The Champion Light and his companions nobly battle their way through the Lord of Shadow's dark forces and battle the Lord himself, but before Light could strike the villain down, the Lord of Shadow stripped him of his powers, reducing him to a tiny rabbit-like form. But before the Lord of Shadow could deliver his finishing blow in response, Light finds himself pulled from the world in the nick of time...
In Starview Village, a central hub that observes all worlds, a boy named Alk and a girl named Stella, both amnesiacs with no recollection of how they got there, are trying to activate the World Flipper, a device that will allow them to traverse said worlds, when Light comes crashing through it. After a daemon pops out of the World Flipper and Alk, with Light's assistance, defeats it, the three resolve to use the now-activated World Flipper to set out into the worlds and find Light's world to save it from the Lord of Shadow.
As they proceed through countless worlds on the way to find Light's homeworld and save them along the way, however, it becomes clear that the Lord of Shadow may very well threaten not just Light's home, but every world in existence...
After over four years, the Japanese version of the game was shut down on February 20th, 2024. The Global version will also be shut down July 25th of the same year.
Tropes found in this work:
- After the End: The heroes finally arrive in Light's home world in Chapter 7, but Light's failure to defeat the Lord of Shadow and subsequent absence has resulted in the entire world turning into a snow-covered wasteland as far as the eye can see, with almost no apparent signs of sentient life.
- Ambidextrous Sprite: Most character sprites in the visual novel sections are simply flipped depending on the conversation, with some features like Suizen's white streak in his hair changing sides as a result. Subverted in the case of the main characters, however, as they have separate sprites depending on which angle they're facing.
- Amnesiac Hero: Both Alk and Stella, though they can still remember their names, language, basic physics, swordsmanship and cooking in Alk's case, and how to operate and maintain the World Flipper in Stella's case.
- Animal Jingoism: Fang Canyon is populated by canine and feline people that have been at war for generations, though ultimately subverted in that many of the younger people on both sides would rather have peace, even after a prior peace negotiation attempt went up in flames.
- Anti-Frustration Features: There are some features that were made to ease gameplay:
- If your party gets stuck bouncing for a while, the game will show a "Reset Positions" button after a while, and eventually teleport them out even if you don't press it.
- There are auto modes for the flippers and Skill activation that are unlocked after advancing in the story early in the game.
- If your party falls off the stage while levitating, they will teleport back.
- If you lose or have to abort a quest, the game will not take your Stamina, so you're free to try again whenever.
- Skipping a cutscene provides a brief summary of the cutscene, allowing players to not miss out on major plot details even if they don't have time to read the whole scene.
- The JP 2nd Anniversary update added a "sparking" pity system that allows players to build up pity currency with Lodestar Bead pulls and exchange them for cards. The Global version, despite mostly following JP release schedule, also got this system at the same time as JP.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Bosses will often show crosshairs before unleashing a powerful attack; if you can hit all of these, you'll cancel the attack and stun the boss for a few seconds. This is not always as easy as it sounds, particularly if you dash at the wrong time or have to go against gravity fields.
- Beam Spam: Deadeye-class Leader units have a Power Flip that is essentially this when charged up at higher levels, often hitting the entire upper field if aimed properly.
- "Blind Idiot" Translation: The translation job for skill descriptions in the Global version is terribly done, as it seems to be a side effect of the game internally mashing together variables to create the descriptions, something that works much better in Japanese than in other languages. This is thankfully being addressed, albeit slowly. Otherwise averted, as the writing for the story cutscenes is praised as one of the best parts of the game.
- Common Tongue: No matter which world a given character originally hails from, everyone seems to speak the same language and understand each other with no problems whatsoever, be they humans across multiple different worlds, the beastfolk of Fang Canyon, or the androids of Mecha Metropolis.
- Cute Slime Mook: The Blobbles.
- Dash Attack: While moving on the field, there is a directional indicator that hones in on the closest enemy; a party can dash toward it to attack. It fails if there is no indicator.
- There are some character skills that can be this. See their sections in the Character pages.
- Driving Question: While getting Light back to his home world is the main motivation of the heroes for the better part of the first story arc, the mystery of Stella's identity serves as the real overarching plot as more and more details about her powers and her role are revealed with each new world that the heroes travel to.
- Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Played with. Every character and enemy in the game has a singular associated element (Fire, Water, Thunder, and Wind, plus Light and Dark). Your party will do more damage to enemies if you use the correct element against theirs, but mercifully, your party doesn't receive more damage if you have them in the supposed disadvantage element.
- Fantastic Racism: The people of the Kingdom of Sand do not treat beastfolk kindly, as the only beastfolk in their world is depicted as a bloodthirsty monster. This extends to Light due to his animal-like appearance, as he finds difficulty in gaining trust with or even talking to any humans in the Kingdom.
- Fembot: The female gendered Droid characters sometimes are this.
- Fight Like a Card Player: Except with pinball, but same principle. The pinball gameplay is only really ever present in, well, the gameplay. In cutscenes characters just fight like normal people/animals/etc. The only connection the actual setting and plot has to pinball is the World Flippers, which are shaped like a giant pair of pinball flippers with an appropriately-sized pinball on them.
- Flunky Boss: All the bosses will summon some kind of minion or obstacle, usually to shield their weak spots. Players can use these to their advantage to build a combo.
- Forced Transformation: Light was turned into a rabbit-like creature. He still insists he's human and doesn't appreciate being called a rabbit.
- Foreshadowing: Alk has Stella by his side and his Skill is named "Meteor Break". The Lord of Shadow has a girl by his side who looks a like and has the same name as Stella while also having an attack called "Meteor Break."
- Friendly Pirate: The Crimson Blades. They're officially titled "pirates", commandeer a pirate ship, and dress the part, but their actual occupation is less of real pirating and more like a combination freighter/mercenary crew that transports goods between floating cities and hunts actual pirates for a living. Light refuses to associate with them initially due to their title and has to be coerced by Alk and Stella to team up, but once they do, they prove to be valuable allies.Light: We are no friends to corsairs. But we ARE friends to Marina and the Crimson Blades.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: It is perfectly possible to summon characters and have them in your party before you encounter them in the story proper, such as rescuing Amelia. This is slightly mitigated, as if the player chooses to look at a character's unit chapters before meeting them in-story, the game will warn the player that they might be spoiled for such plot points. However, this does absolutely nothing to stop the player from making characters fight themselves in certain story fights, like Klaus and Regis.
- Getting Crap Past the Radar
- In Kaiyu's first unit episode, she is introduced drunkenly and loudly singing, "taaake one down, pass it around! Sixty-nine bottles of- heh. Sixty-nine."
- Jay's second unit episode starts with Jay and an old merman exchanging books. The title of the book that Jay gives the merman? "Bonkers Honkers." The subject material is apparently exactly what you'd expect.Nimbus: Ugh, I can't believe you dragged me here to listen to two wrinkled geezers drool over "honkers."
- Kikuno, as a courtesan, is no stranger to the art of seduction - which she quite handily flusters Alk with until Light objects by knocking her across the room, in his tiny rabbit form to boot.
- Happy Holidays Dress: Ever so often characters get limited run Holiday (Christmas) variants in the gacha or as prize for an event.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Played straight with protagonists Alk and Light, otherwise frequently averted by recruitable units who use spears, polearms, bows, guns, or even just their fists.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: In chapter 7, the first encounter that Alk and co have with the Lord of Shadow (and Light's second encounter with him in general) is all but impossible to successfully complete due to his high health and brutal attacks. This is much to the point where if you even try to abort the battle, the game refuses to do so, saying that "You cannot run from the Lord of Shadow." Turns out that this is for a good reason since the game is scripted to continue once all of your units are defeated.
- Hope Spot: Chapter 7 is filled with these! From the survivors hopping to place to place, hoping to find a place to stay at without being attacked (which isn't the case as every time they stop, they're attacked at some point or another), the heroes thinking they can defeat the Lord of Shadow, and the World Flipper being absent, it's clear that this world has been severely messed up by Light's defeat and absence.
- Humanity's Wake: The Mecha Metropolis is set on a world entirely populated by sentient androids and other non-sentient robots, presumed to have been made by humans that died off a long time ago. They have a fascination with the humans of yore, made especially clear when the protagonists arrive.
