instantly max out a single stat and a varying but significant buff to their main stat roughly inversely scaled to the number of extra stat points they can expect to gain from mastering every possible Super Soul Break and above belonging to them currently existing in the game. Most importantly, an even smaller number of characters with access to the Record Board can also unlock their Hero Ability from it which is equal or greater in overall power in comparision to 6* abilities useable by that character and may have properties that no generic abilities of the respective school possess, but no other character can use it. |
| 654 | * SmugSnake: The ''FFVIII'' Red Giant will laugh off every physical hit you land on him and boast that your magic won't work, even if your party is leveled high enough to kill him quickly: the only way to make him stop is to use the respective Breaks on him, even though you might already be doing 9999 damage per hit to him. |
| 655 | * SoLastSeason: A good number of Hero Abilities are essentially reworked versions of the character's old Soul Breaks that they can now use freely and might even be more powerful than the old Soul Break version, although generally missing various effects associated with it. |
| 656 | * SpamAttack: A favorite tactic of some bosses and a few {{Mook}}s as well. Many popular player strategies also revolve around spamming powerful attacks. |
| 657 | * SpellBlade: |
| 658 | ** The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Spellblade]] Ability Class is this, consisting of Abilities that deal Physical Damage and Elemental Damage simultaneously, ideal for melee fighters who want to push out maximum damage by capitalizing on an elemental weakness. However, only a very small pool of characters can actually use Spellblade Abilities, including Cloud, Celes, Squall, Lightning, and of course, [[MasterOfNone Tyro]]. |
| 659 | ** There are also certain Support Abilities which are Physical attacks with StatusEffects tacked on instead. Unlike Spellblade, a much wider range of characters can use Support Abilities. |
| 660 | ** Dragoons can equip special Jumps that are also imbued with elements, such as Wind-type, Ice-type, and Thunder-type Jumps. |
| 661 | ** Sharpshooter abilities are elemental ranged attacks, usable by nearly everyone who can used ranged weapons, and are stronger when used with a ranged weapons (but are still quite usable even with melee weapons.) |
| 662 | * SpellLevels: Present, of course, being Final Fantasy and all. The standard [spell], [spell]ra, [spell]ga, and [spell]ja tiers exist, mainly for the standard [[FireIceLightning Fire, Blizzard, and Thunder]] trio and the Cure line, although other spells like Water and Gravity get second tiers, like Watera and Gravija. Some spells like Protect have just a -ga level which affects the whole party instead of just one character like the basic version, while spells that inflict StatusEffects like Slow have a -ga version that is a lot more accurate. |
| 663 | * SpitefulSpit: Kefka's OSB involves Kefka throwing statues of the Warring Triad at the enemy to form a gigantic tower, then jumping on top, transforming into his final form and ''destroying the world''... which is followed by Kefka swooping down and spitting on the enemy, which deals one Overflow hit. |
| 664 | * SquishyWizard: Most Mage-type characters fall under this, with powerful spells but terrible HP and physical stats. |
| 665 | ** Averted by numerous MagicKnight types that can be decently effective on the physical front while still having great magic. Onion Knight, Golbez, Exdeath, Terra, Celes, Ashe, Vayne, and Iris all fit the bill. |
| 666 | * StatusEffects: The usual Poison, Blind, Paralyze, etc. status can be applied by both your characters and the enemies. However, they avert the usual UselessUsefulSpell the series is known for; a lot of bosses are weak to a couple of status effects, as well as Paralyze and Slow, making some abilities like Intimidate ''very'' useful. The game actually encourages players to use status effects against some bosses to get a Mastery ranking. This, unfortunately, can turn boss battles into a drag [[LuckBasedMission if the player is unlucky]] and his attacks don't activate the desired status. |
| 667 | ** Amusingly enough, while Doom is something to be dreaded in other games due to its ability to turn any fight into a [[TimeLimitBoss timed battle]], here it functions more like a positive status effect: sure, it'll still kill you when the timer runs out, but a large number of abilities become stronger when you're under the Doom status and due to the fact that most endgame battles are designed to be beaten as quickly as possible, chances are that you'll die far before the countdown itself kills you if you aren't strong enough. |
| 668 | * StatStick: Rods and Staves are essentially useless as weapons. Their only purposes is to give Mages the stats they need for their spells to be effective. |
| 669 | ** Obsolete weapons with Realm Synergy are this. If Sephiroth has Masamune-Shinuchi or Yoshiyuki, you can give Cloud Masamune without any problems. |
