YMMV / Arc Rise Fantasia

• Anvilicious: This game has a very negative view of religion. Every religious character is either a deluded sap or a villain, and a villain who wipes out a city with no provocation is treated as a Well-Intentioned Extremist because he wants to destroy religion.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • Even people who didn't care for the character admitted to feeling sorry for Adele when she died, as it's clear how much of a Broken Bird she was at that point.
  • For those who disliked Niko due to his cowardice, the fact that he dies via pulling a Heroic Sacrifice redeemed him a few points.
• Complete Monster:
  • Ignacy was a rival of the heroes' Old Master and is first seen injuring said master fatally with petrifying wounds. Through the game, Ignacy is revealed to have murdered a hero's mother and manipulated loyal warriors to betray their benefactors and murdering them later. Ignacy forces a painful transformation on innocent victims, which makes the heroes kill the victims in self-defense. Later, Ignacy kidnaps one hero's sister for information and attempts to Mind Rape another. He later has the daughter of the woman he murdered years past perform a Heroic Sacrifice to save her sister.
  • Hosea, Patriarch of North Noireism, is a Divine Race whose ideal world involves the death of the Common Race as he leads the remains under him. Acting kind to L'Arc and Ryfia, Hosea tries to have them accomplish Imaginal's Law, making them believe it would save the world, not knowing it would mean the deaths of 90% of the world's population, while he craves. To accomplish his twisted goal, Hosea worked with Ignacy to conduct operations and experimentations to control the Child of Eesa, killing countless victims, including many of the hero's loved ones. Realizing L'Arc is catching on and won't enact Imaginal's Law, Hosea has Ignacy kidnapped Niko to get L'Arc to come to his domain, unleashing a trap to kill him and Alf to take the role of Child of Eesa to start Imaginal's Law. When this fails, Hosea decides to try killing them himself to force a new Child of Eesa to be born, and afterwards unleashes a laser cannon to L'Arc's hometown with his dying breath as spite towards him.
• Designated Villain: Eesa. She isn't malicious in the slightest and the only reason you end up fighting her is because she wants to go on living whereas L'Arc's Law will eliminate the need for her. Really, how can you blame somebody for wanting to defend their own life? The post-battle scenes just stack the woobie points even higher.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Weiss is something of a fan favorite. It's not hard to see why.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There's a glitch that allows you to equip body armor to all parts of the character, even on the accessory and foot sections. This effectively lets you have a bosses level of defense. It makes the game's hard boss battles far more manageable.
  • Another glitch allows for an easy money grind: Equip a character with the Arm Force and accessory that increases money earned after battle and allow a set of Rogues to steal money from the party in Modelro Coast. Defeat each Rogue that steals before he can run away, and the end result is a 50-100% profit of the stolen amount after the battle ends. And, because the amount a Rogue will steal is a set percentage of the party's total, the more money the party has, the more it will make.
• Growing the Beard: Somewhere between 2 to 8 hours the voice acting becomes acceptable as they get into character. From then on only one-off characters are grating.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Niko's cowardice (and L'Arc's resulting frustration) is Played for Laughs at first, and then taken more seriously later on, but still nothing horrible. Then Niko's guilt over said cowardice pushes him into making an Heroic Sacrifice, which L'Arc blames himself for, making this something of an in-universe example.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Serge's suffered a lot of trauma over his life, but responds by continuing to live his life with a smile as best as he can, even while seeking the one responsible for most of his problems.
  • Among the minor characters: Elena (i.e. L'Arc's mother). There's a reason why L'Arc claims that she's stronger than he'll ever be.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Dynos, once you learn his backstory. Everything that could go wrong for him over the last few years has gone wrong, making it little wonder that he's ended up so bitter and angry.
  • For those who don't hate the character, Adele counts as this for some, due to her, in some ways, brutally imperfect nature.
• Les Yay: Leslie and Shelly Greenhill. Seriously, just look at what happens after you rescue Shelly from the ruins! Ryfia and Cecille also seem to want a taste of Leslie.
• Love to Hate: Adele gets a lot of hate for being an awesomely insane bad guy.
• Magnificent Bastard: Prince Weiss Dona Meridia is the eldest son and ruler of the Meridian Empire who after learning the horrible truth about Eesa and its Laws intends to free the world from them even if it means conquest and destruction. After his father was cursed and brought to despair by Eesa's curse, Weiss began his plot against Eesa, propagandizing the Empire into invading other nations to cut off the religious influence and unite against Eesa, while using his brother L'Arc as a key figure in his battle as the Child of Eesa, deceiving him into his plans while secreting guiding him to the truth in hopes of getting him to denounce Eesa. Ultimately succeeding in convincing L'Arc, Weiss entrusted him to save the world in his place after his conquest was foiled by Alf, giving him final orders to execute a contingency plan he readied ahead of time in case he died, passing away peacefully after making amends to L'Arc in his last moments and being certain he will succeed.
• Misblamed: From an email interview here the poor voice acting was due to lack of direction.
• Moe: Ryfia, being a Badass Adorable Naïve Everygirl. Maria could classify as well, after regaining her voice and starting to move past her trauma.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ignacy crosses it before the game begins by forcing Rastan to kill Rex by holding his family hostage. If that doesn't do it for you, then there's everything he does at Lascarde. Alf was so badly traumatised afterwards that he crossed the Despair Event Horizon and became an Omnicidal Maniac.
• Narm: Many moments mostly thanks to the abysmal English dub, but one in particular stands out Niko's last words (well, the last ones the party hears) are "I sound stupid, so I'm switching off." Sure, It Makes Sense in Context he's switching off the video feed to his ship while he perfoms his Heroic Sacrifice but if you look at it another way...
• Player Punch:
  • Talk to all of the civilians in Antrax when you arrive. You'll regret it after the attack.
  • Before tackling the final dungeon, you get the infrequent option of wandering around as L'Arc to talk to the scattered members of the party... except by this point, L'Arc has decided to pull off a Heroic Sacrifice when everything is over, which the others don't know, and it feels like most of the conversations with them are specifically designed to punch you in the gut over this fact.
• The Scrappy: Niko to some, due to his constant cowardice. His English voice doesn't help things either.
• Spiritual Adaptation: The game could be considered one to the Tales Series. Not only are the characters of anime design, there are skits that tend to be on the light-hearted side and costumes (that can only be seen on the character portrait). At least two of the developers also worked on the Tales Series: director Hiroyuki Kanemaru from Tales of Symphonia and scenario writer Takumi Miyajima, who worked on Tales of the Abyss. It even takes the Heroic Sacrifice and Sadistic Choice plots from both games...
• Stoic Woobie: Rastan has had a sucky life, but you won't catch him angsting about it.
• The Un-Twist:
  • Saura reveals herself to be "Allul of the Twelve" long before you realize that she's actually a Rogress.
  • When Weiss tries to kill Alf, L'Arc stops him, telling him that fratricide can't be the answer. Weiss says "then why are you raising your sword to me?", and the game then tries to make it seem like a twist hours later when It's "revealed" that L'Arc is Weiss's brother.
• The Woobie: You'll really want to give Luze a cuddle once you find out her backstory. She was made into a god by her people and led them as one, only to eventually be accused of being a false deity and have humanity become divided over her, which resulted in her becoming so distraught about her ability to lead them that she put herself into a state of hibernation...

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