YMMV / Bug Fables

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Just how benevolent was Queen Elizant I? While she's well known for being a just and fair ruler who everyone adored, she hoped to use the Everlasting Sapling for immortality before her "hard earned sleep" stopped her. It's an incredibly selfish wish considering it would make her the permanent ruler of Bugaria, and it doesn't help that other immortality seekers like the Wasp King and Upper Snakemouth's scientists are some of the most evil characters in the game. So would she have been any better if she was able to realize her dream? Interestingly enough, King Hector mentions that her obsession with the sapling drove her insane. Was that hyperbole from a bug with an axe to grind against the ants, or was he closer to the truth than Elizant II would like to admit?
  • Does Mothiva love Zasp and struggles with showing it, or does she simply view him as a tool to help with her rise to stardom? Their creator envisioned them as a couple, but their in-game interactions seem to paint Zasp's affections for her as one-sided which leads to fans picking up mixed signals from it all.
  • Kabbu offers the interpretation that the main reason why Jaune constantly put down Vi's dreams of being an explorer is because she didn't want to see her sister go out and get killed.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees:
  • Yes, termite soldiers can have built-in cannons on their heads, they're called "Fontanellar guns".
  • Unlike with wasps, termites do have kings in real life. Their role in real life termite heirarchies isn't fully understood, aside from the fact that they continuously mate with the queen so she can keep having babies over the course of her incredibly long life.
• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Despite having the chance to be the last bounty the player hunts down, the False Monarch isn't that difficult and can feel even easier then some of the other bounties found earlier in the game. Most of his attacks don't do a lot of damage and are decently easy to block. Even when he starts summoning Mooks, they don't make the fight much harder, considering that they are Mothflies, which Vi can kill in one strike.
  • While they're hyped up as being far stronger than the four champions you have to beat to even challenge them, the contestants in Metal Island's Spy Cards tournament aren't any tougher than said champions. In fact, some feel that they're even easier.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Vi tends to split people into two camps: those who love her for being a hilarious Jerk with a Heart of Gold responsible for some of the funniest scenes in the game and more than a few heartwarming ones, and those who loathe her due to her greed, rudeness, and tendency to get Team Snakemouth into trouble. Even the developers may have agreed, as her original character was felt so much like a potential Scrappy that they had to tone it down.
  • Kina is also fairly divisive among fans. There are those who like her for her pretty design and find her Hair-Trigger Temper and overprotective nature hilarious, and those who dislike her for seeing her as an extreme Jerkass and find her aforementioned overprotectiveness creepy, almost bordering on psycho stalker's obsession. The optional scene in Defiant Root where she intimidates and threatens Yin (who's a baby caterpillar who can't talk) doesn't help matters.
• Best Boss Ever:
  • The Beast. As if fighting a terrifying, sadistic centipede that towers over the main characters wasn't cool enough, the fight turns the Hopeless Boss Fight trope on its head by having Kabbu power through what should have been an unavoidable Total Party Kill through sheer willpower alone. Thanks to this, the player and Kabbu get the satisfaction of slaying the monster responsible for the deaths of his friends instead of it being relegated to a cutscene.
  • The Final Boss fight with the Wasp King, powered up by the Everlasting Sapling, is amazing. Everything the player has learned comes into play in this final fight over the fate of all Bugaria and you are given the feeling that no matter what, you can not lose this fight. The Wasp King's attacks are also just the right challenge for this point in the game and is a fair fight despite his powers to heal. All capped off by some Awesome Music.
• Best Level Ever: Despite being an optional sidequest with no bearing on beating the main game, Upper Snakemouth is a highlight for many players thanks to its haunting atmosphere, creepy enemies, morbid lore, and the nightmarish and tear-jerking light it sheds on Leif's backstory. It even has its own unique enemy encounters, boss and accompanying theme, and is long enough to be a chapter of its own.
• Breather Level: Upper Snakemouth becomes accessible right alongside Chapter 5. If the player beats Upper Snakemouth first, then most of Chapter 5 becomes this because the levels gained in Snakemouth are more than enough to let the Bug Me Not badge kill any of Chapter 5's enemies on the world map, which significantly defangs the much-hyped and feared Wild Swamplands in particular.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After having to endure their rudeness and hostility throughout the game, then having them selfishly try to sabotage Team Snakemouth's attempt at securing an alliance with the Termite Kingdom against the Wasp King on top of that, crushing Team Mothiva and publicly humiliating them in front of a crowd of fans is incredibly satisfying.