| 670 | * StanceSystem: A minor example: some [=BSB=]s allow the character to either summon some kind of monster to aid them (with the summon itself either having a non-damaging or a defensive effect, if they do anything at all) or to enter a special mode with one of their commands, with their other command becoming powered up as a result. The former usually adds a secondary effect to their other command when the summon is active and using the summoning command when it's active results in a powerful attack that also dispels the summon, requiring you to spend another turn to resummon it, while the latter usually powers up the other command either gradually in multiple stages, or with a single use but at a heavy cost to the character's defenses. |
| 671 | * StoneWall: Any character with high-tier Knight abilities. They typically have the highest Defense and HP, and can draw both physical and magical attacks to them with certain abilities. |
| 672 | ** Paladin Cecil is considered the top-tier tank in terms of sheer survivability, and Soul Breaks that can either raise the entire party's Defense or draw all attacks towards him. |
| 673 | ** Any character with Magic Lure/Reflect can draw any single-target Magic and bounce it back on the enemy. Also worth noting that Celes and Exdeath with their Soul Breaks (or anyone who uses a RW) can draw and nullify single-target magic and refill their abilities. |
| 674 | ** Golbez is an interesting magic-based variant of this: his BSB draws both single target physical and magical attacks, and his commands allow him to put up a barrier that nullifies an amount of damage equal to 30% of his maximum HP and use a 4-hit dark-elemental magic attack that heals him by 20% of the damage done by the attack, making him extremely durable while also allowing him to do respectable damage to the enemy. |
| 675 | * StylisticSuck: Several of the icons for Gunblade-type weapons just swap around the handle or blade from another icon, sometimes recoloring the blade. However, this is the same way ''Final Fantasy VIII'' depicts its Gunblades, with weapon manuals even drawing attention to the fact that they reuse parts from other models. |
| 676 | * SummonMagic: The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Summon]] Ability School allows particular characters to summon a variety of creatures to assist in combat: all offensive summon magic targets every enemy and has a "minimum damage" property in their damage formula which guarantees that the summon will always deal specific amount of damage at minimum regardless of enemy defenses, but they generally deal less hits than other types of offensive magic and have noticeably lower maximum use counts than every other ability in the game. These include the usual trifecta of [[FireIceLightning Ifrit, Shiva, and Ramuh]], as well as [[NonElemental Bahamut]], but also special Summons from particular games, such as the Mist Dragon from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV'', Syldra from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyV'', or Valefor from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX''. Only a few characters can use this School of Abilities, including The Summoner, Rydia, Aerith, Garnet, Yuna, and Vanille. |
| 677 | ** Magicite is another form of this: anyone can summon one on their turn, causing it to perform a predetermined attack, and letting it assist the party afterwards with its own attacks at regular intervals. |
| 678 | * {{Superboss}}: |
| 679 | ** Most Challenge Events have bonus battles released three days after launch, with increasingly difficult {{Boss Only Level}}s starting at Ultimate+ difficulty and going all the way to [[NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast Apocalypse ++]]. |
| 680 | ** Festival events feature the special Boundless superbosses, with special gimmicks to add to the difficulty. So far, ten have been released: [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX Nemesis]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIX Ozma]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV Zeromus EG]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII Yiazmat]], [[VideoGame/CrisisCore Bahamut Fury]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyV Shinryu and Omega]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVIII Omega]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyIII Iron Giant]], [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI Proto-Ultima]] and [[spoiler: [[OriginalGeneration Shadowsmith]]]]. |
| 681 | * SuperMode: |
| 682 | ** Activating a Burst Soul Break causes the character to enter Burst Mode after the attack, which grants them a spike in overall strength and replaces the Attack and Defend commands with Burst Mode-specific commands unique to every character. |
| 683 | ** Ultra Soul Breaks cause the user to enter EX Mode afterward; unlike Burst Mode, EX Mode doesn't give the character access to special abilities, but it instead grants them powerful passive buffs tailored to their role. |