- Ice Magic Is Water: Units who use and control ice are classified in the Water Element.
- Interdimensional Travel Device: The titular World Flippers. Every world has one somewhere.
- Lions and Tigers and Humans... Oh, My!: Most of the cast is human with the occasional elf from what look like bog-standard medieval fantasy worlds, but there's a substantial portion of beastfolk from the Fang Canyon and youkai from Yamato, with some sentient androids from the Mecha Metropolis for good measure. Nobody in Palpebra seems to be fazed by this at all.
- Little People: The Sheephird are these, they often have two part names like Pur Lilie and Mal Lulucia.
- The Lost Woods: The Garden of Sprites.
- Merged Reality: The world Yamato is actually the fusion of two different worlds that were both named Yamato; one was a world populated by humans and the other was the world of youkai.
- Monster Allies: The one-star and two-star units, which drop from certain stages. They are usually weaker than the summonable or welfare characters and lack a leader skill, but can be very useful as sub units to back up the three-star and above main party members.
- Ocean Punk: Endless Blue is a Flooded Future World with Pirates, Cities on the Water, Underwater Ruins, Eldritch Ocean Abyss and Merfolk who are descendants of humans who adapted to live Under the Sea.
- Planetville: The different worlds are more or less treated as these, whether or not they are Single Biome Planets.
- Portal Crossroad World: Starview Village is the Hub World/City for the game.
- The Kaleidoscope dungeon in Palpebra is partly this in the lore, with shifts sometimes transporting adventurers to and from other worlds.
- Power Equals Rarity: Subverted. While 5-star characters pack a punch, they're not invariably the best, as some 4-star and even 3-star units can be just as good if not stronger if you build right, and many utility characters required to make top-tier teams are found in the lower rarities. Even some 2-star characters see use on the backrow if they provide the right kind of support.
- Revenge: The only two people who care about the war in Fang Canyon are the dog king and the catfolk village elder. The former because of some inexplicable hatred towards the cats, and the latter because the dogs destroyed the cats' old village, causing the death of King Whitetail and the disappearance of his son. Everyone else is sick and tired of fighting and would like to see it over with, resulting in Claw and Albert deposing both leaders with the help of the heroes in order to finally bring peace.
- Ridiculously Cute Critter: Where do we begin? Light is forcefully turned into one, the Zapquill wouldn't be out of place in a Mons franchise, Faf is a little talking dragon happy to act as the mascot of a tavern, and then there's the fox kits that Shirano and Inaho look over...
- Robot Girl: The female gendered Droid characters sometimes are this.
- Saintly Church: The Church of Farlana, the faith of the Farlands. They worship the light of the stars, ever since it first came about when a sage guided a group of travelers by starlight; in other words they are fond of light, stars, and guides.
- Schizo Tech: Anything from worlds with higher Technology Levels ending up on worlds lower down the tech tree would invoke this, such as having sentient androids with advanced energy weaponry stroll through a medieval world, or for that matter, the aversion of Fantasy Gun Control, which fascinates a certain Sha Suzu when she discovers a firearm in the Kaleidoscope and disregards her magical studies in favor of engineering better guns.
- Shifting Sand Land: The Kingdom of Sand. It has an "Arabian Nights" Days feel with Temple of Doom/Ancient Tombs that have Lost Technology, mostly in the form of golems.
- Shout-Out: The Global translation really enjoys memes.
- The World 3 Stage 11-2 fight against Hermit King is titled "Crab Rave", alluding to the memetic song of the same name.
- The World 5 Stage 4-3 cutscene is titled "More Than Meets The Eye".
- From Celtie's Unit Episode, in a surprisingly contextually accurate use of the phrase:
- In her second Unit Episode, Helga suddenly sounds like Harvey Dent when responding to Nimbus asking what she'll do when there are no more battles to fight.Helga: I'm sure I'll be long dead by then. You either die a hero - or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
- Someone clearly had fun with the translation in Global's Christmas event.Pur Lilie: You got a problem, bub? I'll have you know that this was all according to keikaku.
- One of Hanabi's home screen quotes is a blatant Take That!:Hanabi: You want me to say, "believe it?" ...Look, I'm a REAL ninja, thanks.
