Its story is set in the year 21XX where human technology has advanced to the point of developing androids. One day however, researchers discovered another android from inside a meteorite that crash-landed on the planet, one possessing technology that far exceeds anything on Earth. Its substantially low energy consumption and the resources available were capable of powering the android almost indefinitely. As android development technology began to quickly evolve, various uses for androids throughout the world was discovered, eventually leading to the creation of Armed Dolls (ADs), androids made specifically for military purposes and combat. A few years later, however, sudden attacks broke out within various towns and military bases from rogue Armed Dolls within each country. A special Armed Doll organization was then founded to investigate the cause of the androids turning against mankind and eliminate them. The organization however suspect that these attacks are not simply caused out of the blue, but rather the AI of the Armed Dolls are being hi-jacked into rebelling against their human creators.
Gameplay is similar to a third-person arena shooter, however many characters take advantage of their ability boost and fly around the arena. The original game featured a small assortment of Armed Dolls available, each with their own unique set of weapons: Slyphyris, the all-around combat AD; Lilly, an AD maid; Ayame, a ninja AD; Linavulgar, a samurai AD; and Meryl.Y.T, a pint-sized AD piloting a Mini-Mecha. Despite the relatively small number of characters available at the start, the game features different "Types" for each characters with various sets of weapons. The game featured an Arcade Mode to play against the computer and an online Network Mode to battle other players over the Internet. Over the course of time since its initial release, the game received update patches to fix bugs in the game and adjust the gameplay mechanics. It later received an updated version in the form of DYSNOMIA ExBurst on December 30, 2009 during Comiket 77, however those with the original game can upgrade to ExBurst through patches from the game's website (when they use to be available anyway). ExBurst featured two more playable characters, a mission-based Story Mode, a Free Battle mode, and revised online multiplayer, among other things. DYSNOMIA ExBurst can be purchased from the Japanese DLsite here
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Full disclosure: The majority of this article was written without knowledge of Japanese and from guesswork using machine translation. As such, it is almost certainly missing important details or has gotten things wrong. If any helpful tropers come along and wish to assist with revising this article, data and resources can be found from archived information here.
DYSNOMIA features examples of:
- A Robot Girl by Any Other Name: Armed Dolls.
- Action Girl: Every Armed Doll in this game fits the description.
- Animal-Eared Headband: Lina has one resembling fox ears.
- Antagonist Title: The game's Big Bad, Dysnomia, has her name as the game's title.
- Arm Cannon: Lilly and Meryl.Y.T's mini-mecha have Type-I armcannons.
- Attack Drone: Some of the girls like Gloriana can use them.
- Badass Adorable: Meryl.Y.T, a cute little robot girl in a mini-mecha.
- Battle Strip: When fighting Dysnomia in the True Ending path, she wears a Gothic lolita long dress in her first form (Type-A), but after defeating her first form, she ditches dress for a mini-skirt that shows off her legs (Type-B).
- Beam Spam: All over the place.
- BFG: Sylphyris' Mega Launcher.
- BFS: Linavulgar uses one with her Type-A equipment. Sylphyris uses one as her melee weapon.
- Big Bad: Dysnomia, the Armed Dolls from the meteorite who began turning against humans by hacking the AI of other androids to her whims.
- Blade Below the Shoulder: Ayame Type-A and B.
- Blow You Away: Linavulgar can summon up tornadoes with her Type-B weapons. Dysnomia Type-C can summon electrical tornadoes.
- Camera Lock-On: Middle mouse button (or the Lock-On button on a controller) can be to lock your cursor to a specific enemy you're facing.
- Camera Perspective Switch: Pressing the F4 key pulls the camera further away from your character, giving you a wider view of your surroundings. Pressing it again shifts the camera into a first-person perspective. Pressing it a third time changes the camera back to its original position.
- Charge Attack: Some of Armed Dolls' weapons have one, such as Sylphyris charging her Megalauncher for a more powerful beam, or Meryl.Y.T Type-C charging up a bigger and stronger rocket punch.
- Cheerful Child: Meryl.Y.T., who is a cheerful and innocent AD while the youngest Armed Doll among the cast.
- Cleavage Window: Dysnomia's outfit features one.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: During both single-player and multi-player modes.
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: The A.I.-controlled players in Story Mode is prune to use some underhanded tactics to keep you from putting up a fair fight, especially when dealing with mobs that can down you easily. In later stages, especially if you managed to get to the True Ending route, the computer enemies deal higher damage than you do, even on Easy.
