Video Game / Final Fantasy Brave Exvius

Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is a free-to-play game in the singularity-defyingly popular Final Fantasy series. It is the fourth global mobile title, after Final Fantasy All the Bravest, Final Fantasy Airborne Brigade, and Final Fantasy Record Keeper.

Two knights of the nation of Grandshelt on the world of Lapis, Rain and Lasswell, are journeying on their airship, investigating rumors of trouble and discord when they suddenly see a vision of a girl imploring them to help, as the Crystal of Earth is under assault. When they get to the shrine where the crystal is kept, they encounter a Black Knight who declares himself to be "Veritas of the Dark", out to destroy the crystals that stabilize the world. Rain and Lasswell quickly take arms against the threat, aided by the fact that they have the power to summon "visions" to help in their quest — manifestations of heroes of old, many from worlds far distant to Lapis...

Developed and maintained by A-lim in Japan and Gumi internationally, it's a Recycled WITH CRYSTALS! version of Brave Frontier, featuring a number of the same gameplay mechanics hybridized to a more "Final Fantasy"-like experience, such as walkable town and dungeon maps and a spell and ability system more akin to the SNES and PS1-era Final Fantasies.

A spin-off tactical RPG, War of the Visions: Final Fantasy Brave Exvius, was announced on December 2, 2018, with the first Japanese gameplay trailer released on June 9, 2019, followed the next day with an announcement of plans for a worldwide release. Just as how this game is the Brave Frontier to the Final Fantasy series, War of the Visions will also seem to take some cues from another Gumi tactical RPG, The Alchemist Code. Its global release was on 25 March 2020.

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Final Fantasy Brave Exvius contains examples of the following tropes:

A

• Adaptational Badass: As is standard for Final Fantasy crossovers, several characters that appear in this game are considerably more powerful than they were in their original games. One of the most blatant cases is Dark Knight Cecil, who gains a ridiculously massive power increase in this game to make him a physical powerhouse, whereas his Paladin form (which is in the game and is effective as a Stone Wall) would be more effective approximately 15-30 minutes after getting it in his original game.
• A Day in the Limelight: All of the main characters besides Rain have short stories to complete after finishing Season 1. These entail what everyone has been doing in-between Seasons 1 and 2, and players who own the Season 2 versions of those units can unlock new abilities for them by completing each mini-campaign. Furthered in the third anniversary, where similar missions opened up for side characters available in the gacha. Of the first three to get this treatment, Silvia stands out, as the other two (Roy and Aileen) had at least made appearances in limited events and the plot before, but Silvia never had a speaking part before.
• Ad Reward: The ad system allows you to view seven ads a day, and after each one you can spin a wheel that rewards either NRG or varying amounts of Lapis, up to 150 on a really lucky roll. Every 50 ads grants an additional reward of Lapis and VIP coins.
• A.I. Breaker: Several boss enemies are scripted to always respond in a particular way to a given action. If the player is able to exploit this in some fashion, the bosses in question frequently become pushovers. One very notable example is Season 2's Hyoh of the Delta Star - if he has no buffs up, he spends his turn applying them. Dispelling them every round means he'll never take an action, preferring instead to reapply his buffs. Dispelling abilities are rather common and affordable - nearly everyone with some degree of white magic has Dispel on their spell list, many melee fighters have the similar Fingersnap ability, four different espers grant one of those two abilities when equipped, and finally a damage-plus-dispel ability is a reward for clearing a sidequest in the Gilgamesh trial.
• A.I. Roulette: How the computer generally uses abilities in the Arena — while certain abilities will be favored depending on what the player has done (e.g. using healing spells if the CPU team has taken a sizable amount of damage, using spells to decrease elemental damage if the player is using elemental sources of damage), there's still an element of random chance involved.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Averted - for every character that has Fashionable Asymmetry, they have distinct sprites for facing left versus right. During the first season, Rain and Fina are the most notable cases of it, but by Season 2, the entire main party has it to varying degrees.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: Fina starts getting hit with this when the heroes finally arrive in Dirnado, and her memories start to return. It seems she once met Rain when he was a boy... and she was significantly nastier decades ago.
• Animal Theme Naming: The various Vaults (with the elementally/colorfully named keys) were all put together by a group of thieves, Raven, that named themselves after all sorts of animals. The only exception to the rule is Shade, which is a secret name. He's actually the third Raven.
• Another Side, Another Story: In story events, you get to see the story from the perspective of others Rain has met on his journey, often as allies. Sometimes as villains.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • If you exceed the item cap in any category (items, materials, summons, etc.) as a result of being rewarded items of that type, you won't lose them. The game will instead force the player to either clear out enough items to get back under the cap or purchase additional slots to raise the cap. By the same token, if you try to redeem messages with items that would exceed the cap, the game will prevent it until you have the space.
  • On the Dark Symphony banner, every pull gets you one Glittering Shard. You need 5 of them to pull Kitty Ariana, in effect guaranteeing her if you spend 25,000 Lapis.
  • The Step-Up banners give prizes for each 5,000 lapis you spend on a 10+1 pull. In order, you get a 10% Trust moogle, a guaranteed 4* from the banner, a random 5* unit, a 10% chance 5* ticket, and finally a guaranteed 5* unit from the current banner.
  • With the addition of 3* espers, four expeditions were added that give supercite for enhancing espers, each containing a pair of eight types (red and blue, for example). These expeditions are always available apart from the three standard expeditions, are always ranked B, always use Tents to increase the success chance, and always take twelve hours. While they provide very little supercite individually (it would take about five months to gather the necessary amount to awaken an esper that gets an experience bonus, ignoring potential bonuses from "Great/Amazing" successes), it still provides a much faster path to fully-leveling espers than the Chamber of Crystals or any other source of magicite. The Chamber of Crystals was also made into a permanent feature of the Vortex with an additional stage that has a chance to drop supercite, though this is incredibly inefficient by comparison.
  • July 2022 added the Chamber of Supercite. Grouped into four sets of missions that can be played once daily, each group collectively drops 25 of a pair of supercite and five esper ore (one of the two colors in that set) can be stolen from the final boss. This is more than double the supercite you can reliably earn from expeditions daily and is more esper ore in a single day than you'll craft from Relics in an entire month. The drawback is that playing the missions is incredibly demanding on NRG, requiring 680 NRG for all the missions or merely 400 for the final ones to farm esper ore. As you only naturally accumulate 288 NRG a day (which may already be dedicated to King Mog missions), and daily ad viewing only rewards an average of 10 NRG pots (100 NRG) based on luck, the missions serve as a steady drain on NRG pots unless you only play one or two. While long-time players and whales are less likely to be inconvenienced in the short term, it does lock out newer players.
  • In response to the 7-star system, Gumi implemented 5-star Select Tickets. Trading in 10 tickets allows the player to get any non-limited 5-star of their choice, provided at least two weeks has passed since they were first introduced. The tickets themselves are very hard to acquire, with only two being available per month. The grind for one of these is grueling, but it becomes dramatically easier to get that 5-star unit you need to round out your party with it. The Unit of Choice system is universally considered to be an integral part of the game, and the weakening of the system caused the largest player outcry in the history of each version of the game.
    • This system has been all but phased out in the Japanese version, with all new units falling under a different pool that is exempt from the UoC shop and EX Tickets. The Global version decided to handle it differently, throwing all the units into a normal pool and putting the new units' Prisms in the Select Ticket shop for a lower cost. While the Japanese version is moribund due to these changes, the Global version is still thriving.
  • The unit limit served as a major restriction for a long time, as it would be easily clogged by cactaurs and pots with actual units taking up a comparatively small fraction of the space. Even with the ability to fuse enhancer units, even a maxed out unit limit would require a lot of condensing. Gumi finally addressed this by splitting regular units and enhancer units into two categories with their own unit limits, effectively doubling unit inventory.
  • The same update that added the trust coin system, allowing you to trade maxed Trust mastery units for coins that can be in turn traded for rare items, added the Moogle Cave expedition, which allows you to increase the TM value of five different units every four hours, three times a day. Though it still takes several months to max out a unit (four or six, depending on base rarity), it makes getting the coins somewhat easier, especially if you dump units at the 85% range to quickly max them out.
  • Starting with the Xenogears event, the game introduced Unit of Choice tickets for limited-time collaborations. This guaranteed a unit of the player's choice from the banner through running the event and spending Lapis (usually taking one lap of the step-up or 15,000 Lapis to obtain the three remaining). This caused a lot of relief from the fans, especially considering the Valkyrie Profile banner came with severe nerfs compared to the Japanese version and the early NieR: Automata and Kingdom Hearts banners didn't include them.
  • The second Tower of Zot event offered a new experiment in bundles. Unlike most events, which involved step-ups as a safety net, they released a bundle that guaranteed a single copy of Black Mage Golbez for $75. In addition, older units, like Barbariccia and Fryevia, have been released for free.
  • When starting the game you're given a free max level Ashe. The starting missions try to coax you into using lower leveled characters ^note  By asking you to use Fire, a low level spell that Rain would be holding by that time, and by asking you to use limit breaks which would be best done if your party doesn't demolish the enemy in one turn to build up limit. but given the fact that this game is very much in JRPG format this allows players to tackle challenges and events earlier and have a character that can hold up on the lower tiers, such as the first tier of limited time character events.
  • Later iterations of the King Mog events offer a free five-star unit exclusive to that event as an early reward, allowing players to get a collection bonus without having to spend resources they may or may not have. A prism to upgrade the unit, doubling the bonus, is sold in the exchange shop.
  • By the same token, the Arena offers a score bonus for having a five-star unit from the current banner in your party, and the free unit counts for that. Very rarely do you actually have to pull a banner unit to get the score bonus, as long as you're willing to wait a bit to earn it.
  • Since Neo Vision units require shards to upgrade, which are obtained by converting other versions of that unit, a recurring daily shard dungeon (over a two-week period) was added to allow the farming of shards for Neo Vision units you already possess, up to five unique units a day. This was eventually made a permanent feature with a reduced drop rate (1-3 per unit, depending on chance), making the feature slower but consistent. With time, the only limit to improving Neo Vision units is your supply of enhancement pearls.
• Anti-Grinding: To keep players from grinding for money and experience until they hit the level cap in an exploration area, each such area has a set number of random encounters, usually divided into two zones. Once the player has fought all the battles in each zone, no more enemies will spawn.
• Anti Poop-Socking: Via the FarmVille system of almost everything requiring Energy, which regenerates 1 point every 5 minutes, the total maximum based on your rank. Arena/Colosseum fights and raid bosses require a token orb to fight, with orbs regenerating every hour to a maximum of 5 (for raid) or 10 (for Arena/Colosseum and Steel Castle) regardless of rank.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit:
  • Most battles limit your party to five units you own plus a companion unit belonging to another player. Arena and Coliseum battles don't allow companions, and certain special events also forbid companions.
  • The Chamber of Arms allows ten units: five as the main party and five as backup which can be swapped out each turn. However, companions and duplicate units are forbidden.
  • The Dark Visions event allows a full party of six units you own. Companions and duplicate units are again forbidden.
• Armor-Piercing Question: In the Land of the Crystals, Nichol talks to Veritas of the Light and notes that people generally fight for two reasons - to take something they want/need, and to defend something they already have. He then asks Lightlord which of the two would be accomplished by continuing to fight. It actually gets through, and Lightlord makes a genuine Heel–Face Turn.
• Ascended Meme:
  • White Witch Fina's original hat, an orange witch's hat, made her a laughingstock. It looked like a traffic cone, leading to many nicknames and memes. As a response, Gumi redesigned her sprite to make the hat white for the next Halloween event, but sold the old orange hat in a premium bundle.
  • In Madam Edel's story event, Erwin refers to the Feeners as an ancient faction, referencing the Season 3 trailer's Engrish pronunciation of Fina.
  • Lucas's Limit Burst is a self-deprecating reference to the previous coding errors the game has had, displaying various missing text bugs like the MAP_TEXT bug and ending with the game's own connection error pop-up.
• Attack Reflector: The Reflect buff causes any magic attack that would hit the target to bounce back at the opposing team, either to the individual that used it or the entire party if it's an AoE attack. In addition, if someone in your own party has the buff and you deliberately target them with magic (healing, for example), it will hit the enemy instead, which in tandem with certain units can be used to bounce magic attacks off your team and hit the enemy six times with a single spell. It doesn't work against spells which ignore a portion of magic defense (such as Ultima), most level 8 spells, or skills which do magic-typed damage. Dispel magic trumps it.

B

• Back from the Dead: At the start of Season 2, the other Veritas are mysteriously revived under Raegen's leadership. Later revealed to be revived when Dark Fina sacrificed herself to become the Earth Crystal. Separately, it was revealed that Rain died in the final fight of Season 1 and was revived as well.
• Bait-and-Switch: Played for Laughs - after finally defeating Veritas of the Dark for good and saving the last crystal, Jake proposes a celebratory hug to Lid. To everyone's shock, Lid actually agrees... and promptly hugs Fina.
• Balance Buff:
  • Some units received new (or buffed) skills as part of a transition from Japan to Global. For example, Rem transforms from a Master of None to a strong magical finisher with Dagger Boomerang, and she gains Dual Wield Daggers innately as opposed to getting them from enhancements in JP. Even those who were considered to be strong units like Roy or Wilhelm aren't immune from buffs.
  • Magic DPS units before CG Dark Fina had been underwhelming compared to their physical counterparts in Japan, either because of lower damage output in general or good damage but lower survivability (CG Terra). To reduce the gap, Sol, Warrior of Light Krile, and Dark Mage Exdeath's damage receive buffs upon their arrival on Global.
• Barrier Change Boss:
  • From the main campaign, the two forms of the amoeba boss will buff themselves in response to magic/elemental or physical attacks while debuffing the other. However, if you try to switch from one to the other without using Dispel to clear the previous buff, the buffs will stack and the amoeba will become practically invincible.
  • Hein from the Hein's Castle event has a blanket immunity to all elemental attacks (200% resistance). During the battle, he'll occasionally debuff either his fire, ice, or lightning resistance down to -50%.
  • The Shadow Lord from The Shadow Lord Invades event has extremely high physical and magic resistance. Every three turns, he'll hit himself with a 98% debuff to whichever one is currently not debuffed, while also casting Dispel on himself to clear the last one and whatever other debuffs you've hit him with. At the same time, he'll cast a team-wide Silence if it's a physical debuff and Blind if it's magic.
  • Tolfidan from the Conqueror of Izander event will debuff one of four elemental resistances depending on his current HP. Above 75%, it's wind. Above 50%, it's earth. Above 25%, it's water. Finally, for the final 25%, it's light.
  • The esper Phoenix, in his 2* form, will debuff his fire, lightning, wind, and light resistance. If you use one of those elements on him, he'll dispel and debuff his ice, water, earth, and dark resistance. Rinse and repeat. If he's hit with fire four times (one per turn) while his fire is debuffed, the rotation will stop. This also serves to disable his self-healing, which restores him to full health if he's dropped below 40%.
• The Battle Didn't Count: Even though the story won't progress unless the player wins, it's not unusual for story foes to just get up and suddenly demonstrate the ability to just shrug off whatever damage they did and knock the entire party to their knees, even if the player barely took damage during the actual fight. This becomes particularly frequent in Season 2.
• Barrier Warrior: Mystea and Shylt's skillsets revolve entirely around protecting themselves and their allies, with Mystea being the first unit able to guard the entire party against magic attacks. Their sprites are even dominated by a Beehive Barrier.
• Behind the Black: Towns and exploration maps run wild with this — every single one has at least one hidden path obscured by details from the camera viewpoint but would logically be visible to the characters.
• Black Knight:
  • Veritas of the Dark takes his fashion cues from the judges of Final Fantasy XII to the point of threatening to be an Expy. The other Veritas follow suit. And moreover, this time the elaborate armor is a plot point.
  • Hyoh fills this role in Season 2, and is similar to Darth Vader, complete with Laser Blade. In reality, he is Rain, who is working to change the empire from within.
• Blame Game: Seen during the fallout after the Esther/Sylvie nerfs. Esther and Sylvie were originally revealed as powerful units who were far ahead of not only the currently released units, but most scheduled units for the near future. As a result, Gumi made a stealth patch nerfing the units to a more manageable level 20 minutes before the banner dropped. The community called the eleventh-hour changes a bait-and-switch by the developers. When they responded, they blamed "unofficial sources" for the confusion. The community fired back, saying that the "unofficial sources" came from the game's data.
• Blatant Lies: Lasswell's Sand In My Eyes excuse rings so hollow that even Fina, she of Laser-Guided Amnesia with no grasp of civilization, doesn't buy it.
• Blood Knight:
  • According to the trophy descriptions, several of the visions were more interested in fighting than anything else. At least one, Artemios, took this to Hunting the Most Dangerous Game.
  • Most of the Veritas and Eight Sages were this, with Fina joining the side of Hess only so she could fight against the strength of the Veritas. One has to wonder if the Aldore wasn't absolutely right in banishing these people for fear of all of the world's power being concentrated in a select few bloodthirsty warriors, as if having so much power given to so few people weren't dangerous enough even if they were sane, well-intentioned soldiers.
• Bonus Feature Failure:
  • The limited-time Demons Unleashed event offered little to no incentive to run. This event offered two items to grind: Void Vessel and Rod of Gravity. The Void Vessel was crafted from 5 Farplane Souls and Dark Crysts, both of which were very easy to farm. Players considered it a useful item with fringe trial usage. The Rod of Gravity, which was the centerpiece of the event, offered tremendous grinding for little payoff. Players needed 44 Void Vessels to craft the rod, or 220 Dark Crysts and Farplane Souls, 66 Litrocks, and 66 Earth's Cores. These were easy enough, but the problem were the 80 Demon Hearts. Only one or two dropped from the highest difficulty. In contrast to the Shining Splendor, which was a strong item that required a grueling grind, the Rod of Gravity was only marginally stronger than the elemental rods, which could be crafted for free with a Magic Key. Most people grabbed their Void Vessel recipes, did the ADV stage for 100 Lapis, and moved on from the event.
  • The Global version's Christmas event for 2017, Eternal Winter, is considered to be one of the worst events of all time. Gumi decided to mash all three event types into one. It had the grind of Mog King events, story scenes similar to story events, and the collaborative effort of raids. The main problem is that the low rewards and exorbitant rates openly discouraged players from running it. It was released within the same time frame as the Final Fantasy VII Destroy the Reactor event, forcing players to divide their energy between the two. Unlike a conventional Mog King event, Eternal Winter had no bonuses, worse currency drop rates, worse rewards in the Mog King store, and even viewing the story scenes required the same currency used to obtain rewards. The only 4-star Summon Ticket offered cost 30,000 Candy Canes. Most Mog King events had 3 4-star summon tickets for 20,000 currency. In NRG terms, farming the Eternal Winter event cost six times the NRG for a third of the payout.^note This would take 60 runs of the highest difficulty, or 1,500 NRG, to farm the single ticket. The VII event sold three of the same ticket for 20,000 currency combined, which can be earned in 10 runs on the highest difficulty with a Conrad and a 100% friend carry. Finally, the second stage was also gated behind farming the event, and even then the increase wasn't enough to make it worth farming.
  • In the Final Fantasy VIII event, the developers decided to upgrade the Revolver. It became a 125 ATK 2-handed sword, which was a 5 ATK downgrade from Conrad's TMR. The problem was its 100,000 trinket price tag (in comparison, most 3-star TMRs are valued at 12,000 trinkets). The second problem was that Conrad was the 3-star base on Cloud Strife's banner. Not only did Conrad share a banner with the face of the franchise (and one of the most iconic characters in gaming history), but his banner introduced an integral, powerful game mechanic in True Doublehand. Conrad and Cloud's banner was such a money maker for Gumi that they reissued the banner six months later, giving players another chance to get more Conrads. Veterans had no incentive to pick the Revolver up because most already had a copy of Conrad's Revolving Saw, and it was widely panned for costing almost as much as a high-end Unit of Choice ticket did in Japan.
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Some levels have bosses that look exactly like the mooks of that area, only with much higher health and stronger attacks. These can end up being some of the more difficult fights, as these upgraded mooks often come in groups to make up for the fact that their attacks haven't changed, making it harder to neutralize them without a herd-hitting debuff attack.
• Boss Rush:
  • The March of the Beasts trial has nine battles consisting of various bosses, all of which you have to beat to win. It's one of the easier trials, but getting the optional missions can be difficult over such a stretch.
  • The Torturous Trio trial pits you against Elafikeras, Echidna, and Bloody Moon in that order. All three are identical to their individual trials, but you have to go through all three without resting. If you can beat Bloody Moon you can likely beat all three, but part of the problem is that Bloody Moon's strategy discourages the use of black magic, while Elafikeras is best defeated with wind-based black magic. Echidna, meanwhile, throws around status effects that you also have to guard against. During the first day, the fight could be beaten by escaping from Bloody Moon (the hardest boss), but fighting it after is a challenge in and of itself.
  • Story events previously ended with a boss rush as their bonus stage, with a 10% rainbow ticket as its final reward. These originally ramped in difficulty, with some reaching the same difficulty levels as end-game content, but have largely tapered off since Cid's event. They were eventually phased out entirely as the meta of the game shifted to Neo Vision units.
    • The bonus round of The Color of Heartlessness story event pits you against the upgraded forms of the Brachiosaur, Greater Demon, and Intangir from the Chamber of the Indignant. Each has its own set of missions to complete, and like the Torturous Trio trial there's no rest period. It seems to have been put up solely to demonstrate what a monster 7* Hyoh, who was released with the event, can be as a pair, though it's certainly doable without him.
    • Similarly, the Lion of the Mysterious Woods event features the six Bomb party, the White Dragon, and the Greater Demon. Unlike the last event, the on-banner 7* is a powerful bard.
  • August 2020 had the limited-time Boss Rush Survival event. It has three difficulty levels: BGN, INT, and ADV. BGN is a relatively simple rush of generic boss enemies. INT requires some tricky combination of elemental physical and magical damage to pass, capping off with the original iteration of the Bomb Family trial. ADV requires beating the Scorn versions of the Ice Bird and the Bomb Family trials, a task that is largely dependent on your ability to gear against elemental damage.
  • February 2021 followed up with Boss Rush Survival 2. The headliners for this event were a modified version of the original Wicked Moon trial, followed by the Scorn versions of Antenolla, the Venomous Vines of Death (second battle only), the Octopus and the Teacher (second battle only), and Tiamat. This trial was released in tandem with the Neo Vision awakened form of Draconian Princess Fina, who is well-suited to clear the trial as a pair. Hybrid chainers also work, though it's definitely a trial meant for the Neo Vision era.
• Bragging Rights Reward: 3-star Bahamut offers a gold medal for defeating him with a limit burst. This is to show everyone else that you were willing to spend hundreds of turns defeating an enemy with absurd defensive stats when he self-destructs in four turns if you simply never attack.
• Break Out the Museum Piece: When standing off with the Sworn Six in front of the final crystal, the party notes that the Veritas have powered up their armor. Fearing that they won't have the power to stand against them without it, Sakura summons her old Veritas of the Bolt armor and re-dons it, preparing for the fight. It turns out Sir Raegen also felt this was necessary - it turns out he is the one currently using the Veritas of the Frost armor, leading to the question of just who is using Raegen's old armor as Veritas of the Dark.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Lapis can be used to replenish energy, refill arena and raid orbs, and summon new units. While the game does provide many free opportunities for lapis, which can be turned into more high-level visions and equipment, players can also just buy a pile of it to quickly level up.
• Brutal Bonus Level:
  • The Realm of the Dragon King, available once the final boss of the first season is cleared. It's not plot-critical, but it's a massive exploration dungeon (so much so that, by using a tent, a player can set a waystation that can be restarted at with its own sidequests) where even the weakest enemy present has hit points in the hundreds of thousands. Their attack stats are on par with their hit points, all of them get multiple actions per turn in combat, about half of them are immune to Status Effects (so while some fights can be cheesed with use of poison, paralysis, and stone, many cannot), many of them have outright One-Hit KO attacks on top of other very powerful attacks, and it's the one area on the world map where enemies can get a preemptive strike. If the RNG is particularly merciless, a large and powerful group of foes can get the drop on the party and perform a Total Party Kill before the player has a chance to do anything. Furthermore, the encounter rate is higher and there are twice as many encounters per section, at a minimum. Oh, and continues are barred. The rewards for clearing this are a chance to get Bahamut as an esper as well as the recipe for an improved version of the Dragon Killer materia.
  • Season 2 adds Madam's Manor in Paladia. What it lacks in the sheer scale of the Realm of the Dragon King it makes up for in difficulty. In addition to the volume of enemies and preemptive attacks that make the Realm difficult, each floor has specialized enemies that are designed to lethally counterattack against certain skills (physical, magical, etc.) while also being extremely resistant to those skills. In addition, each floor has a boss on par with some Vortex trials.
  • Story events in the Vortex have two extra stages, each costing 90 energy to play through. These are significantly more difficult than the past stages and have decent rewards for beating them, such as Trust moogles. Older versions of story events had the story play all the way through to the last stage, so it can be assumed the change was made to make the story content more accessible to all players while keeping the rewards available for those capable of completing the entire event.
  • The Six Realms are the Season 2 equivalent of the Realm of the Dragon King. It is much easier to unlock, only requiring you to be Rank 108 and complete a Multi-Mook Melee in the Town of Moraque. It is similar to the Realm of the Dragon King in that the mooks can get pre-emptive strikes and have powerful status effects (including instant KO attacks). The mini-bosses are fairly easy, aside from one that has an AoE Death attack used at a 50% threshold. Unlike the Bahamut fight, the Asura fight requires you to go through all six dungeons before unlocking her. It also doesn't help that one of the missions for the initial exploration requires Lasswell's Season 2 form, which is a gacha unit that the friend list doesn't provide. The final boss, Asura, is arguably the hardest fight in the game. She has a variety of fixed attacks that bypass cover, strong magical attacks requiring powerful buffs (or a magical cover tank) to survive, and a specific pattern provoking a powerful retaliation when not followed. While the esper herself is largely underwhelming, the materia she drops from her mission is invaluable.
• The Bus Came Back: For an ability class - while Blue Magic was hinted at to exist from the game's launch, and all characters had a listing for Blue Magic capability (or, as the case may be, lack thereof) since the first day, no character actually had it until the third season of the game began nearly 3 and a half years after launch. Appropriately, its sudden existence is worked into the game's plot.
• But Now I Must Go: Water Maiden Luka gives a speech like this halfway through Rain's journey in Olderion, in order to clean the toxins from the sacred lake. It initially looks like a Heroic Sacrifice, but it's eventually clarified to just be a process that takes a few years to complete, after which a return will be made. Though getting a little lucky in the gacha will have her aiding your cause quite a bit earlier. Luka emerges to pray just in time for the final battle against the Chaotic Darkness.

