Video Game / Lost Ark

Lost Ark is an isometric Free-to-Play Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game created by Tripod Studio and Smilegate RPG, a subsidiary of Smilegate. Initially released in South Korea in December 9, 2019, it was eventually published in North America, South America, and Europe by Amazon Games on February 11, 2022. With its release in 2022 on Steam, it became one of the top games if not the top game on the platform.

The combat and gameplay in Lost Ark plays similarly to other isometric Action RPG games such as Path of Exile and Diablo, but with MMO aspects built into the game and traditional MMO leveling through questing.

Long ago in the world of Arkesia, The Legions of Hell invaded the world of mortals and caused the deadly Chain War. With even the gods abandoning them, the mortal races sought the power of the Ark, a legendary item created by the Top God Regulus and capable of destruction as well as creation. The Sidereals, a group of mortal heroes, found the Ark and used its power to drive back the Demons, ending the war.

However, the demons have returned, and the Ark will once again have to be found.

You play as an Adventurer chosen by the divine to find the Lost Ark and save the mortal world; along your journey you encounter a young priest called Armen who's also seeking the Ark, and join forces with him.

On top of its isometric action combat, the gameplay of Lost Ark is very focused on the exploration of the game world, with each in-game zone having dozens of hidden collectables to find or elite enemies to kill. After a certain point in the story, the player is able to freely use a ship to explore Arkesia's seas, which, other than allowing travels between continents, allows the explorations of small islands with their own rewards and adventures.

---

Lost Ark provides examples of:

• 100% Completion: Tracked in many, many forms.
  • First, there's the Adventurer Tome. This tracks your basic progress in the game as well as the important sidequests, relationships and hidden objectives in various areas.
  • Next, there are various types of collectables from Mokoko Seeds to Giant's Hearts. These are tracked in a separate category, though interestingly at the moment 100% completion is not actually possible for some: Several islands such as Vairgrys' Lair do not really offer Island Souls despite the same saying they do and Masterpiece 51 is simply not in the game even though 52 is.
  • Cards are tracked in yet another section. You actually need multiple copies of each card to complete this section because each card is in at least one Book and when you have all the cards in a Book you get a special set bonus even if you don't equip said cards. Then if you max those cards by getting more copies, you get better bonuses.
• 24-Hour Armor: It's hard to tell that Thar is a Human rather than a Sylvain, which Vern is primarily comprised of, because you never see him so much as take his helmet off, even in his Rapport questline.
• Aborted Arc: The assassination attempt on Armen immediately after the prologue goes completely unexplained and the identity and motives of the assassins are never revealed. Though giving the later events of the Rethramis arc, its likely they were hired by Kharmine, and a pair of side quests suggests that a holy sect has been planning to assassinate him as well as other leader figures.
• Affably Evil: Ezrebet is either a demon or an Eldritch Abomination, but she's sincerely polite and friendly as well despite apparently murdering an unknown number of innocent people.
• All-Powerful Bystander
  • During the Chain War, the leader and most powerful of the guardians, Vairgrys, sided with the mortal races against the demons to protect the planet. For unknown reasons, however, Vairgrys has yet to truly pick sides in the coming conflict. Everyone who talks about him is very worried he might side with the demons this time given that he seems to be at least as powerful as the gods themselves.
  • Guardian Luen is another incredibly powerful Guardian, but even during the Chain War he remained completely neutral as he considers himself to be simply an observer. He does have a personal fondness for Nineveh, however, so he'll usually tell her what he knows. When he instead tells her that she can't meet Vairgrys, she's rather startled.
• All There in the Manual: Many pieces of lore regarding certain characters are only available as flavor text in their cards. For example, did you know that Rictus, the boss of the Brilliant Ridge dungeon, is actually the second in command of the Beast Legion? You wouldn't unless you read his card.
• Amnesiac Dissonance: The amnesiac doctor Seville, now known as Orne, has disturbing memory fragments he does not wish to think about. Apart from his former self's fanaticism, he also had an unnerving amount of knowledge of how to make explosives and how to open up a man's ribcage, though at least this appears to be for medical reasons. Fortunately, he's able to put some of this knowledge to good use by creating a treatment for Krissa, who had given up on methods to treat the pain caused by human experimentation she was forced to undergo.
• And Man Grew Proud: The current world is set after at least two massive wars in the past and the seeming extermination of the Haal race for trying to rise up against the gods. There are in-game hints that they may have succeeded in some form. In fact, going by what Nineveh mentions in passing, either records in the game regarding Lazenith are inaccurate or Demons may be what remains of the Haals.
• Angel Unaware: Bard Allegro, a blind but otherwise ordinary seeming bard, seem to be one of the Lazenith who had their wings stripped for bringing the Ark to Arkesia. He's put into the same grouping as Beatrice and Nineveh in card sets, teaches you the song of Trixion and is an old, old acquaintance of the latter.
• Anti Poop-Socking:
  • Trade Skills consume Life/Work Energy, which regenerates through in-game time, with rarer gatherable materials consuming more Energy than others.
  • Stronghold Energy is consumed whenever something is researched, crafted, or deployed, and once again regenerates in real time.
  • Rapports have a hard daily limit on how many interactions you can have, with around 99 gifts, 5 emotes and 5 songs that can be played across all Rapport characters, meaning it's impossible to equally level every Rapport at the same time.
  • Endgame content has a general Daily or Weekly lockout, as standards for most MMO games.
  • Chaos Dungeons and Guardians can only get full rewards twice a day. For Chaos Dungeons after your two daily runs you can still get a special currency to buy more honing mats, but even this caps out.
  • If you don't do your Chaos Dungeons or Guardian fights for the day, you get ten Rested Experience per skipped encounter. Twenty Rested Experience doubles your loot. If you skip doing them for the day, the next day you will get double loot for the first run and normal loot for the second. If you have a lot of characters to take care of, you can actually get 2/3 the loot for 1/3 the work^note Skip doing any Chaos Dungeons or Guardians for two days. On the third day, you'll have forty Rested Experience for each, meaning four runs worth of loot over three days while only actually doing two runs., which is how many players opt to play their alts.
• Arch-Enemy: Brelshaza considers the Mage to be this, due to the latter foiling her attempt to steal the soul of a powerful Sylvain wizard.
• The Archmage: Very few mages get to wear this title, with two most commonly named being Enviska and Ealyn. Enviska has been dead for centuries or more and is a folk hero while Ealyn is not only a nearly unrivaled mage, but also a pioneer in magick research. When contact reopens between Rohendel and Vern, Rohendel's mages are a bit embarrassed to find Vern much more advanced than they are under Ealyn's guidance.
