Into this world sustained by the Score, a stone has been thrown. The ripples will soon try to instigate a gigantic change.
The eighth mothership title in Namco's Tales Series, and its tenth anniversary title. It was released in Japan for the Playstation 2 in 2005, and in North America (but not Europe) in 2006.Thousands of years ago in the fantasy world of Auldrant, the Songstress Yulia Jue used her powers to read the memories of the planet itself. She detailed her findings in a vast prophecy known as the Score, which promised unlimited prosperity and wealth for the entire world at the end. In the centuries since then, two great nations known as the Kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear and the Malkuth Empire have fought over the scattered Fonstones upon which the Score is written. Between them lies the Order of Lorelei, a religious order dedicated to the safekeeping of the Score, who act as a neutral arbitrator.Tales of the Abyss follows the adventures of Idiot Hero, Jerkass and White Prince Luke fon Fabre, a Kimlascan noble who has never been allowed outside of his manor since he was kidnapped from his vacation home seven years previously. Due to the trauma from this incident, he developed retrograde amnesia concerning his entire existence, and had to be taught everything again from scratch, even basic skills like how to walk.His mundane existence changes dramatically when mysterious Staff Chick Tear Grants breaks into Luke's manor with the aim of killing his swordmaster, her brother Van Grants. Upon touching Luke, she and Luke are accidentally teleported halfway around the world, landing right in the middle of Malkuth. Together, they try to return Luke home while gradually unravelling the secrets behind his status as The Chosen One of legend.In true Tales Series fashion, it doesn't take long for the first game-changing plot twist to hit.The game has an Animated Adaptation produced by Sunrise. The first episode aired on October 3, 2008 on TOKYO MX; in addition, another channel had an hour long special the following day, showing both the first and second episode. The anime adaptation is apparently stated to be released this October 11, 2011 by Bandai Entertainment in North America. The anime is released sub-only even though the video game has an English dub.The game was originally released for the PS2, and a port for the Nintendo 3DS has been announced and confirmed for an international release. It was released in Europe on November 25th, 2011, marking the first time the Old Continent gets to officially play it.Tropes Include:
Adaptation Induced Plot Hole: The anime has quite some, due to the compression of the story. To be precise, some situations are not properly foreshadowed or even explained, so they don't make any sense to people not familiar with the video game.
Case in point: It's never explained why Ion dies if he reads the Planet Score. He just does.
Adults Are Useless / Competence Zone: averted by Jade, who is twice the age of the rest of the cast but is often complimented on his ability to keep up with the younger heroes. Lampshaded by his occasional comments about how his joints ache in his "old age" (he's 35), usually giving him an excuse to get out of manual labor (IE crate-moving puzzles; ironically, when he does have to push a crate around, he does so with one hand, the other remaining in his pocket).
Adult Child: Luke. Well, not quite adult, but still. Also completely justified, since he got complete amnesia (complete—he had to relearn how to eat) seven years ago. He's basically seven years old.
All of the Other Reindeer: The older girls in the Order, who did their best to make Anise's life miserable, mocked her parentage, and insisted she was incapable of being a good Fon Master guardian.
Also happens to Van and Tear while they are watchers in the Qliphoth. The other soldiers were jealous of them because they came from the Outer Lands and are descendants of Yulia.
All Your Powers Combined: Nebilim. She has the best Strike and Fonic Artes in the entire game. She also has Mystic Artes like Rending Saber, Mystic Cage, Indignation, Innocent Shine, and Fortune's Arc.
Allergic to Love: Guy is afraid of women, to be specific, although that doesn't stop him from hitting on them and then running the hell away. Justified by the circumstances of his gynophobia: as a child, Guy's servants as well as his older sister sacrificed themselves to protect him from an enemy attack. He ended up buried in a pile of dead women.
Lampshaded by a number of characters, particularly Luke, who ask him whether it's fair to lead women on that way.
It's also suggested that he doesn't entirely know that he's turning women on, as seen when he compliments Tear on her appearance.
Anime Theme Song: "Karma" by Bump of Chicken — the vocals were removed in the English localization. It was even recycled for the animated adaptation.
Arbitrary Headcount Limit: You only fight with four characters, while you have a total of six; complete with Hand Wave as to what the other characters are doing while your main party is fighting.
Anise, after Ion's death. She gives up her gold digging ways and is determined to become the first female Fon Master, and practically all her conversations after that point have her saying that Ion would have wanted her to do something, or that Ion would have liked a certain course of action.
Spinoza, after the death of his colleagues due to his betrayal.
Mieu is also an atoner since he's been exiled from his village because of his actions. He is just a small child, but his playing around lead to a horrible fire that killed several of his kind and started a war with another species that is now dominating and terrorizing his people.
Awesome, but Impractical - Luke's, Guy's, and Anise's second level Mystic Artes, which become available in a New Game Plus. They are a pain in the ass to learn how to use, and either require a particularly unfavorable HP level to activate or have a high cost associated with them (-20,000 gald for Anise). Also, they can only be used once per battle (except Guy and Natalia).
Because Destiny Says So: Holy crap, is it ever. Why don't the people of Auldrant do anything when something bad happens? Because the Score predicted it, so there's no point meddling.
Beta Test Baddie: Played straight by Sync, and likely most all of the other God-Generals as well. Inverted, ironically enough, by Asch.
Big Bad: Vandesdelca Musto Fende (AKA, Master Van)
Bishounen: Majority of the male cast fit this trope.
Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Anise. Sugary sweet on the outside, utterly cynical on the inside. Mind you, she's not all that bad on the inside when the chips are down, being ultimately something of a Jerk with a Heart of Gold. She is also The Mole working for Grand Maestro Mohs and has been giving him information about Ion and the team since day one.
Bittersweet Ending: Depending on who the red haired person at the end is, Tear or Natalia will be very sad.
Blade on a Stick: Jade uses a spear and variations thereof as his primary weapon. Also, in the anime, it's shown that the tip of Tear's staff is sharp enough to pierce flesh.
Bodyguard Crush: Gender inverted. Anise has a crush on Ion, and is also his bodyguard. Legretta loves Van and is his right hand woman. Arietta was the original Ion's bodyguard, and was in love with him.
Bonus Boss: In the Bonus Dungeon, there are clones of the God-Generals and Replicantis, the Sword Dancer, and in the Devil's Arms sidequest, Nebilim. Oh, and there's the Tales Cameo Team, as well.
Bonus Dungeon: The Replica Lab, which is also a particularly frustrating Escort Mission without an online map.
Boobs of Steel: Tear has the biggest measurements in the cast and serves the role of Staff Chick. She shows amazing combat proficiency in cutscenes, however, and she's easily one of the best characters for battle with her light magic, on par with Jade when she has her pendant equipped. And considering that Natalia can also be a Staff Chick herself, Tear can be free to just cast. She can also be a decent mid-range brawler, if you play her right.
Break the Haughty: Pretty much everything that happens to Luke in the first half of the game. Also, for Natalia, she subdues a bit when she joins the party, realizing quickly that fighting in real life is much different from practice. The real kick for her, though, is when she discovers she's not really a princess, and her real father is one of the God-Generals.
The Call Has Bad Reception: After defeating Van at the Absorption Gate, Lorelei warns Luke and Asch that Van survived and is trying to imprison it. The problem? Lorelei used the ancient Ispanian translation of Van's name, "The one who would seize glory". If it had just used his normal name, Luke and the party could have started to head out and foil Van's schemes a whole month earlier.
Luke, Guy, and Asch will yell out a phrase to accompany their Field of Fonons Artes, e.g. "Blade reveal your fury! Dragon Tempest!"
Cannot Spit It Out: Luke and Tear. This goes on for about a third of the entire game. The rest of the party easily knows that they have romantic feelings for each other, but Luke can't spit it out because, well, he's seven years old and his fonons are seperating, so, by Luke's logic, why tell her how he feels when she'll just be brokenhearted when he disappears, and Tear can't spit it out because she's textbook kuudere.
Catch Phrase: Anise "Booo!" (or in Japanese "Buu buu!")
Likewise, Jade's "My, my!" and Natalia's "Oh, my!". Tear has "You idiot", saved specially for Luke.
Character Development: Tear, Anise, Natalia, and Luke, but Luke more than anyone else in the game.
Chekhov's Gunman: The Dark Wings are mentioned near the very beginning of the game and finally show up a while after.
Childhood Marriage Promise: Natalia and Luke made one, which became one of the defining points in Natalia's life as it contained the ideals to which they would strive to as future monarchs. Luke doesn't remember making it, so Natalia reminds him about it at every opportunity and dreams about how romantic it would be if his first recalled memory was of the promise. It's revealed that she really made the promise with Asch, which leads to much guilt on Natalia's part for forcing her dreams onto Luke, and forms the basis for her own personal struggle to differentiate Luke and Asch.
The Chosen One: Luke. But it's not as simple as that. Asch was the original Chosen One, and Luke was created as a mere decoy. But both Luke and Asch's individual actions coincide with those of The Chosen One, as predicted in the Score. The simplest explanation is that they are both "The Chosen One".
