Adult Fear: Your wife getting murdered, your daughter kidnapped and being framed for a murder you did not commit. Bonus points for all of this being done to you by people you've known for years, including your brother-in-law.
Oh, and additional bonus points for one of them being your mentor, and probably the closest thing you ever had to a father-figure.
Aerith and Bob: Along with the conventionally Hindu-sounding Asura, Mithra or Yasha, you have gods named Olga, Sergei or… Deus. It's a bit baffling.
All Star Cast: A lot of popular and well-known seiyuus are being cast for this game.
All There in the Manual: a lot of story elements that aren't shown explicitly in the game are shown in the extras section as well as the Pre-Order Bonus art book from Gamestop.
Alternate Universe: The story takes place in a setting where humanity discovered a powerful source of energy called Mantra. The Demigods could control this mantra, and it was able to propel technology to levels that are currently unacheivable within at least possibly a few hundred thousands years. Unfortunately, due to pollution and overpopulation The Will of the Planet, Gohma Vlitra, sent the gohma to kill all humans on the planet out of anger as result of said pollution and overpopulation, thus starting the War of Creation.
Said universe manages to be the same one as Street Fighter, just thousands of years ago.
Always Over The Shoulder: When using a certain projectile outside of huge boss fights (Which one of them being a rapid fire barrage of bullets that are shaped like Asura's FISTS), the camera focuses on his shoulder.
American Kirby Is Hardcore: Inverted, believe it or not. The american cover has Asura trying to smash your face in, true, but the Japanese cover has Six armed Vajra Asura screaming in rage at you with his arms raised, instead.
Ancient Astronauts: Sources differ on whether the game is set in extremely distant past or future.
And Now for Someone Completely Different: Yasha, Asura's brother-in-law is confirmed to be playable. In contrast to his brother-in-law, his fighting style consists of very speedy multi-hit combos and projectiles used for higher-yet-slower damage.
Animesque: The game intends to play out like an anime series, complete with "episodes". Hell, the loading screens even look like eyecatches!
There are 18 episodes, and each episode has about 15-30 minutes of content. The plot structure and content of each episode is indeed comparable to that of your standard anime.
To make it more obvious that the game is basically an interactive anime, two episode of DLC are even animated by not just Studio 4°C, but key animators from many different big name anime projects directed them (One of which was a key animator in FLCL, AKIRA, Ghost in the Shell's Second movie, and Kill Bill volume 1's animated segment explaining O-ren-ishii's backstory).
Hell instead of being just a conclusion, Part IV: Nirvana feels more like it's a bunch of OVA's than just a conclusion, do to the much longer episode 22.
Annoying Arrows: Asura treats being struck with a hundred spears as "annoying."
In the DLC Lost episodes, Both Ryu and Akuma have been given this power just to fight Asura.
Battle Aura: After knocking Vajira Wyzen off him after he gains six arms, he unleashes a massive one that looks like a cross between Super Saiyan Goku's and Kyuubi Naruto's. The Other Deities are seen having them as well.
Beam-O-War: Berserker Asura vs. the Brahmastra. The Brahmastra wins, but asura is able to hold it back with his own ki attack for a few seconds, implying the possibility of him being able rival trillions of souls worth of power.
Behind the Black: A lot of the intermission slideshow images have things hidden outside the immediately visible area which can be viewed by panning the images.
The Berserker: Asura fights with the grace and power of a monster truck fueled by pure, distilled rage.
His berserker form is even worse.
Beware the Nice Ones: Yasha. On the outside, the guy's is Badass Pacifist who Along with Deus wants nothing more than to exterminate the Gohma from threatening the world, just don't someone waste countless lives on something insufficient, if you don't want a ki slash through your torso.
Asura is perhaps the friendliest of the Eight Guardian Generals, and he's NOT someone you want to be dealt with Sergei learned this the hard way.
Bigger Is Better: Subverted. Wyzen turns himself into a planet-sized being to literally crush Asura, and gets his ass kicked. Immediately afterward the rest of the Seven Deities are shown scorning Wyzen for his mistake of thinking being bigger equates to being more powerful.
Bloodier and Gorier: The earlier trailers were shown like this, in that all the minions of the demi-gods had regular blood come out of them instead of orange blood and Asura was also shown being much more brutal towards enemies. Why this was changed in the final product is unknown, but it seemed likely that it was the result of thematic reasons and to probably not seem like a rip off of God Of War like some people were making it out to be.