C

• The Cameo: About half of the visions are characters from earlier Final Fantasy games. Brave Frontier, Secret of Mana, NieR: Automata, King's Knight, Tomb Raider, Just Cause, Star Ocean, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Xenogears, and Secret of Mana characters also appear. This isn't just the heroes; prominent NPCs and villains join the fray. Ariana Grande and Katy Perry also appear in the game.
• Cap:
  • The various forms of inventory (units, items, materials, etc.) start with a cap of 150, which can be increased with lapis or vouchers (up to 1,500 for units, 500 for the rest). Friends start at five and cap at 130, both by spending lapis and with a small amount granted as rank up rewards. Crafting previously had slots which allowed up to four of any given category to be crafted at a time, but this was removed and crafting time was eliminated.
  • Each unit has cap on its possible rarity and a level cap based on that rarity. Units summoned with friend points won't exceed a cap of three stars, while those summoned in other ways can reach up to six and units that start off at five stars can be upgraded to seven. The level caps for each rarity are 15, 30, 40, 60, 80, 100 and 120.
  • In the Player Versus Player arena, damage for a single attack of any type is capped at 999. This includes attacks that have multiple hits; for example, a basic attack that hits twice would do 500 damage for one hit and 499 for the other. Note that abilities which count as multiple attacks (Barrage, Dual Wield, Dualcasting, etc.) apply the cap to each individual attack, rather than the whole set. Fixed Damage Attacks are likewise capped. Percent Damage Attacks are just disabled, as they would be easy damage otherwise. However, there is a workaround — chained attacks increase the damage of a hit by 10% (30% if elemental) for each hit in the chain, up to a maximum of 300%, regardless of whether or not the damage done will surpass the cap. With a large enough setup chain, a single attack can be made to do up to 3996 damage (finishing a chain with an esper or Rikku's Sunburst, for example). Units with a chain cap modifier can add an additional 200% damage to the cap.
  • The win streak bonus in the arena caps at 18%, equal to 10 straight wins.
  • Each ability-based stat buff has a cap of 300%, which was later increased to 400%. This also applies when calculating equipment attack boosts from traits like Doublehand and True Doublehand. True Dual Wield is capped at 200%, to compensate for the added bonus of two weapon slots. The magic equivalent is almost exclusively limited to STMR equipment for this reason.
  • The maximum amount of gil a player can have is 100 million, later increased to 200 million and then 500 million. It seems like a lot, but it's easier to earn than one might think, especially if you aren't summoning 5* units on a regular basis.
  • The maximum amount of damage the player can do in any single hit is ~10 billion (repeating nines), and the maximum amount in a single turn in ~100 billion. This is after the original cap of 2,147,483,647, a hard-coded limit based on how the variable was stored, proved far too easy to reach as the power creep of the game increased.
• The Cavalry: It's not unusual in story sequences for a sudden intruder to come to save someone caught dead to rights. It's perhaps at its peak during the side story "A World United" in late season 2 - when Charlotte has to face a world-ending peril without Rain or Lasswell, there are appearances by characters that haven't been featured in the story in over two years (like Mercedes and Emma), not to mention the first story appearance by some characters (like Amy and Marie) that were known to be alive from their unit descriptions but never before active in the plot, not to mention a host of others offering their aid.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Enforced in some later Colosseum and event fights — monsters will frequently have immunities to various effects of top-ranked units to encourage other builds. Resistance to Gravity and Damage-Increasing Debuff abilities go from "almost unheard of" in the plot to suddenly everywhere in the optional fights.
  • Missions occasionally require the use of certain moves or characters. For characters, this is limited to those obtained through story progression, so at worst they'll be underpowered. Moves, however, can be more problematic. Some moves can be crafted or obtained through espers then attached to whatever character you want, but others are exclusive to certain classes or even specific characters in extreme cases. For example, the move Fire Blade is only learned naturally by Ronaldo, a 2* unit from the standard summon pool, or found in a locked chest in the Town of Mitra, requiring a key.
    • Story events usually require certain characters from the event, although the game does make it easier by providing one. The only case where one is not provided is the Six Realms, where a mission outright requires Pyro Glacial Lasswell in the party.
  • The Training the Soul story trials are a literal version of this trope. You cannot bring a friend, and you are limited to five of the seven free Season 1 units. The rewards are exclusive equipment relating to Rain, Lasswell, and Fina (that also grants extra abilities to them, such as Mana regeneration). Much of the difficulty comes from the fact that you have to use units that are sub-par compared to other visions.
  • The Short Stories in the Vortex require that you bring along the story unit relevant to the story you're playing through, though you get to bring along whatever other units you feel like. The exception is Fina's story, which requires you to use only her story unit for the final battle.
  • Exchange events allow you to bring any units you please, but will reward bonus currency if you bring units from the accompanying summon banner. Generally, 3* base units give a 50% bonus, 4* give 75%, 5* give 100%, and 7* fused units give 200%. This encourages players to summon the relevant units and then run a team of them to maximize their currency gain and make purchasing items easier. This is easier said than done in some cases, as the on-banner units may not synergize as well. Of particular note is the Castle Hein event, which featured a boss practically immune to physical damage while the on-banner units were primarily support units with Onion Knight as a physical attacker.
  • The Chamber of Arms allows ten units because the bosses within tend to swap between physical and magical immunity depending on which phase they're in, so the player has to prepare teams for both eventualities.
  • The Fixed-Party Trials are a more literal interpretation of the trope. The game gives players a pre-set party to beat the trial with, complete with STMR-level equipment.
• Cognizant Limbs: Several bosses have limbs that are counted as its own creature and can be targeted individually. The giant flower boss template (such as the Antenolla from the Chamber of the Fallen) has the flower distinct from the roots, a vine, and the leaves, while the giant squid boss template (such as the Achiteuth from the Grandshelt Catacombs) has several tentacles that can be targeted.^note And if you use an "analyze" skill, targeting any part adds the same entry to the in-game Bestiary. Some machine bosses also have this, most notably in the case of the Chamber of the Fallen's Aigaion.
• Combination Attack: There are two ways these come together. If attacks land at pretty much the same time, a Spark Chain will be triggered, powering up the attacks in question. If attacks with elemental affinities land within a very close window of each other, an Elemental Chain will trigger. In each case, the subsequent attacks will receive a damage boost. This is particularly relevant in the arena; see above under Cap, and became the overall meta once Orlandeau was released.
• The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: In non-Arena battles, computer opponents don't require MP to use any of their spells or abilities. This is most obvious in battles where the computer uses black magic spells available to the player (like the Veritas fights), when the player can use Osmose and the like to zero out their magic points and still have to deal with a rain of -aga level spells. The only reason the computer opponents seem to have a limit to their magic points is to keep the player from abusing Osmose to have unlimited magic points themselves.
• Consolation Prize: In Raid events, you earn points and Raid currency even if you lose, the amount being equal to the percentage of the boss's health you managed to shave off. You don't get any gold, exp, or rank exp, however, and the stage missions go uncompleted.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The "Time for Revenge" event ends with spoiler: a play-by-play of the beginning scene of the game, except you're fighting as Veritas of the Dark against Rain and Lasswell.
  • Blossom Sage Sakura's ability, White Light's Protection, is a call back to her story event, and is the spell Roselia was working on before her death.
• Continuity Snarl: In the Leviathan recruitment event, Nichol is implied to not know that Leviathan released Luka from her duty purifying his waters, as he asks about her wellbeing and whether she has been freed now that Leviathan is in Paladia. Come the 2nd Anniversary side stories and Nichol was the one who negotiated for her release in the first place.
• Contractual Boss Immunity:
  • Most bosses have a standard immunity to Death and Petrify, both being a guaranteed KO against enemy units. Immunity to all status effects is fairly common, especially for the headline boss fights in the Vortex, but lesser bosses tend to be vulnerable to at least some of them. Gravity and its variants also won't work.
  • More challenging bosses in the Vortex tend to be immune to breaks, or at best are only vulnerable to one type (Gilgamesh can only be MAG broken, for example).
  • If bosses have the ability to cast damage mitigation of one or more types, more often than not these mitigations will be immune to all forms of dispel. Certain bosses also have stat buffs that are similarly impossible to remove.
• Conveniently an Orphan: Lasswell's parents were killed by monsters; Sir Raegen raised Lasswell in memory of his fallen friend. This consequently has Lasswell feeling much more affection towards his benefactor than Rain, said benefactor's oft-ignored son. It helps him bond with Emma, the little girl the party finds on Kolobos searching for her mother or more specifically, searching for the truth about her mother's death.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Lampshaded in the Inferno Hollow, where Rain keeps asking why Lasswell wears his heavy coat inside a hot cave.
• Cosmic Keystone: The eight elementally-aligned crystals. There's much that isn't known about them at first, but it is known that something very bad will happen to Lapis if they're destroyed. In addition to being magical prisons for the Eight Sages of Hess, they create a barrier that separates Lapis from Paladia, and the two would violently merge if all eight are destroyed. Most of the plot of the first season involves Rain and Lasswell trying to keep the Sworn Six of Paladia from destroying them, with the game kicking off with the destruction of the first, the Crystal of Earth. The last part of the first season's plot is Rain and crew scrambling to figure out what to do when they're all destroyed.
• Counter-Attack:
  • Several units have counters, and the counters are more varied in most games. Yes, the standard "counter a physical attack with another physical attack" is present, but there are also physical counters to magic attacks, magic counters to magical attacks, and even two characters, an equippable unit-specific ability, an accessory, and an equippable ability that can heal as a counter. Other characters can counter with breaks, Imperils, MP refresh, or buffs.
  • Numerous bosses have special retaliatory skills they will used if attacked in certain ways. For example, the Two-Headed Dragon will hit your party with a massive debuff if it is hit with any damaging ability.
• Creator's Favorite: Global Original units have seen love. Not only are some Purposely Overpowered to the point of obsoleting most units in the near future, but older units get free periodic buffs on top of their enhancements. These include (but are not limited to) frame data, increased stats, and modifiers.
• Crippling Overspecialization:
  • Combined with Healing Magic Is the Hardest, this affects white mages hard. The hardest hit by Squishy Wizard are all healers, most have no physical attack to speak of, and most of them lack any damage-dealing skills or spells outside of abilities granted by espers (and Banish, which is fortunately the Trust Master reward for a very common friend-point summon unit).
    • Averted by Refia, Tilith, and Ayaka, who also can buff the party in various ways. And then Rem (and to a slightly lesser extent, Y'shtola) came along and laughed at the idea of being offensively limited while healing.
    • Fully averted with the Holy Wand, which gives anyone the ability to cast Holy.
• Crossover: With Brave Frontier, Secret of Mana, NieR: Automata, King's Knight, Tomb Raider, and Dragon Quest so far in both the Global and Japanese versions. Japan has had several other crossovers, including with Monster Hunter and Bravely Default.
• Crutch Character: Any vision that maxes out at four stars will be excellent early on, but they'll hit a wall around the end of Lanzelt. Even still, a couple of them are good at certain party roles if the player can't find a suitable five-star vision with that role. Most prone to landing in this role are Cyan for physical damage, Vivi and Shantotto for magical damage, and Maria for healing. They tend to be a Glass Cannon in later areas, though.
  • A strong 7-star DPS can complete many trials in the game on their own. It is relatively easy to find someone with that same unit as a friend (preferably of a higher level) and clear up to the most advanced end-game content.
• Cult: The event "Guardian of the Order" centers around a cult that controls monsters and sacrifices children to the Crystals. Rain and Lasswell are two of these children.
• Custom Uniform: If a named character is part of a military organization, they are guaranteed to be wearing something distinctive compared to the grunts of said military. With the various members of the Knights of Grandshelt and the Orders of Aldore, this helps them stick out to show their importance, but they're at least high ranking officers in their organizations. With the Sworn Eight of Paladia, it's at least justified in that their custom armors are Amplifier Artifacts that enhance their powers. All of this goes right out the window, though, when you consider that Shatal got to wear his custom uniform even when he was just a grunt in the Aldorean army.
• Cute Kitten: Although Nyalu isn't a literal kitten, she believes she is one. The game gives her cat-based animations as well.
• Cut Lex Luthor a Check: In the "Conspiracy to the Throne" event, how do Amelia and Shera contend with the plot to hire an assassin to kill him before he's officially crowned Emperor of Zoldaad? Pay Shine double what his Sinister Minister offered. It helps that Shine is actually Amelia's sister. Also, given that Shine helps out after the contract is over, there's a suggestion that she simply supports Shera as well.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: There are three types of abilities which increase the amount of damage the target will take:
  • Stat breaks. These types of moves directly lower the target's offensive and defensive stats by a specific percentage for the duration of the break. What stat(s) are targeted and how much they're lowered are depend on the move used. Bosses can come with an immunity to some or all forms of stat breaks, and certain moves can grant temporary protection from breaks.
  • Elemental imperils. These moves lower the target's resistance to one or more sources of elemental damage by a certain percentage for the duration of the imperil. As with stat breaks, elements targeted and effectiveness depend on the move used. Unlike stat breaks, there is no way to resist an elemental imperil, though it can be dispelled and a small number of units have abilities that can cure the imperil. The imperil also stacks with elemental resistance buffs.
  • Weapon imperils. A Player-Exclusive Mechanic that increases the damage the opponent takes from units wielding a specific type of weapon. Enemies are always vulnerable to it, though it can be dispelled. Its effectiveness is diminished if the unit is dual-wielding and has a weapon of a different type.