Chronic Back Stabbing Disorder: Fridge Logic leads one to the conclusion that the God-Generals have this, switching loyalty between Asch (during the Akzeriuth quest), Mohs, and Van, despite all three having vastly different goals. Partially justified in that the God Generals are all Selfish Evil: they all have their own agendas (for Dist it's reviving Nebilim, for Sync it's destroying the world), so it's safe to assume that they're just trying to make sure what they want gets done. This is particularly clear in the case of Asch, who will do whatever it takes to kill Van.
Church Militant: The Oracle Knights are the guardians of the Order of Lorelei, though even the non-militants like Ion have some pretty awesome abilities.
Combat Medic: Both Natalia and Tear can alternate as a long/mid distance fighter or the healer, depending on which kind of healing you prefer (Gradual area-of-effect spells from Tear, or concentrated single-target artes by Natalia)
Combination Attack: the "Field of Fonons" thing, which is actually pretty cool. Whenever a character uses [Technique A] which is (say) Fire-elemental, it leaves a circle on the battlefield charged with Fire. Stand in that circle and use [Technique B], and [Technique B] will turn into something new (and generally Fire-elemental).
Compressed Adaptation: This is most notable in the CD dramas, though the manga suffers from this as well. Many things are left out of the CD dramas, including the Albiore, an important vehicle that you spend several quests and subquests in the game acquiring, reacquiring, and powering up. Also left out of the dramas is Mieu, though some would say that's a good thing.
Conditioned To Accept Horror: Tales Of The Abyss not only has Ion go to his death with a smile because he can't grasp that his individual life has any meaning besides what he can do with it, like trying to stop a war, find a way for Luke to win and save Tear's life and instead of resenting it, he is honestly happy that betraying him and causing his death helped The Mole. While he's an extreme example, the entire population of Auldrant qualifies.
Luke's own father and uncle are willing to send him to die both to set off a war they'll win and because the Score says so: it's not until fairly late in the game that they seem to realize that this was a cruel thing to do to Luke and Natalia and it would have been not just ok, but good for them to not want to do it.
Grand Maestro Mohs sees nothing wrong with a genocidal war, since the Score was made to bring prosperity to Auldrant, so it's obviously for the best. While Mohs is hated by fans because of Ion's death, he actually doesn't even qualify as a Well-Intentioned Extremist on Auldrant. His is the moderate faction, containing the normal, sensible members of the Order who just want the best for Auldrant, like Tear. In a different era of Auldrant's history, he'd probably be a good guy, just not when the Score is currently counting down to Auldrant's demise and he's dealing with replicas. Since the Score, written for the benefit of everyone, doesn't regard replicas as worth a mention he's actually fully justified in considering them not people, given the Order's doctrine about Lorelei. He's actually completely right that Lorelei cares about everyone, he just overestimated Lorelei's ability to make the Score turn out that way.
Almost everyone reacts with shock and horror to the idea of revealing a Score of death, even when, or especially because, doing so would save someone's life and go against the Score, and since the Score was written to create the most prosperity and happiness for Auldrant's people, obviously Lorelei wouldn't have had them die then if it wasn't for the best.
The best example, even more than Ion is the Big Bad. When Luke asks him if he cares about Luke at all other than as a living weapon he honestly doesn't understand the question, mistaking it for an existential one. The Big Bad was brought into the world as a Laser Guided Tykebomb, in accordance with the Score with parents who were aware of this the entire time and only thought about him in terms of that function just like how he regards Luke. Oh, and as a babysitter for their 'real' child. The people who used him to destroy his homeland and as an excuse for performing deadly experiments on civilians who were going to die anyway considered themselves fully justified, between the Score and using him as a scapegoat. When that's the ethical framework in which he was raised, is it that odd that he doesn't see anything wrong with creating replicas or destroying Auldrant? After all, it was ok to hook him into a machine and destroy Hod for the greater good, and he's doing this to allow humanity to survive the Scored end of the world. In the context of Van's childhood, his interactions with Luke in the early game become a massive Pet the Dog. He gives Luke the childhood he wishes he could have had: a comfortable life with parentalfigures who at least seem to love him instead of being constantly told thousands will die because he's a monster and subjecting him to brutal experiments. He just can't grasp that Luke feels he has a right to resent what was done to him because Van himself was repeatedly told that he didn't and internalized the idea.
The Start of Darkness for most of the loyal god-generals was when they ran into a horror that they could not accept. Largo's daughter was kidnapped, causing his wife to kill herself and he could not have justice. Legretta suddenly fell in love with someone she went after in a Roaring Rampage of Revenge and the knowledge that this was likely Scoredmakes her skin crawl. Sync, like Ion believes that he can't have value other than as a tool and hates this.
Heck, even touching the magma isn't that bad. The characters can be completely submerged in magma with only a couple hit points missing to show for it.
Cosmic Deadline: Funny how you pretty much do nothing different in fights with the Big Bad, and he finally decides to die for good after roughly 60 hours.
When you defeat him the first time, he really was beaten, though, and would have died if he hadn't succeeded in absorbing Lorelei into himself.
Crapsack World: Luke is not actually who he thinks he is, and his very existence is responsible for ruining the life of Asch, whom he replaced as a child. Not to mention he was used as a tool by his mentor Van to kill millions of people because Asch was predicted to die by the Score. Oh, and Guy, his best friend, has a repressed desire to kill him. Then there's Tear, who's sister of the main villain Van and the pupil of another villian, Legretta. Natalia doesn't know who her real parents are either: the one she thought was her father wants her dead after he finds out, and she's forced to kill her real father, the villain Largo. She's not a princess and the boy she thought she would marry (Luke) turns out to have been a different boy she hasn't seen in years (Asch). Next is Guy, who lost his homeland and nobility, and has gynophobia because a bunch of dead women including his sister were piled on top of him because they happened to be murdered by the very house his is currently serving. Jade accidentally killed his professor, and his desire to bring her back not only twists his former friend Saphir (Dist) into a life of evil but is also responsible for the creation of the most despicable science known to man, formicry. Anise is actually a double agent for Mohs, and in part due to her betrayal her beloved friend Ion dies. Of course, Ion wasn't perfect, he's also a replica and he doesn't even see any value in his own life and whose existence led to the disposal of the other Ion replicas, warping fellow Ion replica Sync's view of the world and leading to his usage as a tool for evil. Van hates the score because it led him to destroy his home, which in turn created a tidal wave that destroyed Arietta's home. Arietta also dies at the hands of Anise, and even at her death she falsely believes Anise stole Ion from her, when the Ion she knew was not even the one that traveled with Anise. Throw in a war-craving king and a Corrupt Church and you'll find it's not really surprising that the villains want to completely recreate their world.
Creepy Child: Jade's childhood development of fomicry caused him to have a rather warped view of death and killing, not to mention his Creepy Monotone and overall fonic genius, but he's grown out of it.
Original Ion, in the manga. Kills what amounts to a newborn baby on page 9.
Crutch Character: Jade, before he conveniently has his powers sealed to the same level as the other party members. And slowly works through said seal, conveniently gaining power at the same rate as everyone else.
Cryptic Conversation: A subversion. The conversations with Lorelei, and the Score itself, are considered cryptic and become hard to understand not because they're metaphorical or mystical but because people expect them to be. 'Light of the Sacred Flame' is not a metaphor, it's a translation out of the language the Score was spoken in of Luke fon Fabre.Miner's City is also not a metaphor or poetic description of Akzeriuth: the city didn't have a name when Yulia read the Score because it hadn't been built yet, so Lorelei just called it what it was. Because of this, the characters seem to assume that Scion of Lorelei is another metaphor or that Lorelei is saying something mystic and irrevalent when he tries to explain to Luke that the reason Lorelei is speaking to him is that they're one and the same entity, and Luke needs to know certain things to save them both.
Cutscene Incompetence: Your party is surrounded by a bunch of Mooks that you've already beaten a hundred times over, and they decide to surrender. Meanwhile...
Cutscene Power to the Max: ...your weakest party member can put an entire house to sleep, jump off a roof, and nearly kill someone without breaking a sweat. Though in another cutscene near the end of the game, she strains herself heavily just putting eight people to sleep, claiming that she never put that many people to sleep before. While it may be arguable that she only attacked the people that were currently in the courtyard of Fabre mansion at the start of the game (and only made Luke, Van and Guy kinda groggy, at that), it's somewhat unlikely that every knight in Natalia's palace was pretending to be asleep, though they'd probably do it if it meant that Natalia would be safe.
It's worth noting that Tear was already feeling weak from the miasma before she put that band of replicas to sleep.
Dead Baby Comedy: As a child, Guy was traumatized after being smothered by one dead woman after another, all dying because of him, an experience so horrifying he blocked it from his memory. Now he's terrified of all women. Hilarious!
It's funny because of the way he reacts.
Deadpan Snarker: Jade is quite possibly the king of this trope.