| 684 | ** Characters with Trance Legend Materia (typically ''FFIX'' characters and Terra) can trigger Trance upon dropping to [[CriticalStatusBuff 20% HP or lower]], which causes their HP to instantly regenerate back to max and enter a character-specific Trance Mode that enhances their overall stats and grants them a specific buff. |
| 685 | ** Certain Ultra Soul Breaks can trigger Brave Mode, which replaces the character's Attack command with a Brave Ability. Depending on the USB in question, performing a specific action while under Brave Mode causes the Brave Ability to Level Up. You can level it up as many times as you please up to a limit, and then use the Brave Ability to dump all of your charges and perform a powerful Overflow attack. |
| 686 | ** The Yiazmat (Transcendent) fight gives players access to a special ability called Awakening of Historia that automatically casts an Awoken buff on a party member (in a set rotation) every three seconds. When a character is Awoken, they deal 10x more damage, take half damage, and have doubled ATB fill rate and halved cast time. |
| 687 | * SymbolSwearing: Just like in the original game, all of Barret's swearing higher than Disney-level is censored with a variety of symbols. |
| 688 | [[/folder]] |
| 689 | |
| 690 | [[folder:T]] |
| 691 | * TakenForGranite: As usual, the Petrify status ailment. While the afflicted can still be damaged and restored with Stona or Esuna, it's functionally identical to a KO, but does not penalize your medal rewards. |
| 692 | * ATasteOfPower: |
| 693 | ** Meta example -- because the ''[[VideoGame/KingdomHeartsI Kingdom Hearts]]'' event was balanced around the Japanese version, it gave Global players access to Arcane Overstrikes and Glints a month before their scheduled debut in the 3rd Anniversary Celebration, their first D260 event boss in Cloud, and a D220 Trickmaster raid with better rewards than normal. |
| 694 | ** During the second encounter against Humbaba, Terra starts the fight in Trance and has two Soul Break stocks charged, allowing her to open the fight with her Finding Love BSB. |
| 695 | * TemporaryOnlineContent: Missed an event that ran for about a week? Too bad. Very rarely has limited-time content ever returned -- in the Global version (and not in the Japanese version at all), as of 2018, there has only been ''two'' rerun events ("Renewal Dungeons") that unleash a pack of old dungeons again for newer players to complete. And even these events do not include the oldest events, ever, nor special events like Festivals. |
| 696 | * ThemeNaming: Soul Breaks are often named in a way that echo the character's other, canonical Limit Break-type attacks, if any, or otherwise call to mind their home abilities. |
| 697 | ** Tyro's Soul Breaks include Grimoire, Tome, Apocrypha, or other synonyms for "book" in their names. |
| 698 | ** Just like in ''Dissidia'', the Cloud of Darkness' attacks are all some variant of Particle Beam with a suffix slapped in front of the attack. |
| 699 | ** Cyan's Soul Breaks all bear the "Bushido" suffix, since they're based on his Bushido commands in ''VI''. |
| 700 | ** Cloud's later Soul Breaks include Climirage and Sonic Braver, echoing his other attack names Climhazzard, Sonic Break, and Braver. He also got Sonic Blade from ''Kindom Hearts''. Yuffie got "Freewheeling" for her skills, like Freewheeling Bloodfest, Freewheeling Gauntlet, and Freewheeling Reflection. |
| 701 | ** Squall's ''Dissidia'' attacks, mostly based on his ''VIII'' Finishers, included Revolver Drive, Fated Circle, and Blasting Zone; here he has Blasting Drive, Blasting Aura, Brutal Blast, Revolver Drive, Revolver Aura, Fated Fang, and Fated Aura. Rinoa's Soul Breaks almost universally bear the "Angel Wing" prefix. |
| 702 | ** Several of Beatrix's Soul Breaks use the Seiken prefix, while some of Steiner's use Sword Art. |
| 703 | ** Tidus' Overdrives in ''X'' included Slice & Dice, which ''Dissidia'' made ThemeNaming already with "Dart & Weave" and "Cut & Run"; ''Record Keeper'' continues the trend with "Slash & Splash" and "Quick & Rush". Wakka's attacks include "Aurochs" after Auroch Reels, his best Overdrive, and Lulu has "Fury" Soul Breaks after her Overdrive. Jecht's Soul Break are prefixed "Jecht" or "Ultimate Jecht", but this is true to his original game anyway. |
| 704 | ** While not fitting any particular "theme", ''XII's'' cast has Soul Breaks that evoke the naming conventions of their Quickenings. For instance, Ashe has Northswain's Glow, Heaven's Wrath, and Maelstrom's Bolt; ''Record Keeper'' gives her Thunder's Echo, Dusk's Decree, Empyrean's Edict, and Lodestar's Gleam |
| 705 | * ThereIsNoKillLikeOverkill: The {{Superboss}} Nemesis's strongest form has Transcendent Ethereal Cannon, an attack that ''always'' hits for '''99,999''' damage. |
| 706 | * ThisIsMyStory: The TropeNamer line is repeated word-for-word during the ''Final Fantasy X'' Corrupted Painting. |
| 707 | * TimeLimitBoss: |
| 708 | ** Technically, every boss fight is one: taking too much damage or too many actions to end the fight will hurt the battle's ranking. |
| 709 | ** Any fight that involves Doom, such as ''FFVI'''s Nelapa and the Eidolons from ''FFXIII''. |