  • After all the horrible stuff he has done throughout the game, beating down the Wasp King and then watching him get turned into a tree is satisfying beyond belief.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Beginner players tend to favor Vi in the overworld due to the usefulness of her beemerang in starting fights against enemies and activating the crank mechanisms that are pretty abundant in the first areas. As the game progresses however, Kabbu starts learning more versatile, convenient skills (dashing, digging, chopping tall grass, etc) that make him superior in exploring and traversing terrain, save for the occasional obstacle requiring Vi/Leif.
• Complete Monster:
  • Hoaxe, after finding a crown that gave him incredible strength, went from a friendless trash collector to the merciless Wasp King. After seizing control of the Wasp Kingdom from its rightful ruler Queen Vanessa II and running it into the ground, he brainwashed most of the wasps into becoming fanatically loyal to the point of being forced to die for him; kept the deposed queen as a prisoner to torture; and had bugs thrown into his dungeons to starve for the slightest offenses. In pursuit of the Everlasting Sapling, the Wasp King leads destructive assaults on the Ant Kingdom and after opening the way to the Sapling itself, cruelly abandons his loyal soldiers to die against the roaches protecting it while setting uncontrollable fires that threaten to annihilate the roaches and their village. Obsessed with becoming an immortal tyrant who'd crush bugkind under his heel, the Wasp King represents the worst kind of people that covet the Everlasting Sapling's power.
  • The scientists in charge of Upper Snakemouth are a duo of sociopathic cockroaches who sought to recreate the Everlasting Sapling's incredible powers, no matter the cost. In hopes of achieving immortality without the sapling, they kidnapped innocent bugs and would subject them to inhumane experiments that would destroy their minds and turn them into feral cordyceps zombies and throw away a reasonable bunch of cordyceps, considering it a failure. Though long dead thanks to falling prey to their own hubris, the victims they left behind infest Snakemouth Lair as a haunting reminder of the atrocities they committed in their arrogant bid to create something even stronger than a god.
• Cry for the Devil: While Hoaxe's past is far from an excuse for the sheer amount of damage he has done to Bugaria, some still find it rather pitiable that he once had to fend for himself in the Dead Lands.
• Dancing Bear: At a time where the Paper Mario series had alienated fans of earlier games due to major gameplay and style shifts in Sticker Star and Color Splash, Bug Fables was hyped up for being based on the original two titles, Paper Mario 64 and The Thousand-Year Door, leading many to treat it as the continuation they'd been waiting for - especially once Paper Mario: The Origami King was announced and shown to be going in yet another divisive direction. Thankfully, Bug Fables became popular in its own right.
• Demonic Spiders: Chapter 5 and 7 have a good portion of them that help make the Wild Swamplands That One Level and Giant's Lair very tedious.
  • The Leafbug Tribe are individually not too tough, but together become serious threats. Their main gimmick is that every time one of their own is damaged, they gain an attack up charge. This requires the player judiciously use TP and Leif's freezing abilities to burst down specific enemies or face the wrath of the massively charged enemy coming their way. God help you if the charged Leafbug is a Leafbug Clubber, as they can deal either massive area of effect damage or possibly lethal single-target damage. This strength thankfully goes away when they aren't near any other Leafbug tribe members, but still.
  • Wild Chompers hit hard, have 2 defense, and can spit out Chompers. Their only weakness, like all plant enemies, is freezing, but they can be healed by their attacks and even other enemies, making fighting more than one a huge chore.
  • Madesphies are capable of paralyzing your entire party and dealing tons of damage if you fail to block their cries, but since the camera becomes an Event-Obscuring Camera that prevents you from seeing your party, it can make blocking a serious chore- and these things do 3-4 damage per attack, totaling a huge 8-9 damage to the entire party if you fail to block their cry. The only benefit you can have is their vulnerability to flip, but they must be made into a priority target or they can turn any battle into a loss with their ability to paralyze your entire party.