Luke's pretty snarky as well, and Tear will occasionally do this if annoyed.
Death Seeker: Played straight by Asch, subverted by Luke.
Tear: ...I don't know. I just suddenly got worried...
Luke: Don't worry. If worse comes to worst, I'll protect you.
Tear: What...?
Luke: Uh... I-I didn't mean it like that...
Tear: ...Well, fine. I didn't take it like that.
Disc One Final Dungeon: To be fair, Yes the Absorbtion Gate takes place about 3/4 through the game, but if you experience the build up and the seemingly resolution of the entire plotline up to facing Van, not to mention the kickass music when you fight him, it's a safe bet to say the developers wanted players to think this was the last dungeon.
Disc One Nuke: By exploiting a Good Bad Bug, it's possible to get the Vorpal Sword, a near-endgame level weapon for Luke and Guy, the first time you can run around on the world map.
Disney Villain Death: ...Well, sort of. After you fight Van the first time, he throws himself off the ledge and into the planet's core. Everyone thinks he died, and he himself was expecting to die, but he actually survives. When he dies for real, you kill him.
Sync, too.
Distressed Damsel: Fon Master Ion, a rare male example, and further supported to his extremely girly appearance. (And female voice actress.)
The Ditz: While not being a full blown example like Colette Brunel, Natalia has her moments of profound stupidity. While in the Shurrey Hill Sephiroth, Anise convinces Natalia that Van'sbeard and eyebrows give him special powers. In a skit in Daath after the party has spent significant time in a desert region, everyone remarks about how sweaty they are. Instead of being worried about whether or not she may actually be a real princess, Natalia is more concerned about smelling bad.
Natalia's characterization is often subject to Ping Pong Naïveté. Sometimes she's very capable, intelligent, and mature; other times, as Rule of Funny dictates, she's, well... that.
Don't You Dare Pity Me: During the Contamination Sidequest, Dist feels sorry for Jade and tries to make him feel better with amounts to a platitude since Luke is doomed to become Deader than Dead and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Jade is unamused, both since Asch having Luke's memories won't make him Luke any more than the Nebilim replica containing Professor Nebilim's memories made her Professor Nebilim and when Dist pities you, that's when you know you've really hit rock bottom.
Doomed Hometown: Inverted: Luke's hometown isn't destroyed, Van's (the villain) is, and it's one of the reasons he hates the Score.
Dying Moment of Awesome: You have to admit how cool it was how Asch died. Unarmed at first, he manages to fight off dozens of soldiers but then ends up stabbed in the back. The sword goes through him, another three swords get stabbed through his body. He kills the last remaining soldiers, remains standing and pulls one of the swords out before his strength leaves him and he falls to the ground.
Interestingly, it's Asch, the original who is very clearly the Evil Twin. Despite his backstory, his Kick the Dog moments compared to Luke's good intentions lose him a lot of sympathy, especially on a second playthrough.
And in the OVAs, at least, they have the same Japanese VA.
False Flag Operation: Attempted by Van and Friends. Subverted in that their intended target doesn't fall for it. (Well, Natalia does. But she at least has enough common sense to ask the other side about the attack before pushing the big red "TO WAR" button.)
Famous Ancestor: None other than Yulia Jue for Tear and Van.
Fantastic Racism: In regards to the replicas that end up all over the world in the last part of the game. An important part of Asch's motivations.
Fantasy Gun Control: Averted by Legretta; played straight with everyone else.
Later there's The Glorious Land, Eldrant floating in the sky, but it gets shot down and land-based pretty soon.
Friendly Enemy: More or less everyone but Mohs and Asch. Almost everybody has had professional relationships in the same military before the fighting starts, and the lack of real animosity is palpable.
Friendly Fireproof: Annoyingly hand waved by Jade, who says at one point that he can't use artes to fight back, because there were too many civilians around without friend-or-foe markings.
It might still be hand waving, but a book in Grand Chokmah explains 'marking' and how it pertains to preventing friendly fire. It's better than no explanation, at least.
"Funny Aneurysm" Moment: Both in-universe and out of universe, there's Guy's fear of women. It's played for laughs, up until it's revealed what caused it. Almost everyone in the party felt horrible for having made fun of him for it, and it's probably safe to say that a lot of fans instantly felt bad for laughing at it.
Gainax Ending: Wait, so, um...Why are Luke and Asch shining like that? What, are they melding or something? Why did the screen go completely white? Why did Asch's hand just twitch? Why are the credits rolling right now without answering those questions?! Oh, good, there's a after-credits stinger. And he's back! Wait, his hair is long again. But his sword's sheath is affixed similarly to Luke's. But his hair is long and Tear seems more surprised than relieved and "I promised someone" could refer to either Tear or Natalia, not to mention that Jade's the only one who would know about the Big Bang Effect (the reason it would be Asch instead of Luke) and he looks like someone's killed his puppy—GAAAAAHHH.
There's a lot of Your Mileage May Vary going on with this one; some people think it's obviously Luke, some people think it's obviously Asch, and there's a stack of evidence on both sides. But for those who don't think there's any reason for a controversy to exist, Word Of God says that you're SUPPOSED to decide what the ending means for yourself. Who would say that about anything if there were an obvious, straightforward answer?
Well, according to one rumor (I believe it was cited as being in one of the Japanese artbooks or complete guides or whatever?), it was supposed to clearly be Luke and a last minute call was made to change things so it would be more ambiguous—so Executive Meddling?
the two have a psychic connection. Its possible that one is a Soul Jar for the other.
Gainaxing: Have Tear as the displayed character and start running. Also, a number of cutscenes.
Also Lorelei, who is given a rather deep and masculine voice.
Generation Xerox: A Laser Guided Tykebombborn specifically for the purpose of destroying a city ends up defying the Score in order to save the world from utter destruction, gathering a group of allies, one of whom was originally out to kill him and another of which betrays him. Also, his friend Ion dies and he's helpless to save him. There are several more ways in which Van and Luke fit this trope.
Goggles Do Nothing: Guy's Hopeless Dreamer outfit has a pair of goggles on his forehead.
Goggles Do Something Unusual: Jade's glasses don't do anything to correct his vision (which is, in fact, above average). Instead, his eyes are where his ability to use magic is concentrated, and the glasses act as a Power Limiter.
Gold Digger: Anise. Justified in that she is trying to shovel her parents out of debt. Nonetheless, it's slightly squicky to see this thirteen-year-old girl trying to twine herself around Luke. Or, say, Peony, who is thirty-six. The first part, though, isn't really that creepy in Japan.
The Squick isn't as strong if you take Luke's age at face value (17). However, if you go by his real age (7), it gets worse.
Good Is Not Nice: Asch is trying to accomplish the same thing you are, to stop Van from destroying the world and replacing it with a Replica world, but that sure doesn't stop Asch from passionately hating Luke and threatening to kill him.
Guide Dang It: Many of the sidequests are Lost Forever if you're not too careful, annoyingly some are important in understaniding some plot points in the game.
Din's Shop is also pretty complicated, but it's the only way to get some of the best armor, and Natalia's strongest bow, which is needed for her second Mystic Arte.
On the topic of Mystic Artes, many probably had to look up how to do the second-playthrough Mystic Artes.
Have a Nice Death: If you die on a boss battle, you can view a small skit that helps you exploit the enemy's weakness.
Harder Than Hard: Unknown. All enemies stats are increased fourfold compared to what they were on Normal. Mystic Artes can and will destroy you. Bosses have such incredibly high defense that you're essentially forced to spend millions of Gald on a potential Game Breaker sword for Luke and Guy in Chesedonia if you want to do more than one damage per hit when said bosses easily have over 70k HP even in the first chapter of the game.
Heroic BSOD: Luke, after he commits an act that makes everyone in the party hate him, even though he's the main character, exacerbated after he finds out he's a replica.
Further exacerbated by the fact that he had been post-hypnotically manipulated into doing it by his beloved master who also gave him a You Have Outlived Your Usefulness speech at the same time, and that his father and uncle knew that they were sending him and his party to suicide bomb a city so that they could use it as an excuse to start a World War, and that the destruction of Akzeriuth destabalized the entire continent, leading to potentially thousands more deaths. And did we mention that Luke is one of the few RPG main characters that absolutely hates killing people, had a BSOD the first time he killed someone, and still has nightmares about every person he kills?
Heroic Sacrifice: Ion. Asch repeatedly attempts this, but never quite pulls it off. He eventually dies because he wouldn't accept a weapon from Luke, in a great aversion of Gameplay and Story Segregation.
Also, after he realizes what a complete ass he's been, Luke slowly begins to develop an inferiority complex and think the only way to redeem himself is through this. He appears to do this in the ending, but it's not made clear whether he does or not.
See With Friends Like These. As per Luke's experience at that point, the six most trustworthy people in his party were, in order, Van, Guy, Ion, Van, Van again, and Anise. Of them all, only Ion doesn't end up being revealed to be a traitor at some point in the game, and even he was holding back what was probably the only piece of information that would have made Luke doubt Van—that Luke was a Replica.