Book Ends: The game starts with Vlitra's appearance, a Title-Screen like moment complete with press start, and Asura jumping off of Shinto towards Gaea. The last episode starts with Vlitra's reappearance, a Title-Screen like moment complete with press start, and Asura jumping off of The Karma Fortress towards Gaea.
Boss Subtitles: Apparently starting with Gohma Vlitra, they all have these, as well as different ones for each form they have. They even have them for their weapons, as well
Breather Episode: Episode 10: Words of Wisdom, in which Augus helps Asura recuperate after his fight with Kalrow with the help of some scantily-dressed maidens.
Brought Down to Badass: The creators have mentioned that Asura has lost some of his godly power while being exiled. Looking at all the footage before that, how that stops him from doing anything seems to be anyone's guess.
Buddhism: Highly noticeable and based on this mythology.
Bullying a Dragon: Really, everything the Seven Deities do just succeeds at pissing Asura off even more.
In the ''Lost Episode 1' DLC, where Asura fights Ryu, he Shoryukens him all the way to the moon... particularly the area where he fought Augus earlier. You can tell because of the giant slanted cleaved area from when he used Wailing Dark, as well as the sword sheath sticking out to the side. Bonus points for Evil Ryu's Ultra II having enough force to slam the cleaved area back in place.
And Oni then proceeds to use Misogi at the beginning of the battle which Asura deflects to the side in the same manner as Wailing Dark to cleave it right back up.
Calling Your Attacks: Mostly averted with the exception of Wyzen, humorously enough.
Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Before realizing they could just siphon the mantra out of Mithra by force, the Deities used this method to power themselves and their weapons up, with Mithra being the main priestess that preached about the Shinkoku faith.
Dirty Old Man: During his speech to Asura in the hot springs, one of the things Augus says along with fighting is sleeping with Beautiful women. Fighting with them, too.
The Corruption/The Heartless: The Gohma, which are stated as being corrupt impure beings that take the form of rocky and lava-esue animals. The strongest of them all are planet sized and can easily destroy planets casually, and nearly destroyed mankind. It took the combined power of Asura and the other deities to defeat them the first time around, but are hinted at making a comeback.
Crapsack World: The world where Asura awakens after being exiled is most definitely this.
Asura: "Save the world", they said? This is just a living hell...
Cut Song: The official soundtrack got seven songs that seems to have been cut from the game.
Darker and Edgier: Episode 11.5 is notably darker than the rest of the game.
Dark Reprise: "One Who Spins Samsara", a darker version of "In Your Belief".
Deadly Euphemism: "Saving souls" means killing people for their lifeforce. "Exorcism" means destroying one of your own ships because there's an enemy on board. "Purification" just means killing.
Deadly Upgrade: Asura's black-skinned 'Wrath Asura' form. The extra materials states that, while he's more powerful than even his six-armed form in this state (though still not nearly as unstoppably devastating as his Berserk Form), his attacks do more damage to his own body than to others. The black color is due to the fire of his wrath burning so hot it scorched his skin...
Deicide: What Asura is trying to do to all the 7 deities.
Deface of the Moon: Augus slices the moon deep enough in Episode 11 to make the sliced chunk rise high. Evil Ryu punches the sliced chunk back into place in Lost Episode 1, and Oni not only does the same damage in Lost Episode 2 that Augus did, but Asura's fight with him ends up epically destroying the moon.
Detonation Moon: Oni and Mantra Asura start fighting so hard the moon starts crumbling just by their fighting. Not to mention Oni split the moon in half with a single punch to start the moon's destruction.
Died Standing Up: How Yasha dies. Subverted in Lost Episode 2, however, as when Asura and Akuma fought each other, they eventually turned into stone. The subversion is that they Start moving again and fight once more, still looking like stone statues!
Disappears into Light: Every demigod does this when they die, from common Mooks to the great gaurdian generals.
Distressed Damsel: Asura's daughter was kidnapped by the other gods.
Downloadable Content: Episodes 11.5 and 15.5, done in a literal anime style, are downloadable. There is also Part IV: Nirvana, which consist of four episodes, and the game's true ending.