• Asian Fox Spirit:
  • Flame and Night Fox Yoho are Guardians resembling giant nine tailed foxes with magic curse powers and flame attacks. The latter of the two can also summon sexy fox ladies that serve as a minor distraction during the fight or turn the player themselves into one if they fail to dodge its attacks.
  • One competitor in Anikka is more directly a Korean Kumiho, which are rather nastier than their more well known Japanese counterparts. The lady in question is raising the dead and eating human livers in an attempt to become human herself, but when her disguise breaks she resembles a mostly naked woman with tails and claws. She's probably dead at the end of the fight with her, though it isn't confirmed and she's never mentioned again.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • In the current build, Machinists are popular for their cool design, high mobility and defenses. Unfortunately, their damage turns out to be really bad, leaving many players unwilling to continue playing them. Later on Demonic Impulse Shadowhunters have the exact same issue, but at least they can perform well early on before tripod scaling becomes an issue.
  • Comparisons of top damage classes can often be less straightforward than they appear: Many of the supposed top performers such as Strikers are back attack classes that are unable to reach their full potential in a real fight due the struggle to avoid boss mechanics and reach behind the boss and then execute long combos before the boss inevitably moves again with no warning. Classes like Sorceress, Summoner and Gunslinger meanwhile run off of Hit Master, meaning they can hit the boss from wherever they want and still deal full damage. As a result it's generally agreed that the best way of tracking effective damage is to check how much damage they can burst out within 6-8 second damage windows rather than how they theoretically perform in consistent uninterrupted damage. Which is not to say back attack classes are at all bad: Deathblades and the aforementioned Strikers are still among the best classes in the game.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: The official Amazon Games localization is... a bit rough. Overtly literal dialogue, stiff voice acting, names changed for no apparent reason (which isn't even totally consistent, as the 'old' names tend to sneak in some parts of the game, such as Armen at times being named Aman), inconsistent pronunciation, female players being referred to as male, and so on. Overall, the localization is comprehensible, but not optimal in the least.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In Rohendel, Brelshaza is revealed to have placed Flamekeeper Gherdia under her control and is using him to sow chaos in the kingdom from within.
• But Thou Must!: There are a number of dialogue options and even choices in the game that give some impression of choice, but there are very few that have any consequence whatsoever. The ones that do have it matter what you say can pop up in odd places. For example, a sidequest in Xeneela where you can either send a cat back on the carriage it snuck in on or leave it to the mercy of the residents, who are terrified of the thing. One option is better for the cat's wellbeing than the other, shall we say, and has a follow up later.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": Elves? Dwarves? Never heard of them. We have only Sylvains and Umars here. Fairies and angels are essentially referred to as Mokokos and Lazeniths, though there are also winged fairies that do go by that name. Cyborgs are also referred to as Cykins instead.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit":
  • There's a fairly classic monster known as an owlbear in this game, but unlike common depiction the 'beak' appears to be its nose and it has two long tusks coming out of its actual mouth. The head also resembles a small rodent such a gerbil or hamster more than a bird or bear and it has a long spray of feathers for a tail and a few on its arms, but otherwise not many birdlike traits. If you didn't call it an owlbear, it's like few would recognize it as such.
  • There's a small, weasel like creature seen in some areas referred to as a mongoose. Most real life mongooses don't have little horns, though.
• Came Back Wrong: Valtan is killed early in the game by Kharmine and later resurrected by Akkan to be the first Legion Raid. However, even for him he's behaving like a brutal raging monster. The boss fight itself seems to imply that the resurrection had not been fully completed yet given that Akkan has to partially direct him at the start. He even drops dead from exertion before the end and fights you as a ghost, after which his soul dissolves.
• Can't Hold His Liquor: The player character is a bit of a light weight: During the Yorn storyline at one point you get so drunk you begin hallucinating that all the Umar around you are food and apparently a few sips during Nagi's Rapport quests is enough to make you start dancing in public. At least you're a good dancer.
• The Cavalry: At the climax of the East Luterra arc, the Mayhem Legion launches a massive attack on Borea Fortress, with thousands of soldiers and living siege engines. Despite everything your character does, its a losing battle as the Demons pour into the fortress and put you on the backfoot as you and the fortress' defenders desperately Hold the Line... And then the various people you've befriended throughout the arc suddenly arrive with their own forces to help out, turning the tide.
• The Chains of Commanding:
  • While Azena's personality is naturally rather arrogant, most of her coldness comes from the responsibilities of her position. A key example is the exile of the surviving Xeneelan researchers to Vern: While she secretly didn't blame them, she had to send them away to keep them safe from the other Sylvains, so she banished them from ever returning and cut all contact immediately. In private, she assumes they all hate her and stresses the hell out when you secretly bring her to meet Ealyn in Vern. Ealyn actually understands and still cherishes her, which lets Azena relax and talk to her old friend briefly.
  • Ealyn tries to pull the same thing off but her natural personality is more impulsive and relaxed, which rather undermines her efforts. Her close acquaintances like Avele understand what she's really like but since she doesn't appear much in public, many of her more distant relations and the common people do seem to be fooled.
• Clueless Chick-Magnet: Jederico thinks he's being trailed by assassins. When you investigate, all you find is that he has a massive number of Delain women crushing on him and possibly stalking him.
• Collection Sidequest: TONS:
  • On the local side, each continents has its own sets of collectables which increases that continent's completion percentage, which include:
    • Random collectable items dropped by mobs, often needing multiple of each to complete; all of them have a description with lore.
    • Cooking collectables: food items that can either be found hidden in areas either as full food, or as hidden ingredients to cook said food. At times, they may require levelling up a Rapport to obtain.
    • Vistas, specific cutscenes of areas with variable hiddenness.
    • Hidden stories: Small untracked sidequests/puzzles that have to be found through in-game hints.
  • World-spanning collectables include:
    • Mokoko Seeds: Small seeds that can be found hidden anywhere in the world, including inside dungeons; usually in hidden spots or hard to see places. There are over 1200 in the whole game, making it the single most abundant collectable by far.
    • Island Tokens: Found by completing the various island questlines found on the sea.
    • World Tree Leaves: Collectables randomly found while using Trade Skills.
    • Cards: Collectible cards of characters that can be found through quests, Rapports and other methods.