D

• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: The game's "Yes/No" confirmations are ordered "No/Yes", which can cause people to instinctively agree while assuming it will be a denial.
• Darkest Hour: In the final part of the first season, when Chaotic Darkness, a Vision of the negative emotions of humanity is first beaten, Chaotic Darkness takes on an amalgamated form that No Sells all of the party's attacks and swallows them all into darkness. Rain, the last to succumb, doesn't know what else he can do. All of the people in the world, particularly those Rain met personally, invest their hopes in Rain prevailing. The light of hope shows Rain where his friends are, and Evan comes in with a Big Damn Heroes entrance on the Invincible to bring Rain's crew out of the abyss and take on Chaotic Darkness once and for all.
• Deadpan Snarker: Lasswell's more than willing to make snide comments about the current situation, with Rain being his most frequent target. Dark Fina joins in later.
• Death or Glory Attack: Several characters, as well as anyone who equips the Odin esper, have access to an attack that does massive damage, but it has a 50% chance of missing. Zile's ultimate technique, Exploding Shell, is a massive attack that has a 26.5 times multiplier... but 80% of the time, said attack multiplied 26.5 times hits the player's party. Even if you mitigate that with reraise or mirage (or if you get unlucky and the enemy can mitigate the damage somehow, if he connects properly), setting up Exploding Shell requires 3 rounds of preparation and all of his unboosted magic points, so Zile commits to the one attack and is nigh useless otherwise.
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Justified Trope. While Original Generation characters can and do get Killed Off for Real in the single-player campaign, the whole point of Rain & Co's ability to summon "Visions" is that you are getting a specific instance of a person, a snapshot captured at a particular moment in time. Therefore, even though the character is actually dead, their vision can fight alongside you, and it doesn't break the plot (or the drama) in half.
• Defeat Equals Friendship: Espers will join and give Rain's party a significant boost in stats and abilities, but they (in Final Fantasy tradition) want to test Rain and his party first.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Things look like they've finally gone Rain and crew's way after the first part of Pharm. They've defeated five of the Sworn Six, with Raegen successfully defeating the sixth, the crystal is still in one piece, and all of the other known threats to the world's stability stopped. That's when Sol and Behemoth, two of the Eight Sages of Hess, suddenly show up and shatter the last crystal while Rain's party are discussing what to do next. It's not completely out of left field, as the Eight Sages were a known entity, with one being Fina and another being Dark Elf, it was rather sudden as the two aforementioned Sages were at least shown awakening, whereas Sol and Behemoth just suddenly appear.
• Diminishing Returns for Balance: In the Arena, the amount of points you earn for winning a battle is determined by how many points your opponent has. If their points are 1.5 times higher than yours or greater, you earn 150 points. Half or less and you only get 50. The practical effect of this is that it becomes increasingly difficult to earn points at higher ranks, while lower ranks can earn points up to three times as fast.
• Disappeared Dad: Rain's father, Sir Raegen, hasn't been seen in years. Rain isn't exactly looking forward to any reunions, though. He hasn't disappeared at all. In reality he's Veritas of the Dark. Or Veritas of the Frost. But he was really just himself all along.
• Disc-One Nuke: Two of the rewards for clearing out early content are two units at the 5-star rarity - Ashe (who learns several useful recovery/damage hybrid moves, one of which also is a good introduction to the chaining mechanic) for clearing the tutorial, and Lightning (whose Dual Wield and elemental coverage can clear large portions of the Season 1 content) for clearing through 2/3 of the game's first continent. While still useful, however, both have largely been phased out of the top-tier meta (although Ashe, with duplicates, still sees a lot of play in the Arena, and Lightning has some usefulness in teams built around Quick Hit chaining).
• Dispel Magic: White magic Dispel can do this to a single enemy. Dispelga is the all-enemy version of it. On a non magic side, Bushido - Freedom materia acts like Dispelga with the addition of dealing small physical damage. As the game goes on, there are a few modifications to this mechanic.
  • With more units and enemies having ability to dispel, later units and enemies start featuring undispellable buffs, forcing players to upgrade their roster.
  • Even more recent units have the ability to dispel only buffs from enemies or debuffs from allies. Abilities that fulfill this category are commonly called "Perfect dispel."
• Draw Aggro: Draw Attacks, a passive ability that causes the unit to be the target of enemies much more often. It's also in the form of Provoke, an active ability that Golem can bestow upon anyone. Various other units have this too. Inverted with Camouflage, which makes the unit much less likely to be targeted.
• Dual Boss: In the final level of the Fire Shrine, you have to battle Veritas of the Dark and Veritas of the Flame at the same time.
• Dual Wielding: The Dual Wield skill allows any character that has it to wield two weapons, so long as those weapons do not have a two-hand requirement (bows and harps are the primary examples, with others being scattered across various weapon groups). Any character using it attacks twice and abilities that deal physical or hybrid damage (and a few magic ones) will be cast twice for the cost of one. Limit bursts don't fall in this category. Attack is calculated independently for each weapon (contrary to the character's attack stat), but if either weapon has elemental damage and/or causes status effects or some kind, those traits are shared by both weapons. This can be obtained in several ways:
  • Materia: Zidane's Dual Wield materia grants the ability to any unit equipped with it. Loren's Awesome Swordsman does the same, except with a 15% ATK boost when using a katana, sword, great sword, or dagger (checked individually, so a 30% boost if using two different weapons that qualify). Mediena's Quintessence is functionally similar to Loren's Awesome Swordsman, except it gives 15% MAG bonuses for equipping rods or robes (again checked individually).
  • Equipment: Gilgamesh's Genji Glove accessory, Abel's Bowie Knife dagger, and the Second Knife dagger from the Easter event grant the ability while equipped. Camille's Aqua Blade grants Two-Blade Stance, which allows any other regular sword to be wielded in conjunction with it. Jiraiya's Clan Master Headband is similar to the Aqua Blade in that it grants a limited version to allow for two katanas to be equipped. Finally, the Automatic Pistols from the God of Chaos battle allow it and any other gun to be used as a pair.
  • Innate to character: Onion Knight, Lightning, Luneth, Nyx, 2B, and A2 all have innate Dual Wield learned at various levels. Loren has an innate Dual Wield with the added bonus of a 30% ATK/DEF/SPR boost. King and Medius (after enhancements) can dual-wield guns. Amelia can dual-wield guns and fists (the latter after enhancements). Helena and Lara Croft can dual-wield any combination of guns, throwing weapons, daggers, and whips. Rem and Emilia can dual-wield daggers. Pyro Glacial Lasswell can dual-wield katanas and great swords. Finally, Kelsus can dual-wield fist weapons.
• Dwindling Party: Downplayed, but in Season 2, the original group of seven party members is winnowed down to four. (Arguably, it started in Season 1 with the death of Dark Fina.)
• Dying Town: Ghost Port Kolobos is still active, but it's mostly in ruins, and the residents make it clear that it's not going to be able to keep up much longer.

E

• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: As long as you keep up on your gear and awaken your units, you'll find that any given enemy usually won't survive a simple barrage of normal attacks from your team. Bosses, on the other hand, have a lot of health and do much more damage. This effect becomes more apparent the further you progress. If you don't have a decent buffer/debuffer combo by Dirnado and especially Olderion, expect to suffer one wipe after another as the bosses hit you with full party elemental magic and multiple physical attacks in a row.
• Easy Level Trick: 3-star Bahamut requires you to survive four rounds of powerful attacks without attacking in turn. Alternatively, if you have 7-star Cid, you can use his jump move with a 15 turn delay to completely skip the battle and still get credit.
• Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: In general, the elements are paired (fire/ice, lightning/water, stone/air, light/dark), and something that uses one element will be weak to its pair. It's worth noting that not everything resists its own element; they just take extra damage from the opposite element. Espers share this trait: any resistances they grant are paired with an equal weakness to the opposing element, though some espers are neutral in all elements. Certain missions exploit this by forcing you to equip an esper that will weaken you against a particular boss if you want credit.
• Elves Versus Dwarves: "A Promise Beyond Time" reveals that this is fully in effect for most elves and dwarves in the past of the world of Brave Exvius; the first part of the past timeline of the event shows Ruggles the dwarf and his struggles with Bran the elf (while Bran's wife, Lunera, is not at all concerned with such issues and quickly befriends Ruggles).
• Empty Shell: The effect that the mysterious Hollow that's ravaging worlds in season 3 has on people - anyone affected by it becomes entirely bereft of emotion and will, mechanically going through the motions of their routine or numbly obeying commands with only the barest modicum of effort. Fina's goal in the season is to seal the Hollow off to cure this condition.
• Evolving Attack: Both Limit Breaks and Summon Magic. When a unit or an Esper improves in star ranking, their unique limit/magic attack becomes more flashy and graphically intense to correspond with a more powerful effect. Awakenings, when introduced, also introduced this to learned abilities; crysts found in events/Chamber of Gems and in-game currency are needed to evolve these.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: All over the place in Season 2. Lasswell now rocks the topknot ponytail, while both Lid and Jake have cut their hair down considerably shorter. In each case, it's a more no-nonsense hairstyle as the team of seasoned warriors is now invading a new world in search of Rain.
• Expy:
  • Most characters and situations are call-backs to various Final Fantasy games.
    • Wilhelm takes a lot of inspiration from General Leo and similar characters, being a sympathetic, loyal Imperial general who is very loyal to someone who wants to improve the Empire but ultimately cannot betray it directly. (Good thing you've got the power of visions, then, which allows him to sidestep that!) The game even calls attention to it by his Trust Master reward, which became the best shield stat-wise available when released. The previous best shield? The one that's the Trust Master reward for General Leo.
    • Sol and Chaotic Darkness are, respectively, Expies of Xande and Cloud of Darkness. Sol is, like Xande, a once-wise mage driven to insanity, who creates enough of an imbalance in light and dark to summon an Eldritch Abomination. Even the way the heroes beat the Chaotic Darkness is a call back to Final Fantasy III: they lose to said Eldritch Abomination, are swallowed into it, but everyone they met helps them escape.
  • Jean is very obviously a female version of John Rambo, even down to the name. Her Trust Master reward is even a machine gun very similar in appearance to the one he carried on the front of First Blood.
  • The second Christmas event, Eternal Winter, is an Expy of Frozen (2013). One of the items available for purchase is outright implied to be Elsa's gown, complete with "Let It Snow!" as an ability.

• Hasiko, the Incarnation of Hatred from the first Global Fan Festa raid, is similar in design to Hisako from Killer Instinct.

F

• Fake Longevity: The Chamber of Vengeance has a mechanic that rewards the players for completing the various levels with up to 50 different units. In theory, you could use five different teams in each attempt to complete it as intended, which is a viable strategy in the easier levels when the boss dies to any good chain. At the higher difficulty levels, specific roles are required for a clear, so you'll have less leeway to swap between them. Pragmatically, most players will settle on a core set of units and swap out one or two per run as needed to get the clear. For example, building a provoke/evade tank can be done with virtually any unit if you have the right gear, and magic tanks are for the most part interchangeable. This is especially bad with The Empress's Resolution, a trial so difficult that there is basically a handful of units capable of clearing it, so players will be stuck swapping out one unit at a time to get the rewards.
• Fake Ultimate Mook: Several foes are very large and detailed, but they're just common encounters that aren't any appreciably more difficult than others around them. The Ziggurat Gigas in later sections of the Isle of Kolobos is a great example — a large sprite that looks more impressive than several bosses, but the only thing making it stand out from other encounters is a slightly higher hit point count (which is negated by being weak to electricity in the area where the lightning Summon Magic is found).
• Faking the Dead: Near the end of The Color of Heartlessness, Hyoh is thought to have killed Domino and Shatal, with even Nazuu, who was skeptical of his loyalty, reporting their deaths. However, it's later revealed they're still alive, likely because Hyoh only made it look like he killed them. Of course because Shatal is now a traitor, he joins Domino and the Children of Hess.
• Fascist, but Inefficient: Despite having 700 years to solidify its rule and crush all opposition with their advance technology, Aldore has been fighting remnants of Hess, other rebels, and more opposing its regime since it won the war.
• Fetch Quest: A good number of sidequests in the game involve going out, getting a hold of something, and going back to the appropriate person. The most expansive one is the Vault series of sidequests; a group of thieves hid a number of element-themed keys around the world, and Rain and his crew are tasked with finding each one, able to move onto the next set of element keys after finding all of the current ones. Each key unlocks a reward, and there's an additional reward for using each key of an element. There are five sets of these keys, with 65 rewards available for finding each key, and a final quest consisting of five more fetch quests after completing all five Vaults.
• Fixed Damage Attack:
  • Cactuars are around, so naturally their 1000 Needles attack is on-hand. Played for Laughs in the Cactuar fight in the fights used to showcase the Season 2 upgrades for story characters - that one uses 10 Needles (doing, yes, 10 damage, in a game where even the weakest friend-point summon at level 1 has three-digit hit points).
  • Xon's Toxic Dagger and Rikku's Sunburst are two more examples, among several others. Setzer's Dice attacks have a 20% chance of dealing damage as low as 1 or as high as 77,777. Inverted with some limit breaks and skills that do a fixed percentage of the target's maximum hit points as healing.
  • Fixed attacks also refer to a battle mechanic that bypasses all forms of cover. In addition to certain units using this mechanic, as noted, quite a few bosses use it for various purposes, one of the most popular being a nuke-skill meant to wipe your party as retaliation for doing something wrong (killing the wrong part first, using certain elemental attacks, etc).
• Foregone Victory: The first four stages of the King Mog raid event are impossible to lose unless you have a means of intentionally killing your entire party. King Mog never fights back. Instead, he'll sneeze one of your characters out of the fight every three turns, then run away when there's only one left. This counts as beating the stage, but you get less coins than you would have for winning. Once you've unlocked the final stage, he'll become a proper boss fight.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: Most of the esper summon animations involve the esper in question breaking through the game UI in some way before doing their thing, with some of them being more explicit about it than the others. Several of the offensive CG limit breaks (for example, Pyro Glacial Lasswell's) also involve breaking through the game UI and slashing/charging at the player.
• Friendless Background: Fina was apparently trapped in the Earth Crystal all this time, so Rain and Lasswell, the first two she contacts upon being freed from it, are her crutch as she learns about the world.

G

• Game-Breaking Bug:
  • The 2.3.0 update had a litany of these on release. The app became unstable, frequently crashing, map text was corrupted, the chests in the new Autumn Moon exploration were only open-able on the first level, and the new boss, Sheratan, did not transform properly, and her cap did not work. Finally, logging into the game resulted in a bugged interface, needing a complicated series of steps to make the game accessible again. This took an extended maintenance to update, yet continued to have problems after. To fix this, they had yet another emergency maintenance only posted on their Facebook page. The string of extended maintenances (coming right off a 24-hour maintenance to secure Gumi's servers after a data leak) exacerbated the anger. Gumi profusely apologized, giving unprecedented compensation for the problems (including a free 5-star EX ticket). The player base was pleasantly surprised, and all was forgiven.
  • The Misty Bamboo Forest mission has a three minute timer. If you play it then switch immediately to the Arena, the timer will carry over, ending the match at three minutes regardless of turns taken.
  • The 2.6.0 event wiped friend gifts from 45 days before the update without compensation or warning. Those who saved were saving their Friend Points for the future 3-star Trust Moogle event.
  • Version 3.0.0 saw more backlash from the community. Despite being released ten months after the Japanese version of the update, it contained numerous bugs that were already fixed. Numerous Good Bad Bugs, like being able to beat the Torturous Trio trial by escaping the final boss, were fixed within the hour, while it took days (for even weeks) to fix basic gaming functionality. Daily quests were broken for the first week, chaining damage never counted for raids, and the friends list stopped updating. The first bug took a week to fix, the raid bug lasted for a month, and the friends list bug is still here to this day.
  • Version 3.4.0 saw relatively minor bugs, but one stood out: the story event bug. If the app stopped in the middle of a dungeon with multiple stages, like a story event or Steel Castle Melfikya, the event only counted that singular stage for rewards and kicked you out of the entire dungeon. This caused lots of wasted stamina and energy, time, and money. While it received only minor frustration due to Folka's story event being almost over, people started to get angry when the bug went unfixed for a month and carried over to Ignacio's event. The player base saw it as the developers mailing it in, and it caused one of the largest consumer riots in the history of the game. The bug came back for the Aldore Five-O event.
  • The Regina banner's special 5% Rainbow Banner had one major problem: the rainbow drop rates weren't 5%. The chance that the first crystal would be a rainbow was 6.88%, and the other 10 crystals' rates were 3.5%. According to Gumi's own data, nothing suggested that the overall rainbow rate was even close to the advertised rate. This brought unprecedented compensation, with Gumi offering a full Lapis refund.
  • Update 3.6.5 made the game unplayable for a large number of users. Ostensibly due to compatibility issues with the implementation of 64-bit support, a wide swath of devices not compatible with that standard were rendered incapable of running the game. It took most of the day for the playerbase to figure out a workaround, which certainly wasn't help by Gumi's recommendation that players simply find a compatible device and use that instead. It took several days for Gumi to work out that the actual problem was the implementation of expanded item descriptions.
  • Fourth Anniversary update has a bug where fusing units of any type with any method will crash the game. This update coinciding with release of NV Ling and Louise, the former a highly anticipated unit while the latter a great support unit on her own, ensures that a lot of people will be locked from entering vortex or world map because they exceed their unit cap making the entire anniversary celebration pointless. This thankfully gets fixed within 24 hours.
  • A server compatibility issue with Facebook login makes people whose accounts are bound to Facebook, which roughly consists of half of the playerbase, unable to log in to the game for a total of five days starting from August 25th 2022's end of maintenance. While this is technically not Gumi's fault since this problem can be found on other gacha games who uses Facebook login feature, Gumi's way of informing the playerbase about the issue (as in announcing vaguely about trying to fix the problem) enrages locked-out players since the week is the start of a 4-week long Final Fantasy X event where they miss some good features like daily 10-pull summon. Gumi ends up having to hugely compensate Facebook players by giving a lot of resources including 13.000 lapis and plenty of various tickets.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: During most levels, there's a little meter at the top showing you how many waves you have to make it through, with a character running from right to left as you get closer and closer to the end. The character, in question, depends on what the level is — in sidequests it's the star character, in the campaign it's Rain in Season 1 and Lasswell in Season 2, or sometimes Raegan — towards the end, when Rain and Lasswell link up, it's both of them! (This can lead to the occasional Interface Spoiler, as the timers for non-campaign events are nonetheless synced up with the campaign's plot.)
• Gathering Steam:
  • Several attacks gain in power when you cast them in succession. Comet and Meteor are two examples.
  • Warrior of Light Bartz has a series of skills that activate in succession. In exchange for three turns dealing no damage, he gains 200% buffs to every stat that cannot be dispelled, unless he's killed.
• Gender-Blender Name: The Olderion trio. One of Olderion's water temple guardians is named Elle. Despite how feminine that appears to anyone who speaks a language that heavily borrows from Latin, he is consistently referred to as male. Nichol, Elle's brother, also counts — the spelling is a shortening of "Nicholas," but has the same katakana and is pronounced very close to one of its feminine forms, "Nicole". Luka, their sister, is a male name in eastern Europe. The trend finally breaks with Ellie, Elle and Arsha's daughter.
• Glass Cannon:
  • The esper Bahamut can do incredible damage with its AoE Megaflare and has powerful elemental attacks, but its physical and magical defenses are so weak that most strategies to beat it involve killing it on the first turn.
  • Glacial from the Fallen Ice Bird trial is similar, possessing even weaker defenses and a whopping 1,000% Fire weakness. However, Glacial gets a preemptive attack to hit your party with massive Ice/Wind damage and summons backup, so you have to survive at least one round before one-shotting it.
  • Vanille is a relatively mediocre unit in most cases, capping at five stars and her only role being a buffer/reraiser. In the Arena, however, her Limit Burst is very popular for troll builds. When fully leveled, it has a 89% chance of instantly killing every unit on the opposing team. Paired with magic tanks and Limit Burst fill enhancers, Vanille can usually fire off her Limit Burst by her second turn. Cait Sith and Suzume share similar levels and limit bursts, while Vincent is a bulky 7-star unit that can do the same with slightly reduced effectiveness (70%).
• Gray-and-Gray Morality: Subverted with the backstory of Paladia. Although the war was fought over different ideals and saw people on both sides die, Aldore instigated the war against Hess and had set it up to get rid of their champions the Eight Veritas after they tried to find a peaceful solution to the war. Aldore sent the land the war took place on to the world of Lapis, decimating and killing off most of Lapis inhabitants to ensure their control is undisputed. Once achieved the entire nation became a dictatorship ruled by Aldore's Emperor. While Hess did do some unsavory things, such as converting unwilling beings into Espers like Tetra Sylphid, they fought for the right of independence from Aldore's tyranny.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • Several side missions require killing a specific kind of enemy a certain number of times. In some cases, they are uncommon-to-rare spawns that only show up in particular regions on that continent. Unless you happen to have gotten lucky finding them before and remember the locations, you'll probably end up looking up their locations online. The quest to kill Hungers is a notable example, as Hungers only spawn in one specific sub-level on that continent, very rarely at that. It isn't until two continents later that you can find a reliable source.
  • Revive Kills Zombie is in effect, but targeting enemies with white magic spells requires the player to realize that the "Select Target" button below the characters is actually a button and not just an instruction. This is not listed anywhere in-game or on the developer's site.
  • By the same token, you can press and hold on any unit to see a complete breakdown of all their current buffs/debuffs, status ailments, and enfeeblements, something the game never tells you. Furthermore, using this method allows you to target allies with your attack abilities, which is useful if you want to wake up a sleeping or confused unit and don't have access to a non-violent means of doing so. It also allows dispel abilities to be used on your own units.
  • The King Mog raid actually has a secret level to it, where Mog King fights back. Unlocking it is a completely different story, though. To unlock it, you need to have your entire party use an exclusive ability to play with King Mog. Then, you have to use the badmouth ability that is unlocked until he gives up and runs away. This unlocks the final stage, where he actually fights back.
  • One that fortunately only comes up with sidequests is "Defend". "Defend" is both a basic guard action any unit can do in battle (simply swipe down on a character's status bar), and an enhanced guard ability available only to certain units. Several sidequests require use of Defend, which can confuse players unfamiliar with the ability (as a sidequest, it always means the ability).
  • One of the more annoying ones was when the Sky Palace of Final Fantasy was turned into a Nostalgia Level. In the original, one floor was a repeating maze that could be solved by walking in a given vertical direction for two intersections and in a given horizontal direction for two intersections. These could be done in any order so long as it eventually ended up as "two horizontal, two vertical." Moreover, in the original, the teleport pad gave a clue as to whether it would send you further up or back down (the pads were triangles pointing in the appropriate direction). In the Brave Exvius version, however, there was only one correct sequence that worked, and the teleport pads both up and down use the same graphics. It was very much a Trial And Error Mission unless you just gave up and looked online for a guide.