There's Also Lost Episode 1 and Lost episode 2, both of which crossover with Street Fighter, right down to using Street Fighter IV's HUD and battle system. The first lost episode has Asura fighting ryu, and the second one has Asura fighting Akuma. Both episodes switch to Asura's Wrath styled gameplay in the second halves of both fights upon Ryu and Akuma Turning into Evil Ryu and Oni respectively, and the many cinematic cutscenes and animesque QTE's are put in between and near the end of both battles.
Dying Like Animals: After 12,000 years of conditioning, most of the remaining humans consider it an honor to have their souls harvested by the Deities. The Girl is the only one who seems to have a problem with accepting death.
Everything's Better with Spinning: Gohma Squashers are prone to spinning alot. Asura's heavy attack involves a 720 spin that blows nearly every enemy away from him.
Evil Old Folks: Kalrow fits the look. Technically, all the evil deities are, as 12,000 years to them as far as aging goes is only a few months to us.
Evolving Attack: As Asura gets angrier and changes forms, his fighting style changes accordingly, allowing him to have more attacks open to him. This also applies to situations in which he is armless.
Final Boss, New Dimension: When fighting his master, instead of fighting on earth they fight on the moon. Technically it isn't a new dimension, but it is a completely different location from earth.
Played somewhat straight with the Final Boss, in which you fight him INSIDE the planet itself.
Played straight completely with Chakravartin, where you fight him in both Naraka and it's Event Horizon.
Fictionary/Speaking Simlish: The humans seem to speak a language that sounds mildly similar to Japanese in cutscenes. The demigods are capable of understanding and communicating with them however.
It sounds Japanese only because it's spoken by Japanese voice-actors with strong accents. In terms of grammar it's not all that similar. Some have claimed it to be broken Sanskrit, but there's no official or expert confirmation on that.
Gameplay and Story Integration: Happens all throughout the game justifying the scenarios and conditions (armless Asura, fighting Wrath Asura, and the like), but a subtle one occurs in DLC Episode 22: Asura, upon taking his Destructor form, permanently has the Destructor gauge equipped.
Gameplay Roulette: Stated to be one of the main selling points of the game.
Genre Busting: Along with traditional hack and slash gameplay, there is also Rail Shooter elements as well.
Other elements of this include that there are no Action RPG elements like Devil May Cry or Bayonetta have, (Like getting new weapons or collecting stuff like a Heart Container), nor is there a upgrade of stats. Asura's stats instead change depending on the episode.
One can also add in Fighting Game thanks to a coming DLC that pits Asura against Ryu, complete with the health bar, super gauge and Ultra gauge from Street Fighter IV (although in Asura's case, the latter two are replaced by his Burst and Unlimited Mode Gauges).
A review has pointed out that while this might not really be considered a "game," but as a multimedia experience, it is a memorable one.
A God Am I: This is the shtick of all of the Seven Deities, though none more than Deus.
Green Aesop/ Space Whale Aesop: Overpopulation and pollution on the planet earth will cause the earth itself to mutate it's animals to kill humanity in a form of vengeance. Thus, no polluting or overpopulating the planet, people, or else a massive monster made out of magma will get angry and try to kill everyone on earth!
For those unfamiliar with Kinnikuman, what Asura does is throw Evil Ryu high into the air, leap up after him and grab him from behind with his normal pair of arms. He then holds Evil Ryu's wrists with his upper pair of arms while using his lower pair to lift and spread his opponent's legs before dropping him nads-first onto his knee. Oh, and the actual impact happens after Asura and Evil Ryu fell over a kilometre just to build up more force behind the drop.
Guest Fighter: Technically, Ryu in the special DLC for this game counts as this.
Human Resources: Mantra is artificially produced by processing human souls. It's even more horrifying than it sounds, since the people whose souls get harvested believe they're being taken to paradise, and actually beg to be killed.
According to Yasha, in 12,000 years they've harvested seven trillion human souls. That comes out to about five hundred and eighty million people per year that the Deities have killed, either personally or by their soldiers.
Interactive Movie: Asura's Wrath is something of a unique example. While there is actual gameplay in it like most other Beat 'em Up's and Action Game's, a lot of the gameplay focuses on cutscene based QTE's, but usually each one synchronizes with every action taken on screen, and some of the presses synchronize with attacks similar to a Rhythm Game. Episodes 11.5 and 15.5 are even straighter examples that still use the same synchronic attack principles, as it's based on button inputs that mimic all the hits on the screen of an Anime-like stage that acts as a stand in for Full Motion Video, and they are arguably even better examples of this than the main game.