• Conflict Ball: Executor Solas, a high priest from Sacria and an inquisitor, shows up with a group of like-minded individuals looking for heretics. They enter into a foreign kingdom, murder a bunch of peasants on their way to the village, and decide to kill everyone there under suspicion of being demon worshippers and heretics. This act of war goes largely unopposed apart from Armen attempting to defend them. And despite seemingly knowing Armen is a Delain, Solas has no issue with him until he goes berserk and attacks them. Once Solas kills all the villagers and Armen , Armen decides to run away with the demons. Solas is basically never mentioned again after a handwave from Thirain about how he can't do anything about it, despite being King of Luterra by this point.
• Confusion Fu: Kakul Saydon's attacks fit his clown theme and are deceptively deadly: They're kind of ridiculous, but actually very deadly. Shandi warns the player that he rarely gets serious and is much more dangerous than he appears.
• Coolest Club Ever: Revelry Row is an island containing nothing but an anachronistic dance club. You can even find Blackfang and her crew relaxing there, though you can't talk to them. The Una task for the island involves making sure it stays the coolest club around by finding a legendary DJ to keep things fresh.
• Crippling Overspecialization: While there are eight ships in the game, by the time players reach the latter stages they typically abandon most of them. Six ships are specialists and two, the Estoque and Astray, are generalists. The specialists will have one kind of hazard they excel at, one they're okay at and suck at most of the rest. All ships take about the same amount of effort and resources to max out, so most players find it more convenient to just max out the generalist ships since they can do pretty well everywhere. The only specialist ships that see use are the Eibern's Wound and the Tragon. The Tragon is the best ship for the most popular sailing coop and the Eibern's Wound gives buffs for the weekly ghost ship bosses. There's little point in building ships like the Brahms to resist less dangerous weather conditions when it comes at the cost of being unable to handle anything else. This is, of course, assuming you decide to upgrade your ship at all, which can get incredibly expensive.
• Crutch Character: Demonic Impulse Shadow Hunters perform very well from the range of about 1370-1460 and require little investment for gems, but start to steeply fall off after that as character strength grows more dependent on Tripods, which are upgrades for your skills that attach to your gear. Since tripods don't exist for DI, this means they lack the boosts that can up to double the effectiveness of other class's skills. The class remains very popular among many, but the damage ends up comparable to tank characters like Gunlancers when before they were top contenders.
• Crystal Dragon Jesus: While the main religion of Arkesia is polytheistic with Regulus as Top God, the religious outfits of priests and their symbols are outright identical to Catholic symbols, the most blatant being very obvious Christian crosses with no differences from the real thing.
• Cutscene Incompetence: There are several moments where the player character gets quite literally swatted aside and knocked out by the local villain regardless of how powerful they are, with another character swooping in to save them. A particularly notable example is at the end of the Glorious Wall siege: You fight Legion Commander Valtan and after taking off more than half of his health bar, he decides to get serious and knocks you out with one blow, at which point Armen and Thirain swoop in with a combined attack and defeat him.
• Debate and Switch: In the South Vern storyline, the Vernese military is shorthanded, the defenses have been weakened, demons are on the rise and humans feel underrepresented in politics. All friendly NPCs are incensed at the Senate trying to raise more military forces because they feel it undermines Vern's predominantly Sylvain culture and shows disrespect for the queen. When you go to South Vern, you can see that there are monsters attacking them, showing the real need for more military force... but then the senators who were pushing hardest for stronger military turn out to be in league with the demons and the need for a stronger military is half neglected and half "solved" by reviving the disbanded Solar Knight order.
• Defeat Means Friendship: It takes a lot of effort, but you can actually befriend Mari despite her anger and sorrow over Krause's death, making her a Rapport NPC. She requires more Rapport than any other character in the game, tied only with Nineveh and optionally Sasha and Ealyn.
• Degraded Boss: After a certain point in the game, you can end up facing raid bosses like Tarsila as minor bosses in the Chaos Gate dailies.
• Destructive Savior: The land of Shushire was not naturally freezing cold. It was actually frozen by Sirius in order to seal away the flame demons who were rampaging there.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Players sometimes hesitate to bring classes like Arcanist or Gunslinger/Deadeye because they have questionable reputations at best: Arcanist is a partially luck-dependent class and the latter two have the unfortunate combination of extremely low durability on top of animation locks that can leave them very vulnerable on top of a complex ability rotation. Deadeyes in particular generally have to fight very close to the boss despite using guns. However, in the hands of a skilled player, they can be extremely effective. Gunslingers in particular are one of the most desirable classes to bring for fights like Kakul Saydon... provided they can keep themselves alive.
• The Dividual: According to his card, Kakul-Saydon is in fact two entities; the "main" body is the maniacal, bombastic Kakul, while the puppet on his shoulder is the grim, morose Saydon. They do speak to each other, but are more or less considered to be the same entity.
• The Dog Bites Back: Ephernia is mind-controlled by Brelshaza before the player arrives in Rohendel and is stopped as part of the story. When she reveals her scheme, he is pissed and returns during her boss fight with the implication you would not have been able to beat her without his assistance.
• Dying as Yourself: Implied with one character on Anguished Isle. One militia member was sent to investigate the island and ran into Stella. She passes information to the player before vanishing. As the player heads through the island's dungeon, they run into and kill a number of Mayhem demons that were corrupted from normal people. After killing Stella, you can enter a secret area at the back and find said militia member simply cowering at the back as she uses every ounce of restraint to keep from going mad like the rest despite already being a demon. One hit is all it takes to let her die in peace, after which you pass on the news to her superior.
• Elemental Powers: The Sorceress class tends to primarily wield fire, lightning, and frost elemental spells in combat.
• Enigmatic Minion:
  • While Kharmine outwardly professes loyalty to Kazeros like all other Demons, its clear as early as Rethramis that he has his own agenda at work, and it involves the Arks. During the South Vern finale he gets in your way as the final boss fight, but seemingly only for appearances' sake.
  • After his first defeat Kakul Saydon seems to have gone off on his own both to recover and to pursue some agenda of his own. What he's after is not very clear, but is most likely simply causing mayhem and chaos. He even considers going after Kazeros himself before deciding to aim bigger. He also survives his Legion Raid boss fight, showing that his plans are not done with yet.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Assuming it wasn't part of his act, the prologue suggests that Kharmine detests the depths humanity is willing to sink to in the name of greed.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Avele is very popular with both men and women and her schedule is basically jam packed with various dates after work. However, while she's pretty good at flirting, her insensitivity tends to bite her in the ass, which ruins a date with another girl when she brings the player character along. The PC, on the other hand, knew perfectly well that coming with Avele would ruin the date and thus clear out Avele's schedule.