Hot For Teacher: Luke/Tear, as she did teach him, and then there's all the Luke->Van and Asch->Van implications.
Ineffectual Loner: Asch, who spends most of the game one his own and fails to accomplish much of anything when he's on his own. Luke may be an Idiot Hero, but at least he has enough sense to not insist on doing things himself.
In the Blood: Only descendants of Yulia can sing her hymns, and only designated seventh fonists can use the seventh fonon. Jade and Mohs tried to defy this rule with disastrous results.
I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: If you read Luke's journals toward the end of the game, you'll realize that he decides against telling Tear how he feels because his body is going to disintegrate soon anyway and it would just break her heart.
I Will Wait For You: Tear says this to Luke right after you defeat Van for the last time.
Guy: Are you stupid? Only a child needs kindness to be blatantly obvious in order to see it.
Anise: Luke. Do you actually think there's anyone in the world who'd say "yes, I'm pushing myself"? You're so dumb!
Luke's stupidity (and in particular, Guy's line above) takes on new meaning when you find out that he's only seven years old.
Luke tends to act like an idiot because he doesn't have much experience with the world, due to being confined to his manor for as long as he can remember. He is also not very good at expressing his thoughts or feelings, with a tendency to put his foot in his mouth. However, he is NOT a moron. He can be quick thinking, and even clever, on occasion (such as when he used Mieu's fire breath to fend off Arietta's second attempt to abduct him at Coral Castle), and does pick up on things. It's probably better to call him ignorant, as he does learn and grow out of it through the course of the game.
Luke may qualify better for being a Naive Hero. Yes, he's Book Dumb for the obvious reasons, but he tends to do pretty well when he isn't confronted with something requiring Book Smarts or subtle people-skills; as shown by his shades of his combat pragmatism in cutscenes.
If you happen to be using a carried over costume that has post-cut hair, the change is lampshaded with a short conversation about Luke wearing a wig that covers his longer hair (wearing one early in the game nets one or two more such conversations).
Infant Immortality: Subverted; see what happens after Akzeriuth in this scene. (only the first 55 seconds is relevant)
Forget Akzeriuth. Remember the thousands of technical infants that Luke and Asch sacrifice in order to obliterate the miasma in the second half of the game, after Dist tore a bloody swath through them in order to prevent them from sacrificing themselves in that manner in the first place? Not to mention all the Replicas that Luke and company had to have blown through in the final dungeon, or how Ion (and thus probably Synch) was only two years old.
Informed Ability: Van taught Tear the fonic hymns, so he presumably knows them too, but we're never shown. I can't be the only one who wanted to hear him sing.
He did claim that he used a fonic hymn to survive his fall into the core.
He also uses judgement in the final battle. He doesn't sing it though.
Intergenerational Friendship: It's pointed out many times how much older Jade is than the rest of the group (particularly with Anise, of whom he's close to three times her age). He only ever admits maybe once in the game that he considers any of them friends (and this admittance is towards Luke, even!).
It Gets Easier: subverted as Luke never gets used to killing people, Jade even mentions that he knows that Luke doesn't sleep at night, because of the nightmares he has when killing people. Played straight with Natalia though
James Bondage: Ion, who manages to get himself kidnapped more times than most female damsels.
Mind you, the trope is also somewhat justified; Luke has been isolated from the world as long as he can remember. He also acts pretty much as expected for a seven-year old; nevermind that he's also physically seventeen and is probably ridden with teenage hormones in addition to his mental immaturity.
It also doesn't help that nobody in the party even thinks for a minute about, y'know, helping the obviously, painfully socially clueless guy who has NEVER LEFT HIS HOME BEFORE, let alone interacted with human beings besides the ones in his manor his whole life, become a little more socially acceptable. This makes a certain event painful when you realize the entire mess could likely have been avoided by simply teaching Luke how to become less ignorant of the world. But no, instead of taking some of the responsibility for it, the party blames it all exclusively on Luke. Making them even bigger jerkasses than he is. It also REALLY doesn't help their case that they withheld critical information from him that could plausibly have led him to not blindly trust Van. Jade comes off as especially bad here, but then again the game frequently acknowledges that he doesn't really get this 'empathy' thing, so that may be a bit of Fridge Brilliance.
Guy at one point actually does point out that Luke's behavior is partly his fault as well as Natalia's, since they helped to raise him since his birth.
Sync is the game's most triumphant, unrepentant example, however. Any sympathy from his Freudian Excuse is negated by him kicking the dog at every opportunity.
Luke at the start of the game qualifies as well. For a seven year old member of the highest levels of nobility with the life experience of a toddler, he's surprisingly down to Earth and his rudeness is tempered by his extreme aversion to killing and desire to protect people.
Tear too. While she may be a bit icy and blunt (and likes to say "You idiot" a lot, she's actually very sensitive and loving, and genuinely cares for Luke.
Can be noticed in certain cutscenes as well, e.g. a scene that involves Tear walking towards the screen with her entire body in clear focus.
Though oddly enough, its the relatively more modestly endowed Natalia who has the far more revealing alternate outfits.
Just in Time: Can be averted, surprisingly enough. If you take too long to save Ginji and the Albiore I, he really will fall to his death, leading to another NPC taking his place as the pilot of the Albiore III.
Oddly, though, the game is playing this straight at the exact same time: the entire reason you're trying to save Ginji and the Albiore I is to save the people remaining in St. Binah before it sinks, which conveniently takes long enough for the party to go halfway around the world and engage in a Fetch Quest. The anime adaptation rewrites things to make more sense: the party doesn't take part in the first-mentioned act at all, and Noelle happens to arrive at St. Binah with the Albiore Just in Time.
Karma Houdini: While everyone was busy guilting Luke, no one seems to mind that Asch tried to kill him at least twice, the first time while he was helping the other God-Generals slaughter the 140 crew members of the Tartarus. Doesn't go under Easily Forgiven, because they never seem to even remember it at all. Not to mention that they forget him possessing Luke's body and forcing him to attack Tear for kicks. They also ignore the fact he could have stopped Van's entire plan if instead of attacking someone as much an innocent dupe as him, he co-operated with them and explained what was happening.
Also, the only ones who seem to mind that King Ingobert and Duke fon Fabre knowingly sent Luke and his party to die while destroying an entire city are themselves... and even then, it seems that its primarily for trying to kill Luke and not for allowing Akzeriuth to fall.
Similarly, Tear doesn't seem to have a problem with the fact that her beloved adopted Grandfather Teodoro quite calmly allowed it to happen and supported Mohs' attempt to toss the entire world into War, only changing his mind when it became clear that Van was going to kill everyone... and by doing so, apparently invalidated the Score which had been Teodoro's justification for waving aside all the bloodshed that he'd been complicit in.
Though there's not much to indicate that they actually are that close.
The number of Houdini's in this game is epic Everyone in your crew except Natashia hid something from Luke that might have stopped everything that happened, yet while Luke has to suffer for it, the rest just waltz merrily on like they were innocent. Of note is Guy, who was working with Van, Jade, who figured out the most important hint early but was to lazy to give a damn, Ion, who also figured it out but felt the need to keep it to himself, and Anise, who outright betrayed them, loses her excuse due to the fact her hostage parents could have been saved multiple times, and then had the nerve to slap the only one who called her out on it.
Kick the Dog: Plenty from villains all around; the most overt would be Sync's blow below the belt towards Anise.
Legretta's slaughter of Belkend and Sheridan's class I and Class M tech-heads was pretty horrific too.
One that particularly hit hard was the party's surprise meeting with Van in Belkend, which ends in a stalemate, neither side having convinced the other. The kick comes when Van, the only person Luke had ever looked up to, pretty much tells Luke "You Suck" and dismisses him entirely. Even considering the fact that this is the Big Bad who's saying this and thus Luke really shouldn't care, you can still tell that it stings.
Van was somewhat arrogant at the time; this came back to bite him in the ass when Luke beat him at the Absorption gate. To say he was surprised is an Understatement. However, it is also implied that Van is not completely heartless; he Knows how cruel he is being, and takes no enjoyment from it. At the end of the game, he has quite a lot of respect, even pride, for Luke.
And then there's Asch possessing Luke's body and using it to attack Tear while Luke watches in horror. This and other events, especially in Ortion Cavern really prove that Asch is the evil twin, especially in contrast to Luke's entirely good intentions at Akzeriuth.
Kissing Cousins: Natalia and Luke. Subverted: while Luke's mother is Natalia's father's sister, Luke as you first know him from the story is actually a clone, and Natalia was adopted from another family when the real princess died in infancy. Double subversion because the two of them are royalty, meaning it's practically mandated.
Lampshade Hanging: If you carry over your costume titles and equip Luke with one pre-Important Haircut, the other characters will point it out.