  • The Dead Landers themselves are very bulky, having a lot more hit-points than anything you've faced so far. Alpha is relatively easy to deal with if you know its attack pattern (it can poison and stun you though), but Beta and Gamma are both destructively bulky and have attacks that are hard to dodge. Beta is a flying enemy, but unlike anything you have faced before, it NEVER falls down after you hit it. That means you're going to have to waste a bunch of teamwork points to try to destroy it, as Kabbu^note And Chompy too is useless against them (which he even notes if he spies them), Leif has to actually use his skills, and Vi's normal attacks won't do anything unless if you invest in a bunch of specific medals. It also has two attacks where it can puff up and deal 5-6 damage to everyone in the party, or belch out poison that deals 2 rounds of 3 damage (also hard to dodge). As for Gamma, they're constantly summoned by Omega if you're in its line of vision (they're also fast in the overworld too and can bypass Leif's Bubble Shield), and they hit like a truck. Besides their hard-hitting claw attack, they also have two attacks that are hard to follow (specifically one where it charges a beam, and quickly fires it) that results in your team member being put to sleep, allowing it to wreck your party. They're weak to ice and vulnerable to being frozen, but they thaw out a lot quicker than any other enemy in the game. You even fight a mandatory battle after getting through the first portion (thankfully with Maki, who happened to help you out in most of Chapter 5 too) involving all three of them at once, meaning you're going to be in a world of hurt as well^note After beating the game, an optional quest involves going back to the Dead Lands and fighting this same exact setup again, WITHOUT the help of Maki.. Since your level will most likely be maxed out by then, the game isn't kidding when you're recommended to run away from these creatures and avoid battle with them at all cost, as you'll get nothing out from them if you reach that point. And don't think "Bug Me Not" will help you once you can't level up anymore - you'll fight them if they bump into you.
  • The Roach Constructs in the Ancient Castle are Goddamned Bats at worst and can be avoided with the "Bug Me Not" medal if you're powerful enough, but the same can't be said about the fiery ones at Giant's Lair. All of them hit harder and more erratically than their previous counterparts, and are very likely to cause the Burn status, a status that is found nowhere else in the game (other than the final battle and their encounter in the Cave of Trials). Like the Dead Landers mentioned above, it's wise to avoid encountering them if you're fully leveled up.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Giant's Lair is this for some people. While the haunting atmosphere and terrifying monsters are widely praised, the stage's short length compared to the absolute marathon that was chapter 6 and the tedious ice puzzles thrown into the middle rubbed more than a few players the wrong way.
• Draco in Leather Pants: While he's infinitely more likable than Mothiva, some fans are a bit too willing to let Zasp off the hook for being a willing participant in Mothiva's more malicious stunts. Whether one buys into the "abused Zasp" interpretation or not, he's still making a conscious decision to help her attack Team Snakemouth and torpedo important negotiations with the Termite Kingdom.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Tanjerin, despite playing a bit part in the game, managed to get several memes revolving around him because of his adorable appearance and downright bizarre personality, even having an impact on the setting. Despite being a backer character, his creation resulted in the inception of a unique race of "Fruity Bugs", indigenous to the unseen Eastern Lands. He is far more popular than all of the other backer characters combined, so much so that he managed to be the only other character besides Team Snakemouth to receive official art by Giancarlos Soto. This culminated in the official "PUSHROCK" cheat code, which replaces everyone's appearance with Tanjerin's...except for Cerise (his Cherry Bug girlfriend), Skirby (the Tangy-Berry-selling merchant on Metal Island and another Tangy Bug), his original self (which gets replaced by Kabbu), and 3D models. This code is learned through an optional superboss battle against a hologram resembling him known as "TANGYBUG".
  • Despite the fact that she has no dialogue or characterization to speak of, and meeting her requires the player to find and beat an out-of-the-way dungeon and its tough boss battle, optional party member Chompy is every bit as beloved as the main trio. While a lot of it is due to her providing a small but essential damage buff in combat with her attacks, it also helps that she's just plain adorable to boot.
  • Out of the main bosses, the Chapter 4 boss, The Watcher, is the most popular despite only showing up in that chapter due to its connections to the Roaches, its cool design, and its fun boss fight where it shifts between sand and ice to attack you with.
  • General Ultimax has also gotten a lot of love from the fans. His design is cool, his cocky yet cowardly personality is hilarious, and his boss fight in Chapter 6 is fun and has great music to set the mood. His similarities to popular villains from older Paper Mario games also works in his favor.
• Epileptic Trees: This with the fandom when it comes to the Upper Snakemouth secret room with the computer displaying Venus and her two siblings. This room gave some fans the conclusion that Venus and them are creations of the Roaches. Despite the fact there's multiple evidence in the game that suggests otherwise.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Despite his meager screentime, the Wasp King makes every second count and truly sells himself as Team Snakemouth's most dangerous foe. He spends most fights effortlessly stomping the good guys into the dust, wields a badass axe and overwhelming fire magic, and even when Team Snakemouth can put up a proper fight against him, it takes a lot of effort to finally take the bastard down. And once you find out his backstory and read about the sheer hell he went through, it's hard not to admire him for his perseverance, as evil as he may be.