| 710 | ** Magicite bosses are not only timed for rewards, but the bosses themselves get stronger after a few turns. If you take too long, they spam their strongest attacks until the battle is over, which restricts more time-consuming strategies focused around Soul Break charges and/or damage reflection. |
| 711 | *** The 5* Dark physical-weak Magicite, Deathguise, is probably the most obvious example of this: his damage output is nearly nonexistent to the degree that you can easily forego a dedicated healer if you have an ability that heals your party passively assuming your Magicite passives and accessories are in order, but he has a Savage mode that halves his incoming damage that he spends most of the fight under and regains it either every 2 turns or whenever he loses 10% of his HP and most of his attacks involve Dooming your entire party and massively lowering the Doom count, and once you get him down to low HP, he lowers the Doom counter to 5 for 2 characters at a time while also removing their Reraise status if they have it active. In short, if you stall too long at the beginning of the fight, the repeated Doom count reductions will kill you and if you can't kill him quickly enough at low HP, the forced 5 second Doom kills you instead. |
| 712 | * ThatCameOutWrong: Edgar tells Terra that no human is born with powers like hers. Lampshaded immediately by Tyro. |
| 713 | -->'''Tyro:''' Poor choice of words, Edgar. |
| 714 | -->'''Edgar:''' Forgive me. |
| 715 | * ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman: |
| 716 | ** The usually-benched Core characters get special Bravery Synergy in Crystal Tower dungeons and some other special events, letting them pull their weight properly. |
| 717 | ** To a lesser degree, bringing in other underused characters from certain games for events and tough portraits where they have Record Synergy as well. All Nightmare Record fights are also tailored for specific types of characters, not only because of the synergy they get, but also because most of the Nightmare bosses have gimmicks that either greatly reduce damage from all but one type of attacks or always counter those attacks with something that makes using them suicidal, such as a full-party Death spell. |
| 718 | ** Using a character simply because their Soul Break has a damage type or Status effect needed for a ranking requirement that isn't very easy to find for newer players, like Earth and Dark. |
| 719 | ** Aria's Burst Soul Break and Ultra Soul Break have cushioning effects against Fire attacks; the Burst raises the party's Fire resistance and the Ultra grants everyone a barrier that absorbs up to their max HP in Fire damage. Against most enemies, Aria is just another White Mage; against an enemy who specializes in Fire attacks, Aria suddenly becomes your best option for healer. Lenna, Aerith, and Alma, got similar resistance-buffing Soul Breaks for Ice, Dark, and Holy, respectively, but only Aria has an Elemental Stoneskin effect. |
| 720 | ** A large number of Record Dungeon fights are set up so that you need to make full use of a number of awkward abilities and Soul Breaks you'd never even bother with in normal gameplay: the bonus fight with Zidane is impossible to beat without proper use of Steiner's Minus Strike and Balthier's otherwise subpar first Burst Soul Break's ability to blind enemies and deal extra damage to blinded enemies with its commands is extremely useful in the bonus fight against Judges. |
| 721 | * TokenGoodTeammate: [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI General Leo's]] event is called "A Light Among Shadows," eluding to his role as this in the original game. |
| 722 | * TookALevelInBadass: |
| 723 | ** Sinspawn Ammes, the WarmUpBoss of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', was impossible to lose against because his only attack is Gravity. Well, around here, he still uses only Gravity... But now he's a FlunkyBoss who can summon an endless horde of Blue Sinscales whose Spines attack ''will'' chew through an underleveled party if you're not careful. |
| 724 | ** Of all people, ''[[ButtMonkey Palmer]]'' from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII''. Originally a ZeroEffortBoss, in this game he actually has decent attack power on top of having loads of health, and is a downright MarathonBoss on Elite. [[MurderArsonAndJaywalking And he doesn't get hit by a truck either.]] In the Masters of the Planet event, he's an Ultimate boss with [[FlunkyBoss Shinra mooks he can resummon]] and a devastating AOE FixedDamageAttack when he's on low health. |
| 725 | ** Mote Ifrit. The first boss from ''[=FF8=]'' gets jacked up to 255 difficulty and released. That's 85 levels higher than an Ultimate+ boss. Widely considered the hardest boss in the entire history of the game - maybe even harder than Parade Float. To give you an idea of how powerful he is, one banner in all of the ''[=FF8=]'' events since has been dedicated to beating him. |
| 726 | ** The Ultimate fights in the events are generally this, most of them taking a pre-existing boss and souping up their power and giving them new moves. |