Also, unlike other examples, there's no actual Full Motion Video involved, but it instead uses the main graphics engine to simulate Full Motion Video, and instead of being more of an interactive movie, it's plot structure, episodic nature and running time of most of the episodes, it's more of an Interactive Anime than an interactive movie.
Interface Screw: During the final fight against Chakravartin's Last form, He starts doing his own QTE's that have a unique design to them that make you think you have to press them, except it's him who's pressing them, and you have to counter them with your own QTE's.
That's nothing. The entire Part 4 is an exercise is screwing with the predictable button prompts of before. Prompts appear all over the screen, multiple prompts may appear at once, and one prompt even goes in slow motion!.
Ironic Echo: "Let us decide!" "Decide what?" (face-punch) "Who is stronger!" ( Asura says this to Yasha when looking for a fight 12,000 years ago, and Yasha says this later to get him to activate the Mantra Reactor inside him.
It's All About Me: The Seven Dieties. With the exception of Yasha and Deus.
Kill 'Em All: In the end, the only named character that is still alive is Mithra.
Lag Cancel: Jump cancels which can be done the moment you do a launch attack and then follow up with a an air combo, and a Homing cancel that can be done immediately after an air combo to home in on a locked on opponent to keep doing more damage.
Like a Badass out of Hell: Asura is repeatedly killed and sent down into Naraka. His response is to literally climb his way out of the underworld. The really amazing part is that Asura gets killed four times over the game, and every time he dies he just comes back faster. The first time he climbed out of Naraka took 12,000 years. The second time took five hundred. The third took a couple of days. And the fourth a couple of hours.
Asura: How many times must I repeat this?
Limit Break: The Burst mechanic, when the rage meter is filled, allows Asura (and Yasha) to preform powerful moves in cutscenes that move him along to the next section of the episode, along with doing immense killing damage to the enemies, making Asura effectively a being that gets more powerful as the episodes move along with each burst done.
Martyrdom Culture: The Seven Deities have cruelly managed to transform their followers into this with villagers begging for the chance to die at their leaders' hands and become Mantra. Asura and the Girl are utterly disgusted by this.
Nintendo Hard: Not usually, but equipping the mortal gauge onto Asura turns the game into this, even on Easy Mode.
No Endor Holocaust: You will lose count of how many times the planet should have been knocked out of orbit or just outright destroyed.
No Sell: Yasha and Augus are capable of taking Asura's normal attacks to the face with little effect.
Off Model: Episode 11.5 has tons of this (most of deeper lines of Asura's body look like paint and the rings on his back are made into circular protrusions, he bleeds and spits out Black Blood, Wailing Dark starts off intact instead of being broken near the handle and isn't seen to extend before that, etc.) but since it's made into a crazy insane action packed episode, its very forgivable. Helps that's directed by a key animator from the team behind FLCL.
Avoided in episode 15.5, however, as the animation style stays much more consistent than 11.5's, although it's still somewhat obvious that the animations are based on earlier designs of the characters since the Dojis look a lot more human-like, the tips of Yasha's fingers aren't covered with rings and Deus uses a normal nunchaku instead of a more elaborate one with a beam of lightning as its chain.
Oh Crap: When Wyzen realizes that turning into a planet-sized Buddha and crushing Asura with a country-sized index finger not only didn't work, but that it just made Asura angrier.
Older than They Look: Much older, in fact. Despite being countless millenia in years old, certain deities besides kalrow look to be only in their 20's or 30's. Even Kalrow, despite looking 70, is EVEN older than all the other guardian generals put together at least.
It's made even more ridiculous when you release that the Guardian generals are actually descended from line of previous guardian generals. The current set are easily the Youngest deities we see in the game itself.
Ominous Buddhist/Hindu Chanting: True to form of taking influence from these particular mythologies, it's all over the place in the soundtrack.
The Omnipotent: Played around with. Chakravartin is described in the extras as the Omnipotent ruler of Gaea, but Asura eventually defeats him, which shouldn't happen to an omnipotent ruler.
Orochi: Gohma Vlitra's True form is this, and is probably the biggest depiction of an Orochi to date.