  • Astotheles. What's not to like about a devious, yet honorable bandit boss who can kick ass despite missing an arm?
• Fandom Rivalry: The game, sadly, got caught in the crossfire of the Paper Mario fandom's notorious civil war. Not helped with the fact that Paper Mario: The Origami King was released around the time Bug Fables was ported to the Switch. Fans of the first three games say that Bug Fables is the true next Paper Mario game in all but name, and shows what the modern games lost. Meanwhile fans of the modern games feel it doesn't do enough to evolve the Paper Mario formula, and only shows that fans of the classic games are stuck in the past.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Many fans have shipped Kabbu and Professor Neolith due to their pre-established friendship along with holding each other in high regards, almost in ways similar to couples (Kabbu even laments wasting a chance to escort Neolith at one point). Some people do ship Kabbu with Leif but it's not as common. A overarching idea among all of Kabbu's ships is that he is gay with people joking about the fact that he is a "Rainbow" Scarab Beetle.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Given the game's style and source of inspiration, it's inevitable that fans of Paper Mario (specifically, the first game and its sequel) would be drawn to it.
  • The game also resonated with a lot of Hollow Knight fans, because both are independent, crowd-funded games that center around bugs having fantasy adventures in a tiny world of magic, gods, and ancient secrets.
• Game-Breaker: All three members of Team Snakemouth can become this in their own way, as listed below:
  • Vi, upon being equipped with Last Stand, Power Exchange and Poison Attacker medals, can effectively pull off the Danger Mario setup. When combined with her multi-hit and piercing attacks, berries to further permanently increase her attack, a medal that can further upgrade her multi-hit attacks and a medal that decreases aggro on her, Vi can easily take out large chunks of bosses' HP by herself.
  • Vi can also be equipped with TP Saver, Life Cast, and Life Stealer for practically infinite skill spam. Even at minimum HP, with the right damage-boosting medals, especially Last Attack, since the game calculates HP-based damage after the skill cost, using a skill that puts her in a danger state will keep her at maximum damage potential. This setup also has the benefit of practically infinite healing, with the 'Secret Stash' and 'Sharing Stash' skills providing more than enough HP for the cost.
  • Kabbu and Vi's Fly Drop attack is an incredibly powerful attack that hits for +6 their normal attack power and ignores a point of defense, usually dealing 10/11 points of damage. Its TP usage is surprisingly low at a mere 6 TP, so you can just spam it and tear off huge chunks of boss health with it.
  • Leif's Frigid Coffin is surprisingly useful for how low TP it costs. It deals 4 damage and has a large chance to freeze the enemy, essentially stunning them for one or more turns for only 3 TP. Even better, the move averts Useless Useful Spell, and has a high chance to freeze even bosses, though they have to be grounded for the move to work. Judicious use of this spell combined with a little bit of luck can allow you to stunlock bosses, taking the edge off a number of tough encounters.
  • Kabbu's tauntlooping strategies can become really strong during the lategame. The strategy mostly revolves around using medals to increase Kabbu's defense to absurd levels: common medals include Last Stand, Defense Exchange and Back Support while Kabbu sits in the back line and endlessly spams Taunt, a 2 TP move that directs all aggro to him. If you attach Favorite One to him then not only will he soak up damage, but he'll continually buff his allies to make up for his damage. Attaching a TP Core medal makes this even more efficient, as Kabbu will be able to earn some of the TP spent on taunting back over the course of the battle. If you're good at Super Blocking you can slap the Super Guard+ medals on him to deflect even more damage and turn Kabbu into a complete Stone Wall. And if that's not enough you can spend an additional 3 TP to get Leif to use Bubble Shield Lite on Kabbu, turning him completely invincible for one turn. This strategy can stonewall the difficulty of numerous tough encounters that rely on single-target attacks, but is weak to bosses that prefer area of effect attacks. However, the Bubble Shield strategy shuts down most of the final boss's strategy, as he primarily uses single-target attacks.
  • Leif's Ice Rain (unlocked by entering Upper Snakemouth) is the strongest skill in the game in terms of pure DPS, bar none. It hits four times without diminishing returns, unlike Vi's multi-hit skills, multiplying any attack boosts fourfold, including the extra point from ice weaknesses. On top of this, it has a chance to freeze with every hit and can hit two enemies at once, racking up its damage potential even further. The only downside is that it's also the most expensive skill in the game (at 11 TP), but with high base TP and a good stock of Crisbee Donuts, you can effectively blitz most bosses before you run out of resources.