| 727 | ** In ''VI'', the Returners attempt to escape by Chocobo from Figaro Castle after Kefka's attack, and are quickly caught up to by two soldiers in Magitek Armor. In the Record Dungeon version of the cutscene, the party is seen ''evading a MacrossMissileMassacre'' on Chocobos before being surrounded by two Magitek Soldiers moving at SuperSpeed. |
| 728 | * TrialAndErrorGameplay: |
| 729 | ** In the early days of the game, achieving bonus conditions in boss fights was largely this, since you had no way to check them beforehand. Due to the wide range in variance in bonus conditions, it was somewhat difficult to score Champion ranks on bosses without [[GuideDangIt looking it up on the internet first.]] A later update subverted this by adding Dr. Mog's Tips to the Dungeon Info, which allows you to check the bonus conditions for any boss fights prior to fighting the boss or even entering the dungeon. |
| 730 | ** Can still crop up here and there with regular enemies, especially if you aren't prepared to deal with stone or instant-kill attacks. |
| 731 | [[/folder]] |
| 732 | |
| 733 | [[folder:U-V]] |
| 734 | * UndesirablePrize: |
| 735 | ** Equipment from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'' came to be viewed as this due to their sheer abundance, and are now usually either sold or used as upgrade fodder. Worse, there were ''no FFXII dungeons at all'' for months, so the lack of Record Synergy made them useless. |
| 736 | ** Josef's Giant Gloves, for their Noble Sacrifice Soul Break; Josef KO's himself to buff the party's Attack. A buff that ''many'' other Soul Breaks can give ''without'' killing the user, including two more that Josef himself can learn. It's useful as a Fist weapon, but even then there's dozens of Fists stronger than them (including three more from ''II'', so Realm Synergy won't solve much). |
| 737 | ** Yuna's [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyX2 Tiny Bee]] is universally considered to be '''''THE''''' worst Burst Soul Break relic in the game. Its SB, [[MoreDakka Trigger Happy]], has no usage on her; its initial damage and its first Burst command are weak non-elemental magic hits, and its second Burst command is a weak group heal[[note]]While group heal burst commands are very common for Bursts, Tiny Bee's is ''much'' weaker than usual[[/note]]. As just a weapon on its own, its stats just plain suck; Yuna has access to Rods and Staves that afford her much better stat boosts, and any Mage you may want to have high Magic or Mind for can find much better boosts on much better guns. |
| 738 | ** Y'shola's Nirvana Zeta has been deemed the worst USB relic in the game, with Goddess's Mercy. It grants the party Shield, High Regen and Instant Cast 1 to the user. Shield only protects you from a single hit of any kind, High Regen is an underwhelming heal on its own and Instant Cast 1 is largely pointless, as her BSB has an instant heal command by default. If you had any doubts remaining about its awfulness, it's also the only USB available in the predetermined Realm Dungeon Roaming Warrior lists for dungeon difficulty 99 and up, when every other RW available is a Super Soul Break. Its only redeeming feature is the fact that Shield can avoid some powerful attacks that normally ignore Blink and Magic Blink, but using it in this manner is generally a waste of SB. |
| 739 | ** Fran's Bracers give Fran what is wildly considered the most useless Legend Materia in the game. It gives her a 30% chance to Interrupt enemies when using a Support ability on them while she is equipped with a bow. This means that it demands a specific type of ability and a specific type of weapon, in exchange for a ''chance'' to delay the enemy's turn. Even if most bosses in the game weren't immune to Interrupt anyway, damaging Support abilities are very low-powered and no character has any business using them more than once, unless overwriting an enemy's buffing ability. |
| 740 | * UselessUsefulSpell: |
| 741 | ** Many of the basic Soul Breaks are this, since they often have effects on-par with normal abilities. Other Soul Breaks can variably be useless as well due to just being bad. |
| 742 | ** As usual for ''Final Fantasy'', any ability concerning StatusEffects is useless, but this game makes it more noticeable. Since characters can only equip two abilities, it's never worth bringing a status-inflicting ability along over other, more useful abilities. And for status healing, the game has not only Esuna, but Ultra Cure, which heals HP and heals status ailments, so the lower-rank White Magics that heal specific statuses will never see use. |
| 743 | ** The early 6-star abilities have mostly been {{Power Creep}}ed into this trope. |
| 744 | ** Reraise is a White Magic ability that revives a party member upon death. Since a character loses all their stat buffs when they die, it's much more advisable to not let them die in the first place, and to that end [[LastChanceHitpoint Last Stand]] is a common buff on healing Soul Breaks. Besides, characters can only equip two abilities, and White Mages will always want a Cure spell, so Reraise has to compete for that last slot with the rest of the White Mage's skillset, which you probably want for support abilities like Dispel or Hastega (not to mention many White Mages have access to Support, Bard and Dancer, which are all useful ability schools). |