To the point where Chakravartin's Giant form is do gigantic it sits on it's own Nebula/Galaxy, and when a now planet sized Asura, who is now even bigger than Gongen Wyzen or Sakra Devanam Indra Deus, seem like just tick or flea trying to punch into Chakravartin's Forehead!
To the point both Ryu and Akuma are able to breath in space, survive being punched to the moon, and Evil Ryu closes up the cut out trench Augus made in the moon. With his foot.
Power Levels: Impurity Levels for Gohma. Most of the big ones, especially ones seen in the first episode, were over 9000, and Vlitra was simply "Immeasurable"
The Power of Hate: Asura's sheer rage and hated can keep him going for quite a while.
Evil Ryu is reffered to as Hatred Incarnate, making him strong enough to tangle with Six armed Vajra Asura.
There's also a Unique example in a version called "Synchronic Impacts". Usually, whenever a quick time event appears on a video game screen, you need to press it immediately in order to suceed. These particular Versions, however, act more like Rhythm Game inputs where you wait for a circle to shrink around a Y or Triangle button command and time your button press to them, and it usually occurs when ever Asura does a big attack on an opponent after pressing the burst button to initiate. This is one of the skippable examples, but doing so costs you End of level points that give High rankings. Depending on how well you time the button press, you even get a Good, Great, or Excellent ranking, just like a Rhythm Game.
Another unique example is Chakravartin The Creator getting his own.
Really 700 Years Old: The deities of ''Asura's Wrath' take this to really ridiculous extents, in that despite some of them looking around certain ages as described in their profiles, they are actually countless millenia in age. In fact, the entire civilization they come from take this trope to new heights, in that the deities are descendants of previous deities that protect the Shinkoku Civilization that are even older, and there are at least over 100 generations of Deities that have protected their home.
The Rival: Yasha in the main story, and Akuma/Oni in Lost Episode 2, as Asura and Akuma are so determined to defeat each other, they turn into statues after 500 years. And then move again and fight some more!
ROARING RAMPAGE OF REVENGE: The game is called Asura's Wrath for a reason, and he definitely is going on one of these that would make Kratos and even The Bride want him to calm down.
In chapter 12 this is taken even further when The Girl is killed by Olga's orbital barrage. Asura's rage is so great that his roar destroys ships in orbit before he even begins to fire back. Once he actually starts firing he eliminates hundreds of ships in seconds with barrages of lasers and large blasts highly reminiscent of the Biju Dama. Asura is even capable of going up against the Brahmastra in a duel of power.
Science Fantasy: It's a combination of Eastern Mythology and Space Opera. And pure, unadulterated awesome, if it were a genre.
Scifi Writers Have No Sense Of Scale: Often objects are in entirely different scale depending on the scene; for example, Vlitra makes a hole in Earth the size of a continent, but when Asura charges into it, it doesn't look bigger than an oil tanker. Ofcourse if the two were to scale, Asura would be just a microscopic dot, but in this game it really wouldn't have been a problem to make him grow to giant proportions, himself.
The rest of the game manages to maintain an admirable degree of scale, its just that said scale is "holy shit huge."
Serial Escalation: Just how much more powerful (and in some cases, bigger) can the bosses get, and how much more insane will the fights themselves be? To put this in perspective, the Very first boss in the game is as big as a continent and can wipe a battalion of Shinkoku Trastrium ships with ease. And it just gets more insane from there on out.
It all culminates in the final battle with Chakravartin. His giant form is many many times bigger than any other character in the game, to the point while even being out of the solar system he's still visible from the planet earth, and after growing to the size of the earth itself, he still makes Asura look like an ant, he can casually fire really strong, really fast laser beams that goes across the solar system at several times faster than light, Throws entire planets and even STARS at you, and even tries to make the sun go super nova JUST TO TRY AND KILL YOU! The kicker? This is only the first half of the fight. And Chakravartin hasn't even tried using his full power or his next form after this one.
And finally done with Asura's last bursts with each subsequent burst symbol getting bigger and bigger untill the very last one where it covers almost the entire screen.
Sequential Boss: Almost all the Boss fights are like this, especially the ones that take an entire episode to fight against.
Seven Deadly Sins: Five of the Eight Guardian Generals have a sin as their Mantra, the driving force of their power.
Asura is Wrath, Deus is Pride, Olga Lust, Kalrow is Sloth, and Augus is Greed. Wyzen is Violence. Sergei is Vanity, a sub class to Pride. The only real odd man out is Yasha who's Mantra is Melancholy.