  • The Ant Kingdom Bank has an interest system that can make money a non-issue around the midpoint of the game. If the Berries that won't be used immediately are all stored while progressing the story or doing sidequests, it's possible to have the interest pile up until there's more Berries than anything to spend them on. This is even after the nerf from a 3% per hour rate to 2% per hour.
  • On the Spy Cards side of things, in earlier patches a deck of 12 menders was able to heal itself to maximum HP every 2-3 turns, while dealing strong damage when combined with the chapter 3 Boss card. It took a long time, but this deck literally could not be beaten if the player knew the strategy. In later patches the Mender card was nerfed so that its effect was impossible to activate, turning it into a Joke Character.
• Genius Bonus: Many aspects of the game reference real-life behavior of insects:
  • In the Termite Kingdom, one overworked NPC sends you on a fetch quest for something to help him get some rest. Real-life termites never sleep and literally work until they die.
  • Also, the Ant and Termite Kingdoms have a bad relationship until the end. Real-life termites and ants regularly compete for resources and are known to have 'wars' with each other.
  • Also, the presence of a Termite King may sound weird to someone familiar with insect colonies only having queens, but termites actually do have kings in real life. Queen Layra's massive size is also a nod to the fact that queen termites are huge compared to other insect queens, though to a far more grotesque extent.
  • Mantidflies are enemies in this game, and like in real life are found living close to wasps who they are commonly mistaken for.
  • It's no accident that the horrific monster that terrorizes the Wild Swamplands is a centipede. The Beast is specifically based on the Amazonian Giant Centipede which is highly aggressive and dangerous, and will eat anything it's capable of killing which includes animals such as bats and mice.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the game has a rather modest fanbase in the west, there is quite a larger fanbase for it in Asian countries, with most of the fanart and such primarily coming from Asian fans. Considering bug-catching is a common past time for many Asian people growing up, it's not too surprising.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Wasp Scouts aren't that tough, but they're incredibly tanky at 15 HP and have the ability to call in backup, with said backup being either another 15 HP Wasp Scout, or a similarly bulky Wasp Trooper. And to make matters worse they tend to hover near the back of enemy groups which limits Kabbu's options and protects them from Chompy entirely, so you'll have to burn through quite a bit of TP to get rid of them before they call for help.
  • Diving Spiders have respectable health, and blocking their poisonous bubbles can be tricky thanks to them shooting the bubbles from two different arcs requiring different timing. That's not too annoying so far... until they randomly deploy their bubble shields, which protect them from the party for a turn and can't be broken through no matter what. Now they're annoying, and they help turn the Peacock Spider into a Goddamned Boss since it can summon them to help it out.
  • Virtually every enemy in the Honey Factory since they all have the ability to paralyze party members, and the one medal you can equip to prevent such is only found in the storage, which is already quite late into the area. As a result, it's entirely possible for the player to end literally stunlocked for several turns during a normal battle if they consistently fail at blocking. It's no wonder that Abomihoneys become less likely to self-detonate outside Hard Mode, considering Normal Mode already has enough annoyances as it is.
• Love to Hate: Mothiva is as narcissistic and shallow as they come, but fans love her precisely because her meanness and selfishness make her a fun and compelling heel in a game where the main villain's relationship with the heroes is rather impersonal. It helps that her boss fights are fun and are accompanied by awesome music.
• Magnificent Bastard: Astotheles is the leader of a dangerous gang of bandits of the Lost Sands. A skilled criminal responsible for many successful thefts, Astotheles decides to capture Team Snakemouth in exchange for a reward from the Wasp Kingdom troops, and pulls it off by posing as a merchant who sells them the key to his own hideout, where he has his men ambush them on entrance and lock them in their prison. When Team Snakemouth escapes, Astotheles challenges them to the duel to death to protect the key to the ruins they're after. After being defeated and shown mercy, Astotheles commands his men to let them leave his hideout in a display of honor, and their own display of kindness causes him to rethink his life as a bandit while hiding from the law. Crafty yet noble to a fault, Astotheles proves to be the team's most honorable foe during their adventure.