Law of Cartographical Elegance: A particularly egregious example, as part of the plot involves going to the North and South Poles... which are right next to one another when traveling on the Field, even though the cutscenes makes it clear that Aldurant is a globe.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: Subverted in that Luke isn't really an amnesiac; he's actually a clone of the "real" Luke: Asch. The game makes it clear that clones are a complete blank slate; Guy recalls Luke having to learn to walk.
Leaning on the Fourth Wall: When having the party run around in their bathing suits, some say that somebody must be forcing them to wear them.
Let's Split Up, Gang: Forced upon the party during the first trip to Absorption Gate. A platform collapses and separates the party into three pairs: Luke and Tear, Guy and Natalia, and Jade and Anise.
Happens twice more: first during the Timed Mission in the Meggiora Highlands, and again when the party attempts to warn the civilians and military as the Shurrey Hill area is about to fall. At least during these, you get to choose who goes in which party; the former has you choose between Guy and Jade, and the latter between Natalia and Jade (again).
Let's You and Him Fight: Subverted in that, although Asch is working towards the same goal as the party, he hates Luke personally, and would gladly kill him if given the opportunity. To be fair, he has every reason to, thought it isn't the reason you think...
While Jade is a decent chef, according to skits he uses his cooking as "non-lethal" experiments to the group. It's usually mild things like putting in disliked ingredients or testing their tolerance for spiciness, but it probably wouldn't be the smartest thing to have him cook while you're in Mushroom Road.
Literal Genie: Aside from his tendency to translate names out of Ancient Ispanian and say Light of the Sacred Flame when he just means Luke fon Fabre, for example, Lorelei is a well-intentioned example of this. The Score is a fairly straightforward list of historical occurrances in chronological order. For instance, the war will certainly bring prosperity to Kimlasca... until the plague kills them all. A pity that part was on the next fonstone. There are two times in the game where Lorelei saying something fairly straightforward is turned into a Cryptic Conversation because the listeners expect him to be crypic and mystical when all he's trying to do is tell them some piece of vital information in simple terms.
Loads and Loads of Loading: The load times after a battle on the world map are generally bad, but become far worse if you're in the Zao Desert. It's particularly bad in the Inista Marsh because the game treats the area as if you're still on the world map and not in an actual dungeon like any other area listed in the dungeon listing of your map.
Although the Loads and Loads of Loading screen does give you a heads-up on whether you're just on a new screen or a cutscene is about to happen, which can be beneficial. (When a cutscene is going to play on the next screen, the little dot animation freezes.)
This issue was greatly improved in the 3DS version, in which load times got considerably shorter than in the PS2 version.
Locked Out of the Loop: Jade figures out early that Luke is a replica of Asch but doesn't tell him... it's not like its an important part of the Big Bad's plan or anything.
Love Triangle: Anise, Arietta and Ion, despite the fact that none of them can spit it out. This game makes a kinda cruel variation: Arietta was in love with the original Ion, since it was him who protected her and taught her everything when she was separated from her monsters family. Anise, on the other hand, falls for the replica Ion, who is the only one she got to know. Of course, none of the girls know about this.
In a skit, it is implied that, if Asch had not appeared, Luke, Tear and Natalia would most probably have ended up in the same situation.
Low Level Advantage: If you're on a New Game Plus and you carried over your Capacity Cores, it's recommended to fight as few battles as possible until Ion gives Luke his first Capacity Core in the Cheagle Woods.
Luke, I Am Your Father: Largo is Natalia's true father. He didn't particularly care to tell his child about this, though...
Although technically, Luke has no father, Van could be considered his father because he created him. Jade could also be considered his father as he invented fomicry. Neither of them though, uttered the famous words, despite Anise attempts to invoke it with Jade.
Magic A is Magic A: The game's physics are unusually consistent, affecting not just the overall plot but battle mechanics, cutscenes, and even character development arcs.
When Jade is fon slot sealed, his stats decrease because stats are measurements of various types of fonons and fonic power. In the same way Jade stores his spear, everyone uses fonons to enhance their abilities, growing better it with experience.
People aren't hit by friendly fonic artes because fonists can mark their allies' fon slots. The fact they can only protect a few people at a time not only justifies the entire party not participating in battle and why they can't be swapped out during the battle (the markings would need to be redone), but is actually mentioned in a cutscene, where Jade reminds Tear that she can't use an arte around that many unmarked civilians.
The scene where they discuss the nature of Lorelei and the nature of a fon sentience seems like it's just general background info and an excuse to poke fun at Luke's ignorance but a piece of information there is a Chekhov's Gun. The definition of a fonon sentience is a sentient pure clump of the fonon with the sentience's fonon frequency. And Luke is a replica, pure seventh fonon, with Lorelei's fonon frequency. Lorelei later states that Luke is another aspect of himself and this explains why replicas aren't included in the Score despite being seventh fonon: they're not under Lorelei's jurisdiction.
The entire Contamination Sidequest revolves around how Auldrant's laws of physics are as unforgiving as our own, when Jade has to come to terms with the fact that despite all his determination and genius it's simply not possible for him to save Luke any more than he can bring back Professor Nebilim. Of course, some fans of the game ignore this arc since it means that it's Asch that returns, not Luke, but others object to this both out of respect of the worldbuilding and because it turns all of Jade's Character Development into a Broken Aesop.
Magic Music: Tear's best abilities are her fonic hymns, which require her to sing.
Musical symbology is rife in this game. In the Japanese translation, "fonic artes" (magic) is rendered as "tone magic". When Jade uses his "Mystic Cage" arte, he says (in English), "Oh admonishing melody, arise in the name of the Necromancer. Mystic Cage!" And all the titles in front of Order-of-Lorelei ranks (Ionian, Locrian, etc) are all music-theory terms. And let's not forget that the "fonons" manipulated by magic are basic particles of sound.
To say nothing of the fact that the world is governed by a Score and several of the levels have giant floating music staffs in the background.
The several of the teleport pads in the Absorption Gate look like treble clefs.
Plus, most of the Capacity Cores and shops have music-term names (Marcato is a Core while Virtuoso is a shop in Baticul, for instance). Largo is also a tempo of music.
May-December Romance: Here's a fun thought, Luke is technically seven years old with a mindset to match and only has the body of a seventeen year old, while Tear actually is sixteen years old. Tear knows Lukes real age and yet by the end of the game both of them love each other. Sorta weird on Luke's part, kinda creepy on Tears's part.
Not to mention Anise/Arrietta and the current Ion, who is * two.*
Meaningful Name: Asch. He's the leftover ashes of The Holy Flame.
Also, Luke himself: the name actually does mean "Light".
Also, Sync is a clone; Largo is really big; Legretta is really quick; "Vandesdelca" means "one who would seize glory"; Guy is afraid of women; and most of the God-Generals have musical names which ties in with the overall sonic theme of the setting.
Legretta's name is actually an example of Spell My Name with an S. While not incorrect, a better translation would be Regret. Kinda makes sense. May also be a Woolseyism to maintain the God-General's musical theme naming.
On a related note, Names to Run Away From Really Fast—an in-universe example! You have to wonder what Van's parents were thinking, naming him something like that... Compliance with the Score?
Don't forget Guy's parents. Gailardia is similar to the scientific name of the Blanket flower by the way. Long names must be a tradition of Hod, with the exception of Mary.
Mary's not really an exception, when you look at Marybelle Radan Gardios as her full name.
Natalia is a double whammy. First off, Natalia means birthday, and that comes into play when Luke finds a locket with that date inscribed on it. It's Largo's prized possession, to commemorate the birth of his daughter Meryl, who is actually Natalia. Secondly, Meryl means shining sea. Natalia birth mother committed suicide by drowning in the Sea of Baticul when her newborn daughter was taken from her to replace the original Natalia, who was stillborn.
Lorelei. Interesting to give the fonon sentience of healing the name of a singer that lured people to their deaths. The Score is literally Lorelei's memory, meaning Lorelei has to die to destroy it, according to Van, and the only way to do that is to destroy Auldrant itself. The Score is described as a tempting drug that lures people...
Malkuth and Qliphoth are both taken from the Kabbalah. Qliphoth represented the evil spiritual forces, while Malkuth is the lowest of the sephirot, seperating them from the Qliphoth. Malkuth literally means "Kingdom".
Mercy Mode: In the game's brief stealth section, you're supposed to have your party sneak through a forest, while avoiding soldiers and guard dog patrols. If you're caught, you fight off the enemies, but return to the start of the area. However, if you get caught too many times, the game will let you brute force your way through, fighting the enemies and not bothering with stealth.
Minor Injury Overreaction: In the anime, all it took was one minor scratch to his chest to make the final boss of the Absorption Gate declare himself defeated, and throw himself over the edge to (presumably) his death while giggling like a maniac. Not the case in the game, however, as it takes quite the boss fight first to defeat him there.
Same goes for Sync. Once his mask is broken (if that can be called an injury) and his identity is revealed he goes on a spiel about Cloning Blues and promptly jumps into the abyss. Keep in mind, he was kicking everyone's collective ass up to that point.