• Evilutionary Biologist: Having seen a prophecy of ruin for the nation of Arthetine, Technologist Krause decided that the only path to survival was to pick the greatest and noblest minds of the nation and transform them into cyborgs, evolve them endlessly, and create a new machine god.
• Fake Relationship: To make Jederico's fangirls leave him alone, the player character claims to be dating him. He goes along with it because he doesn't want the temptation of real pretty ladies throwing themselves at him given his implied vow of chastity.
• Fantastic Racism: Despite being an intelligent species, goblins are typically treated like any other mindless monster. This does have SOME basis however: they're often pretty aggressive and are also more vulnerable to magic-induced insanity than humans, which makes them even more likely to attack people. It's implied that they and other races like orcs were created by the demons directly or indirectly and thus are very easily manipulated by them.
• Fragile Speedster: The Astray is the fastest ship available but like the Estoque doesn't particularly resist any type of weather. In fact, the base resistances are even lower. It also has a low base HP and takes -40 durability when traveling compared to many ships only going -25, such as the aforementioned Estoque. While you can actually buff the resistances to be at least as good as the Estoque, the low base durability and increased damage while sailing still make it a very vulnerable ship. This also comes at the cost of not using sailors like Blackfang who buff speed a great deal at the cost of providing bad resistances. You can be fast in the Astray or strong, but not both at the same time.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: South Vern Neria's Rapport questline has the two of you track down a serial killer who turns out to be a victim of heavy child abuse. Neria is unimpressed, however, because she's still the one who chose to poison random strangers.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: During the questlines for a region your character class is originally from, some characters will recognize you from your past deeds in your backstory.
  • In the Anikka arc, the Female Martial Artist's status as the Yeon Clan's Grand Master is acknowledged several times, and Hodon is eager for his rematch against her in the tournament.
  • The Assassin's status as a Delain is acknowledged in several instances, such as after the first time Armen uses his powers to save Varut in Prideholme. Though once you actually get to Kalaja, suddenly no one remembers you and treats you like a foreigner.
  • The Mage's status as Enviska's Successor is acknowledged many times in Rohendel, where they originate.
• Gang of Hats: The various Demon Legions function as this.
  • The Beast Legion is primarily made up of Demonic animals and beast tamers. It is led by Valtan.
  • The Mayhem Legion have a Monster Clown aesthectic and specialize in spreading madness and debauchery. It is led by Kakul-Saydon.
  • The Plague Legion spreads disease and pestilence wherever they go. They also have a fondness for necromancy. This Legion is led by Akkan.
  • The Covetous Legion are essentially Succubi, preying on humanity's vices and desires in order to spread ruin. Vykas is the leader of the Covetous Legion.
  • The Phantom Legion specializes in illusions and carefully crafted schemes enacted from the shadows. The leader of the Phantom Legion is Brelshaza, who is the most cunning and ruthless commander according to her card in-game.
  • Finally, the Darkness Legion serves as Kazeros' elite guard, and is made up of the strongest Demons. Their officers, including their Commander, tend to be quiet and taciturn, but capable of devastating destruction. Thaemine is the leader of the Darkness Legion and is stated to be both the strongest and most mysterious of the Legion Commanders.
• Genius Loci: The Isle of Wisdom and Tortoyk aren't naturally occurring islands but rather the bodies of giants. While Tortoyk is still alive, Isle of Wisdom is made out of the body of Dormerek, a giant that was killed by Sacria in a failed attempt to seize the Ark it was protecting.
• Glass Cannon: In general, as a class's damage potential goes up, their ability to take a hit, mobility or both decrease. The Assassin, Mage and Specialist classes fall nearly universally into this category, though Shadow Hunters can self heal, Bard is a support instead and Artillerist is loaded up with shield abilities which mask their low defense. Even some Warrior and Martial Artist classes fall into this: Berserkers, for example, usually run Mayhem, which causes them to (effectively) take about 40% more damage than they would otherwise.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Delains are half-human, half-Demon, and are capable of utilizing their Demonic blood to access a Super Mode, but risk going mad if they abuse it too much. Given that they all reside in a demon cursed land and their children are also seemingly Delain, rather than diluting the bloodline, they may not all be literally the children of demons like Armen but are born that way from living on cursed land.
• Have You Seen My God?: Kharmine implies that Regulus is, at best, not actually watching over Arkesia anymore. He doesn't elaborate on whether he left, died or was imprisoned. Later details show that Regulus forced all the other gods to withdraw from Arkesia for unknown reasons. The only priests who are still in contact with their god are the priests of Sirius, the patron deity of Shushire.
• The Heavy: Since Kazeros is currently trapped in the Demon Realm's red moon, his Legion Commanders and Kharmine serve as the primary antagonists throughout the story. Kharmine in particular serves as the primary overarching antagonist for the game's first act (Rethramis to East Luterra).
• Heel–Face Turn: Countess Ezrebet is actually a shapeshifting demon or maybe something even worse from outside of normal reality, but doesn't really possess much actual malice despite her crimes. She's more curious about humans than anything. After feeling more of the original Ezrebet's emotions and getting help in processing and contextualizing them, she vows never to hurt anyone again.
• Heroic Willpower: Zaika is actually a corrupted Delain, but basically just said "No" to going evil and berserk. This makes him a lot stronger than other Delains and also makes him more or less immune to other areas full of thick corruption that normal Delain can't enter. But he too has his limit: After Thaemine personally shows up on the battlefield, Zaika is forced to absorb the corruption in the land and promptly goes berserk, becoming the final boss of the chapter.
• Homoerotic Subtext: Armen and Kharmine are just oozing subtext out of every pore. Armen and Thirain count as well.
• How Unscientific!: During Shana's rapport quest you get a flashback to explain what happened on the ship she came to Punika on. Apparently, the ship was attacked by pirates and after everyone else was killed, Shana suddenly manifested psychic powers, threw all the pirates back onto their ship and then threw the entire pirate ship into the ocean, sinking it. Nobody else in the series has demonstrated any kind of psychic powers. While it probably could be done with magic, this incident was clearly some kind of telekinesis. This incident is never addressed with the characters more focused on finding out if Shana's dad is still alive.
• Humanity Is Infectious: The Ezrebet you can gain rapport with is actually an Eldritch Abomination wearing the form of the original Ezrebet, who summoned her out of grief following the death of her son. "Ezrebet" doesn't really understand any human emotions and, despite originally being an enemy, doesn't even hold any malice. This is why she starts feeling unnerved when the original Ezrebet's emotions begin bleeding into her and, implicitly, she begins to from similar tastes to her as well.