H - I

• Harder Than Hard: The Yensa Sandsea event introduces a new "Legend" difficulty to the normal lineup. It costs a whopping 40 energy to play, and has difficulty on par with the ELT version of a raid boss. It's not insurmountable, but it's definitely a step up from normal exchange events.
• Healing Magic Is the Hardest:
  • Early in the game, units good at healing were fairly uncommon, period, and the ones with access to the strongest healing spells were much rarer than ones with access to the strongest attack spells. In particular, revival magic remains rare, with only about a couple dozen characters (only Fina, as of being able to reach 6-star form as part of the one-year anniversary, is not randomly summoned) capable of learning such, and usually it's at higher levels.
  • As the game's advanced, this has been ameliorated to some degree by the introduction of more healers, particularly Refia and Luka, who are both reasonably common appearances in the gacha... but those two still take a while to come into their own as healers, and only really "turn on" fully once they reach 6* ascension. (Refia doesn't even natively learn a heal until the level cap for her 4* form, despite having plenty of cleanses.) Rem is arguably a vastly more powerful healer, but she is a 5* base. Y'shtola is too, but she is only available during FFXIV events (though this has the upshot of her being available for free).
  • The Global version itself tried to further relieve this a bit with the exclusive character Aiden, who is a 3* base available from the lapis gacha and is thus not terribly difficult to acquire. He gets Esuna and Cure very early on, and isn't terribly difficult to level... but unfortunately, his final heal is an odd duck due to randomness, and his cap being 5* makes him much more limited in application than Rem, Y'shtola, Refia or Luka.
  • Averted with Ayaka, who can do pretty much any sort of healing your heart desires. She has access to Curaja (a full heal in all but name), Dual White Magic, Reraise, Full-Life, Dispelga, and Esunaga. She also has an AoE Full-Life and an MP refresh, but are abilities.
    • Even she isn't limited by this trope. Her Limit Burst is amazing at full level: it heals your party to full, revives your party with 100% HP, and is the only thing that can cure every ailment in the game (including Stop and Charm). However, it costs a staggering 56 crystals to use (compared to the usual 16).
• Heel–Face Turn: While Garland, Emperor, Cloud of Darkness, Golbez, Exdeath, Kefka, Kuja, Vayne, Glauca, Adam, and Eve were villainous in their home games, they're always trusted visions here. Within the backstory of Brave Exvius, several of the visions from the world's backstory were also explicitly villains, or at the very least at war with Rain and Lasswell's home of Grandshelt. Played with concerning Fina, who seemed like a villain initially until the party sees a brief glimpse of her past.
  • Even the Veritas become summonable Visions in this game.
• Herd-Hitting Attack:
  • Mostly the bailiwick of mages with higher level spells, but warriors with access to Bladeblitz, Scattershot, and Multiburst can do one with physical strikes. Most limit bursts also function as one.
  • Notably, one of 2* Odin's gimmicks is giving a character access to Bladeblitz. Diabolos can do the same with Darkside, and Tetra Sylphid can do it with Wind Slash.
• Heroic BSoD: Late in the trip through the Isle of Kolobos, Rain finds the zombified remnants of his crew attacking him, and the guilt over their deaths has him freeze. Lasswell snaps him out with a good question — said deaths happened on an entirely different continent; how did their bodies get to Kolobos?
• He's Just Hiding: In-Universe, this is the prevailing attitude of Lasswell and Raegen at the end of Season 1, with both sure that Rain, who disappeared after confronting Sol to dispel the Chaotic Darkness, is still out there.
• Hidden Elf Village: The Lordless Castle was a literal example, with only Bran and Lunera living there.
  • The Lost Village of Marlo, which requires finding a secret path out of Wolfsgang Peak to even access. Several unique items are available there, including the first shop where star quartz can be traded.
  • The Sorcerer's Hideaway is on the same concept, but is unlocked by talking to a certain NPC in the Mysidia Underground.
• Hold Your Hippogriffs: Given that they frequently replace horses in use in Final Fantasy games, perhaps it's not surprising that several characters say "Hold your chocobos" at various points.
• Holiday Mode: In addition to holiday-themed content (such as limited-time summons and missions against holiday-themed foes like Frostor, the killer snowman), many of the icons (including the launch icon for the game) will get a holiday-themed makeover around major holidays celebrated across countries.
• Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: In Artemios's, one of the game's visions, backstory, he started out as a simple archer whose skills were so great he was called on regularly to assassinate humans. Eventually, he came to enjoy it so much that he couldn't stop and started killing people indiscriminately, and had to be put down himself. In the actual game, he's so blood thirsty that he'll break the fourth wall and directly threaten you when you level him up through the fusion system.
• Hybrid Monster: As per Final Fantasy tradition, several monsters (most prominently, the Chimera boss and its palette swaps, which are a lion/goat/dragon combination similar to its mythological origin) are mashups of several different creatures. The also describes the final form of Chaotic Darkness, the Final Boss of Season 1, with parts/the whole bodies of at least eight different monsters forming its body.
• Identical Stranger: It comes up at the end of chapter 1 of season 3 - Daisy, the actress apparently immune to the effect of the Hollow, decides to join Fina. She then changes and reveals that her appearance previously was just a costume for the play she was putting on - her actual appearance is identical to Lid's season 1 form.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The event missions can have up to six different difficulty levels:
  • Beginner (BGN)
  • Intermediate (INT)
  • Advanced (ADV)
  • Professional (PRO)
  • Elite (ELT)
  • Legend (LGD)
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Scattered around the towns and exploration maps are locked chests which require magic keys to open. Nothing in these chests is necessary to progress (even for the optional missions, there are alternatives), but they do contain useful and rare treasures. The only way to obtain the keys is to craft them using two rare items (one is a potential byproduct of crafting abilities, the other a 50% likely drop from a rare Piñata Enemy) or purchasing a batch using lapis.
• I Gave My Word: Lasswell and Rain discuss how important a knight's commitment and honor are — to the extent that they are honor-bound to oppose their liege if he turns out to be evil.
• Irony: The Trust Master reward for most characters makes sense — a powerful weapon or ability that's thematic for the character. Exdeath? His reward is Holy — and he's one of the very few characters with an innate weakness... you guessed it, to holy damage.
• Item Caddy:
  • The Pharmacology passive ability improves the power of used items, and the Drink command gives the user a wider range of items that can be used.
  • Ilias and Mel are the clearest examples of this trope. They can use Salve to make single-target item effects AoE. Ilias also has innate Drink, an upgraded version of the Pharmacology passive, which stacks with the original, and a wide range of support tools. While Salve is designed to only work with Potions and Ethers, a Good Bad Bug makes this useful. By targeting someone with an item, using Salve, and backing out to using an item, it targets them.
  • On the obtaining side of this drope, the game gives many options. Montana, Paul and Pirate Jake double the gil dropped. Locke and Pirate Jake both have abilities that boost the drop rate of normal items, and Pod 153 replicates this well. Xon increases rare item drop rates, but anyone with the Great Raven's Cape can do the same. Some of the official videos suggest that these do stack, but with diminishing returns (with the suggestion that three sources of drop boost are the limit).
• Item Crafting: As the game progresses, recipes for equipment, items, and abilities are found in the world in treasure chests and as rewards for missions.

J - L

• Joke Item: The Angel Slayer is a two-handed short sword earned by beating the Tower of Lezard Valeth. At 180 ATK, it certainly sounds like an impressive weapon. The catch is that it has a damage variance of 1% - 110%, making its effective DPS a fraction of advertised. This is a Mythology Gag to its home game, where it had an even wider variance (it was fully capable of doing just one point of damage at any time).
• Jumped at the Call: Rain is not one to let a chance at heroism go by.
• Kaizo Trap:
  • When Shrinyu hits 0 HP, it will unleash a Desperation Attack that does massive physical and magical fire damage. At least one unit has to survive to pass the trial, which is easy enough if you can get 100% fire resistance on a single unit.
  • The Gargantuan Gigantuar has a similar trap when it hits 0 HP; it deals a fixed, unavoidable 1 million damage to the entire party, requiring at least one unit to have Reraise.
  • A common staple of Trial bosses is that any mooks they summon tend to go berserk if they're left alive after killing the main boss, usually in the form of a powerful and unavoidable AoE attack. An example of this is the Scorn of Antenolla battle, in which the roots of the flower will wipe your team if you kill the main flower first.
• Katanas Are Just Better: In general, the most powerful weapon available in a given story area will be a katana. Only a few characters — samurai, ninjas, and Lasswell — can use them, though. This doesn't end up holding true for events and Trusts, however, as greatswords and spears generally outpace katanas a bit, and some regular swords have slightly overtaken them.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Fina remembers nothing before contacting Rain and Lasswell in the game's opening. Veritas of the Dark hints that there's some commonality between him and her, though.
• Last Chance Hit Point: Certain units come with an ability that allows them to survive fatal damage one time, which is refreshed each time they die and are revived. Depending on the skill, it may require the unit to be above a certain health threshold and may only have a percent chance of activating. Furthermore, it's important to note that the skill activates based on a single hit. For example, a unit that takes 100k of damage in a single hit would survive if the the skill triggered, while the same attack split into 20 or 40 hits would overwhelm the skill due to the volume of repeat damage.
• Late-Arrival Spoiler:
  • The Memory of Aquapolis banner featured a playable character who is a Walking Spoiler Dark Fina. The character is also now part of the general summoning pool, meaning you can see her in friend lists and possibly pull her well before the plot introduces her.
  • Relatedly, finding out that visions aren't related just to dead people and that even the living can become visions was a pretty big reveal during the Olderion arc and some of its related side story events, with the discovery that Luka can still help you out despite being at the bottom of a lake a major triumphant moment... and she's in the general gacha as a pullable unit, and as a 4* to boot, so she's not even that rare. For people starting in 2017, it's entirely conceivable to pull her while you're still on Lanzelt, three whole continents before you even meet her for real. If acquired early and leveled, this point is also spoiled by the unit descriptions for Charlotte, Mercedes, and Lawrence, along with a plethora of other units.
  • Relatedly again, later FFBE-centric side story events feature the idea of visioning into recent events as a major plot point, and are accessible long before it's relevant in the main story, so you'll be able to see characters like Shera, Wilhelm, and more of Jake's crew long before you get to them in the plot, depending on when you start. On top of that, the rest of the corporeal party will be in the event, so you'll see Lid, Nichol, etc. long before gaining them as characters. The events even spoil the main plot point of Season 2, with S2 Lasswell leading the party and everyone openly talking about Rain being gone.
  • This trope is exaggerated with the appearance of Pyro Glacial Lasswell, complete with Rain's sword, hinting that something happened to him (spoiler: it did. Specifically, he died, and got better, and took on a Secret Identity). Gumi even promoted this in their news and released an update video to promote him. All of the future versions of the main characters and Raegen have been released as well. Japan gets the rest of the armorless Sworn Six, Hyoh, and Akstar.
  • The beach-themed versions of Fina, Lid, and Dark Fina are unlike the other seasonal units in that they remain in the general gacha pool. A new player could theoretically draw any of them (and get spoilers on the unit screen about them) right from the get-go. The Halloween characters do the same as well, although those are only available during Halloween events.
  • For newcomers to the game, summoning any of the Sworn Six of Paladia in the gacha can serve to ruin major plot points from all over the first season. While Darklord, Flamelord, and Lightlord are very rare 5-star visions (and thus have a very low chance of appearing to present spoilers), Heavenlord, Waterlord, and Earthlord are 4-star visions, and thus much easier to draw even outside of their banner events.
  • A major plot twist in the Season 2 campaign — namely, the fact that a certain character was another character's Secret Identity — was hinted at when said two characters (Hyoh and Rain) were featured, and received 7-star upgrades, on the same summoning banner.
  • Similarly, Akstar and Zeno of the Beta Star shared a banner in the Global version of the game, spoiling the reveal that Akstar was the party's enemy all along.
• Lethal Joke Character:
  • Kenny Crow, the mascot from Final Fantasy XV, looks useless at first glance, as a 4-star base DPS/buffer hybrid with 100% passive provoke and too little bulk to back it up. However, he has 20% innate evasion. With enough evasion-based gear, he actually becomes a competent provoke tank, since it's easy to fit enough bulk for him to survive.
  • Vossler is hardly the best magic tank around, especially with Neo Visions seriously outclassing him, but he possesses two unique attributes which make him an excellent budget choice for surviving difficult trials. First, he has three separate HP locks, allowing him to soak up a lot of big hits. Second, he has a physical cover on a cooldown skill that, while having an abyssmal proc rate (7%), nullifies 100% of incoming damage. With some luck (and mirage stacks for a buffer), he can shut down two turns of physical damage.
• Lethal Joke Item: The Seraph Staff is a limited item that, when run through Steel Castle for its unique enhancement, auto-casts a three-turn status effect immunity at the start of the battle. This is average on its face, since plenty of units have abilities that do the same over more turns, but how it interacts with Neo Vision units is what elevates it. Whenever a unit Brave Shifts, the effect is refreshed, making it permanent on a unit that can shift consistently every few turns. On top of that, the effect is uniquely undispellable, so it trumps effect debuffs cast by certain bosses, making it an excellent choice for provokers if you can fit it. It's telling that two different Clash of Wills bosses have had dispell/debuff skills paired together that make the Seraph Staff the only thing capable of overriding the combo.
• Lethal Lava Land: About half of Zoldaad is covered in potentially active volcanoes, and a stretch of desert bordering it. This leads to much of the nation's militarism; they have significant resource problems because of how much of their land is nigh-uninhabitable.
• Level-Up at Intimacy 5: The Trust Master mechanic. Any summoned vision has a trust value which maxes out at 100%. This value has a chance to raise by 0.1% after completing a level, or can be artificially raised by fusing a vision with Trust Moogles or other copies of itself, the latter being faster but more difficult to obtain. The higher the unit's trust value, the more likely it is that the player will gain an extra item after completing a level, which is guaranteed at 100%. Full Trust Mastery also grants a special ability or item unique to that unit, which can then be equipped on any compatible unit you choose. Many of these items and abilities can only be obtained via Trust Mastery and are appropriately powerful, with the rarer summons typically having better rewards. Maxed units can also be traded for trust coins, which can in turn be traded for rare items like 5-star summoning tickets.
• Level-Up Fill-Up: Each time you rank up, your NRG is refilled, all orbs (raid, arena, etc.) are refilled, and you get 100 Lapis. Any excess NRG you have rolls over, but excess orbs do not.
• Limit Break: Each character has a limit meter, which fills based on how many gems are picked up after an enemy is hit. When filled, it allows a character to do some splashy effect. Most are attacks, though some are various buffs or heals. They also get stronger with regular use, though this is even slower than Trust Mastery grinding unless supplemented with Burst Pots.
• Linear Warriors, Quadratic Wizards: Averted. The chaining meta has a fair balance between physical and magical units. Both get access to multiple-hit attacks that pile up the damage, some of which hit multiple enemies and/or boast elemental damage. Also, physical skills get used twice for the price of one use if Dual Wield is equipped, while magical spells (or abilities) can only be cast twice and spend Mana on both casts if Dualcast is equipped or they have an ability that allows them to dualcast certain abilities. Physical units are both more economical and have wider application of use, but Gumi seems to be making an effort to balance it out with Global-exclusive units and rewards taking advantage of Magic. Trance Terra's enhancements were released early, making her a top-tier chainer, Grim Lord Sakura could dualcast her Grim abilities, and Barbariccia gave 5-star mages a strong chaining spell in Tornado and two powerful finishing skills in Aeroja and Sunder.
• Literal-Minded: Fina doesn't get turns of phrase at all, but as she was sealed in a crystal for countless years, she's a bit new to figures of speech.
• Loads and Loads of Sidequests: Much of the action in the first two seasons is helping out random villagers with various issues, be it collecting 20 Bear Asses or finding lost items. Rewards vary from easily obtained items to recipes for valuable equipment. This is abandoned in the following seasons.
• Loophole Abuse:
  • For level missions that require defeating an enemy a certain way (magic, limit burst, etc.), you can easily get around the restriction and still earn credit by killing the enemy with whatever you please and then tacking on the relevant attack at the very end. For example, an enemy that must be defeated by magic can instead be killed with a large physical chain with a weak magic set to land after the chain has finished. This is because the game tracks the condition by the enemy's health being reduced past zero, even if it's zero to begin with. The technique does take careful timing, however, as performing it too early won't earn credit and the computer will cancel it out if you perform it after the enemy's health is already zero, especially in the case of magic and espers.
  • The Arena has conditions each week which ban certain types of moves — combos, some or all magic, healing, etc. — and a blanket ban on instant death and Percent Damage Attack moves. However, espers and Limit Breaks are never banned, even if their effects would violate these conditions. This allows certain units and espers to get around the restrictions, though obviously they're not as convenient as moves that can be used each turn. Counter attacks can also beat the restrictions.
  • Aside from Save Scumming, there is an exploit involving Setzer's Cursed Card and two units with Hide or Lie Low equipped with Rikku's Pouches. Have one Hider use Hide/Lie Low, the other units do whatever they're meant for, and finally have Setzer target the party with Cursed Card. Cursed Card will Petrify the entire party save the absent unit. While Petrified, units cannot be attacked or even targeted, except by spells/abilities meant to cure the condition. On the next turn, the hiding unit comes back and cures everybody using Panacea. The other Hider uses Hide, everyone else attacks or heals MP, and Setzer uses Cursed Card on the party again. This creates a perpetual cycle where the entire party is considered effectively dead or removed from battle, leaving no valid targets for your enemy to attack. While not intended, this makes the system rife for abuse.
  • The way Entrust works makes it pretty easy to fire off very expensive limit bursts every turn. Instead of doing it on a crystal-by-crystal basis, Entrust fills by a percentage. For example, a freshly-pulled Larsa could Entrust a full LB gauge to a fully-powered Ayaka, despite her LB costing almost 5 times as much, the only downside being fielding a unit that will die to a stiff breeze. Its culmination was a popular strategy to kill Omega by stacking an underleveled unit with as much LB crystal filling as possible and having them Entrust to a powered-up Olive every turn. This allowed her to spam her LB every turn for massive damage with impunity, killing Omega fairly easily. Entrust is a fairly rare ability on stronger units, seemingly for this very reason, but there's a notable exception in Warrior of Dawn Galuf. Galuf has an Entrust skill that is only restricted by being exempt from his multi-cast, meaning you can't also refresh physical cover while using it. That said, for the cost of a missed turn or two of damage, he's a physical tank and entruster in one.
• Loot Boxes: The main method of character acquisition in the game is a gacha, which can be pulled by either using tickets or lapis. There are several gachas to pull from - one general one, one banner that's weighted more for the current featured units, one with a list of units pared from the general one that requires special EX tickets, one low-level free banner (that uses friend points instead of lapis), and usually a couple of others that rotate depending on current events.
• Lost in Translation: Has become more common from around Pharm on. Characters (like Nichol and Loren) are misgendered, for example, and lines are misattributed. Most notably, in the Guardian of the Order event, the team constantly refers to a group of religious cultists as "churchgoers".
• Lower-Deck Episode:
  • The "A Promise Beyond Time" event is one — it concerns two concurrent plotlines that don't even mention any members of Rain's party at all. One concerns the elven ruins explored in the second part of Gronoa and the last days of the elves that lived there, and the other concerns an adventurer trying to piece together what happened to the elves. It gives much background as to what happened on the continent once it became a desolate poison-choked landscape.
  • Generally most story events focusing on the featured visions of the week. The only one that isn't is the Veritas of the Dark event, which is a direct call-back to the beginning of the story and actually has Rain and Lasswell as bosses.
• Low-Level Advantage:
  • There is one advantage to using a lower-star version of a vision — their Limit Break can be maxed out with fewer uses than in a higher star form. That said, weaker visions have a smaller level cap for their Limit Break, so you'll have to grind it one way or another, and reaching the maximum level is still a very long grind without using pots. This was eventually patched out, making the grind identical regardless of the unit's star level.
  • Players with lower ranks reach the next rank faster, replenishing their energy and orbs. In the arena and during raids, this means a lower ranked player can play more often than one with a higher rank and possibly end up with a better score, by virtue of being able to replenish their orbs faster.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • The Enchanted Maze is a variety of one. There are no bad results — even the worst case scenario gives the player a metal minitaur, a metal giantaur, and two items useful for awakening units. However, getting lucky with the RNG provides two each of every variety of metal cactuar, a gil snapper, a mini burst pot, and the drops from three minituars, plus an assortment of items to awaken units. The Intermediate version is even more of one — it gives better rewards and even allows a player to make two wrong guesses before booting them out, and the bare minimum acquired will be two metal gigantuars, a king gil snapper, and the chance to collect a couple awakening items twice. However, the fewer wrong guesses made, the better the rewards. If a player manages to get incredibly lucky and guess the correct path each time, they get a half-dozen metal gigantuars, three king gil snappers, two burst pots, the drops of three minituars, and the aforementioned assortment of awakening items, including a few six-star awakening materials.
  • In some cases, clearing a level without one of your characters being knocked out can wind up as this. If an encounter that has this as a victory requirement contains a boss with a variation on the Death spell, then you can only hope that the RNG doesn't screw you over or that you're able to take out the enemies before they can use it. The first battle against Odin is a notable example, as he has a AoE Death move which he uses as a threshold attack. Beating that mission requires overwhelming force to kill him without his threshold attack triggering.
  • The Skeleton King gets a mention. He has a chance to drain your MP, restore his, and/or spam powerful AoE attacks against you in the same turn. The punishing nature of his attacks, the outright circumvention of the main strategy to defeat him, and the specific combination makes the strategy for winning "don't get a bad beat". Completionists had an especially tough time, especially considering there was a brief glitch to get another missable item.
  • The Realm of the Dragon King randomly gives enemies a preemptive attack. If certain enemies get this, you may find your entire party getting wiped without any ability to save yourself.
  • The Fallen Ice Bird trial falls squarely under this trope. The battle is simple enough in theory, as Glacial and its minions have incredibly low defenses and an extreme weakness to fire attacks. However, Glacial gets a preemptive attack which allows it to hit your entire party with massive damage, including an Ice attack that is all but guaranteed to wipe three members of the party. If the boss survives the next turn, it summons two more minions and imbues Ice to everyone's physical attacks — which it has complete immunity from. The damage adds up very quickly. The strategy to beat it boils down to hoping your DPS units survive the first assault and knocking out Glacial on the first turn.
  • Diabolos's 3-star trial is easy enough after dealing with his Gravigas, but after 50%, it turns into pure luck. He gains the ability to randomly cast an AoE Dispel, AoE Full Break, or AoE physical barrier. Running physical units like Orlandeau makes the fight a roll of the dice.
  • The Venomous Vines of Death combines punishing damage and breaks with heavy RNG, especially after passing 60% health in the first phase. Once that threshold is passed, he has a 33% chance of using Swallow (ST Death), Freeze Prey (ST magic damage, Stop, and Reflect), or Malboro Song (ST magic damage and Berserk) every turn. Swallow isn't a problem with proper gear, and Freeze Prey is annoying but manageable due to your tank still having an action. Malboro Song is debilitating, and in effect forces you to go without a provoke tank (or, if you only brought one, any tank) for a turn, which can be fatal. The second phase also has some RNG with the Mini Malboro sets. Despite each big Malboro resisting a different type of attack, the primary strategy is to slowly grind through one phase and quickly beat down the other. This strategy is especially annoying, especially considering the second phase's Mini Malboro spawns are random. You will either get a set of 2 physically resistant Malboros and 1 magically resistant Malboro or 2 magically resistant and one physically resistant. Players bringing one type of DPS are in for a significantly longer fight if they get the wrong set of Mini Malboros. And even if they do, the possibility of them chaining (or even sparking) Bad Breaths looms over the battlefield.
• Luke, I Am Your Father:
  • At the end of the Olderion arc, Veritas of the Dark is revealed to be Raegen, Rain's father.
  • Happens again about a third of the way through Pharm, Veritas of the Waters is revealed to be the distant ancestor to Nichol, Luka, and Elle.