• Memetic Loser: As mentioned below, Zasp is a target of mockery and "simp" jokes thanks to his extreme one-sided devotion to Mothiva.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Tanjerin is a small orange beetle that appears close to the Golden Settlement. Despite being an otherwise unimportant NPC in the game itself, he resonated with fans making all sorts of memes starring him.
  • One of Leif's abilities is to form an ice shield that protects him and his friends from harm, but the way he extends his arms when doing this looks a bit like a T-pose. Cue references to Leif "asserting his dominance" over bug-kind.
  • Zasp worships the ground Mothiva walks on, to the point that attacking her in any of the Team Mothiva-fights raises his attack stat. This led to many fans jokingly calling him a "simp" ^note Which is a derogatory term for a person, often a guy, willing to say or do anything to get into someone else's pants. complete with the infamous "All women are queens" and/or "Is this guy bothering you, queen?" stock-phrases.
  • "Ow, my ankle."^note In Chapter 5, Maki assists the player as a Guest-Star Party Member, until, at one point, he gets separated from the group and ends up unable to help them due to him conveniently spraining his ankle. This became a recurring joke in the fandom, with the phrase "Ow, my ankle" being the most commonly used variant of a joke.
• No Yay:
  • Despite Word of God confirming them to be canonically partners, a lot of fans don't feel that comfortable about the Zasp/Mothiva pairing, be it because of Zasp's increasingly stalker-ish behavior or the fact that Mothiva seems to use him solely for his strength and otherwise treats him like a servant at best, with uncomfortable undertones of Domestic Abuse from both ends.
  • While he is not completely kept out of the shipping game, several fans generally avoid pairing Leif with any other character due to his special circumstances making things overall rather Squicky (that is, being a corpse reanimated by a Cordyceps specimen). The fact that he was once Happily Married also doesn't help.
• One-Scene Wonder: The Dead Lander Omega is only a threat for the opening stretch of Giant's Lair, but thanks to it being one of the game's biggest sources of Nightmare Fuel you'd be hard pressed to find a player it didn't leave an impression on.
• Schizophrenic Difficulty: This happens upon reaching chapter 4. The game has a comfortable difficulty curve from chapters 1 to 3, but then the game can become exponentially easier after those chapters as you get strong medals that makes your party beefy and easy grinding spots to gain levels. Then the difficulty goes back to hard upon reaching the Giant's Lair in Chapter 7 as the enemies there are vastly stronger then everything before it even with grinding.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Ice block puzzles quickly fall into this category as the game progresses. While they don't tend to be hard, they're tedious since pushing ice blocks across the map tends to be rather slow and a lot of the later puzzles force you to throw the blocks across large swathes of land. And when Kabbu gains his charge ability later in the game, the tedium ramps up since the charge and horn strike commands are tied to the same button, and accidentally pressing the horn strike button too many times in between strikes will lead to Kabbu demolishing the block and forcing the player to start all over again. Thankfully, v1.1 changed it so Kabbu's charges don't destroy ice blocks. Prior to v1.1, there was also a glitch in the console versions causing ice blocks to be pushed for much less distance than intended, meaning you had to hit them many more times to get them where you need them to be, which provided more chances to have Kabbu accidentally destroy the block.
  • In Upper Snakemouth, Leif learns to create small icicles that enables the team to pass through water. However, it's incredibly slow, and as only three ice platforms can be present an the same time and you can only respawn on solid ground, a small mishap means you fall into the water and have to start all over again. Additionally, the ice platforms arbitrarily fail to work in about half of the waters in the game world, preventing it from seeing much use as an Easy Level Trick.
  • The two stealth segments aren't exactly fun. For both, it's unclear what you exactly have to do, the enemies have no visible range of sight and any failure sends you back a fair amount. The first one has a Guide Dang It! moment involving a door you can actually jump on even though they're mainly 2D, and the second has major Camera Screw that obscures your party, the path, and the enemies.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The menu codes already offer unique challenges in their own right, like the "RUIGEE" code which disables leveling up, but lowers MP requirements for medals to 1 and allows you to increase how much MP you have for berries. Some players refuse to even do that and refrain from equipping medals at all (other than Hard Mode and/or Hard Hits if desired). Combine that with the other difficulty-raising codes and you're in for a tough time, to put it nicely.
• Shocking Moments: The Reveal that Queen Elizant II is Good All Along, and actually seeking the Eternal Sapling so that she can revive her mother and step down, catches a lot of players off-guard. Since players are Genre Savvy, most players are successfully taken in by the suggestions that Elizant II is your typical evil queen, seeking an Immortality Inducer to keep herself on the throne forever. It makes the character in question extremely memorable.