• Hype Backlash: In-Universe; when you consume the Punika cooking item Steamed Papu Crab, text pops up expressing bafflement that anyone would eat something so chewy or with such a weird smell. The crab's meat is otherwise praised for its texture and the mild fruity smell that comes from the crab's diet. But this seems to be another case of So Bad, It's Good for food reviewer Amalone because he still gave it five stars.
• Immortal Immaturity: Avele and Ealyn both have this issue. Avele literally needs picture books to learn anything and has the attention span of a gnat. Ealyn, meanwhile, constantly runs away from the palace so she can buy cake.
• Impractically Fancy Outfit: Some outfits and skins may raise questions on practicality. For example, Sorceresses might run into combat with miniskirts and two to four foot long pieces of cloth tied into the sleeves and waists of their dress, which should definitely stick on the ground giving all the running around. Female characters also all generally go around in high heels even though they frequently climb up cliff faces or even jump between them or gaps that look to be thirty feet across. Sorceresses may make some amount of sense given that they theoretically don't need to move around much in a fight, but a martial artist wearing that getup? Not a great idea.
• Infinity -1 Sword: The Eurus and the Estoque. The Astray is the fastest ship in the game, but the second fastest ship, the Eurus, requires only one quest line and a short one at that to acquire. Furthermore, a fully upgraded and properly crewed Estoque, the starter boat, is almost as fast, also has good resistances, and can keep up with a fully upgraded Astray.
• Infinity +1 Sword: The Astray is the fastest ship in the game with good resistances when fully upgraded and the best crew in the game. However, it requires significant investment to acquire, including 300000 Pirate Coins, getting Blackfang to Trusted Rapport, completing two Una's Task Reputations through daily quests, and lots of ship parts. The only reason it doesn't completely replace every other ship is its relatively low resistances, but with the best crew, fully upgraded and with enough sea bounty resistance bonuses it can even keep up on that front.
• Informed Attractiveness: Played for laughs. Great Castle's Neria is referred to as the most beautiful of all Umar women, but the Umar body type and beauty standard most likely differ wildly from the player's. You just have to take the game's word for it.
• Interface Screw: The "Darkness" debuff status effect serves as this, darkening the edges of the screen at one stack and further darkening more of the screen as it stacks up.
• Interface Spoiler
  • Want to know what important supporting characters survive to the end of the chapter? Just look at the rapport page for the area. If they show up, great! They'll be fine. If they don't? Then you better hope they show up again in a different place or they'll probably end up dead or incapacitated.
  • Certain cards can spoil a character's fate or other plot developments.
• I Surrender, Suckers: At the end of West Luterra, its actually possible to take up Scherrit's We Can Rule Together offer, but if you do choose this, it turns out to be a ploy so your character can get close to him and make a surprise attack.
• It's All My Fault: During the Assassin's Awakening questline, you run into Father Varut again, who blames himself for Armen's fall, believing that if he had helped Armen come to terms with his Delain heritage instead of warning him against using it, he wouldn't have fallen under Kharmine's sway.
• Jack of All Stats: The Estoque is the most popular starting ship due to having even resistances across the board and a base speed of 20, which is dead middle. It's also the earliest available ship.
• Jerkass Gods: Despite the devotion of the people, the gods overall seem to be hands off at best and may actually want the world to end. The "Guardians" they set over the world actually act as a cosmic retcon button, they refused to help out the mortal races during the Chain War and when the Lazeniths set out to help the mortals by bringing an artifact that could help them, the Ark, the gods punished them by stripping the vast majority of their wings. This is eventually pointed out by Kharmine of all people, who points out that it makes no sense for people to worship Regulus because he never does anything for them anyway. Assuming he's even still around, which is questionable. If this is deliberate, it may only be Regulus to blame: He forced the other gods to leave Arkesia.
• Karmic Death: In Shushire, Vrad ultimately meets his end in the very arena he sentenced so many innocents to die in, at the hands of the very Demon he sold his soul to.
• Last of His Kind: Subverted. Tortoyk is referred to as the last of the giants, but when spoken to about a giant heart in your possession he mentions that that there were eighteen giants to start and he knows that fifteen have died. Thus, there are two more out there somewhere. After collecting the final heart there are hints that they may try to find the two missing giants.
• Left Hanging: Shana's rapport quest line ends with the revelation that her father is probably the pirate king Bloodclaw and that she's going to visit Blackfang to talk more about it. However, this is where the quest line ends, so we never see them meet nor get explicit confirmation.
• Legacy Character: Each major city has a tavern run by a woman named after Neria, who was a major ally to the Sidereals during the Chain War. Some of them tell you their real name when you're near the end of their rapport quests.
• Legend Fades to Myth: Records more than a few centuries old are pretty spotty. There are more than a few stories about why something happened a certain way, such as why the Lazenith lost their wings. In the first story we hear it's because the gods refused to help the mortal races fight off the demons, so the Lazenith stepped in to help. In the story we hear from Nineveh later, they instead lost their wings because they used the Arks against the Haal without permission after the Haal race was committing major blasphemy.
• Lethal Chef: Prideholme Neria really isn't a good cook, to the point that one bite of her cake knocks the player out for what's implied to be hours. This is brought up much, much later during a Fourth Wall Breaking quest line where she claims she actually does know how to cook but the game designers make her cook bad on purpose because it's a cute gimmick.
• Light Is Not Good
  • For all their talk of being the "chosen servants" of Regulus, in practice the Holy Sacrian Empire leaves a lot to be desired. Executor Solas is a Hanging Judge and his chapter is basically a bunch of murderous thugs, while the Feiton chapter have essentially placed the region under martial law and abduct children, explicitly to interrogate and torture them for their perceived role in the Chaos Gates appearing. Though thankfully, the Feiton chapter eventually undergoes a Heel–Face Turn.
  • The Lazenith are basically angels, but the vast majority of the ones that remain are themselves the subject of divine punishment for disobeying the gods: They stole the Arks to either try to wipe out the Haals for sacrilege or to fight demons. Kadan warns you not to trust them should you meet.
• Loads and Loads of Races: There are your standard humans, elves and dwarves as the three dominant powers, though they don't call them that. Then there are angels (Lazenith), three different types of fairy (Fairy, mokoko and bambiri), demons and Delains all have autonomous or semi autonomous countries or communities. After that you can keep digging down and find goblins, orcs, trolls, ogres, mole people, harpies, owlbears, puruus, elementals and who knows how many more. However, currently, only humans, sylvains and delains are actually playable.