| 745 | * VancianMagic: The game uses this system for all special abilities, magic included. While most weaker types of Soul Breaks can be used an unlimited number of times as long as you have the sufficient Soul Break gauge for them, all Soul Breaks from Arcane Overstrike onward have an use limit, which is generally 3 times per battle for normal Glints and only once per battle for anything stronger than that. However, all Awakening Soul Breaks gain a second use per battle once they've been honed to maximum rank via either getting more copies of the relic that contains them or using Lenses to buy Hone Scrolls to rank them up. |
| 746 | * VictoryByEndurance: Many bosses boil down to this, especially the bonus bosses, due to your abilities only having so many charges before you have nothing but the basic Attack and Defend commands left. Typically boss fights boil down to "boost the party with every buff you can, sap the boss with every debuff you can, and unleash hell on them until your White Mage can't keep up with their damage output anymore." This is also a major reason why healing and buffing Soul Breaks are so critical to success in the late game and bonus dungeons -- attacking the boss isn't the hard part, surviving their attacks is. |
| 747 | * VideogameDemake: The game could be considered this for the 3D Final Fantasy games. |
| 748 | * VillainProtagonist: |
| 749 | ** Your roster can include Golbez, Gilgamesh, Exdeath, Kefka, Sephiroth, Reno, Kuja, Garland, Edea, Gabranth, Raines, Jecht, the Emperor and Cloud of Darkness. |
| 750 | ** Some events also encourage this by giving Record Synergy to this set of characters, usually the Dissidia events where you fight the heroes. |
| 751 | * ViolationOfCommonSense: |
| 752 | ** Quite rarely, one of the bonus conditions for a boss fight will include ''not'' using an element they're weak against, which can make certain fights drag out longer than expected if you want an extra three medals for not using their weakness. This is oftentimes justified if said weakness triggers a CounterAttack. |
| 753 | ** If a (usually Event) boss has a bonus condition that involves preventing a certain character from being KO'd, you ''need'' to bring that character along for it to count. This is sometimes impossible the first time around when you need to defeat said boss to unlock the character in the first place. |
| 754 | ** Yunalesca requires the party to be Sapped most of the fight lest you be subject to Mega Death, which is a OneHitKill against non-Sapped party members. This sounds wholly counterintuitive unless you played ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyX'', where the same attack required the party to be Zombified to avoid it. |
| 755 | ** The anniversary celebration for multiplayer pitted the players against Cagnazzo, with a vague warning that "something is different about him." Said difference is that he's immune to damage, and hitting him with lightning when he summons water to him will trigger a CycleOfHurting where he loses his water and then gets it back a few turns anyway. You have to just let him keep summoning more and more water and survive his onslaught until he tires himself out and becomes vulnerable to damage. Such a pity that you probably won't come to this conclusion on your own, as every version of ''Final Fantasy IV'' and appearance of Cagnazzo in this game have hammered into you that lightning is the way to go against him. |
| 756 | ** A number of characters have a Trance-type second Legend Materia, which triggers when their HP falls to 20% or lower, healing them back to full and giving them a number of useful buffs that stack with all other buffs in the game, often including an effect that reduces their cast times to 1/2 or 1/3 for the duration of the Trance. Thus, due to the overall focus in killing enemies as quickly as possible in high-end content, chances are that instead of attacking the enemy, you'll instead use one of your first turns to smack the poor Trance user to critical health so that they can kill the enemy that much quicker. |
| 757 | * VisualPun: The official website for the Japanese version accompanies the "Back to Top" button with a sprite of the "Dragoon" Core Character. As in, you're ''Jumping'' to the top of the page. |
| 758 | [[/folder]] |
| 759 | |
| 760 | [[folder:W-Y]] |
| 761 | * WakeUpCallBoss: |
| 762 | ** Vargas in Mt. Kolts (FFVI). You can't hit him until you kill his bears, and he can use Gale Cut, an attack which will hit your entire party. He is weak to Blind, Stop, and takes more damages from poison attacks, but chances are your team won't be sufficiently prepared when you meet him for the first time (and that is assuming you can craft those abilities at all). His Elite version is also quite a challenge. |
| 763 | ** Sinspawn Ammes in Zanarkand (FFX) will be the player's first exposure to a FlunkyBoss. |