M - O

• Made of Evil: At the end of the Land of the Crystals storyline, Sol summons a vision made of the collective evil of all mankind all throughout history, the Chaotic Darkness.
• Magikarp Power: Some of the visions are quite powerful, but they start with practically no abilities.
  • Most extreme is Exdeath. He's not only extremely sturdy, but he's one of the most powerful mages in the game. However, he can't learn any attack magic other than Gravity (a Fixed Damage Attack that can't be a killing blow) until he gets about halfway through leveling as a four-star vision. He won't have any other innate attack spells for 66 levels. He also gains levels on the slowest experience track, amplifying the trope's effect.
  • Many former 5-star max units become this. Rain and Paladin Cecil. Rain even going up to his 5* form pales when compared to a lot of the popular Physical Vision characters, having fairly mediocre stats and no real notable skills. At his 6* form, Rain gains access to a skill with the same debuff as Full Break, as well as his own unique "Leadership" buff, which is essentially the Cheer and Focus skills in one, making him an amazing Support option for any party that even outperforms some Premium units. Cecil, on the other hand, goes from a tank outclassed by General Leo or Amarant to arguably the best Stone Wall in the game at his 6* form (primarily rivaled by Warrior of Light). At 5*, Cecil has issues serving as the tank since he lacks an effective option to Draw Aggro on his own compared to the other two having the Draw Attacks Passive. At 6*, not only does Cecil gain passives that allow him to cover 75% of attacks (even taking 2 AoE hits when covering an ally) with a Defense and Spirit boost included, but he also gains access to Curaja to supplement healing (which can be helpful given his HP Pool at high levels and he benefits from Spirit boosting for magic tanking) and Focus if you need someone to buff the Squishy Wizards he's covering. And to top it off, Cecil's Limit Break is upgraded from a DEF/SPR boost to include an Attack buff for the party, making Cecil one of the few units some players consider Limit Grinding.
  • Randi from Secret of Mana takes the trope to new heights. As a 5* base vision he was unremarkable up until he received his 6* awakening and the abilities that came with it including a super fast limit-bar fill skill, his Power Charge now doubling his stats and giving him 3 new supercharged moves, and an out of the box Doublehand that stacks with the Trust Master Reward. (In Japan, Doublehand stacks with itself, making a doublehand build Randi crazy overpowered.) Players in the Global version would probably be underwhelmed after pulling him at first aside from passives (increased damage against beasts, dragons, undead and fairies), but with a little luck and patience, you will be rewarded with one of the most potent physical units in the game.
  • Healers in general run into either this or Crutch Character — some healers, like Aiden, get useful heals quickly, but their power wanes at higher levels. On the other end of the scale is Refia — she has to be awakened at least once to get any hit point restoration outside of equipped espers/materia, but once she's maxed out after two awakenings, she is in the running for the most potent white mage in the game.
  • In trademark fashion, Onion Knight fits this by way of stats, which at his base rarity of 5*, are at max level, more in line with those of a 3* unit (1200 HP, ~60MP/ATK, ~40 everything else). By 6* max level he becomes one of the highest ATK units in the game, gains access to a suite of passives, chaining moves and element damage/resistance actives. He becomes even better with his Trust Master Reward, the Onion Sword, the strongest non-element sword in the game, which also unlocks his strongest on-demand chaining move, Onion Cutter.
  • Despite being reworked into a more traditional fighter this time around, Gau is still this. His stats are rather low to begin with and he only learns mediocre attacks with only one Herd-Hitting Attack through his 3- and 4-star forms. It isn't until he's at his 5-star level Cap that he learns his unique Leap skill, which grants him a random set of unique and powerful attacks that are far more effective, including a powerful Life Drain, an Armor-Piercing Attack, and even his infamously powerful moves like Flash Rain, Flare Star, and Cat Scratch.
• Mana Burn: Osmose and related skills drain the opponent's MP to refill the user's. The amount drained is based on the type of skill used and the associated damage type. Some bosses have much stronger versions that can completely zero out a single unit or sometimes the entire party.
• Marathon Boss:
  • Aigaion in the Chamber of the Fallen can take hours to complete, depending on how much damage you can do and your ability to survive each turn. This is notable in that even the tougher bosses beyond it don't take nearly as long to kill if you have the strength to do so.
  • Any boss that has the gimmick of "phases" where they can lower their defenses under certain circumstances can be fought instead with Fixed Damage Attack moves (buffed out by elemental chaining and equipped "killer" abilities), bypassing the absurd defense but instead turning the fight into one of these. Most prominent is the fight to upgrade Carbuncle to a three-star esper - one popular method is to simply rely on non-dark and non-light elemental chaining capped with Setzer's Dice or Double Dice to whittle away at its health. While effective and comparatively easy, it's also notoriously slow - it's not unusual to need over 100 rounds with this method.
  • Unless you have multiple hybrid units that do non-elemental, fire, lightning, or wind damage, the Venomous Vines of Death is guaranteed to be a long battle, as it contains two parts - one is extremely resistant to physical attacks, and the other is extremely resistant to magical attacks. Outside of anyone capable of gearing out two solid hybrid attackers, the choice is generally whether the player wants the first half to be quick and the second taking a long time, the first taking a long time and the second being quick, or both taking a decent chunk of time.
  • The Assimilator of Unknown Origin in the Clash of Wills isn't ordinarily an example, but it becomes one if you turn on all the health modifiers. At a whopping 500%, the boost gives Thranothor 15 billion health, and on a burst turn you can expect to do around a fifth of that total. It's notably the first CoW boss that does not penalize turn count, simply because players cannot be expected to knock down that health total in ten turns. It gets even worse if you activate the Challenge AI modifier, which causes the boss in its first phase (100%-75%) to retaliate with AoE instant death if you do more than 500 million damage in one turn, forcing you to poke away until you hit the threshold for that phase. Finally, the boss has a mechanic that causes it to build morale at an accelerated rate past turn 20, making the fight even harder if it drags on too long.
• Marathon Level:
  • Story events in the vortex are modeled after the world map, but each area must be completed in a single run, and all the mission rewards can only be earned if you can complete the entire thing. Each area has five sections, each with two (later three) missions to complete. The player must have enough NRG to complete the entire area, or at least have the patience to wait for it to regenerate for each section. This can cost up to 90 NRG for the final area. The rewards are well worth it, though, ranging from awakening materials to summon tickets and moogles.
  • The Brutal Bonus Level Realm of the Dragon King can take far longer to complete than an average exploration. All the exploration levels are interconnected, and unlocking them individually requires trekking through one to set up a base camp in another. This means the length is already twice as long on the first playthrough. On top of that, there's between two and three times the amount of random encounters in each section, all of which are far tougher than any normal exploration. The cherry on top, however, is the Eternal Summit. One of the missions requires you to kill all the Shadow Bahamuts in the entire realm (that's seven shadows spread across seven areas) and then defeat Bahamut.
  • These levels have become somewhat devalued by the introduction of characters who can restore more Magic Points then they spend. The first to do so was Raegan, whose "Instant Flash" took 15 MP but restored 18 to the entire party... per hit, meaning you'd get a second helping if Raegan was Dual Wielding (and his abilities all but screamed "Let me dual-wield"). After him came Esther, Zeno of the Beta Star and (to a lesser extent) Akstar, all of whom can similarly refund MP to themselves. Even worse, for every character on this list except Esther, the ability in question is a Herd-Hitting Attack. You have to have enough gear and Materia to kit them out to full potential, but if you do, these characters can breeze through Marathon Levels without having to worry about how many times you can use your good attacks. The healer Ayaka can likewise be set up to restore 50-80 MP to her allies (but not herself) using "Dedication", and regenerate the expended MP passively; but this spell lacks an offensive component.
• Mass Monster-Slaughter Sidequest: Sidequests that don't fall under the 20 Bear Asses list typically fall under these - kill X number of a certain species. Despite the fact that it's usually a monster that's supposedly causing trouble in one particular area, any of that species, regardless of where it spawns, is fair game - given that some monsters are rare spawns in certain areas but common spawns elsewhere, this is fortunate.
• Master of None:
  • Units generally at best have two areas in which they're capable — even then, it's generally more like "good at one, and passable backup in another if need be." Units that attempt a balance at more than that typically lag — Fran gets hit hard by this as she attempts four things (physical attack, magical attack, support magic, and healing magic) and generally falls flat at all of them compared to specialists.
  • Averted for late-game content. Fitting many roles into six slots requires this to some degree.
• Merging the Branches: Rather than pick either the original or the remake version of Final Fantasy III for use in terms of visions, Brave Exvius pulls from both, to the extent that Luneth, Refia, and the original Onion Knight each have two versions playable, and all of them get boosts when Final Fantasy III units are featured.
• Microtransactions: There's nothing stopping a player from just downloading the free app and making progress without purchasing extra items or lapis. That said, the game will regularly remind the player that extra items or lapis is just a few clicks away.
• Mirror Match:
  • As more characters have been added to the gacha, these have become more and more likely to happen (especially since levels can be replayed, either for extra lapis from sidequests or for drops). The first instance where this was possible was in Olderion, where Mercedes was added to the gacha just a few weeks after she first appeared as a boss fight. This has since included all of the Sworn Six of Paladia.
  • Furthermore, in the Tournament Arc in the second half of Gronoa, the player can use the same characters they are supposed to be fighting against, and can summon the same visions as the opponent if they desire. This can also come into play for events based on prior Final Fantasy games — for example, since Kefka was in the gacha from the beginning, it was quite possible to bring him in to fight against the Kefka who was an event battle for the Final Fantasy VI event — in fact, to encourage the Mirror Match, Kefka was given an additional awakening when the event launched.
• Money for Nothing: The rate at which money can be acquired outstrips the increase in shop prices somewhere around the end of the first island, and that's if you don't do any vortex missions that allow money farming (the Gil Snapper's Cave event every weekend is an easy 2 million gil at the least). Attempted to be averted by some extra bundles, which allow a player to purchase materials and metal cactuars for in-game currency as opposed to real-world currency or lapis. The cost of enhancing characters also increases dramatically as their level goes up and getting the last 10 levels for a 6-star unit can cost as much as getting them from 1 to 50, if not more, though still a drop in the bucket all things considered. Ability awakening is genuinely expensive, up to 1 million gil per enhancement in some cases, though certainly not difficult to earn. Expeditions serve as a steady drain, costing far less than ability awakening but quick to add up as you queue new ones. This problem is more pronounced for players that don't spend real money for lapis, as they have less units to spend the money on and thus can reach the cap a lot faster, clogging their inventory with Gil Snappers that they may have to sell for no profit simply to make some room. Even though the cap has been increased several times, the introduction of Gil Snapper Towers (500k in value) as raid rewards makes reaching the cap extremely easy, perpetuating the problem.
• Money Sink:
  • The Global-exclusive Expedition system heavily leans towards this. You can dedicate some of your units, cash, and items to a mission which can take anywhere from three hours to an entire day. The cheap D/C/B-class expeditions give marginally useful rewards, such as items that duplicate certain useful spells/abilities and magicite that can be farmed in exploration maps. However, if the player is willing to finance the A/S-class expeditions, they can get 6-star awakening materials, high-end ability awakening materials, and even Trust Moogles. However, the latter is distinctly more expensive, and units need to be much more powerful in order to ensure a decent chance of success. Expect to drop a bunch of in-game currency to farm these.
  • Ability awakenings, full stop. In addition to the crysts necessary for awakening, they cost a considerable amount of gil, up to a million for the +2 awakenings. The upgrades can be well worth it, though. The most extreme examples are Agrias, who goes from a poor Orlandeau clone to a near copy for just under 3 million, and Queen, who can be upgraded from a somewhat disappointing 5* base to a useful Support unit at a cost of 7 million.
  • The 7-star meta in general functions as this. Beyond using up an extra five-star base to upgrade a unit that hit level 100, it also costs 3 million gil to change the unit from a level 100 six-star to a level 101 seven-star. Gaining levels beyond that requires an absurd amount of experience (over six million to go from level 119 to 120), strongly pushing players to spend the money to fuse metal cactuars to further power their units.
  • In terms of Lapis, the slot limit for units/materials/etc. seems to have been designed to encourage the player to dump Lapis into expanding them, almost as much as the game's gacha system itself. It's very easy to reach the cap in any one category, requiring an expansion unless you're willing/able to sell off or use them. At 100 Lapis per five slots, it's a very expensive investment, though at least it stays maxed once you pay for it.
• Mordor: Gronoa, the sixth continent Rain travels to, is a desolate land where almost nothing natural grows, a poisonous miasma covers everything (and gets thicker as it goes higher, which limits airship travel), and the only civilization possible is found in a pair of underground towns.
• Multiple Life Bars: Barrier skills grant a second buffer health bar to units, averaging around 2000 HP. It can help you survive an attack or two, and it also has the property of not being affected by Gravity-type health reduction attacks. Some bosses can likewise cast barriers on themselves, to the tune of several million HP, but these can be dispelled.
• Multi Shot:
  • Barrage, which does four full-powered strikes on foes. Its power, even at its 16 MP cost, makes any unit with it formidable.
  • Many characters' regular attacks can be considered as this. Lightning and Seven, for example, hit 5 times in 1 normal attack. If you have Dual Wielding on any character, all of their melee abilities will be used twice in a row, doubling the hitcount: Queen from Final Fantasy Type-0 is the absolute queen of this, as she has an unique skill that lets her attack 5 times in a row. If combined with Dual Wielding, this means her 5-hit normal attack will be used 10 times in a row, easily making it the longest attack animation in the entire game.
  • Chaining skills, which are becoming more common, are another form of this.
• My Future Self and Me:
  • If you can summon multiple copies of the same unit with different star rankings, nothing's stopping a player from just using both at the same time. Done quite literally with Cecil, as both his dark knight and paladin selves are visions, each with radically different stats and abilities. In fact, the two work quite well together. From the same game, we also have Kain (both in standard and Atoning Dragoon versions, the latter from the game's ending) and Rydia (in standard and Pure Summoner versions - ironically, the more powerful version is based on her early-game appearance).
  • All of the main story units, plus Dark Fina, are affected by this trope as well. Technically, since the vision of Dark Fina is implied to be the Dark Fina from 700 years ago, the trope is literal here too.
    • If you've been playing for a while, you can field an entire team of Finas, all with different forms. There are twelve Fina units in the game: Fina, Dark Fina, White Witch Fina, Beach Time Fina, Seabreeze Dark Fina, Cheerleader Fina, Lotus Mage Fina, Summer Fina and Lid, Kimono Fina, Chocobo Fina, Light Lily Dark Fina, and Blue Mage Fina. And that's just global; there are even more from Japanese-exclusive crossovers as well.
    • The same can be done with Rain. Nine versions exist: Rain, Awakened Rain, Demon Rain, Vagrant Knight Rain, Chocobo Rain, Hyoh of the Delta Star, Akstar, Zeno of the Beta Star, and Aldore King Rain.
  • Taken literally with the CG story units, who are all 5-star base versions of the main five characters of Season 2. The Sworn Six also get updated versions for Season 2, including several who get holiday forms.
  • Heavily implied in the actual story with Akstar, who reveals himself to be a future version of Rain, and serves in the Orders with Rain.
  • Heliarc, a 4-star unit, is Sol's past self from before his Magitek enhancements.
• Mysterious Waif: Fina, the girl who was trapped in the Earth Crystal, has no memory of her past, and who accompanies Rain and Lasswell in part because she has a vague feeling that she should.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Several of the visions are cameos from previous Final Fantasy games, and they'll make references to their home games in various places. For example, Edgar will flip and catch a coin in his victory pose, and Maria will call to Guy, Firion, and Leon when leveled from the menu screen.
  • One important to the plot for the series as a whole: the number of different characters named Cid that are interested in airships is given a nod when Rain, Lasswell, and Fina reach Dilmagia, where most of the world's airships are built. It turns out that there's levels of skill for airship engineers, and the master airship engineer is called "Cid," neatly explaining why so many Cids are interested in airships. The current top candidate for Cid, a woman named Lid, joins Rain's crew. And the original Cid, who helped build the airship Invincible (which is itself a Mythology Gag for Final Fantasy III), is Veritas of the Heavens.
  • Zoldaad's first part intermingles plot points from Final Fantasy V (using the energy of the Fire Crystal for industrial and military purposes) and Final Fantasy VIII (a rebel resistance, an important orphanage, and an assault on a transmission tower ending with a battle against X-ATM092). Its other part adds Final Fantasy II (rescuing a royal prince/princess from a power-hungry emperor, and pitting you against a Behemoth).
  • Nichol's brinksmanship with Veritas of the Light, where the former gambles with the latter with their fates over a coin flip, has some very strong parallels with Celes' recruitment of Setzer in Final Fantasy VI. Right down to the one offering the coin flip using a double-headed coin, and the latter seeing through it but agreeing anyway, albeit for different reasons.
  • During the "Out For Vengeance" side story, when Tomoe shouts at Akstar to wait, he responds "Do I look like a waiter?"
  • The Chamber of Arms is one in almost its entirety to the Sealed Weapons of Final Fantasy V. Notably, 3 of the weapons (Gaia Bell, Sasuke's Katana, and the Flame Whip) are the same, and another 3 (Lightbringer, Holy Rod, and Dragon's Whisker) are expies for weapons whose original names are used for weapons acquired elsewhere.
  • Elena is a reference to the Warrior of Light trope, even appearing in a popular manga called Fundamental Forces.
• Naked First Impression: Fina appears to Rain and Lasswell this way, albeit floating in a crystal.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: Averted with the "Time for Revenge" and "Memories from the Battlefield" side stories, which detail the preparations of the Veritas. "Time for Revenge" follows Veritas of the Dark and Veritas of the Flame as they prepare for their assault on the crystals, with the last chapter being Darklord's assault on the Earth Crystal from the game's opening. The last battle, in fact, is a re-enactment of the Hopeless Boss Fight at the beginning of the game... from the viewpoint of the Darklord. "Memories from the Battlefield" deals with the doings of the Veritas shortly after Aldore effectively exiled them to the world of Lapis, following Veritas of the Light primarily with Waterlord and Boltlord joining her.
• No-Damage Run: The Dark Visions and World of Visions events reward points for taking no damage in battle, later updated to less than 5000. Part of the challenge is gearing for elemental resistance and figuring out how to evade the rest.
• Nostalgia Level: Several special dungeons are based on other Final Fantasy titles, and they do more than just reference them with names — the scenery is updated versions of the original, and the music (both while wandering and in-battle) is from the original game that the map is based on. In the case of Inside the Giant of Babil, it even uses the same dungeon layout as the original game, and the Dreadnought level includes options for asking terms to enemy soldiers (though this starts a battle since they're Imperial grunts that you just shouted "Wild Rose" at) or showing items (as in showing the pass to the guard to bypass a battle).
• Not-Actually-Cosmetic Award: The game has a trophy system, with tangible benefits for earning them. In addition to getting money, items to power up espers, and lapis, gaining enough achievements unlocks crafting recipes for some very useful items. The strongest accessory in the game is gated behind earning nearly every trophy.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: During the Tournament Arc, the Jake/Lasswell and Dark Fina/Rain battles happen offscreen without player input, with the latter winning in both cases. Rain also goes unfought even though Lasswell does not, though his final clash with Lasswell is at least shown as a cutscene.
• One-Hit KO: Death spells and the like are present as usual, and inflicting Petrify on an enemy (except in the Arena) will instantly kill them.
• One-Winged Angel: A feature of many bonus bosses, which have a hit point lock (i.e. they stop taking damage at certain plateaus) to prevent a player from skipping a phase (though counterattacks sometimes are a workaround to these). And the transformation is never a Bishōnen Line transformation - expect a boss to become much more monstrous and probably more visceral. The final boss of the first season, Chaotic Darkness does this as well, but the two phases are treated as different missions (so players are automatically healed, and they can even change parties if they want). Inverted with the victory pose for Scarmiglione - he transforms from his One-Winged Angel form to his simpler white cloak form if he's in the player's party when they win.
• Opposing Combat Philosophies: Neo-Vision units sometimes have a Brave Shift form that is wildly different from their standard form. For example, Monk Sabin of Kolts is a physical attacker in his normal form and a magical attacker in his Shift form.
• Optional Boss:
  • The White Dragon, the Demon Chimera, the Brachiosaur, and the Erinyes on the Farplane. Unlike every other fight, attempting these fights requires no energy expenditure (except if you want a rematch after winning), and defeating them for the first time gives a weapon. Friend units are locked out, but the bosses are easy enough to beat after playing the game for a bit. Although most weapons have fallen to Power Creep, the rest are usable in the current meta.
  • The Chamber of the Fallen was the first section of the Vortex dedicated specifically to challenging bosses. These bosses follow a traditional fight model, costing NRG and allowing you to bring a friend unit. They may be a boss rush, or just one series of bosses. Defeating them gives Infinity +1 equipment, but they have special missions for 10% Trust Moogles, more infinity +1 equipment, and strong abilities. All were considered very strong upon release, and though some have fallen to Power Creep, everything from Gilgamesh on up is still respectably difficult.
  • The Chamber of Arms on the Farplane also contains bonus bosses. There are thirteen bosses in total released over the course of 8 months. Unlike the conventional Farplane fights, these take NRG to complete as well. What distinguishes these are that you can take ten units instead of six. Items and friend units are banned, as are duplicate units. At the start of each turn, you're given the option to swap units to and from your five-man party as you see fit. They're some of the toughest battles in the game, and have the same special missions as the Chamber of the Fallen fights.
  • Limited Vortex events are usually capped off with a limited boss fight during the final week, which plays out similar to a boss fight in the Chamber of the Fallen. Their difficulty varies, though on average they aren't quite as tough as the Fallen bosses.
  • The Chamber of the Vengeful features trial-level reruns of previous bosses. Unlike other bosses, you are strongly encouraged to use multiple units, with mission rewards for clearing with multiple units (up to 25). The units featured in the original event not only get bonus stats, but are tailor-made to take down the boss.
  • 3-star Bahamut normally doesn't have to be fought. You just have to wait out four turns without attacking, which can be exploited in various ways. If you choose to attack him, however, he'll fight back, and you have to beat a boss with absurdly high health and defensive stats, complete immunity to all elements unless he debuffs himself, randomly shifting physical/magical immunity, and the ability to one-shot anything he hits. Win and you get a shiny gold medal to prove you slogged through a fight that takes hundreds of turns to finish.
  • 3* Asura similarly can be skipped, but can be fought for a gold medal if you're willing to kill the boss three times in a row.
• Original Generation: A huge number of the visions are new to the setting, with backstories related to various locales in the game. Some of these function as Foreshadowing as to what's happening in those countries — Ludmille and Carrie in particular give hints about what Zoldaad and Dilmagia, respectively, are like, possibly well before Rain gets to visit them depending on when they get summoned. And then, of course, there's summoning as visions living, plot-relevant characters who are otherwise unable to join Team Rain as physical people, with the likes of Luka, Shera, Wilhelm and the rest of Jake's rebel crew being among the most prominent examples.