Mirror Boss: Most of the God-Generals, especially Luke and Asch.
The cameo team battle in the Arena is essentially this. Reid is Luke/Guy, Mint is Tear/Natalia, Philia is Jade, and Nanaly is Anise/Natalia.
Mix-and-Match Critters: Rappigs, half rabbit, half pig. More like 9/10 pig and 1/10 rabbit, really. They're basically pigs with bunny ears.
And they're adorable.
Replicantis
Moral Dissonance: Everybody keeping secrets from Luke and then berating him for not trusting them, with predictably horrible results. In a curious play of this trope, this appears to be intentional: the blatant hypocrisy of the rest of the party is about the only thing that would make the player sympathise with Luke at this point.
More Hero than Thou: In the third chapter of the game at Daath, Luke and Asch argue over who should commit mass-suicide at the Tower of Rem with all the replicas to destroy the miasma. Luke initially goes through with it, but Asch helps him once he realizes that Luke had the Jewel of Lorelei all along; Luke just absorbed it into his body because he and the Jewel are made entirely of Seventh fonons. The Jewel's ability to disperse fonons actually began to cause Luke's body to disintegrate when Luke could see right through his own arm. Of course, Asch due to having being given incorrect information about the Big Bang Effect, thinks it's killing him instead of Luke so it's not a real sacrifice.
Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The party manages to solve many of the world's problems only to create new problems instead, the biggest example being when Luke sunk Akzeriuth. Most of these also result in other pseudo kabooms.
Not Quite Dead: Dist. Dist. Dist. He really is as "tenacious as a cockroach."
Oblivious to Love: Luke just never really seems to put the pieces together that Tear feels the same way.
Obvious Beta: Surprisingly, the initial release in Japan. Because it was rushed to come out at the end of 2005, it had an abnormal amount of cut content. Among them, Guy and Natalia's second mystic artes as well as cut-ins for the mystic artes used by the cameo team. (Yet ironically they still use them.)
Older than They Look: Though all the characters are at seemingly young ages, it was stated in the game that a year on their planet is 765 days long, meaning that everyone is actually twice as old by our time. More than likely though, the humans of that planet age at a slower rate than we do, evening it out.
So Jade was right for calling himself an old man? That didn't stop him from becoming a very capable melee fighter to go along his magic artes though.
Ominous Pipe Organ: The organ music continues to go on even after the villain gets up...
That's because he's still playing it, while monologuing at the party
Omnicidal Maniac: The Big Bad intends to destroy the whole planet so that no trace of the Score remains, before replacing it with a Replica.
One-Winged Angel: Surprisingly downplayed. While the final boss does have a second form, only a couple things actually change about his appearance.
Oranyan: Asch. Nyan nyan with Natalia, ora ora with basically everyone else.
PAL Bonus: The North American release included some extras the original Japanese version didn't have. The Nintendo 3DS version is based on the North American version as a result and is the first time Japanese players have access to them.
Perpetual Frowner: Asch seems to be physically incapable of being happy.
Physical God: Luke and Asch possess the power of Lorelei, a power that can destroy anything, teleport the user, control people's minds, heal, ressurrect the dead, control the future, etc. According to the game's physics and Lorelei himself, Luke is also a physical incarnation of Lorelei, making him the setting's real Crystal Dragon Jesus.
Poor Communication Kills: Luke is particularly guilty of this (even Jade says that he should have told them when it came to what happened at Akzeriuth).
Though this is used just as often against Luke to keep certain information from the player. This leads to several maddening instances in which the other characters berate him for not knowing anything while intentionally keeping him out of the loop.
Indeed, if Jade had told Luke the vital plot point that he had figured out (that Luke was a replica of Asch) then he would have saved Luke a lot of angsting and may even have prevented the destruction of Akzeriuth. Instead, he has the nerve to berate Luke for keeping secrets.
Later on, Jade acknowledges somewhat-off hand that he's also to blame for what happened, as he could have prevented the whole thing if he had just opened his mouth. His reason for not talking? He didn't want to go through the trouble of explaining
Also, whether he understood it or not, Luke should have known better than to hold back any messages from Lorelei. They could have had a whole extra month to foil the Van's plans during the second half of the game, if he had told anyone in his party about the message he received about "The One Who Would Seize Glory." Though its a mystery as to why Lorelei didn't just say Van or even Vandesdelca, since it is quite capable of using proper names...
Anise. True, Mohs had her up against the wall, but she kept the entire situation hidden from the group, and Ion ended up being killed as a result. They could have very likely saved both her parents and Ion, who she was supposed to be guarding in the first place.
Luke hides that he's dying which he wouldn't be if Asch hadn't done the same earlier, admitting he wanted to go to the Tower of Rem because he was dying anyway. Asch hiding that he was dying starts to kill Luke. Of course, it's then subverted by the Contamination Sidequests, since Asch would have survived and Luke died no matter what happened at the Tower.
Power Limiter: Jade has 2. The fon slot seal Largo used on him early-on in the game to even out his level with the other characters, and through an easy to miss sidequest, you learn that his glasses prevent the fonons gathered in his eyes from destroying himself and whatever he happens to be nearby.
The Psycho Rangers: Though they may just be Evil Counterparts, [[spoiler:The God-Generals are all related to a member of the main party, and often use the same skills and abilities. Luke/Asch, Tear/Legretta, Anise/Arietta, Jade/Dist, Natalia/Largo.
Fortunately, quirky only in name. Every battle against the God-Generals is usually the toughest boss at that point in the game, and the last battles are usually tugging on some heart strings somewhere.
Real Is Brown - Bright colors are used very rarely in the game's graphics. Justified, though, as bright colors would create a lot of Mood Whiplash.
Rebellious Princess: Subverted by Natalia, who often works her world-saving duties in with the duties to her kingdom.
Redemption Equals Death: Luke's mindset in the final third of the game, Asch (kinda, since he was grudgingly on your side anyway).
Reformed, But Rejected: A non-villain examplle in Luke, whom the party rebukes for a time after Akzeriuth.
It was more for the bratty attitude than the aforementioned spoiler. It was mostly Jade and Anise who were the most vicious, and they backed off when it became apparent that Luke was making an effort to be a better person. Not to mention that he was carrying a HUGE amount of guilt.
Only Nebilim fulfills the emotional aspect, though. While the Big Bad's ultimate plan might qualify, all the clones encountered during the game were created for far more pragmatic reasons than filling an emotional void.
Rescue Romance: General Frings and General Cecille's sidequest starts from this.
Rock Theme Naming: While a minor example, Jade and Nephry's names are derived from two minerals called 'jade': jadeite and nephrite. Also, Saphir is very likely taken from 'sapphire'.
Royally Screwed Up: Kimlasca-Lanvaldear is riddled with incompetence. Malkuth, on the other hand, has many competent leaders, and it shows if you talk to the people of Grand Chokmah. They'll say things like, "Well, if Emporer Peony says so, then I'll believe him." People don't talk about King Ingobert like that, but they do like Natalia. In fact, every time they say something good about their country, it's something Natalia did, and she's not even the real princess. Duke Fabre and King Ingobert are both fairly incompetent for a large part of the story.
Royals Who Actually Do Something: Almost completely averted. Almost. King Ingobert is very incompetent. Then again, there's Natalia.
Rule of Symbolism: Just about everything in the game is named after elements of the Jewish Kabbalah and the Sephiroth (though not always translated correctly).
Ruleof Three: Though you have six playable characters, three are nobles, the other three are military (insofar as a Fon Master Guardian can be considered military.) You also have three warriors and three spellcasters, three males and three females, and three groups of two in regards to origins (two Kimlascans, two Malkuthians, and two members of the Order of Lorelei). You even fight each member of the God Generals, including their leader, thrice (with the exception of Asch.
The Scapegoat: Luke, most of the time, and the game shows why he's treated this way. For some reason, he takes all the blame for Akzeriuth instead of the Big Bad, who caused it by hypnotizing Luke so that he would lose control of his power and destroy the Sephiroth when all Luke was trying to do was save Akzeriuth by getting rid of the miasma, as any of them could have found out if they'd bothered to ask instead of assuming he wanted to rush ahead because he didn't want to help the people instead of because he was trying to. When Ion tries to say that it's his fault as well for opening the door to the sephiroth even though he knew damn well that Van was up to no good, Anise as good as tells him to shut up. This is likely because if the blame wasn't forced onto Luke, the party would have to admit it was their fault as well.
This is later averted when Luke rejoins the party. His teammates were given some time to think things over, and had realized that they had done this (Guy specificly points this out in a skit) which is why they decide to give him a second chance. Halfway through the game, the only person who blames Luke for what happened at Akzeriuth is Luke himself.