• Sidetracked by the Gold Saucer: The Spy Cards mini game is very addicting due to the endless amounts of card combinations players can have with their decks, leading to tons of experimentation on top of earning Berries from winning Spy Card duels.
• Special Effect Failure: When Team Snakemouth first enters Queen Bianca's chamber in Chapter 3, the other teams try to follow... and their one-track pathfinding can result in them all getting snagged on the doors.
• Spiritual Successor: Bug Fables is a reimagining and improvement of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and in large part serves to cater to the part of the Paper Mario fanbase that was left dissatisfied by the significant shifts in gameplay, artstyle and storytelling taken by the series after its first two installments.
• Squick: The Aphid Dew item is this if you have certain knowledge of entomology; it's the excretion of aphids.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • The opening of the song that plays in Snakemouth Den is very similar to the cave theme from The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening.
  • The first seven notes of the song that plays when you get a game over are identical to "Happy Happy Christmas" by Drax.
  • It's hard to not think of Flowey from Undertale during the first part of the intro cutscene.
  • Several parts of "His Friends Call Him Spuder (Don't Call Him Spuder)" bear a notable resemblance to the boss theme from "A Banquet with Hisstocrat."
• That One Attack:
  • The Devourer is tough in general, but one attack puts it high above the other Bounty bosses: it can suddenly eat a party member with no warning. This attack is really hard to block, and the victim can't escape or fight back and has to simply let their health slowly dwindle until either they die, they get spit out after 3 turns (which is unlikely due to how much health the damned plant sucks from the eaten bug each turn,) or the boss dies. It's especially bad if it eats Leif thanks to his natural advantage over it thanks to his powerful ice attacks, but having any party member be eaten is disastrous thanks to the decrease in firepower against what's considered to be one of, if not THE hardest boss in the game.
  • Delilah's bazooka attack can hit the whole party, hits several times, deals at least three damage per hit that can quickly add up, has tricky timing to Super Block, and each hit can inflict a status ailment. It is possible for her to single-handedly annihilate the party with this attack alone, and may Venus help you if she does it twice in a row after she Turns Red and gets an extra turn. And don't think it's easy to bounce back with a Miracle Shake — one of the status ailments is the otherwise rare^note Mimic Spiders are the only other enemy capable of inducing this on the party Sticky, which disables the use of items.
• That One Boss:
  • While the Bounty Bosses are meant to be tough as a whole, they're mostly par for the course for Optional Bosses in RPGs. The Devourer, on the other hand is an absolute nightmare: most of its attacks target the entire party, the acid balls it spits move fast and poison if they aren't blocked, and it calls in decently bulky flytraps for support. And to make matters even worse, it can swallow a party member at random, which can't be avoided even with a Super Block, and said party member can't be freed no matter what you do: you have to wait 3 turns and pray that they have enough health to survive, or wait until the party member's health drops to 0 for the Devourer to spit them back out. And if it eats Leif, may god have mercy on your soul because its weakness to his ice attacks make him a vital party member to keep alive in this fight. It makes it an even more of a daunting challenge when you consider the Devourer is most likely the first of the Bounty Bosses players will meet, as it becomes possible to fight as early after Chapter 2, meaning most would be woefully unprepared for the challenge. The only saving grace is that it's a bit frail by Bounty standards, meaning that you can and probably should expend all your energy and resources into cheesing it to death before it does the same to you. God help you if you try to defeat it on Rank 0 on Hard Mode before defeating Venus' Guardian, as it's practically unwinnable without the right strategy, items, mastery at Super Blocking, and praying to hell that RNG doesn't screw you over with the Devourer's attacks.
  • The Beast is the first real fight that tests your mettle. The boss hits hard, has a whopping 74 HP (bumped to 82 on hard mode) and has 1 defense, meaning that wearing it down will take a while. On top of that it has a number of devious tricks, in particular an area-of-effect charge that hits the entire party. The only thing that can mitigate the damage is Leif's shield, but that costs 7 TP and if you haven't been pumping points into TP can be a massive drain on your resources. The only saving grace is upon reaching 10 HP, the boss will down Vi and Leif, giving Kabbu the push to refill his HP via Heroic Willpower. This makes the final few turns very easy, but getting to this point is a challenge regardless of your build or strategy.