P

• Parental Neglect: To hear Rain tell of it, Sir Raegen was not an attentive or caring parent at all. Raegen's obsessions lay entirely elsewhere.
• Party Scattering: Precisely how it happened isn't revealed immediately except, of course, that Rain's disappearance is explained in the ending of Season 1, but the beginning of Season 2 shows that Lasswell and Fina have been separated from the others, and they're trying to reunite with their companions. They catch up to Lid and Jake in the first chapter, and with Nichol and Sakura in the second.
• Peninsula of Power Leveling:
  • The entire purpose of the Chamber of Experience in the Vortex of Desires — in each of the four chambers, the enemies give experience well beyond what enemies of that difficulty would ordinarily provide.
  • The Cactuar Dunes, a now-regular weekend event, is an indirect version. Each level pits you against waves of incredibly easy to kill Metal Cactuar and their larger forms. For each one you kill, you get a Metal Cactuar unit corresponding to the version you killed. Those units can then be fused to whatever unit you feel like to grant them experience. The overall experience gain is much greater than the Chamber of Experience, and it has the benefit of allowing you to level up a unit without having to bring them into a difficult battle (for example, a newly awakened unit that would otherwise die in a few hits). The only drawback is having to spend gil to fuse them to your units.
  • For about a week, the very first Dark Espers trial on Beginner was precisely this. If you have Bushido Freedom, 120 MP, and a powerful Orlandeau friend, you can solo the 10 stamina trial and get that one unit 130,000 EXP. However, Bushido Freedom is gated behind the previous trial's no item mission, which is even harder.
  • The Earth Shrine is unintentionally this. Because Trust Master points are gained at a flat rate regardless of the difficulty or energy cost of a given battle, the very first level (which costs only 1 NRG and has just two parts) is ideal for grinding Trust Master points. It's not exactly quick, taking approximately 10,000 battles to reach full Trust Mastery for any given unit.
• Percent Damage Attack: Gravity spells cut the target's HP by a certain percentage, generally 50 or 75 percent depending on the version. There are a few other attacks with similar properties.
• Permanently Missable Content:
  • Any items from special Vortex events can only be earned while the event is active. Once the event is over, that content is lost to the player unless Gumi decides to do a rerun of the event. Conversely, said items can also only be earned once, so players who cleaned out the event on the first go-around won't be able to earn copies.
  • Characters that are holiday-themed or Crossover characters from non-Final Fantasy titles are only obtainable during their events. If you fail to get one while the events are going on, you're never getting that character. This can be particularly frustrating for the ones with a base rarity of five stars, as the odds of getting a five-star unit draw are extremely low... and you might instead draw a unit with a maximum of five stars (this was eventually patched out, though it affected the Halloween and Christmas summons), which might be a duplicate of something you've already raised from three stars. While paying for more draws is an option, it only improves the odds.
  • The Chamber of Arms is a minor example. Each trial has two difficulties: Easy and Hard. Once you complete Easy, it is replaced by Hard and can never be attempted again, potentially costing you any mission rewards you failed to complete. Fortunately, all of the mission rewards can either be bought in shops or earned through other means, so it's not a big loss.
• Pensieve Flashback: Late in Season 2, Lasswell and his group (Physalis and the Sworn Six — dang, they're all Walking Spoilers) get disrupted while trying to teleport to The Very Definitely Final Dungeon. They get trapped in a weird version of Hyperspace Or Subspace that is populated with crystallized memories, which they view as they try to find an exit. They are memories of the first confrontation with the Season's villain, which has just happened: Rain uses a new technique to No-Sell the villain's attack, and they chase him through a teleporter. Only, the flashbacks tell a different story: the attack lands, with the result that every person viewing the memories is seen to have died in them. Rain, the Sole Survivor, gets helped by an Akstar who still has all his limbs and eyes. This eventually leads to the revelation of our missing-limbed-Akstar's true identity.
• Piñata Enemy:
  • Minituars, which are rare spawns in any exploration dungeon, have two possible item drops — one of the ingredients for Interchangeable Antimatter Keys (and are the only source for said ingredient outside of events or rarely as a bonus after clearing a level with a high-trust unit) and Star Quartz, which can be traded for extremely rare items in the Hidden Elf Village. In the rare dungeons (sometimes offered as limited-time bonuses), gil snappers, metal cactuars, and burst pots also serve this purpose, being easy to defeat and turning into units that are to be redeemed for money or experience, respectively.
  • During King Mog exchange events, the higher difficulty levels will occasionally have an extra round featuring one or more of a special enemy which will drop a massive amount of event currency when killed, but with a spawn chance of no greater than 5%. In some cases (most notably, all three of the Final Fantasy Type-0 events), this will instead be replaced by a Metal Slime (with similarly great rewards).
• Playable Epilogue: After beating the Big Bad of Season 2, one last series of quests open up to show what happens to the heroes after their victory. All are missions with fairly basic enemies as well as easy to accomplish side missions, and any character that could stand against the Season 2 Big Bad could win with a single Herd-Hitting Attack per round. They seem to mostly exist to a) space out the epilogue so that the player isn't forced to sit through 20 minutes of cutscene at once, and b) hand out extra lapis to players for finishing the season.
• Player-Exclusive Mechanic: In the Arena, the computer will never use Dualcast or similar abilities, never use revival or One-Hit KO abilities (limit bursts are an exception), and never summon espers. This keeps the fight from dragging on forever by stopping the AI from raising its fighters, and keeps some of the more dangerous espers out of their hands (2* Odin, for example, can One-Hit KO an entire party if summoned).
• Play Every Day: The game uses this in several ways.
  • All normal missions and most vortex missions require energy, which caps at a certain point and regenerates at a rate of one per five minutes when reduced below that cap, encouraging the player to log in every so often to avoid wasting it.
  • Raids and the Arena/Colosseum use raid and arena orbs respectively, which cap at five and regenerate one per hour.
  • The Arena has five daily participation rewards, which don't require the player to win to earn them.
  • There is a daily reward for simply opening the game up. These are frequently items that otherwise would cost real-world money, like extra summons or more lapis.
  • There are six daily quests (eight on weekends) which grant various rewards. These quests include doing story levels, explorations, any vortex level, Colosseum fights, and giving gifts to friends. Common rewards are extra energy, a small amount of rank experience, and lapis. One quest is usually dedicated to whatever the current headline vortex mission is and gives a bonus appropriate to that mission.
• Plot Detour:
  • The Isle of Kolobos more or less functions as this. It's a stop-off for the ship they hope to take to Dirnado, and it focuses more on helping a little girl deal with her parents' absence due to them being killed, and only briefly ties back into the main plot with a comrade of Veritas appearing in the last mission of the area. If not for the appearance of Ramuh, the entire area would be Filler. Oh, and the ship that Rain, Lasswell, and Fina take gets shipwrecked by the esper Leviathan, more or less defeating the whole point.
  • On a smaller scale, Charlotte's quest has you chase her around from continent to continent all the way back to Grandshelt, getting her out of sticky situations until you get her exclusive shield. At least this is optional.
  • After collecting all keys, the Raven sidequest opens up. This requires a series of random quests from each vaultkeeper, until you get the Raven's Cape. This is also optional, but the rewards are decent.
• Popularity Power: This seems to be the main criteria by which units are selected to gain a 7-star ascension. It's not universal, though; out of the main boy band of Final Fantasy XV, only Ignis was released with a 7-star rarity; the others had it added long after their release. Additionally, there was a long time when no Final Fantasy VII character had a 7-star ranking at all, and the game was remarkably slow about adding the main playable cast of VII period.
• Power Creep: A main feature, like most gacha games.
  • Averted with Sheratan, especially involving tanks. Despite AoE physical cover tanks being highly sought after, the fight does not feature any AoE physical moves to cover. If you have a Provoke tank, you can just have a provoke tank and a cover tank to take the edge off of him. Ironically, this makes Cecil a better tank for her than Warrior of Light (who was infamously hyped and delayed for two months as the next step above Cecil) due to having a significantly higher chance to proc his ST Cover. Then magic tanks came along and obliterated the challenge.
  • Lampshaded by the developers after the game matured. By the time it had been available to global audiences for 2 years, there was a plot flag which allowed you to obtain a character after beating one of the game's earliest campaign dungeons. That character? Lightning, the very first character to have a 6-star rank and once the most powerful unit in the game.
  • Former TMR staples like the Ribbon and Dual Wield can now be purchased outright during King Mog events, often for a pittance.
  • The Global version's Power Creep happens much faster than the Japanese version's. While most expected Akstar to reign in Global, Gumi decided to release Sylvie and Esther. The former, if released in Japan, would have been the best support, despite said game having Power Creep'd for nine months longer in comparison to the global version; the latter not only outpaced Akstar by a mile, but also surpassed (not yet Globally released) CG Lightning, the next threshold of Power Creep. Finally, Zeno of the Beta Star, a unit based on True Dual Wield, made Esther obsolete only a few weeks later, being at least on the level of CG Bartz (who symbolized the level after Lightning). Meanwhile, Akstar, notorious to single-player-campaign players as the strongest ally to the good-guys party — not to mention, probably the fourth-most-powerful character alive (and the other three are villains) — and hotly anticipated for all these reasons, came out at the same time and was almost instantly cast aside, leading to strong debate from fans.
  • Espers got hit with this pretty hard. Damaging espers were a staple during the Chamber of Arms, being useful for large burst damage to end the final stage in one move. With the introduction of seven star units, summoners are at best niche and the only summoners worth using use the esper bar to power their own moves instead of relying on their equipped esper.
• Powers as Programs: Several abilities can be acquired as equipment, which then can be placed on any character with ability slots (which is most of them). Some can be equipped by anyone, while others require ratings for particular levels of magic.
• Power Equals Rarity: Averted at the start. While certain characters were obviously more powerful than others, because only certain ones could Rank Up to the then-maximum rank of 6 stars, there was no particular correlation between a unit's starting rank and its maximum. Therefore, meta-defining units like Cecil (the best tank), Exdeath (the best mage), Cloud of Darkness (the best physical attacker) and Roselia (the best healer) could all be obtained at 3 stars and then ascended via (extensive) Level Grinding. All of this changed with the addition of the 7-star ascensions. The only units that can reach 7 stars start at the 5 stars, the hardest rarity to obtain; under normal circumstances, pulling on the gacha will yield a 5-star unit between 3% and 5% of the time. (See Purposely Overpowered for what happens after that.) It has reached the point where basically anything without a 7-star ranking is basically useless except for niche applications.
• Power Glows: The general way you can tell if a premium unit has a higher star rating is to see if anything is brightly colored and glowing. The lower level versions of a unit will be fairly standard, while glowing weapons and auras flare up around the stronger versions. For those that have multiple upgrades, the glow naturally increases with each upgrade.
• Power-Up Letdown:
  • Increasing the level of limit bursts used to only improve the effectiveness by just 5% (or 1% for limits that provide buffs/debuffs). Depending on the star rating of the unit, it can take weeks to get just a marginal improvement on a limit burst's power. This is probably why expeditions offer Burst Pots on a regular basis, and a King Burst Pot every two weeks if you hit the relic requirement. In addition, during the game's early life, Limit Bursts' costs were determined by maximum rarity, as opposed to base rarity. If you pulled a Wilhelm, you had to either choose between using him and using significantly more Limit Burst Pots to awaken him or bench an integral upgrade until his Limit Burst was finished leveling to 20. Players rarely leveled up Limit Bursts unless they were utility-based, when the extra breaks and mitigation truly mattered. Damage-based Limit Bursts only gained prominence in September of 2018, more than two years into the game's lifetime.
  • This hits sometimes when characters gain new awakenings, particularly when they don't gain significant stat boosts or they get abilities that synergize poorly with what the character could already do. The 6-star awakening of Black Cat Lid was particularly notable for combining both of these problems (weak stats, pitiful inherent stat boosts, and getting inherent dualcast when learning almost no magical spells whatsoever outside of Protectga and Shellga and being much more easily geared towards a physical support role). Noctis also jumps out, being a Master of None with no chaining moves, poor utility, and no finishing moves. His 7-star did nothing to fix these problems.
  • The Berserk status effect boosts a character's attack power but locks them into normal attacks. 3* Ifrit has this as an optional trait and the Avenger dagger automatically casts it on the unit that equips it. Normal attacks are practically useless in any serous battle, so there is absolutely no reason to ever use this status effect. It's so bad, in fact, that several bosses will deliberately cast it on your units, since nothing in the game protects against it and an auto-attacking unit is as good as a unit doing nothing at all.
• Promotional Powerless Piece of Garbage:
  • Magitek Armor Terra, who was a free gift for early players. She's a three-star unit that's given for free right off the bat, when even Rain and Lasswell are still just two-star units. However, her skills very quickly lag in power, as she's stuck with what are effectively rebranded versions of the basic level 1 spells, and her stats start to lag after the first area. Not only that, but she can only awaken once, to a four-star unit. Finally, she doesn't have a Trust Master reward at all. In comparison, if you draw her, Terra without the armor has better stats, access to high-level healing and fire magic, can be raised to six stars, and has one of the most powerful spells in the game as a Trust Master reward.
  • The Fan Festa units were 5-star max versions of all of the main characters (except Rain and Nichol). Before the second anniversary, Gumi gave one copy at their Fan Festa events. Since the 6-star meta was well-established, the units themselves were impractical to use. Each unit was assigned to a specific event all around the world, making a full set of two units nearly impossible to complete. They did give out a full set to everyone for their second anniversary.
• Purposely Overpowered:
  • 7* units are improved versions of 5* base units that get dramatic boosts to their specialty, special bonuses when equipping their own Trust Master reward, and come with a Super Trust Master reward that is extremely potent. In exchange, they are only really valuable in pairs: creating one requires having two copies of the requisite 5* unit (one to awaken and the other to consume as a reagent), and getting the STMR requires an additional two copies to fuse into the 7*. The odds of doing this are... pretty low.^note As mentioned above: if you are doing a normal-style gacha summon and not using a specialized banner that commemorates the unit's release, the odds of getting any 5* unit are no higher than 1 in 20. To get 4 of the same 5* unit would, at the time of this writing — October 2018, shortly after the release of Citra as the 52nd 7* units in the Global game — require well over a thousand summons. Neo Vision units have since replaced them as the new meta.
  • Special note goes to Esther, Sylvie, and Zeno of the Beta Star. These three Global Original units were not only head over heels above their competition at the time, but most other units released during the next few months. They were so overpowered that community math determined that they were competitive in Japan's meta, which was nine months ahead of the Global version's, resulting in eleventh-hour nerfs. They even eclipsed Akstar, who was hyped for starting the next stage of Power Creep and was one of the most powerful characters in-game. Esther and Sylvie have even been given Neo Vision-adajacent buffs to keep them relevant in the meta, though the former is more of a gimmick compared to the latter.
  • The Chamber of Wills has special associated units that utilize the Chamber's Morale mechanic, a sort of Awesomeness Meter that increases or decreases based on the actions of you and your opponent. The DPS units gain a shocking amount of damage if you can push the Morale meter to its maximum, putting them leagues above any normal unit in that setting. This is to help make up for the fact that the player can deliberately buff the enemy for a better score, and doing damage to an enemy that has its stats nearly doubled more or less requires having units with similarly insane damage.
• Puzzle Boss: Bosses in the Vortex tend to have mechanics that reward or punish certain actions. A notable example is Gilgamesh, who gains or loses attacks based on the elemental damage you deal to him. This has gotten more prevalent as the game has gone on, to the point that it can be outright suicide to face a boss whose pattern you don't know ahead of time.