- Curtains Match the Window: Meryl.Y.T and Ifrina have hair colors that matches with their eyes.
- Cute Little Fangs: Linavulgar has very noticeable fangs. A few other characters, like Meryl.Y.T, Dysnomia, and Gloriana have them too if you look at the character models while taunting carefully.
- Defeat Equals Explosion: Whenever a player or enemy is defeat, they explode (but not in pieces) before respawning/disappearing.
- Difficulty Levels: Easy, Normal, and Hard.
- Double Unlock: Dysnomia Type-C in ExBurst. When you first unlock Dysnomia, you only have access to Type-A and B. See Guide Dang It! below.
- The Dragon: Gloriana, to Dysnomia. Until Dysnomia sacrificed her to go into final form in Story Mode.
- Dual Wielding: Linavulgar with katanas, Lilly with arm-blades or drills, Ayame with arm-blades or claws, and Ifrina with beam-katars.
- Elegant Gothic Lolita: Dysnomia's outfit is this.
- Energy Weapon: This game features an assort of laser-based weaponry, from laser cannons, homing lasers, and laser guns.
- Epic Flail: Ayame Type-C with sickle chained to a flail.
- Fake Difficulty: The game's Story Mode has some glaring balance issues that often favors the computer players and making them more powerful than you, and you only 5 lives to work with that you can't recoup through any means. Use all of them up and you'll more likely to be rejected from getting the Story Mode's True Ending.
- Fragile Speedster: Ayame is quick, but she's not good at taking punishment from the opposition.
- Freelook Button: The taunt button gives you a small window of opportunity to admire your Armed Doll from any angle. This also happens when you win or lose a game.
- Fuuma Shuriken: Ayame's Type-A weapon.
- Girlish Pigtails: Sylphyris, Meryl.Y.T, and Dysnomia have twin-tails.
- Glass Cannon: Meryl.Y.T outside of her mini-mecha. She's much more fragile without it, but she can hit like a truck with her rocket punches and melee combo attacks.
- Grim Reaper: Dysnomia, if Death was a robot girl.
- Guest Fighter: Valstar is a titular protagonist who originated from a horizontal shoot 'em up also from 2CCP.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Unlocking Dysnomia Type-C in DYSNOMIA ExBurst. The best bet there is to unlocking her third variant is by playing through the Story Mode and get the true ending each of the six characters after unlocking Valstar, Dysnomia, and Gloriana first from Arcade Mode.
- Getting to the "True Ending" path in Story Mode also has no clear hint on how to get the X-Xa versions of the stages, especially for those that have no understanding of the Japanese language and there's no translation of any kind for the game.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Ayame, a ninja robot girl who fights out in the open, whoever her Type-B weapons do give her a stealth cloak that renders her invisible to enemies for a short period of time.
- Hive Mind: Dysnomia acts as a queen to the Armed Doll she has taken over and hacked.
- Hyperactive Metabolism: Meryl.Y.T Type-C can toss out riceballs that recovers her HP.
- Improbably Female Cast: Not a single dude in sight.
- Jiggle Physics: The game features this not just for animating breasts of the bustier ADs, but on some of the character's hair as well.
- Leotard of Power: Sylphyris and Ifrina. Valstar's wears one too, although her bodysuit resembles a white School Swimsuit by comparison.
- Life Meter: Your Armor Gauge. You can also see the enemies' Armor Gauge as well as you fight them.
- Little Miss Badass: Ayame and Meryl.Y.T who are among the game's youngest characters in terms of their AI age (12 and 8 respectively).
- Macross Missile Massacre: Some of the characters like Meryl.Y.T can bombard foes with missiles.
- Mecha-Mooks: Only in DYSNOMIA ExBurst's Story Mode.
- Mercy Invincibility: Invoked whenever a player recovers from taking too many shots at once or from a high-powered attack. This can be accidentally cancelled out should the player try to break their fall.
- Mini-Mecha: Meryl.Y.T pilots one with Type-A and B.
- More Dakka: Some of the automatic weapons, like Sylphyris' Beamgun.
- Most Gamers Are Male: Invoked when Meryl.Y.T addresses the player as onii-chan after being selected in story mode.
- Ms. Fanservice: While robot girls like Linavulgar and Dysnomia fits the description, Gloriana is the Ms. Fanservice among Ms. Fanservices.
- Multiple Endings: Two in DYSNOMIA ExBurst's Story Mode, a normal ending and a true ending.