Guy had been aiding and abetting Van for years and knew that Van did not have Luke's best interests in mind. He also knew that Luke had been manipulated into seeing Van as his father figure and trusted him innocently and utterly, so he must have known that Luke went like a lamb to the slaughter. Van was Guy's friend, and he probably doesn't want to think that he's fallen so far and Guy missed all the signs, too. Not to mention that as Luke's guard and Van's leige lord, regardless of whether or not Guy is at fault, he's still responsible for Luke's safety and Van's actions. Preventing stuff like Akzeriuth is both his job and his family duty, especially because the entire purpose of House Gardios is to protect the Albertesque Seal. Which was just destroyed by the kid Guy was supposed to bodyguard and his own leigeman. As he watched. In other words, if it wasn't Luke's fault, Guy just failed his job, his best friend, and two thousand years of family duty because he missed what went on right under his nose.
Anise is responsible for Ion's protection. Not only did opening the seal make Ion sick, but, like Guy, if the person it was Anise's job to guard was used for something like this, she just failed at her job. And it won't be the last time people die because of this...
Jade knew that Luke was a replica. In the context of this, the Score read in the throne room was all kinds of suspicious. Jade knew that something was up, and instead of telling Luke the one piece of information that might have made him doubt Van, he kept quiet for the sake of Luke's feelings, which was also incredibly Out of Character. While, unlike the others, he tried to keep an eye on Luke, when confronted with a choice between staying with the person the Score said was going to be playing the most important role in events and investigating a random disturbance, he was easily suckered into leaving Luke with Van.
While Tear was racing to stop Van she correctly identified the person responsible as Van. Since she set out from home to stop Van's evil plans in the first place, why is she suddenly blaming the Unwitting Pawn when she correctly identified the Magnificent Bastard responsible a few hours ago? True, the fact she didn't kill Van before is why he was able to accomplish this, and she might not want to admit that her beloved brother is a mass murderer.
Asch, like Jade knew that Luke was a replica, the one piece of information that would have made him doubt Van. While Asch makes a token attempt to stop Luke, the fact it's only a token attempt is proven by the fact that Asch has already demonstrated that he's capable of controlling Luke's body and make him attack people. If Asch had really cared about stopping Akzeriuth, all he would have had to do was take control of Luke's body long enough to make Luke kill himself. This is actually Fridge Brilliance, since if Luke hadn't destroyed Azkeriuth, Asch would have, and died in the process according to his birth score. He has known for seven years that if his replica didn't destroy Akzeriuth in his place this was the day he would die. If anything, Luke is Asch's scapegoat, the lamb led to the slaughter in place of Asch.
Natalia can perhaps be forgiven for not coming to Luke's defense since she was distracted by Asch, but it was Natalia's own beloved father or stepfather that sent Luke to Akzeriuth specifically so that he would destroy it. Like Tear, her options are to blame Luke or to blame a beloved family member not to mention Asch.
In addition to this, why is Luke the one that needs to make up to Asch for being placed with Asch's family instead of the other way around? Luke was acting in good faith the entire time, Asch was the one who knew what was going on and chose not to return because he couldn't forgive his family and Natalia for mistaking an identical replica provided by someone they thought was utterly trustworthy for him. Again, this is a Justified Trope for Asch, since Magnificent BastardVan certainly didn't want Asch blaming the person who had done all of it. Luke feeling this way is also justified, since he was given a guilt complex, but why would Guy, who doesn't even like Asch and should be sticking up for his best friend, think this way? Not to mention Jade, who knows how replicas work.
Van himself was used as a Scapegoat for the destruction of Hod by the nobility and replica researchers who profit from it making Luke a Generation Xerox of his father figure in that regard.
Scary Shiny Glasses: Jade and Dist, although the latter generally only uses the right lens.
Screw Destiny: What everyone wants to do, heroes and villains.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: What the Score ends up being. A lot. The most egregious example: it's implied by Lorelei in one of the final scenes that the success of Van's plan—one that was designed to avert the Score—would have been the "destruction of humanity" predicted in the original Score Of Destruction.
In the scene at Yulia's grave, Tear suspects that Eldrant is what Yulia planned all along and Van knew it from reading her journals. Without Van trying to create Eldrant, all of Auldrant would have collapsed into the miasma, it would just have taken a little longer. Eldrant would at least allow replicas to survive. That would make this an attempt at a Prophecy Twist by the maker of the prophecy. Luke reassures Tear by claiming that since Yulia was Lorelei's friend she wouldn't have done anything he didn't want, an argument that holds no water when Auldrant collapsing into miasma would have killed Lorelei anyway, so what Lorelei would have wanted was for something to live on, just as Luke soon demonstrates that he's perfectly willing to die for his friends to live on. This makes it something of an Either-Or Prophecy.
She Is Not My Girlfriend: Both Luke and Tear say this repeatedly about the other, though everyone else knows better.
Shout Out: Typical for a Tales Series game. Noteworthy examples are three of Anise's dolls being modeled after Cless, Philia, and Presea. Jade's belt buckle is Pac-Man. Nam Cobanda Island is full of Shout Outs to various Namco games. There is one replica in Daath who comments that "Zelos died," which is a possible way that Tales Of Symphonia can end.
At least in the English version, one resident in St. Binah laments the fact that he "lost the election to Mc Govern."
Shut Up, Hannibal!: An epic example at the end of the game. During the final confrontation with the Big Bad, each member of the party gets a turn at proving the villain wrong. They basically prove to Van that his logic is flawed, twisted, and ultimatly hypocritical. He then concedes that they may be right, but he has gone too far down this path to turn back, then weapons are drawn and the cool music starts. They overpower him and he is forced to resort to his One-Winged Angel form. The fight is hard, but midway through, the heroes note that Van is losing control of his power while the party shows no sign of stopping (storywise at least). Finally, they push him past his limit and are able to remove the source of his power and defeat him. To sum up, they essentially pick apart his logic and reasoning (through words then violence) and reveal him for what he is: a man whose hate ultimately made him him into the thing he hated; a slave to the Score. You could say that the entire final battle is one large, epic Shut Up, Hannibal!.
Interestingly enough, Luke delivers the most prominate rebuttal just by simply being there and standing up to the Big Bad. He is also the one who pounds in the final nail by delivering the killing blow.
Small Annoying Creature: Mieu. Lampshaded by Luke getting pissed off at his hyper-cutesy speech patterns the second he starts talking and calling him "Thing" for the first half of the game.
Van has some of this as well, due to his his martial strength, and twisted conviction that he is doing the right thing. While he is not smug, he is somewhat arrogant. His defeat the first time at the hands of the party (particularly Luke) defiantly knocks him down a peg
Snow Means Love: During the first visit to Keterburg, the party stays at the inn and the girls talk about how romantic Keterburg is, with Ion included in the group, to further cement his status as a girl. Their options are rather limited because Luke is wondering around complaining about the cold (worring about his tummy frezing), Guy is scared of women, and Jade is, according to Ion, off walking the town with someone. (Presumably his sister, Nephry who previously thought he was dead.)
In fact, unlike the Tales' series normal Snow Means Love scene, Tales of the Abyss' takes place in a desert city.
Stealth-Based Mission: The forest outside of Grand Chokmah is a section of forced stealth. Thankfully, though, if you screw up enough, you can just choose to fight the guards.
Spoiler Opening: In the anime: Natalia joining the party, the fact that Van is a villain (implied by him showing up with other antagonists), Asch's face (he goes on as The Faceless for awhile in the show proper) and the fact that he and Luke have some kind of connection, and Luke's Important Haircut. And that's not even getting into the lyrics themselves...
The opening of the game is barely any better. Aside from showing that Natalia was a playable character, we see Luke switching between being short and longhaired.
The english manual is just as bad. It features Luke with short hair and depicted with the second Mystic Arte Lost Fon Drive shot. He's first introduced with long hair, but the Status Screen screenshots picture him with short hair and being called Luke Fone Fabre.
The japanese manual avoids all spoilers by having all the screenshots depicting Luke with long hair.
Stalker with a Crush: Dist the Rose Runny Reaper spends an awful lot of his time trying to get Jade's attention.
Suspiciously Specific Denial: Dist pulls this by saying in his letter that the hoverdrive was certainly not in Keterberg by any means.
Sword Beam: Luke's second Mystic Arte, Lost Fon Drive, involves Luke slashing the enemy about eight or nine times and then firing a massive beam of fonons at the enemy.
Take a Third Option: The Score describes all Auldrant dissolving into miasma. There are various hints that Eldrant was Yulia's plan to allow a new world to live on instead of everyone dying. Auldrant will either be replaced by Eldrant or a big ball of miasma. Lorelei tells Luke that he never imagined Luke could find a way to prevent Auldrant's death.
Talking Is a Free Action: Typical boss fights have a lot of banter that goes on even while the characters are hitting each other.
Talking to Himself: Replicas = same voice actor, thus highly justified. There's also an in-game example, when Lorelei possesses Tear to speak to Luke. As he says in the scene, they are the same person or at least the same fonon sentience.
Team Pet: Mieu, though Luke is the one that technically "owns" him.
The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: Usually, you want to have Luke and Tear in your party when you fight Van for the last time, and to listen to what they have to say to him, but by changing around your team, and getting rid of Luke/Tear, or both. The lines spoken are different, and the conversation will be whoever the current party leader is, and Van, while the scene shows The party leader running in. This was later returned in Tales Of Vesperia.