Shout Out: Several of them, not to just video games, but due to being made by a company well known for using Anime and manga as main influences, along with being major fans of big name japanese developers, there are so many that the game has its own page.
Shown Their Work: This page describes the extensive amounts of Buddhist symbolism in the game, and inspirations for its visuals. Just for example, the way the Demigods are injured is made to resemble the damage done to old Buddhist gilt lacquer statues.
Sliding Scale Of Realistic Versus Fantastic: Definitely Fantastic, especially when it shows humanoid beings breathing in outer space with no problem, showing ridiculous feats of power and strength, and Asura coming back from the dead multiple times just because he's angry enough.
Social Darwinist: Augus, who shouts "Survival of the Fittest, that is the Law of Nature!" to Asura
Soul Power: How the deities power up their wave motion gun the Brahmastra, either through human prayer, Or killing the humans and harvesting their souls.
Perhaps one of the most memorable ones are when Berserker Asura tears Olgas army a new asshole while the games main theme, "In your Belief" is playing.
"In Your Belief" tends to cause some dissonance in general; it's incredibly beautiful and melancholy, and it tends to play when Asura is performing his greatest feats of destruction. Almost as if the planet is lamenting his rage...
One of the games most prevelant traits is that in the really big fights it plays very slow and sad or serious themes as opposed to bloodpumping theme.
Space Battle: Several occur throughout the game. The most epic one of all, is in the DLC Part IV, Nirvana. During the final fight with Chakravartin, Asura becomes the extremely huge planet sized Desturctor Asura, and starts flying towards chakravartin as he throws Planets and starts at you like they are basketballs, and causes a start to supernova just to kill you! It's really cool!
Space Opera: Has some elements of this. Played much more straight later when Chakravartin hints at protecting other worlds throughout the universe.
Sphere of Destruction: Berserker Asura uses these in episode 12 when ever you use the Burst command.
Spell My Name with an S: With such a heavy emphasis on Buddhist mythology, you'd think they would've bothered to check that Vritra is spelled with 2 Rs.
Spiritual Successor: The creator of the game states that the over-the-topness of the action will be like God Hand, and the creators themselves have acknowledged how Clover Studios are a very innovative group and that they hope will give the same feel for Asura's Wrath.
Sufficiently Advanced Cyborg: All the demigods apparently have cyborg bodies, since Word Of God has stated that they are taking Eastern Mythology and dropping it into science fiction.
The cyborg part was confirmed in a Gamestop interview at E3.
Super Mode: In gameplay-terms, there's Unlimited Mode, activated by hitting people (or getting hit) enough, although it seem to go up the fastest by shooting at enemies that don't block your shots. When activated, Asura doesn't take any damage, recovers from knockback and knockdowns automatically and can spam his heavy attacks without cooldown, although every one decreases the Unlimited mode time limit. Yasha, on the other hand, trades the invincibility for a major speed boost, but the other properties are the same.
In story-terms, there's even more fun. Technically, Asura's 'normal', metal-armed form is a Super Mode, referred to as 'Vajra Asura' - his 'normal' form only has metallic gloves. Then there's his rage-fueled 'Six-Armed Vajra Asura' form, and - when his anger peaks - the uncontrollably powerful Berserk Asura. Finally, at the very end, we get Mantra Asura, who combines the power of a thousand arms into one burly set of punching-tools.
Destructor Asura goes even further, now becoming bigger than Gongen Wyzen and Sakra Devanam Indra Deus put together.
Then thrown all over the place during the final final final boss, in which Asura manages to defeat the single most powerful thing in the game in his base form.
Super Hero Gods: All the Gaurdian Generals/Deities in the game. Plus Chakravartin. Subverted with most of your former allies now being enemies. Chakravartin averts the hero part entirely, though.
Super Strength: Another basic power that the deities have, though it varies in level depending on the deity.
Talking Is a Free Action: Characters manage to make extensive monologues, no matter how dire a situation. Perhaps most notably, how Sergei managed to give a mocking farewell speech while being held up by his throat by Asura and with everything except one of his arms hanging limply below him.
However Yasha almost got got hit by Asura in the middle of his speech, and if you screw up one of the inputs, which is easy to do, he does.
Taking You with Me: What Gohma Vlitra tries to do to Asura before disintegrating into tiny pieces. It doesn't work.