R

• Raised by Wolves: Pretty much Fina's entire existence was being sealed in the Earth Crystal. Once it's gone, Rain and Lasswell have to give her a crash course on how the world works. This turns out to not be entirely true.
• Random Encounters: In exploration maps and events, you can be attacked any time while on the map. However, the encounters will eventually run out if you do enough of them, to prevent grinding without spending energy.
• Randomly Drops: Not an issue with items, as all have about the same drop rate, and the drop rate in general is very high. However, summons from the gacha are always randomly generated, and this can be particularly frustrating with special summons (which require a rare item or lapis to get) if it regularly gives you low-end units like Shadow or Fran rather than Terra or Vaan.
  • The Steel Castle of Melfikya, the dungeon responsible for weapon enhancements. Not only are rare passives about as rare as a rainbow drop, the higher-percentage stats are split between the six main stats. For example, you could find nothing but MAG enhancements on a greatsword, or ATK enhancements on a rod. It usually takes many runs to get an acceptable set of enhancements for one weapon.
• Rare Candy:
  • The Metal Cactuar (also, the Minituar, Gigantuar, and the King Minituar versions of it) exist solely as a giant experience boost to whichever unit gets fused with it. This greatly reduces the pain for several Magikarp Power units.
  • There are also Pots of various stats (based off the recurring Magic Pot enemy) and Trust Moogles to increase the inherent stats and the trust rating, respectively, but those are extremely rare — so far, in the international version, the former are only rarely available outside of Arena awards, and typically one 10% version of a Trust Moogle is available per event.
  • Liquid Metal Slime is a Dragon Quest XI unit that serves as a very specialized Provoke tank. However, if fused to another unit, it provides 3 million XP, enough to bring any 6* unit from level 1 to 100 instantly. By comparison, a King Metal Minituar gives a mere 100,000 when fused.
• Really 700 Years Old: The Sworn Six of Paladia had all been present during the war between Aldore and Hess, 500 years before the game's story begins —and so was Fina.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Rain is the charismatic and emotional leader, while Laswell is content to be the more reserved and analytical second-in-command in their unit. They even demonstrate this as they get stronger — Rain develops a red aura and learns the Fire line of spells, while Lasswell develops a blue aura and learns the Blizzard line of spells. Lid and Nichol also function as this, with their hair colors even appropriate for their roles — Lid is a Fiery Redhead, and Nichol is The Stoic with blue hair.
• Regional Bonus: The Global version has gained a number of original characters or variants of existing ones, particularly in 2017. Notable examples include Halloween variants of the six lead characters, Valentine's versions of Luna and Artemios, original Chinese-themed characters dancer Ling. Chow, and Chocobo rider Yun (as Chinese New Year's limited characters), with non-holiday original characters including Olive the Cannoneer, Fryevia the Spell-fencer, Xon the Thief, Reberta the Dragoon, Zyrus the dragon-hunter Black Mage, Esther the knight, and Elena, the Warrior of the Crystal. In addition, the NieR: Automata event added A2 and Eve.
  • It's worth noting that some of the Global-exclusive units are considered some of the most powerful units in the entire game, to the point that many Japanese players are jealous that they're exclusive to Global so far. It helps that their mechanical design has clearly been informed by lessons learned from the JP version, and their kits are well-designed and allow them to do their jobs in a party in a much easier fashion than other, similar characters. (Having incredibly strong Trust rewards helps, too.)
    • Despite being advertised as Global-exclusive, these characters are starting to come to Japan, albeit in a heavily altered fashion. Reberta is a hybrid finisher, Ling is a weaker enhanced Soleil, and Xon is an unusable DPS unit. This caused a bit of controversy, as people were opposed to units advertised as exclusive to Global being used at all. Since that event, Gumi has changed Global Exclusive to Global Original, leaving the option to include future characters in the Japanese version.
  • Another bonus available to the Global version is that several characters are capable of being buffed further there than in the Japanese version. In Japan, Medius can cap at a five-star rating and has very little going for him beyond a good ability to drive up combos. However, in the global version, not only can he reach six-star rating (with attendant higher level cap), he gains new abilities that buff out both his combo potential and his base damage, and he even gets exclusive awakenings, including being the first three-star unit capable of innate Dual Wield (Miyuki became the second nearly a year later). He may be outshined by several more powerful units (particularly the global exclusives, nearly all of the five-star base rating characters, and a good number of four-star base rating characters), but Medius is a fairly common draw that can hold a solid place in a party until the player starts getting very lucky with the random character drops. Cerius, an otherwise forgettable Green Mage in JP who learns Dualcast, a 50% Dark resistance buff, and auto-Refresh in Global. Her enhancements make her bar-ga spells have a full 100% resistance. She became arguably better than Marie, a 5-star base, until her 7-star was released.
  • The Global version now has a new feature absent from the Japanese version - an Expedition system, in which unused units can be sent out on dispatch missions (similar to those in the Final Fantasy Tactics games) for experience and rewards. Rewards can range from simple consumable items to Trust Moogles and stat-increasing Pots. Units also get experience points regardless of whether or not the expedition was successful.
  • Having said that, the Japanese version has a number of characters who have yet to hit the global market. However, these are subject to whatever changes or delays Gumi feels, and some units (like Sora and Noctis) were reworked with promises to buff them to JP's level anyway.
  • Japan also gets some collaborations due to licensing, like the SaGa franchise and the full Mana series. They also have released other collaborations, like Fullmetal Alchemist.
  • The Chinese version, released on August 29th, 2019, is completely different from both Japan and Global. They follow their own unit release schedule, with the first banner featuring Noctis, Dark Fina, and Heavenly Technician Lid. The base version of the game has more advanced quality-of-life features, like multi-ticket pulls, a more advanced quest menu, and the ability to view specific elemental resistances of certain bosses above the HP bar (similar to Sensor in Final Fantasy X). It even has its own Chinese Original units.
• The Remnant: The remnants of Hess left over from the war in Paladia have become little more than terrorists causing random violence just as extreme as the tyranny of Aldore.
• Revive Kills Zombie:
  • As per Final Fantasy tradition, Cure spells and potions damage undead, while Raise spells and Phoenix Downs are a One-Hit KO on them. You just have to figure out how to target enemies with them. This even applies to most undead bosses (they don't get the Contractual Boss Immunity to any variety of One-Hit KO until near the end of the first season).
  • The Zombie status effect inflicts this on your units. All forms of healing cause damage instead, and casting Raise/Reraise in any form causes immediate death.
• Rush Boss:
  • Malboro fits as this in all but name. Every fourth turn, he will use Bad Breath (which causes high damage and every status effect to your party) and Devour, which removes one party unit from battle for two turns. This increases to every third turn once he crosses the 50% threshold, which makes Malboro a rush boss in all but name. The introduction of new units and mechanics has rendered this far more manageable, but in his introduction it was seriously problematic.
  • The battle with Elafikeras, both in The Legendary Stag and The Torturous Trio, is one. The basics are that it puts a magic refresh on the whole party (to further encourage going all-in with offensive abilities), and then periodically does moderate non-elemental physical and magical attacks until the 8th turn. At that point, it will just repeatedly heal itself to full and just spam instant death spells and 99,999 damage attacks until the party is dead. The player is meant to just go all-out attacking it and trying to finish it off before the 8th turn comes around, as any player theoretically able to finish it off once it starts spamming full-heals and instant death should be able to kill it well before that point.

S

• Sand In My Eyes: Lasswell isn't crying when leaving Emma after protecting her on her mini-quest. Just the sea spray in his eyes, honest. Nichol is only slightly more believable when he says that there's mist on his face when his sister has to leave to purify Lake Dorr.
• Save Scumming:
  • If the app crashes or is deliberately closed in the middle of a battle, it allows you to restart that battle from the beginning of the last turn. On your turn, this is a useful method of cancelling out inputs, allowing you to reset a turn for various reasons (testing damage output, achieving a mission you messed up, etc). If done on an enemy's turn, however, the turn will play out exactly the same. This method also does not work for manipulating certain luck-based skills on your turn: if Setzer's Double Dice landed an unfavorable roll on your turn, no amount of resetting will change the outcome.
  • Some fights, most notably the first trial against Ultros and Typhon, have anti-save scum features that automatically resets to their most powerful attacks after a reload.
  • This entirely averted in the Arena, where any closure of the app is treated as a forfeit. This caused a lot of grief due to Arena's early buggy state, which was filled with crashes.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The "Fate of the Dragoon" event follows the legacy of the Dragon's Village and its role in keeping the dragon sealed, eventually dealing with the fairy of Hess that unsealed it.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • While most of the other espers are relatively uncaring about the state of the world, Ramuh does care, but pretends not to in order to test Rain's commitment.
  • It turns out that the extended Tournament Arc put on by Veritas of the Frost is one. It's actually Raegen in the armor; he's testing Rain and his companions in part to make sure that they're strong enough to overcome the Sworn Six.
• Sequel Episode: The entire A World United event serves as a massive Call-Back to Season 1, with cameos from most Season 1 NPCs, most of the characters from story events up to Loren's, and even some unseen units from the game (like Amy and Marie). The plot revolves around stopping a resurrected Dr. Lazarov and his replica of the Chaotic Darkness.
• Serial Escalation: With events, the included difficulty levels increase over time. In the earliest events, there would be three difficulties — Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced. As Power Creep started to affect the game, two more were added — Pro and Elite. With the massive proliferation of six-star units, increasingly good gear, and the increased chance of acquiring a five-star base unit, a sixth difficulty — Legendary — has been added.
• Set Bonus:
  • 7* units gain special abilities when equipped with their own Trust Master rewards, such as increased attack or greater damage modifiers on their skills.
  • There are numerous sets of armor associated with FFBE-exclusive units that grant special bonuses for wearing other parts of the set with them. For example, the Imperial Robe, Heels, and Crown each have a bonus called the Set of Virtue, which only activates when another piece of the set is being worn. The sets fall somewhat short of TMRs, but are still decent in their own right.
  • The esper units, a unit series that has the main protagonists paired with an esper in their character model, gain bonuses when equipped with their specific esper. This usually yakes the form of a an increased stat bonus from the esper.
• Sharing a Body: Fina shares a body with her dark form until Mysidia, when warping into Fina's mind to bring Light Fina back splits the two.
• Sheathe Your Sword: The trial to unlock the 3* version of Bahamut plays out like a much more dangerous version of this trope's first appearance in the series - he specifically warns you to "stoically endure," and outlasting Bahamut's attacks without inputting an offensive ability is by far the fastest way to beat him. That said, given how capable he is of wiping out most characters even with proper use of the defend command, it takes a bit of work to figure out how to survive. Attacking is still an option, but it's extremely punishing.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: The writers tried to do this with Lid and Jake in the middle of Season 2 by crippling Jake to the point he's all but dead and having Lid leave the party to take care of him, even almost performing a Heroic Sacrifice to heal him. This didn't sit well with players for a series of reasons (in particular the massive Too Bleak, Stopped Caring the dragged-out, extremely grim Visectrum arc caused), and by the end of the Operations Map arc, the two were back to Lasswell's team and in full shape.
• Shop Fodder: While all of the items dropped are useful either in Item Crafting or in improving units, the volume at which they pile up in the later part of the game turns them into this as well. This goes double for raid materials, which are only useful in crafting items from their specific raids and quickly clutter up the player's inventory.
• Shout-Out:
  • The "Mighty Hammer" that can be obtained through the Tower of Crystal event gives its user a large boost in hitpoints and attack power, makes their attacks lightning elemental, and looks suspiciously like Mjolnir.
  • One of the side quest have you try young lady's kiss to cure others from frog spell, a black mage that you save says it's not that bad being a frog, but then says "it's not easy being green".
  • The Expeditions have various pop culture references and memes. Stranger Stuff is a direct reference to Stranger Things, the Crab Battle mission references a Metal Gear Solid fan video, and Just Cause, which directs you to aimlessly explore, directly references the sandbox video game of the same name. A Certain Set of Skills, which involve finding and rescuing a kidnapped girl, is a callback to Taken.
  • The Christmas event is an Expy of Frozen (2013). In addition, Kryla's attack animation, which involves her sprinkling magic powder into her cauldron, is identical to Salt Bae.
  • In The Color of Heartlessness Domino unwittingly references◊ the theme song to Kingdom Hearts, Simple and Clean.
  • The Gil Snapper's four-star form is a Gil Snapper with a baby Gil Snapper on its shell. Its five-star form adds another, even smaller Snapper atop the previous one. In other words, its Turtles All the Way Down.
  • Various references to Star Wars can be found throughout Season 2's story, along with the story events.
  • Late in Season 2, Sieghard starts dropping regular references to song lyrics during cutscenes. He's possibly the only person who'd think to quote Smash Mouth's "All Star" when fighting to prevent the annihilation of all life.
• Show Within a Show: The first global-original CG unit, Elena, and her rival Morgana, are characters of a comic book published in Paladia, "Fundamental Forces." The battles in their event even take place on a comic page, complete with panels, gutters, and Ben Day dots to complete the look. The end of said event and the author's name imply that either the comic was based on a real story or that Elena was summoned out of the comic; it's not totally clear, but she seems to be Real After All.
• Simple, yet Awesome: There are certain moves that remain useful even as you level up and acquire more powerful units. For a time, Raging Fist was useful as an efficient (3 MP) partial defense ignoring attack (and can be put on any unit by giving them the Ifrit esper, found in the first area of the game). For any powerful unit lacking in area attacking skills (see: Orlandeau), equipping them with Odin after having the latter learn Bladeblitz, which simply does the job for a reasonable cost (14 MP), will enable them to one-shot basic mobs. Not too shabby.
• Skill Scores and Perks: A numerous amount of fighters have skill trees. Using a certain skill will unlock the next step in the tree. Prishe, Yda, Goken, Cagnazzo, and Roy use this for certain moves.
• Socialization Bonus: You can choose to borrow a copy of a unit from another player (each player can designate which one) when going into a quest or exploration and use their abilities to get through it. This not only gives extra firepower, but both players get bonus points that can be redeemed for a free vision summon. If you add that person to your friends list, though, not only is the bonus doubled for both players, but you'll be allowed to use the borrowed unit's limit break and equipped esper as well. During events, any unit that provides a bonus to drops for the event will do so to anyone who borrows it as well.
• So Last Season:
  • New units are periodically released, and there's almost always at least one that completely overshadows most, if not all, earlier units at a given role.
  • This can also affect past events which get a redux. New events are usually balanced against the units and Trust Master rewards that are currently available. However, events that are rerun aren't updated, so their difficulty is balanced against the units and rewards of that time, which are often inferior to the current game. For example, when The Crystal Tower made its first appearance, there were at most a half-dozen units that could awaken to six-star status (most of which could only be found as rare five-star summons) and only a very small handful of weapons that broke +100 strength. When it was rerun, many more units could reach that status (including several that could be acquired at common three-star rarities, like Exdeath), more units had higher stats and stronger abilities in general, and available gear in general had higher stats. The monster difficulty, however, wasn't adjusted — monsters at ELT difficulty were in many cases easier than what prior events featured at PRO (the previous level) difficulty. Likewise, the Vision of Bahamut trial was respectably difficult when first released. However, when it got a redux, magic tanks and more sources of damage mitigation had been added to the game, making its killer Megaflare little more than an annoyance and thus vastly reducing the difficulty of the trial, to say nothing of the actual Bahamut having since been released as an obtainable esper through an even more challenging battle than the trial.
  • This becomes more evident with units that get updated versions as of season 2. In some cases, such as Lasswell and Fina, they're shown (in the story and in side events) to have trained hard to improve abilities , and several instances involve characters with significant amounts of time between their two versions (most prominently, Veritas of the Dark and Raegen - the former is explicitly how we was 700 years ago), some cases involve characters that are just drastically more powerful for no apparent reason (Shera in particular is blatant about this, as all suggestions imply that he's done absolutely no training and yet leaped from a season 1 3-star base to a season 2 5-star base).
  • This also has a habit of affecting Trust Master Rewards. One of the earlier five-star base units was Delita, whose Trust Master reward is a sword with 118 attack and the dark element. Later on, as a four-star base, Glauca gives a sword that not only has 125 attack and the dark element, but also adds Auto-Regen on top of that. There are a couple of cases where Delita's sword is the better option (as it's a regular sword and not a heavy sword, more can equip it, though most in that case have better equipment choices), but overall, if you were to spend time getting only one, Glauca at this point is both easier to get and the more powerful choice.
  • This is now even starting to affect chaining families. Support for several chaining families (such as Divine Ruination, Quick Hit, and Chaos Wave) are getting phased out, as the meta has moved towards focusing on the families used by some of the most popular later units (such as Absolute Mirror of Equity, Bolting Strike, and Absolute Zero). In some cases, units are having their chaining families changed when brought from the Japanese version of the game to the global version.
  • Some older Final Fantasy characters, like Edgar and Terra, have been re-released as 5-star bases. Even some of the previous 5-star bases in the game, like Lightning, have received updated forms, with more coming soon.
• Stellar Name: The main twelve Chamber of Arms bosses are all named after stars in the constellations of the western Zodiac, and their One-Winged Angel forms all have an orb somewhere on them with the constellation in question within (which is sometimes visible on their first form as well). It starts with Sheratan (a star in Aries) and progresses from there.
• The Stoic: Lasswell doesn't like to show what he's feeling at all. This bites him hard when going through the desert, as he nearly collapses rather than admit that he's thirsty.
• Stone Wall: What happens with most of the monsters when the party first arrives in Dirnado. Rather than stretch Underground Monkey and Palette Swap to ridiculous levels, the beginning areas are filled with leveled up versions of monsters from earlier levels. However, while their defensive stats and hit points have improved, their offenses have only marginally increased. Fights aren't dangerous for the most part, but they're also not fast.
• Strictly Formula: For each of the seasons of the game's story, there's a pretty clear pattern. Some threat makes itself apparent to the main heroes, and they go out to stop a colorful team of themed antagonists, only to discover that the actual threat of the season is someone else who's trying to cause The End of the World as We Know It through some new unbefore-seen method and whose connection to the original antagonists is only evident in retrospect. This will be overcome by a member of the main party accessing a power that was hidden to them at the beginning of the season.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: In season 2 of the story Rain, the protagonist of season 1, becomes Hyoh of the Delta Star, a major villain.
• Summon Magic:
  • Espers are recruitable through the single-player campaign (and are probably the main draw for those who want to Play the Game, Skip the Story, along with the large amounts of free Lapis to be gained there).
  • Rain's ability to summon "visions" essentially works this way. "Visions" are memories and experiences made solid, which is part of why you can have two different versions of a single character that co-exist. Rain can even do this himself: his vanilla, Demon, Vagrant Knight and Awakened forms can co-exist in the same party at the same time. (Add in his Secret Identities and there are actually more Rains than the Arbitrary Headcount Limit can accommodate!)