The Evils of Free Will: A war that was destroying the world was stopped by the creation of the Score which set the future in stone and is repeatedly stated to make individual choices mean absolutely nothing. Since the Score is the optimal future, the one that creates the most happiness and prosperity trying to fight it even to save someone's life by telling them their Death Score is considered an evil action. Of course, it's all futile anyway, since replicas are the only ones with free will. If the Score is the best future, then entities that have no place in that future must be evil, or at the best 'not good.' This explains Mohs' opinion of them.
There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Nebilim's Fragmented End on higher difficulties. On Unknown, this Mystic Arte can hit for over 100,000 damage. The HP cap for each member of your party is only 9,999.
Naturally, Dist survives taking one of these in the face.
The Promise: Subverted and Deconstructed by Asch who pointedly states that he thinks making promises is meaningless. Unfortunately, he never keeps his promise to Luke at the end of the game.
The tune that's associated with Asch's death is even titled Promise.
Too Dumb to Live: Asch, who insists on not working with the party. Not only is pretty clear he could never take Van, but even when look at his stats as a boss, the other God-Generals are stronger then he is.
Well, while not taking advantage of the ridiculous amount of resources and skills that could be gained by joining a party made up of some of the highest ranking and most badass officials of the three global powers is pretty damn stupid, he did manage to clear a hard dungeon by himself while still injured from his battle against Van and thus save the day at the end of the Disc One Final Dungeon. Though a lot of the second half of the game could possibly have been cut out if he was able to just sit down and talk with Luke's party for a few hours. And the stat thing is probably an example of Gameplay and Story Segregation (like how anyone could survive Luke or Asch's Mystic Artes, which I believe is supposed to be a burst of hyperresonance, excepting possibly end-game Van or maybe one another), as by that point Luke should be around Jade's unsealed level in terms of combat skills according to one skit, and Jade was able to more or less oneshot Largo and easily hold Arietta hostage at the start of the game. Having a one-on-one battle against a Sync level boss would probably be a lot more annoying than entertaining when you don't have the rest of your party to whittle away at him and use healing magic. Besides, going by the damage he was causing in the game's opening, the fact that he was the protege of the most skilled fighter in the world, and has full control over his hyperresonance, then plotwise he's probably one of, if not THE strongest God-Generals. Though there's no excuse for him not learning at least some healing artes in the past seven years.
He was going to die anyway due to fonon separation, which was by no means his fault.
Trauma Induced Amnesia: Luke's kidnapping. Subverted. Guy's gynophobia: Played straight.
Truth in Television: When Tear confronts Luke about how his fonons are separating, Luke admits that he didn't want anyone to know because he thought that everyone would treat him differently. If you think about it...this is like people with terminal illnesses.
Uncanny Valley: A rare example of when this is invoked and more worked into the story. When the mass replicas show up, people are scared, freaked out, or otherwise disturbed because Anyone would be too if say, you were at your loved one's funeral and suddenly someone who looks and sounds exactly like them shows up speaking in a Creepy Monotone and without basic social skills and is clearly not them. While this isn't exactly a player reaction to it due to the game's heavily stylized graphics, it still fits the purpose of the Uncanny Valley because the replicas look just like their dead loved ones.
Underground Monkey: One of the worst offender, you will fight tons and tons of pallete swap bats, wolves, plants...
Updated Rerelease: The NTSC version of the game is this to the original JP version. During the conversion, the developers polished the whole game and added in several new features, including secret Mystic Artes for all the main characters. It's such a step up that the upcoming 3DS version is a localisation of the American version.
Now the first game in the series to make the other leap into 3D
Waif Prophet: Ion often collapses whenever he uses his power.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: Half the villains in the game. Van in particular: he is attempting to destroy the Score because he knows that it predicts the complete destruction of humanity, and since the people of Auldrant take the Score's word as law....
What Do You Mean, It's Not Symbolic?: If you're familiar with Friedrich Nietzsche, then you may think that the title has something to do with Nietzsche's famous quote about The Abyss, but it never really has any bearing on the game itself. Except with Van, who started to oppose the Score after being used to destroy Hod as an innocent child, and then does the exact same thing to Luke in order to advance his plans.
Wham Episode: Several in the game, among them Luke's failed rescue attempt in Akzeriuth leading to it's destruction, finding out that Van had planned said failed attempt by manipulating Luke the entire time, Luke finding out he's nothing more than a replica that was supposed to be the scapegoat that had outlived it's usefulness once Akzeriuth was destroyed.
Tied together with Player Punch, there's also the helpful citizens of Sheridan and old folks that had given you the Albiore II being slaughtered. And that little boy who was floating on debris in the Qlipoth after Akzeriuth's destruction, stuck underneath his father's corpse and drowns in the miasma because your group can't rescue him in time. This game's point is to make you feel bad.
With Friends Like These - Let's recap the truthworthiness of the party from the perspective of Luke by the time they reach Akzeriuth: a strange woman who tried to kill his beloved teacher and won't tell him why while openly working for and defending the honor of a guy who seems to have Big Bad written all over him (and who was 100% supporting the event that everyone blamed Luke for), a smartass who constantly insults him, his best friend who trusts Van explictedly, a spacy kid, a creepy gold digger, a disliked childhood friend who literally blackmails her way into the party... and aforementioned beloved teacher/father figure who is not only a world-renowned soldier, but the only one in the party to treat him with respect. Yes, Luke was acting like a jerk up to that point but god damn that was unfair.
Not to mention that Guy was completely unaware that his best friend growing up was being used for horrific experiments and so much more.
You Can't Fight Fate: Believed by most of the world. Although it emerges that it's possible to Screw Destiny, this later changes when it is revealed that everything is guided by the planet's memory. But by the end, they manage to Screw Destiny anyway. Another noteworthy example is that the Score said Fon Master Ion was supposed to die, and the original thought that creating copies would defy the Score. He was wrong.
On the other hand, Van unintentionally subverted this by creating Luke, who was supposed to take the original's place in dying at Akzeriuth. Both the original and the clone survived the incident, in contradiction to the Score. The party later points this out to Van in an attempt to convince him that the Score can be defeated, Van merely passed it off as an insignificant detail.
But then later, the party realise that if Luke goes ahead with his Heroic Sacrifice at the Tower Of Rem—built on a site similar to Akzeriuth—then he would have fulfilled the Score anyway. But then he doesn't die during that incident after all, subverting the Score again. It's hard to really say what the game is trying to say about destiny.
Interestingly enough, it's suggested that Yulia left hidden meanings in the fonic hymns urging humanity to break from the Score before it ultimately destroyed the world.
Not to mention, after they defeat Van, Lorelei congratulates Luke on managing to avert the Score of Destruction that it had predicted... which means that, in rebelling against the Score of Destruction, he was causing it instead.
Van was well aware of this fact, which was the reason he wanted to cause the prediction to begin with. He felt that the only way to defeat the score was to obey it, but add extra details that it hadn't considered.
What's really wierd is that Fridge Logic leads one to realize that the Score calls Luke a hero but then predicts Luke's death at Akzeriuth before he has a chance to do anything heroic, possibly meaning that Luke was meant to subvert the Score all along.
We could just say that this is a Zig-Zagging Trope in spades, to simplify matters.
You Fail Geology Forever - Several important plot points involve the core of the planet. Travel to the core of the planet is also involved. The existence of the Qliphoth and it being referred to as the planet's surface imply that Auldrant is mostly solid, with the exceptions of the sephiroth. The core of the planet should be extremely hot, and under extreme pressure, yet falling into the core seems to result in death by fonon separation, not being crushed and burned by intense pressure and heat.
Maybe Justified, since this is fantasy planet, and not meant to reflect real life conditions.
The developers did (for a brief moment) take pressure into account, since the Tartarus and Albiore II had to be equipped with a force field to prevent the core's pressure from crushing them. How Van managed to survive after falling into the core from the Absorption Gate is a mystery.
The same way he [[and Tear]] survived the fall of Hod, the Grand Fonic Hymn. It summons Lorelei to help Yulia's descendants. This is when he seals Lorelei inside himself and Lorelei sends Asch & Luke the key.
Youngest Child Wins: Tear makes Van vulnerable to the killing blow using a lullaby he taught her as a child.
Luke vs. Asch.
Your Princess Is in Another Castle: The part just before the Absorption Gate dungeon has "Ending" written all over it, you apparently kill the God-Generals, the Absorption Gate itself seems like The Very Definitely Final Dungeon... And then, when you're watching the supposedly final cutscene, you see a completely new area of the dungeon, with a treasure chest in it, just to make it clear that you're going to be able to go there.
There's actually a bit of Foreshadowing if you look carefully - if you bring up the map in the Qlipoth, there's this area in a corner of the map that appears to have not sank into it. When you go there, you find that it's got a landmark that you can't enter yet.
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