Tennis Boss: Wyzen and a giant ship he brings with him, in which you reflect missiles back at either of them.
That's No Moon: No, no, no, that's a planet sized demi-god. And that's not a falling satellite or meteor, but the aforementioned deity's finger that is on fire from entering the atmosphere.
Theme Song Power Up: Whenever you hear Wild West-style whistling, it's about time for Yasha to kick some ass.
Similarly when Surge of mantra plays, in both a heartwarming and awesome way ala Ōkami, The moment it gives asura his ultimate form, you know he cannot lose at all in this form.
The Time of Myths: Subverted. It actually takes place in the far future, but many of the elements of this trope are mixed with science fiction.
Time Skip: Two of them. The first at 12000 years and the second 500.
Third Person Shooter: Has a few elements of this, like when not in the Rail Shooter segments, when you use your main projectile, the camera focuses on Asura in a very similar way to one.
Asura:Is this what Gods do!?...There is no need...For Gods that only take...FOR GODS OF DEATH!!
Transformation Sequence: Asura will only have six arms at the maximum, but he will have different forms that he can assume.
Trash Talk: It's particularly vicious in the case of Asura and Augus, where's its not so much trash talking as much as Augus saying how he's having fun hunting and Asura yelling Death threats back at him.
Augus: You need to enjoy this more! Asura: You need to shut up and die!
Unstoppable Rage: The Game. Asura was deliberately designed to convey a sense of power and anger and that it's in the friggin' title. Hell, Asura getting pissed is a game mechanic. In lieu of a life meter for bosses, there's a "Burst Gauge" which measures how angry Asura is, and once it gets full you trigger a (usually incredibly explosive and violent) quick-time event that progresses you to the next stage of the episode.
To the point where he's the friggen god of this trope.
Goes to truly incredible levels in Episode 12, where Asura's sheer, unthinking fury at the little girl being killed in the orbital bombardment is enough to blow up ships in orbit, and this is before he starts shooting back.
It reaches the point where Yasha has to kill Asura just to calm him down.
Turns out to be justified, as Asura's very life force becomes tied directly into his Mantra of Wrath upon being killed.
Utopia Justifies the Means: Technically, this is what drives the 7 Deities to betray mankind, their kingdom, and their comrades, as well as enslaving and genociding mankind as power batteries whilst wiping out most life on Earth and destroying chunks of the planet itself. In probably 5 of the 7 cases it's just a flimsy excuse to seize unlimited ultimate power to fuel and cement their already enormous god complexes.
This also drives Chakravartin's creation of the gohma so he can find someone who can become his heir as the protector of the world of Gaea so he can go out into the rest of the universe to "protect" other worlds.
Vicious Cycle: According to Chakravartin he has destroyed and recreated the world god knows how many times in the past. Asura finally ends the cycle.
Walking Shirtless Scene: Asura, aside from a robe he wears after his first resurrection, is always shirtless when fighting enemies.
Followed by Asura lifting up said finger and punching it repeatedly. He destroys it, apparently causing Wyzen to blow up. Yes, ladies and gentlemen. He is THAT awesome.
What Happened to the Mouse?: Olga flat-out disappears from the plot after the Brahmastra Cannon misfires.Until the True Ending, at least.
White Void Room: What Chakratarvin's final form does to the Event Horizon stage in the final battle.
World of Badass: You have a deity fueled by pure rage, another one who grows to become bigger than the Earth and one other who has a BFS that covers the distance between Earth and the fucking moon.
Even the female deity Olga counts, as she's the commander of a MASSIVE space armada.
Deus, for all his awesome clothes and general sinister Knight Templar tendencies, seems relatively subdued....until he merges with a giant glowing space fortress bigger than the planet.
Asura: I understand it all now! The true reason for my wrath! I could not stand it! There is always some fool who wants to rule the world! Always forcing others to do what they cannot do for themselves! That's why... I pray to no one! Nor will I be prayed to! And above all else... I will never forgive you! For making MY DAUGHTER CRRRRRRRRRRRRRRY!
Wrestler in All of Us: Surprisingly averted. Early trailers showed Asura using numerous wrestling-moves against his foes, but other than the basic Spinning Lariat and an occasional Flying Dropkick, none of it is present in the finished game. Whether this was done to make the combat flow better or for thematic reasons is uncertain.