T

• Tactical Suicide Boss: Kanshou and Bakuya from the Festival of Love event are immune to magical and physical attacks, respectively, and possess DEF/SPR so high that they barely take any damage from their respective weakness. However, each turn they grant special skills to two of your units that sharply drop their defense for one turn, making them extremely vulnerable to damage. The catch is that Kanshou and Bakuya only provide skills that render the other one vulnerable, not themselves, so you have to kill both on the same turn. For added difficulty, the optional missions require beating the pair with those special skills, which do a flat 50,000 damage on each hit (~1.8% of their health).
• Taking the Bullet:
  • The Cover and Sentinel abilities, which have a chance at intercepting attacks aimed at other characters. These can be combined with Draw Attacks and Provoke to greatly reduce how much most of the party gets targeted. Later, Cecil gets Saintly Wall (which has an even higher proc chance and defense boost).
    • Other units (like Warrior of Light and Mystea) have covers that can protect all allies from physical or magical damage, though these are active abilities that must be used beforehand. Illusionist Nichol can even make any unit cover allies' physical attacks (with a 100% proc chance).
  • In-story, Rain's mother Sophia dies blocking a magic attack Veritas of the Light was trying to use on her husband.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
  • If an enemy takes a hit when their health is at 0%, an "Overkill" message will display to notify the player. As noted in Loophole Abuse, this mechanic is useful in getting around certain mission requirements.
  • During raid events, the most difficult version of the boss only has four million health. However, the game awards a damage bonus based on how much overkill you can do, up to 1 billion, which in turn affects the amount of raid coins you will earn from the battle. The bonus is modest, earning a few hundred more coins per raid if you can pass the top threshold for damage.
  • Elafikeras from The Legendary Stag trial has to be beaten in eight turns or else it will kill your entire party. To do this, it has two skills. The first casts 100% Death on the entire party. The second casts 100% MP drain on the entire party, does 99,999 fixed damage to the entire party, and fully heals Elafikeras. Then it casts the second skill again. Added together, this makes it so even a unit with both Death immunity and Reraise will be killed. Even if you manage to keep your party alive in spite of all that (see the Hide/Petrify exploit in Loophole Abuse), you will never be able to take out Elafikeras' 80 million HP in one turn.
  • In the Dark Visions event, points are awarded based on single-turn damage, which is the most valuable point category. This encourages strategies where you attempt to reach the damage cap for the full reward, far exceeding the health of the enemies you face.
• Temporary Online Content:
  • Missed an event that ran for two weeks? Too bad. Wait for the rerun.
  • This is painful for limited-time units, especially in the 7-star era. Get the wrong unit on a holiday banner? Too bad. Wait for the next one, if it even happens. This has been mitigated somewhat with the Trust Coin shop, which sells awakening prisms for limited units if you failed to snag a copy.
• Timed Mission: The Misty Bamboo Forest mission has a three-minute timer. In that time, you have to hit as many collection points as you can, defeat the mermaid, and/or beat the random encounters. If the timer runs out or you die, you get to keep everything you collected up to that point and get the rank experience, though you don't get unit experience in the latter case.
• Time-Limit Boss: Elafikeras from The Legendary Stag trial has to be beaten within eight turns. If not, it will cast a full restore on itself and hit the party with enough damage to kill them several times over (no Reraise cheesing). The redux of the trial is largely the same, except you get ten turns and it doesn't have any elemental vulnerabilities.
• Time to Unlock More True Potential:
  • All visions and espers have multiple ratings, in number of stars. Any vision or esper not yet at their maximum rating can reset their level and increase their rating, opening up new powers to be learned. For visions, this requires spending some gil and expending some items. For espers, though, it requires another fight. On a more meta level, some earlier units gain the ability to further awaken, allowing select units to gain new use after previously being subjected to So Last Season. Both versions also have had many visions gain a boost to their abilities, albeit at the cost of loads of gil and event-exclusive crystals.
  • Ability awakening can grant this in several regards. Sometimes, what were previously useless abilities or one heavily hit by So Last Season will get dramatic boosts upon enhancement. Soleil is probably the shining example — a buffing unit mostly noted for being substandard at her main task compared to what tanks and healers could do as a side note suddenly, thanks in part to global exclusive buffs to those buffs, became able to provide some of the best buffs in the game while simultaneously debuffing a foe, and whose abilities start comboing with each other for extra effectiveness. Awakening took her from "substandard even at her release" to being one of the best buffing units in the game at the time.
  • The second anniversary added the Steel Castle Melfikya event, which allows the player to enhance their equipment by fighting through a series of ten battles. Weapons can be given various passive traits (basic stat increases, auto-casting defensive spells, etc), up to a maximum of three. However, enhancements are randomly determined after each victory, and each battle costs an orb that only regenerates once/hour unless the player pays for a recharge.
• To Be Continued: The plot is released episodically, with new areas released over time (usually on a monthly basis). Wherever the story missions end is where the message is displayed. The Japanese version of the game is a few chapters ahead of the international version.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Cactaurs and pots can become this, if you don't have units you think are worth investing them in. This can be problematic, as they count as units and will take up spots in your total unit count. Mercifully, cactaurs and pots were made fusable for the second anniversary, alleviating this problem considerably.
  • After completing Season 1 of the story, the game gives a 100% Trust Moogle. Most tend to save it for a 5-star unit with a powerful TMR (like Gilgamesh or Loren) or a unit that needs their TMR to succeed (like Onion Knight or Grim Lord Sakura).
  • The king of these is the Prism Moogle. Available from the Trust Coin exchange store, it can be fused with a unit-specific Trust Moogle to obtain that TMR without actually pulling the unit in question. If you've managed to pull a moogle to a 5-star unit, you can pick up some of the game's most powerful equipment without having to summon anything. In exchange, the Prism Moogle costs 10,000 Trust Coins, equal to 100 3-star units and twice as expensive as most items in the shop, and you can only buy one every three months even if you can afford it. The third anniversary celebration summons added another wrinkle to this - they were very rare possibilities from the first summon, almost impossible to get from the follow-up summon, and lucky players would then agonize as to which TMR to get.
• Took a Level in Badass:
  • The season 2 re-released story units are this, for the most part. Most of these units are top-tier at their roles (and are 5-star bases), and some overlooked story units get an update.
  • Any unit that gets a further awakening or ability awakening that synergizes with their skillset. Soleil was notable for this; see below.
  • The Chamber of the Indignant features stronger versions of the bosses from the Tower of Earth in the Farplane, as well as some of the weaker Chamber of the Fallen bosses.
• Tournament Arc:
  • A significant portion of season 1's Gronoa, where the Frostlord forces everyone to face off against each other. Turns out it's Raegen's plan to get everyone at fighting strength for the final battle.
  • Season 2 features the Aldore Orders, with the prize for winning being entry into the Emperor's elite squad, the Orders. Lasswell and crew join in order to get close enough to fight and potentially defeat the Emperor. While they do technically win, events force them to retreat and the party fractures.
• 20 Bear Asses: Several missions require obtaining materials and/or Shop Fodder for people. Some of these are just items harvested from glowing points on exploration maps, but most are enemy drops. One particularly confusing one involves collecting raptor feathers. It's quickly discovered that not all birds have feathers... but apparently, some bats do.

U - V

• Underground Monkey: In fine Final Fantasy tradition, palette swaps of earlier enemies exist in unusual locales. Perhaps the most stark example is the desert sahagin, a desert-dwelling version of an aquatic species.
• Unstable Equilibrium:
  • The story mode starts out difficult for a beginning player, but over chapter and season breaks, during which the player can collect more powerful equipment from events and so forth, the rate at which the player grows more powerful quickly eclipses the difficultly of the story levels, to the point that a seasoned player will tear through every boss like tissue. It gets to the point that a well-equipped player will find themselves having to deliberately hold back when fighting bosses in order to get enough crystals to perform a Limit Break or summon in order to accomplish a side mission, and even that can be circumvented with specific units. Season 4 swung the pendulum back to an extent, giving the enemies a significant boost that requires players to put effort into their story teams, rather than phoning it in with a single carry unit.
  • This trend is reflected in the side missions themselves, which have become easier with each season. The conditions in the first season involve tasks such as doing specific elemental damage or a number of limit bursts/magic/etc., back when it could be reasonably assumed meeting those conditions would take at least some effort on the player's part. As the game has progressed and added countless ways to meet those conditions, the missions themselves have become progressively simpler as a result. Those in the fourth season can basically be summarized as "win", with the only caveat being a set number of turns.
• Unexplained Recovery: Lampshaded in the beginning of Season 2. The five non-Vision Sworn Six of Paladia show up with Raegen at the beginning of Season 2, and Veritas of the Light confirms that all five of them are Back from the Dead, but that she isn't going into detail as to how that happened or for what specific purpose. It's later given a little more context as everyone believes that Dark Fina revived them before becoming the Earth Crystal, but not too much beyond that is clear.
• Useless Useful Spell:
  • Averted, as most enemies do not have immunity to status ailments. Even the ones that do typically only are immune to one or two. One of the things that makes Exdeath so effective is that his Limit Break, in addition to damage, can inflict up to four random status effects on each enemy, including Petrify.
  • As materia, even high-end magic spells rank incredibly low on the Trust Master Reward priority ladder, as they occupy precious slots better allocated for stat boost materia (in particular, MAG for offensive spellcasters and SPR for healers). Even though six-star spellcasters such as Trance Terra and D. Fina have holes in their elemental -aga spell coverage, it's better to use materia to boost their stats and work with what they have, as they already have other spells/skills that more than make up for it.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: In certain trials, it is possible to earn the boss's signature move as an optional mission reward. For example, Wicked Moon's Crazy Day can be earned by doing ice, earth, light, and dark damage during the trial. The moves exist as materia which can be equipped by any unit. Curiously, the moves don't always behave the same way. When Crazy Day is used by Wicked Moon, it's an AoE debuff, while the player's version is a full spectrum elemental imperial for a single enemy.
• Victory by Endurance: In the Arena, battles are limited to ten turns to prevent drawn-out stalemates. If you wind up in a situation where outright beating your opponent is impossible (a Stone Wall like Cecil blocking attacks, for example), you can still win by managing to have one more fighter standing than your opponent does, or at least doing more damage.
• Video Game Stealing: There are skills to steal both items (Steal) and money (Pilfer) from foes. Amongst visions, Zidane is perhaps the most skilled, with not only the highest rates of success, but the ability to steal money and items at the same time. For those playing the global version who got lucky during the Easter season (or super lucky after, when the banner with increased drop rates ended), Xon is the absolute master — he not only has a 100% success rate at stealing, but he can steal both money and items from every opponent simultaneously and do damage at the same time with his Waylay skill. He's also only the second thief (Mercedes was the first) able to be upgraded to six-star form.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: Lasswell is typically unsparing towards Rain, and Rain isn't exactly afraid to comment back, but the two are steadfast companions.

W - Z

• Walking Spoiler: Hyoh of the Delta Star, the new hot-shot of the Orders. After the conclusion of Season 1, he appears just as Rain disappears, and the party is off to find him. He looks suspiciously similar to Rain, fights like Rain, and even shared a step-up with Awakened Rain outside of the story.
  • Akstar's event introduces a new Global-exclusive character, Zeno of the Beta Star. Zeno is his true identity.
• We Help the Helpless: One part of the code of conduct for a Knight of Grandshelt is to assist whoever is in need. This is the in-story reason for Rain and Lasswell to accompany Fina, as well as the reason they so willingly perform Loads and Loads of Sidequests.
• Weak, but Skilled:
  • Warrior of Light has across the board middling stats for a base 4* unit, including defense, something not helped by a surfeit of passives, but has one of the most impressive defensive and support kits. The former can be remedied by the right equips, and thankfully, he has a wide range of options for several different kinds of builds. His enhancements further make him one of the most versatile tanks in the game, if not quite as hardy as a 5* base, and his 6-star form was delayed for about four months because of its power.
  • Firion also has several elements of this - for a vision that caps at six stars, his stats are on the low side (in large part because he's a three-star base), but his wide range of bonuses against classes of enemies, the ease at capping a chain with his Fin Briar, his very wide range of weapons to be equipped, and the relative affordability of his ability awakenings means that he can be rather effective as a finisher in many cases.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Rain's father was a legendary knight by the name of Sir Raegen, and Rain feels resentful in part because he feels his father never really showed affection or pride in Rain.
• Wham Episode:
  • Dirnado: Veritas of the Heavens is revealed to be the first Cid. Who's revered as a god in Dirnado.
  • Olderion: Veritas of the Dark is revealed to be Raegen, Rain's father.
  • Gronoa: Raegen is not the present Veritas of the Dark. He is the present-day Veritas of the Frost, and defected to Rain's side. This leaves the question of who the current Veritas of the Dark is.
  • Pharm 1: Veritas of the Dark is revealed to be a vision of Raegen from 700 years ago summoned by Veritas of the Light. Just as the crystal is saved, Sol and Behemoth King, two of the Eight Sages, destroy it.
  • Georl 1: Hyoh, the fast-rising Delta Star, is introduced. He looks suspiciously similar to Rain and has an energy-based version of the Crimson Saber.
  • Georl 3: Sol is alive, and looking to continue his fight with Rain.
  • Crystalis 3: Hyoh is defeated in one shot by a cloaked man, who turns out to be Rain. Hyoh is heavily implied to be a vision of some sort.
  • Town of Visectrum 2: Akstar is revealed to be Zeno of the Beta Star.
  • Magistellus: Rain and Lasswell's clashing bloodlines and ideologies lead Rain to part ways with the group and officially reveal himself as Hyoh of the Delta Star. It turns out the Hyoh he fought before was actually Nagi of the Iota Star acting as a decoy.
  • Rubiena: Dark Fina is helping Akstar.
  • Grandore: ...Because he is Rain, one who fought Emperor Vlad, failed, trained for decades, and then engaged in Time Travel to come back and Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
• Wham Line: After the events of the Water Temple, "Nice to see you again, Raegen." The mysterious speaker later revealed to be Sakura, a former comrade isn't only providing the shock with the revelation that Sir Raegen is still alive, but to whom the line is addressed. It's Veritas of the Dark, making him Rain's father and Lasswell's mentor.
  • Elena looks like a new twist on the Warrior of Light trope at first, but her job description reveals her true origins. Instead of being a Warrior of Crystal or Spellblade, she's a Precursor, suggesting that she's not only a real person, but connected to Esther. Hidden deep inside the Fundamental Forces comic is an Easter Egg revealing the author, Miles L. Maul, a character from late in Season 2.
  • "He had an eye for catching the smallest details, except when it came to women." The quote, in context, is about Akstar talking about his friends who died in a rebellion against the Emperor, implying that he is Rain from the future.
• What the Hell, Hero?: For once, the main characters are the ones to do it — at the climax of the Fire Shrine, Rain and his friends not only fight off Veritas of the Flame, but Veritas of the Dark teaming up with Flame. And for the first time, the heroes manage to repulse the Veritas without them shattering the crystal. So what happens? Jake shatters the crystal to prevent Zoldaad's military junta from using its power to build up military might. Rain and allies waste no time calling out that action.
• Whole Episode Flashback:
  • The "Guardian of the Order" event details an incident surrounding a rash of kidnappings that was investigated by Lady Loren, a compatriot of Raegen's in the Knights of Grandshelt, about a decade or so before the events of the main plot. Rain and Lasswell appear as young children early on and are two of the kidnap victims.
  • Most story events involve this. The most relative to the plot are the Veritas of the Dark/Earth/Flame events and the Gronoa/Zoldaad crew event.
• You Will Not Evade Me: Tel-Fulsanis, final boss of the Defiance of Fate - The Lightning Tyrant trial, has a special ability which forces any unit that hides or jumps to return to the field during his turn.
• Zero-Effort Boss:
  • The unit-introduction events for the CG units pit the player's party, joined by the headline unit as a companion, against a Cactuar which does so little damage that there is no unit in the game it could possibly kill unless you let it. The point is to try out the headline unit's moveset while having the rest of your party defend so the battle doesn't end too quickly.
  • The "30 Million Downloads" raffle is even more so. The raffle pits you against a single Golden Bomb that immediately explodes, killing itself and dealing no damage to you. The "battle" only exists to serve as an entry ticket for the raffle. The same "fight" is later used for the Rank EXP map in the King Mog's Lost Maps subset of vortex quests.
  • The daily Enlightenment Point quest involves fighting a Golden Bomb with 1 HP.
  • 3-star Bahamut self-destructs in four turns if you never attack. If you choose to attack, well, hope you have a few hours set aside. 3* Asura uses a similar mechanic.

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