| 764 | ** Cúchulainn of ''Tactics'' was the first of the Neo Torments to come out, and was basically a way to introduce players to the PowerCreep the second wave Torments represented. Compared to the other Torments, Cúchulainn only uses two elements for its offensive, it doesn't buff itself or debuff the party, the only status ailments it uses are easily countered with proper precautions, and it uses Resistance-piercing attacks sparingly, even in its final phase. Finally, the ''Tactics'' realm has great synergy in its cast, since a many of them are Holy-elemental Knights with lots of Relics, and Ramza has the Gen 2 Holy Chain. Many of the later Torments are packing Resistance-ignoring attacks in multiple elements, use multiple status ailments, will buff themselves and debuff the party, and come from realms with poor synergy between its characters and/or its realm doesn't get new Relics often; against them, Cúchulainn comes off as the developer's way of easing players into the new Torments before unleashing the ''really'' awful ones on them. |
| 765 | * WarmUpBoss: Guard Scorpion from ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', in a weird sort of way. It's much too powerful for just Tyro, but it hardly matters if the player attempts to survive. After a certain point, Dr. Mog notices that it's overwhelming Tyro, and lends the player Bahamut to [[CurbStompBattle tear it apart with a Mega Flare.]] |
| 766 | * WeaponBasedCharacterization: Every character can equip multiple weapon types, but only the ones they would be able to use in the game they come from or which are suitable proxies [[ImprobableWeaponUser for the more outlandish preferences]]. There are a few exceptions, such as Daggers, usable by everyone (but generally weak), and for the sake of balance some characters gain access to weapons they never wielded, such as Wakka, who can use Bow weapons on top of Throw ones. Tyro can equip everything, and Book weapons are almost exclusive to him (they can be also equipped by Onion Knight and Alphinaud). On the other side of the extreme, characters from games that had no real restrictions (like II, III and V) do become more specialized in their roles and weapon selection. |
| 767 | ** This trope also tends to backfire spectacularly on a few characters, especially Support-heavy ones, who would otherwise be great on any team if not for their [[CripplingOverspecialization extremely limited weapon selection.]] The worst offenders are usually: |
| 768 | *** Irvine, who would be an excellent Support ability user, if it wasn't for the fact that he can only equip Daggers and Guns as weapons, and his mediocre Defense makes him a liability on the front row. Guns are among the rarest weapons of the game, and even if you manage to get your hands on one, chances are it'll only be useful if you are able to exploit Realm Synergy (unless it is a 5★ one). |
| 769 | *** Red XIII, who is a JackOfAllStats, able to use 3★ Combat, 4★ Black Magic (upgradeable to 5) and 5★ Support abilities. He initially stood out for being the only character unable to use Daggers, leaving him with only two choices among weapons: Fists, which are fairly uncommon, and Hairpins, which are very rare. A later upgrade let him use daggers, making him a little more viable as a support character, although it's difficult to build him as a Black Mage unless you have the right hairpin. |
| 770 | *** Sazh is practically in the same boat as Irvine in nearly all areas: 5★ Support, 3★ Black and White Magic, and 2★ Combat, but also can only use Daggers and Guns. However, he can use Armor, something Irvine lacks, which gives his subpar Defense a great boost. |
| 771 | *** The Bard also only has two weapon choices, Daggers and Harps. Like Irvine, he's not front row material, although he at least gets a 3★ Harp from the same portrait to use. Which will probably be the ''only'' one you'll see for a long time. |
| 772 | ** Averted with Firion whose whole shtick is that he can use lots of different types of weapons, including things like Rods and Staves that don't really make sense on a physical fighter. Onion Knight has also a very large selection. |
| 773 | * WeaponOfXSlaying: This is more or less how Record Synergy works; by bringing a Relic that originates from a particular part of the series into its corresponding realm (i.e. bring the Buster Sword into a ''VII'' dungeon), that Relic gets a substantial stat boost. This applies to ''characters'' as well. It's easier to get a leg up on your enemies by bringing the right Relics and characters into a dungeon with you. |
| 774 | * WhiteMage: |
| 775 | ** The White Mage is one of the first characters the player can recruit. Her default Soul Break heals the whole party, and unless you begin playing during an event featuring a healer character, she'll be your best healer for a long time. |
| 776 | ** Aerith can use every White Magic spell of the game, has a very high Spirit stat, and her second Soul Break heals the whole party, making her a perfect fit for this role. |
| 777 | ** Lenna is geared toward this role, though she leans a bit more toward CombatMedic since she can wield Bows and use Black Magic, albeit less effectively. She even wears her White Mage outfit and both Soul Breaks are healing effects. She also can use Dances to inflict AOE debuffs on enemies. |