• Long-Lived: While Sylvains show no signs of aging after five hundred years and humans seem to have human lifespans, Umar at least live for several centuries and the Yoze Sidereal Shandi simply looks old now rather than actually having died over the years. This may also apply to giants: On one of the few occasions you can meet with Tortoyk, it's mentioned that he's growing weaker and doesn't believe he has long to live. He spends most of his time asleep now.
• Ludicrous Gibs: Organic enemies such as humans, beasts and most demons tend to quite literally explode into gore when killed, leaving various scattered bones and a pool of blood where they stood.
• Magic Pants: Whenever Armen transforms into his Delain form, he loses his clothes and gains an entirely different, black outfit. When he transforms back, he instantly regains his priestly clothes and staff.
• Magikarp Power: Certain builds or sets start slow, but end up scaling much better than initially stronger competitors.
  • For example, when it comes to Shadowhunters, Demonic Impulse starts very powerful but due to lack of scaling from tripods and gems, it eventually gets outclassed by Perfect Suppression.
  • The strongest card set in the game, Light of Salvation, is initially a Situational Sword only really good for fighting against the Legion Raids and a few Guardians since it gives Dark resist andchanges damage type to Holy at 12 piece but nothing else. However, with the 18 and 30 piece awakenings, it becomes better everywhere thanks to also giving a significant bonus to Holy damage. Unfortunately, every single card in this set is of legendary rarity and you need 96.
  • The strongest support card set in the game is Lostwind Cliff, but only if you have the 30 piece awakening and your party is using Light of Salvation. It gives a 3.5% buff to party Holy damage, which is only good if they're using Holy damage. This means that you need to get a whopping 96 cards to pull it off, including four different legendaries making up 2/3 of those cards.
• Male Gaze: Actively weaponized by the (currently unreleased in the west) Vykas Legion Raid: after a certain point in the fight, Vykas will pull all players in an unskippable first-person POV cutscene in which the camera focuses on her...assets, her legs, and her feet. At the same time a very quick and difficult QTE will appear on screen that the players have to solve to survive. The only reason that cutscene exist is to actively distract the player.
• Manchild: Avele is, at minimum, five hundred years old given that she was exiled from Rohendel during the Chain War. However, she has the attention span of a three year old and you have to literally get her picture books to make her pay attention.
• Master of All: With 40+ bounties to boost resistances and the perfect crew, the Astray becomes capable of handling all sea hazards while remaining the fastest ship in the game.
• Maybe Ever After: A few Rapport characters such as Blackfang will accept your flirting at high levels, but don't have an explicit Affection level like Ealyn or Sasha. Not yet anyways.
• Mighty Glacier: Gunlancers have the strongest defenses in the game on top of good offense and stagger, but as a tradeoff have pretty low mobility. Unlike most classes, their dodge doesn't even move them in the direction of the cursor but is rather a straight leap backward.
• Mind over Matter: The story passes over the moment without commenting in the slightest, but apparently when Shana was a child her eyes turned black, she levitated a bunch of pirates off the ship she was on and back onto hers and then picked up that ship and threw it into the ocean.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: While some Guardians are basically just giant monsters, some are more closely based off animals. Ur'nil is just a big bear with armor, for example. However, some Guardians are in a middle ground such as Armored Nacrasena, which is a giant scorpion with no stinger on its tail and the head of a wolf. On top of its knees it also appears to have little lion heads.
• Monster Clown: The Mayhem Legion are an entire faction of circus-themed demons, with their basic Mooks simply named Clown. They're stated to sustain themselves on fear and misery, and rituals force humanoids to turn into them. Nagi's quest line also shows that tainted food is related in some way: Produce exposed to the Mayhem Legion's corruption causes strange laughing fits that would have ended in their conversion into demons without her medical treatments.
• More than Mind Control: Brelshaza's magic is targeted towards the mind and can thus manipulate people with traits or desires she finds exploitable.
  • Gherdia is tricked into treason due to his desire to revive the destroyed city of Xeneela and Ephernia follows his lead, but may have been more directly controlled. Both are knocked back to their senses.
  • Hundreds of years ago, Brelshaza controlled the Xeneelan Sylvains into researching dangerous magicks without taking anywhere near the necessary precautions, which eventually resulted in an explosion that has left the area tainted to this day. Azena, understanding that it was mostly not their fault, banished them so that she could keep them safe from retribution from the other Sylvains.
• Necromantic: When you meet back up with Mari on Eternity Isle, she seems to be in possession of Krause's corpse and is trying to revive it. She gives up quickly because she knew it was impossible from the start but had no idea what else to do with herself.
• Nerf: Upon their initial release, many bosses were deemed to be difficult, but for the wrong reasons. For example, unlike now, there was no way to practice the Mario mechanic in Kakul Saydon until you reached said mechanic. This means that you could only make a single attempt to learn the mechanic about once every ten minutes or so. The hitboxes on the saws and hooks in the same fight were also much larger before, making it extremely difficult to get through them. The hit box for the saws and hooks was reduced to a level that many players still consider unreasonably large and a practice mode for Kakul Saydon (and later Brelshaza for a similar mechanic) was added to make them easier to learn.
• Not Quite Dead: Kakul-Saydon is seemingly killed by Kharmine at the climax of East Luterra, only to suddenly reappear in Punika, searching for a way to restore his stolen power.
  • Much later, Valtan, who was killed by Kharmine at the end of West Luterra (and confirmed dead by the remaining Commanders during their meeting shortly thereafter), suddenly reappears within the Chaos Spire.
  • Its all but stated that Orne, a Rapport NPC in Arthetine, is in fact an amnesiac Seville, one of Krause's lieutenants who was taken in by the Tortich antique shop owner after his defeat. Another of Krause's lieutenants, Mari, can later be found alive on Eternity Isle.
  • Despite being killed in the Male Gunner's backstory, Dr. Bergstrom can appear as a boss in Arthetine Secret Dungeons.
• Obliviously Evil: A demon/monster was summoned by a deranged woman, the original Ezrebet, in an attempt to revive her dead son. It faithfully killed off the woman's attackers, but when it became clear to her that her son still wouldn't be returning, she asked the monster to kill her. It did, and then it took her place. The monster, now known as Ezrebet as well, threw lavish parties where she would invite people in and murder them. After being defeated, killing her or even taking her from the island are not really possible, so she's kept on the island as a kind of prison. Interacting with her shows that she did not really understand that anything she was doing was wrong or how humans feel about anything.