- Ninja Maid: Lilly, a robot maid who's armed with some weapons such as an arm cannon and drill missiles.
- Ninja Run: Ayame's running animation is this.
- Ninja Log: Ayame's Type-A sub-weapon lets her create dummies of herself to trick enemies.
- Palette Swap: Player can pick up to four palette-swaps of any character. Enemies in the DYSNOMIA Exburst's Story Mode also comes in different color variants.
- Power-Up: Outside of the Story Mode there are items dropped by slain opponents that provides temporary effects that ranges from boosted attack power to infinite Boost Gauge.
- Power Floats: Gloriana spends most of the time however slightly above ground.
- Roboteching: With many of the homing projectiles.
- Rocket Punch: Meryl.Y.T can perform one when she's not in her mech-armor.
- Robot Girl: The Armed Dolls, and you got quite a variety of them, ranging from a battle-ready robot maid, to a loli-ninja, and an almost-naked demoness.
- Girls with Guns: Make that Robot Girls with guns as many of the Armed Dolls of the game carry high-tech weapons.
- Samurai: Linavulgar is one.
- Sarashi: Linavulgar wears it to cover her chest.
- Save Scumming: It's doable in the Story Mode by quitting before losing a life should you get a bad time with the A.I. players. It's also possible to make backups of the game's save file (dys.dat) and reload from the previous save that way if you're trying to get to the True Ending path as well.
- Sensual Spandex: Sylphyris, Ifrina, Valstar, and Ayame wear skin-tight bodysuits or leotards.
- Scoring Points: In Arcade Mode and ExBurst's Story Mode, you get points for defeating enemies, and at end of each round, a bonus based on how quickly you cleared the stage and enemies defeated. If you clear a stage without losing a life, you get a No Miss Bonus of 50,000pts, but if you were able to win without taking damage, you get Perfect Bonus worth 100,000pts instead. Clearing Story Mode gives you a 500,000pts bonus, and depending if you got the normal or true ending, you get 100,000pts or 500,000pts respectively as well.
- Secret Character: In ExBurst: Valstar, Dysnomia, and Gloriana.
- Sequential Boss: In Story Mode, Gloriana, and to lesser extent, Valstar and Dysnomia. You fight all three forms of Gloriana (presented in reverse order) with no rest in between forms. With Valstar and Dysomia, you have to deal with two of their forms although there's a reason for that with the latter.
- Sniper Rifle: Sylphyris can use one.
- SNK Boss: Gloriana and Dysnomia, due to cheap A.I. and being extremely over-powered compared to actually playing them.
- Spin Attack: Dysnomia Type-A, and she's able to spin her scythe around non-stop. Ayame also has one.
- Stocking Filler: Dysnomia, it's much more noticeable with her Type-B variant.
- Stripperiffic: Gloriana... CHRIST! Linavulgar also falls under this territory.
- Sword and Gun: A general weapon combination for some of the Armed Dolls.
- Sword Lines: Whenever you swing a bladed weapon.
- Taunt Button: Everyone has a few, but some of them gets nonsensical, such as Ifrina's sulking at the player and Gloriana waving her ass to the player.
- This Is a Drill: Lilly, and she wields two of them
- Token Mini-Moe: Meryl.Y.T is easily the youngest-looking robot girl of the lot. Ayame is a close second.
- True Final Boss: Dysnomia if you end up on the "true" ending path.
- Updated Re-release: DYSNOMIA ExBurst added a new Story Mode, updated the Network Mode, added new playable and unlockable characters, as well as other adjustments and bugfixes. Although disc copies DYSNOMIA ExBurst were available, it was possible for owners of the original DYSNOMIA to upgrade their game to DYSNOMIA ExBurst free of charage, at least before the developer's disillusion and patches for the game became inaccessible after their website was shutdown.
- Victory Pose / Victory Quote: Everyone gets one depending on the results. This applies even when they lose.
- Video Game Dashing: Each character can glide across the arena quickly with the Boost button at of the expense of their Boost Gauge. The meter recharging once you stop dashing. Air dashing is possible while airborne.
- Video Game Flight: Pressing and holding the jump button allows you to fly upwards in the air, which also uses up your Boost Gauge.
- Video-Game Lives: In Exburst's Story Mode. You only have five lives with no way to get more.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Sylphyris' Mega Cannon is one of them.
- Winged Humanoid: Dysnomia Type-C.
- Wolverine Claws: Ayame Type-B can use them.
- Year X: The game's plot takes place in 21XX.