| 778 | ** Vanille also leans more in this direction, though like Lenna, her high Magic stat allows her to skillfully wield 4★ Black Magic and 3★ Summons. She has slightly less Mind than Lenna or Aerith, but only by a few points, and she still gets access to 5★ White Magic. |
| 779 | ** Garnet is primarily a Summoner, but just like in her home game, she's a very skilled White Mage. She can wield Rods and 4★ White Magic alongside her 5★ SummonMagic. |
| 780 | ** Yuna can be best described as "Garnet, but better", which is unfortunate as Garnet was literally introduced a month prior. Yuna not only gets access to 5★ Summons, but she also gets 5★ White Magic, which enables her to wield Holy, and her Mind tops out at 143, the highest in the game, making her ''the'' de facto White Mage, although she gets a terrible base Soul Break[[note]]Summon Valefor, whose damage is downright awful due to being based on Yuna's Magic, which isn't very high due to being a White Mage[[/note]] to balance it out a little. |
| 781 | ** Rosa, Y'shtola, Penelo, and Mog are white mages that double as supports. The first two can use Support abilities outright, and Y'shtola even has a massive defense-buff Soul Break. Meanwhile, Penelo and Mog can use 5★ Dance abilities, to allow for AOE debuffs. |
| 782 | ** Finally, Minwu has the highest Mind stat in the game and lots of instant-cast healing Soul Breaks. |
| 783 | *** Also Arc. |
| 784 | ** White Mages generally get formulaic Bursts that cast Curaga on your party on use, and then have single-target Curaja and weak party heal as their commands. This is then tweaked for specific bursts. Particularly lauded are Y'shtola (casts a shield on entry, nullifying 30% max HP damage to each character, AND her Curaja command is instant), Eiko (comes with party-wide critical chance buff, significantly upping damage in physical parties), or Vanille (her entry is instant and she has strong holy-elemental attack instead of Curaja). |
| 785 | ** Thanks to the increased number of damaging white magic spells, a number of the above characters have shifted their focus from healing to dealing holy-elemental damage: Minwu and Arc have a second BSB that focuses entirely on dealing holy-damage with a damaging and a healing command, and both of them have an USB that either allow them to doublecast any white magic spell or give them a follow-up attack after dealing holy damage to an enemy. |
| 786 | * WolverinePublicity: |
| 787 | ** Of course, [[VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII Cloud]] is the first named character to be recruited, after Tyro and the core Black and White Mages. |
| 788 | ** Until the release of the Newcomer Dungeons, Lightning and Tidus were event-exclusive, and otherwise could only be obtained from the Hall of Rites. |
| 789 | ** The Prelude chapter of Record Dungeons prominently features some of the most popular entries in the franchise: ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVI'', ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIII'', and ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyIV''. |
| 790 | * YeOldeButcheredeEnglishe: Heavily employed by the ''[=FF14=]'' version of Ifrit in his BossBanter and Odin in ''[=FF8=]''. Faithful to the original encounter as usual though it stands out more here. |
| 791 | * YinYangBomb: Several characters have dual Dark and Holy-elemental affinities. |
| 792 | ** The Cloud of Darkness is a dedicated Dark character, but has Soul Breaks that deal Dark and Holy damage. |
| 793 | ** Defied for Cecil; while he became this trope in canon and in ''Dissidia'', his Dark Knight and Paladin forms are separate jobs here, and each focuses in their natural element. |
| 794 | ** Zigzagged for Basch: He has a few Soul Breaks that deal Dark damage, including one that's both Dark and Holy, but he's otherwise a Holy-focused character and can't even equip Darkness-type abilities. |
| 795 | ** Cid Raines is a dedicated Yin Yang Bomb, with all his Soul Breaks, including his Burst commands, dealing dual-elemental damage, and his Legend Materia grants him a chance to dualcast Dark or Holy-elemental commands. However, in practice he's mostly a Dark-elemental character, because he has no access to Holy attacks outside of his Soul Breaks. A later event gives him a Soul Break that infuses him with Dark, cementing him as leaning that way between the two elements. |
| 796 | ** Orlandeau has Dark/Holy Soul Breaks, one of which lets him automatically dualcast Dark or Holy commands, as does his Legend Materia. He has the skillset to use both well too, thanks to having Knight 5 for Holy and Darkness 5 for Dark. |
| 797 | ** Rem's Soul Breaks are Dark and Holy, but she leans to Holy with an Elemental Infusion for it. |
| 798 | * TheWorfEffect: During the second encounter with Humbaba, Celes, Sabin, Tyro, and Elarra are seen absolutely hammering Humbaba with multiple high-level Abilities and Soul Breaks. Humbaba, completely unfazed, uses Humbaba Breath and forces Celes and Sabin to retreat. Terra then jumps in and Trances to assist Tyro and Elarra in finishing the fight. |
| 799 | [[/folder]] |
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