• Oblivious to Love: Cassleford seemingly believes that Thirain keeps rejecting potential suitors because he's in love with a female PC, who is oblivious. That being said, this dialogue only comes after you can potentially propose to Thirain yourself and be rejected.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Each class has an introductory cutscene showing them performing a great heroic deed that explains why Beatrice chose them to find the Arks.
  • The Warrior repels a massive Demon attack on Shushire.
  • The Mage stops the Phantom Legion from stealing the soul of a powerful, famous Sylvain wizard, and becomes the wizard's Successor.
  • The Female Martial Artist becomes Grand Master after foiling a Demon's attempt to sabotage the trial for the title.
  • The Male Martial Artist hunts down and defeats the Demon horde that destroyed his monastery and killed his brother.
  • The Male Gunner defeats Doctor Bergstrom and destroys the Demonic ruby that was controlling him.
  • The Female Gunner survives an assassination attempt by one of Krause's followers.
  • The Assassin is an Avesta agent who successfully conquers the darkness within her and gains full control of her Demon side.
• One-Gender Race: The Nia, apparently. Despite looking entirely human, they're a race born from nature and no male Nia appear. There's even a returning NPC from Shushire who is ecstatic to find he arrived in the land of women, but they're none to impressed and take him into custody for illegally entering the village. The only notable male character in the village is an immigrant named Berver and he knows he doesn't really fit in that well.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Bearded drunks who make weapons. Yup.
• Out of Focus: After serving as the primary Heavy throughout the first act, Kharmine takes a backseat in the plot in favor of the surviving Legion Commanders, with his only major moment afterwards happening at the tail end of the Yorn arc when he claims the now-dormant Velcruze for his own use. However, the events of the second Awakening questline make it clear that he is planning something big for the future.
• Parasol of Pain: Aeromancers use umbrellas as their signature weapons, and use them in about every way you can imagine: melee attacks, shields, ranged weapons, summoning Hostile Weather—you name it!
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: It's actually not really clear if Blackfang does anything genuinely pirate related other than sailing around on a big ship. She seems more like a high seas peace keeper who opposes actual pirates who do things like, yknow, steal stuff. She even set up a town for pirates where she indirectly tasks you with tracking down smugglers. Can't have any crime on her island, no sir.
• Plant People
  • While Mokokos don't look like plants, they do grow from seeds and generally live inside plants.
  • Dryads are an intelligent race that can be seen in many forested areas. They're surprisingly hostile most of the time with only a few friendly ones appearing in Parna Forest
• Ravens and Crows: Kharmine has a pet raven that he uses to spy on the protagonist at several points in the story.
• Really 700 Years Old: Ealyn looks quite young, akin to a teenage schoolgirl despite being the Queen of Vern. However, she's old enough to have been alive during the Chain War five centuries ago when some experiment went awry and destroyed the former Sylvain capital of Xeneela. One of her Stronghold outfits is even classic schoolgirl attire.
• Recurring Boss: Many bosses faced during the game will show up again later as storyless elite mooks. Rictus, for example, shows up over and over in the Shadespire/Fatespire line and Chaos Dungeons contain tons of old bosses and minibosses, even including field bosses like Tarsila.
• Relationship Values: Some characters in each continent have a Rapport level, which is increased through doing quests, interacting with them with emotes and songs, and giving them gifts, levelling them up giving various rare or even unique rewards. Starting from disinterested, most characters start at neutral and can go up to the "Trusted" tier, but a select few can go up to "Affectionate".
• Retired Monster: One Rapport character in South Vern is the orc Gillock, a former subordinate of Sigmund the Necromancer. After it became clear Sigmund's promises were empty and the orcs weren't going to beat Vern, most of them chose to die in battle. Gillock's group didn't join them, but not for any moral reason. He just stopped eating people because he and his like minded orcs didn't want to die and knew it'd get them in trouble.
• Rewarded as a Traitor Deserves: Habeck betrayed Anikka to the Covetous Legion in order to obtain ultimate power. At the end of the Anikka arc, Vykas "rewards" Habeck for his services by using him as the vessel for Bandar.
• Romance Sidequest: Characters with the "Affectionate" Rapport level may have a quest storyline that is essentially this. One example is Sasha in Arthetine.
• Schizo Tech: Arthetine never got the memo that this was meant to be a swords and sorcery fantasy world and instead showed up with power armor, monorails, lasers and broadcasting systems.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Kazeros, the demon king, has been sealed inside the Red Moon. Some of these shards have ended up in Feiton and turned the entire region into a corrupt wasteland.
• Sequence Breaking: There's an optional dungeon where you wrap up the plague storyline in Rethramis. In it, Armen is a supporting character and Kharmine demonstrates his first usage of draining the soul of defeated demons. However, because this is an optional dungeon, it's entirely possible to skip it until after Armen has left the party.
• Ship Tease: Many female NPCs and a few male ones will flirt with the protagonist slightly, but typically nothing ever comes of it. There are only two Rapport characters you can explicitly raise to the level of Affection (Sasha and Ealyn) and only a few more you can actually express interest in directly or vice versa, such as Blackfang and Jahara.
• Skill Gate Characters: Demonic Impulse is much easier to play than most classes given the ease of entering the transformed state, the fact that you simply spam demon form abilities on cooldown, being a Hit Master class and then all the benefits of transformation like self healing, movement and crit chance bonuses. It performs very solidly in early T3 and is far more popular than Perfect Suppression, which is typically considered boring. However, their damage potential has a notoriously low ceiling while Perfect Suppression actually has one of the highest damage ceilings in the game. But Perfect Suppression doesn't let you turn into a demon and is more difficult to play, which makes it very rare.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Executor Solas is only around for three quests, but his actions during those quests end up having dire consequences for the story, especially in regards to Armen.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-Universe. Adventure tomes have cooking items to collect and try. When you do so, you see a review from a famous food critic. Most of the Arthetine food items have zero out of five stars, the sedative gets three and strangely enough the critic gave five stars to some bizarre concoction that tastes like everything all at once, including eggs, watermelon and calamari. Apparently, the "chef" responsible for its creation got tired of Cykin food being called bland. He has a similar reaction to the much praised Punikan Steamed Papu Crab, which he apparently considers both rubbery and stinky and yet gives five stars nonetheless.
• Spider People: There are a few spider ladies hanging around, one of which is in Feiton as miniboss in the main quest and another is a world boss in Shushire. They seem to be intelligent, but so aggressive and protective of their brood that it's hard to say for sure based on ingame evidence, so you simply kill them and move on. A later Una Task indicates that they're mutations of normal spiders that arise when the old spider queen is killed, meaning there isn't much point in killing one if you're trying to exercise population control.