- In Noenne's first unit episode, when she, Kapipi, and Celtie initiate an idol battle:
- Flipper World Chapter 33: "Marina does what she wants, 'cause a pirate is free!"
- Spam Attack: Multiball is essentially the World Flipper version of one, as it deploys additional balls to your field that are independent of your main party ball, having their own health, stats, and movement. In addition to allowing you to hit far more often, the increased coverage gives you a higher chance of hitting soft spots, and each individual hit from a multiball builds combo the same way a hit from your normal ball does, enabling easier access to Power Flips and Situational Damage Attacks that scale off Combo count.
- Spin Attack: Warrior Class characters have a Power Flip that causes them to release a spinning blade around them, dealing Area of Effect damage to nearby enemies.
- Super Mode: The Fever Gauge builds up whenever you hit an enemy directly during a boss fight, represented by a gauge on the ground. When it fills up to maximum, Fever Mode activates, temporarily enabling access to field gimmicks that can allow you to reach certain items or hit the boss easier before dropping to the floor, or temporarily disabling intrusive field gimmicks. Certain characters can also put the "super" in "super mode" with passive effects that boost their damage during Fever Mode.
- The Syndicate: The Star Augers, an organization with hands across multiple worlds. They are part of the backstory of certain units and are the main villains in certain story eventsnote .
- Through His Stomach: Alk winds up befriending lots of people this way, in no small part because of his Supreme Chef talents.
- In turn, Alk's also been on the receiving end of this trope, being motivated to win contests if the reward is a hearty meal or a cooking recipe, or being won over by another chef's culinary skills, such as Shirano or Parfait.
- Timed Mission: There is a time limit for each stage, usually 10 or 15 minutes. Running out is an instant Game Over, but most battles should end well before then.
- Trapped in Another World: A common theme, as several characters that the heroes meet were displaced from their original worlds; the inability for normal people to use the World Flipper also renders them effectively stuck.
- Trust Password: The village elder of the catfolk in Fang Canyon refuses to believe that Nimbus could be the lost Selenius Whitetail even when he's being removed from power. It's only when Nimbus calls him "gram-gram" that he realizes who he's talking to, and he peacefully steps down.
- Underground Monkey: There are variants of most enemies in the game for each of the 6 elements. These have the same sprites as other variants of the enemy, but colored differently to match the element in question. Mini-bosses also have slightly altered names, to reflect the element (a Pyro Raider instead of an Aero Raider for example, or a Shining Lost One instead of a Stormy Lost One). This can also apply to named bosses, who have elemental variants appear in the Kaleidoscope. Most of the elemental variant bosses do use more generic names than the story-mode originals, though. Kaleidoscope dungeons change elements and areas regularly, so you can find just about any combination of enemy and element there.
- Wave-Motion Gun: Regis' Electron Buster; it's also his Skill, with his Abilities designed to further increase its high damage output. Have fun dodging it during his boss fight!
- Wham Line: An incantation used by the Lord of Shadow during a battle in chapter 7."Stars above, turn your cold countenances upon the creatures below, who beg scraps of your heavenly light. Know the weight of their wishes. Know the gravity of your failures. Know that you shall fall! Meteor Break!"
- Wutai: Yamato is medieval fantasy Japan, complete with youkai, samurai, ninjas, and shrine maidens.
- Year Outside, Hour Inside:
- As shown in Firamelia's unit episode 1, when Alk gets stuck in-between worlds from a shift in the Kaleidoscope, time moves differently that for him only 2 hours went by in the in-between ends up with him actually being missing for 3 days.
- At the start of the story, Light's drifting through the universe after being defeated and turned into a tiny animal then arriving at Starview Village may have felt to him to have only been a moment, but by the time Light and the heroes return to his homeworld after less than a year since they began their quest it's been several decades; pretty much all previous civilization was wiped off the face of the earth, Light's friend Shakari has aged from a young girl to roughly her 50s/60s, his other companion Joshua had died, and the last remaining kin of the royal family is the previous princess's granddaughter.
- Youkai: Yamato is highly populated with them, especially the Kitsune variety (Inaho and Shirano being most prominent), and other worlds also have the Kamaitachi as a common enemy encounter and potential recruit. Orochi also appears as the chapter's end boss.