• Staying Alive: More than one demon such as Seto or Stella is clearly seen disintegrating after defeat only to show up alive and well later. The characters eventually note that Valtan in particular was clearly seen being killed and yet is still alive, which seems to be the result of some sort of ability the demons possess.
• Stone Wall: Gunlancers, Destroyers and to an extent Machinists are known for being quite bulky, but also generally have less overall offensive ability to compensate. Gunlancers and Destroyers are also the least mobile classes in the game, especially when considering they're both melee.
• Story And Gameplay Integration: Beatrice and Nineveh were apparently the only two Lazenith spared from punishment for stealing the Arks and each has their own duty they must fulfill. While Nineveh is free to move about so long as she's fighting off the demons, Beatrice is just stuck in Trixion watching everything going on in the world. Beatrice also happens to be the one Rapport character you cannot move to your Stronghold. On the other hand, this doesn't apply to less important characters like Samly or Temma who would also find it basically impossible to reach your Stronghold.
• Take That, Scrappy!: In-Universe in a fourth wall breaking joke quest line. You enter the backstage of the game and near the end of the quest line you start helping Armen up from the cliff again... only to give him a solid kick in the chest and start cheering as he plummets downward. The game developer entering the scene calls it inevitable.
• The Tease: Nagi is pretty flirty in general. It's hard to tell how serious she's being at any given time given that she even teases about her own love confession in the hot spring.
• Tournament Arc: The entire Anikka arc is focused on a martial arts tournament where the player character has to fight distinct fighters one on one, with investigations of strange incidents in the continent happening in-between matches.
• Troll
  • Kharmine truly revels in getting under the protagonists' skins.
    Thirain: Is this all just a game to you, Demon?!
    Kharmine: *Chuckle* Yes.
  • A short quest line that opens up after beating Kakul Saydon for the first time is basically a description of his own actions in stage direction format. One of them is detailing a meeting with Nineveh where he predicts what she'll say and how best to annoy her.
• Uncertain Doom: One Anikka competitor is a shape-shifting fox who has been killing humans as part of a ritual to eventually become human herself. She's defeated without much fuss in the arena, but simply collapses to the ground and is never heard from or mentioned again. It's typically frowned upon to kill people during a friendly martial arts competition so it's at least possible, if unlikely, that she's still alive.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: There are a few mandatory stealth sections in the game which tend to be received very poorly by players due to how long they take and how impossible it is to recover from a single mistake. With no checkpoint system, this can mean having to start over the entire segment, wasting tens of minutes.
• Unreliable Expositor: Early game records say the Lazenith were punished by the gods for stealing the Arks to save the world from the Demons before or during the Chain War. A later offhand remark by Nineveh says they were punished for stealing the Arks to destroy the Haals who were trying to rebel against the Heavens. The only way for both of these to be true would be if Haals and Demons were the same thing, but there isn't much in the way of textual support for this idea. The origins and nature of demons is so vague that it's hard to say what little information we have is trustworthy.
• Uplifted Animal: Totopia is an island full of animals that were taught to speak by Nineveh. She left a magic rod in the lake that allows animals that move there to learn speech as well. It's subverted to an extent, though, because the animals don't really seem to be much smarter than normal animals; they can just express themselves through speech.
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: While Valtan's full resurrection is interrupted and halted and Vykas is apparently killed offscreen by the tentacle thing she summoned, after Kakul Saydon's defeat he's actually no worse for the wear and simply leaves. He even hopes you'll dispose of some of Kazeros's other demon commanders for him.
• Villains Never Lie: Armen is awfully quick to believe everything Kharmine, a demon he already knows to be a sadistic bastard, has to say.
• Waif-Fu: While the men are generally muscular and buff, the female player characters can still juggle dozens of enemies at once in the air and smash them into red goo. This is practically enforced by the Martial Artist-type classes, who only has one male class and three female classes. They are barred from the warrior class, however, which involves wielding a sword that probably weighs more than the person wielding it.
• Wham Episode:
  • Lostwind Cliff. The murderous crimes of Executor Solas and his warrior priests send Armen over the edge, succumbing fully to his inner Delain rage and slaughtering Solas and his retinue. Afterwards, despite Thirain and the protagonist's pleading, he accepts Kharmine's proposal to come to the Demon Realm, believing that he has no place with humanity after what he did.
  • South Vern ends with a major change to the story's status quo with the Demons establishing a permanent beachhead on Arkesia via the Chaos Spire, meaning they can now freely enter Arkesia without needing to use Chaos Rifts or Gates. To counter this, the various world leaders form a coalition dedicated to keeping the Chaos Spire's forces contained.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The generally kind Nagi apparently kills intelligent and usually friendly creatures, Moguros, and uses their skin as medicine.
• What the Hell, Player?: If you kill one of the Watchers in Feiton, the innkeeper NPC will be pissed at you for killing a massive rare creature that is entirely content to be left alone and never hurts anyone. You have to do it to fill the adventurer's tome, however.
• Worf Had the Flu: Brelshaza is beaten for the first time by the adventurer at the end of the Rohendel line, but only with support from Ephernia. She also escapes without seeming to be in too great of danger and eventually returns as the fourth and, so far, most difficult Legion Raid.
• Worthy Opponent: During Yorn Neria's rapport quests you're auditioning to be one of her backup dancers. Because. The main competitor is an arrogant younger Umar, though by the end he shows respect for the protagonist and is sincerely happy for them when they're picked for the position instead of himself.
• Unseen Evil: The Demon leader Kazeros doesn't properly appear due to being sealed within Petrania's red moon; when he first speaks to his Legion Commanders, the only indications of his presence other than his voice are a sudden darkening of the screen and a strong wind forming.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness:
  • Halfway through Shushire, Vrad, defeated and facing execution for his crimes, tries to summon Akkan in a final attempt to escape. Akkan simply laughs at him and declares he has no further use for the slavemaster before having his Plague Demons eat him alive.
  • Later on, in South Vern, the Legion Commanders promptly kill the Black Knights after they've opened the portal between Arkesia and the Demon Realm.
• Your Soul Is Mine!: Kharmine has the ability to drain the souls of other Demons, taking their powers for his own. He's (potentially) first seen using it to punish a defeated minion in an optional dungeon in Yudia, and then uses it to permanently kill Valtan and Kakul-Saydon in Luterra. (Though Kakul-Saydon is later revealed to have survived.)

---