  • Astotheles can be a challenge due to him preventing you from using items. Doesn't matter if he's frozen, asleep, or whatnot; if you try to use an item, he breaks out of any status condition he has and knocks it out of your hands, wasting the item and your turn. This means any healing, buffing, and reviving you do can only be done with TP-eating moves or having certain medals equipped. His high HP pool also means that you almost certainly will feel the sting of lacking items before the fight is over. Even worse, when his HP gets low, he will enter a guard stance that will need to be broken with Kabbu and if he is knocked out, reviving him will be impossible due to the no-items rule (unless you have the Miracle Matter medal on him, but this takes 2 turns to activate and the revived ally only gets 2 HP.) This will leave Vi and Leif unable to even scratch him without using TP and if you are out, you've functionally already lost the fight.
• That One Level:
  • The Wild Swamplands is full of very strong enemies, such as the Wild Chompers (can deal a lot of damage and summon more chompers), the Leafbug tribe (very strong and can buff themselves should another Leafbug tribe member get attacked), and Madesphies (can paralyze the party if not blocked, as well as deal a ton of damage if not blocked). There are also several very annoying ice block puzzles, which are only made worse by the fact that you unlock Kabbu's charge ability here, meaning you can accidently shatter the ice blocks while trying to move them. And the level ends with The Beast. Although, if the player goes through Upper Snakemouth first, they can make things decently easier.
  • The Forsaken Lands aren't much better and unlike the Wild Swamplands, there is no way to make to make it easier. The enemies are extremely strong and can be complete pain to deal with, such as the Plumpling, which have a defense of 3 (which is very high for this game) and have a strange attack pattern, the Mimic Spiders, which have a lot of health and very high attack, or the Ironnail, which can paralyze, has a powerful charge attack, and can duck into its shell, preventing everyone other then Kabbu from damaging it. The fog that covers the level makes several of the puzzles when you have to fly with Vi harder then they appear as you often times won't know if there is a platform for you to land on. It is also a maze and the only cue you have that you are going the right way (Queen Elizant II will disappear if you stray from the path) is gone if you chose to come back later for side missions.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • While he makes good use of his screentime as a physical threat, a lot of players felt that the Wasp King was underutilized as far as being a character went. His backstory is dark and interesting, and there are plenty of parallels between him and Vi that could have made him a compelling personal foe for her. But his screentime is meager, and his backstory is relegated to a few blurbs in his bestiary entry as well as an out-of-the-way merchant's dialogue, which leaves him feeling like a lukewarm villain in an otherwise solid cast of characters.
  • Tennent is an edgy, scary termite lurking in a back alley of the Termite Kingdom whose intimidating appearance and demeanor screams Superboss fight when you run into him. And then you're forced to confront him as part of Artia's sidequest, but despite his frightening reputation and Team Snakemouth's fear of confronting him... he doesn't do much other than give you the paint you're looking for. And on the non-potential boss side of things, he's said to have a history with the bouncer of the Ant Kingdom's Underground Tavern, but it isn't elaborated on.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: It's mentioned several times throughout the game that wasps don't have it easy in Bugaria, due to the Wasp King and his underlings wreaking havoc and destroying what little good will the peace treaty had built. It would have been interesting to see how these circumstances affected characters like Madeleine and Zasp, who are both deserters from the Wasp Kingdom. But aside from a few side comments and one scene during the wasp invasion in which Kabbu asks Zasp if he's really okay with fighting 'his people', it doesn't get elaborated on.
• Ugly Cute: Because of the cute artstyle, many of the Lesser Bugs can come off as pretty adorable in spite of being considered monsters in-universe. The Madesphy is probably the biggest example of this, as its Spy Logs go on about it being hideous, but in the end it's still just a small, fuzzy, spiky caterpillar.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Many players felt like the Spy Cards minigame wasn't half as used as it should have been, especially when the tournament was as hyped up as it used to be. In the end, you only have to fight eight times (though you can rematch) and the difficulty curve remains flat.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Mothiva zig-zags this, as while she's a popular singer In-Universe, the heroes know her true colors, and detest her for it. Fans, however, also know her true colors... and love her for it, finding her tons of fun to boo. It helps that she has great battle music in her recurring boss fights, and many of her attack animations are hilariously petty.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Given a number of Real Life insects are primarily female, it's not uncommon to hear many mistake several male characters as female; especially common with Wasp, Bee and Ant characters. The game seems to recognize this and usually reveals a newly introduced character's pronouns in dialogue at the first opportunity.
  • Maki, in addition to being a mantis, has a rather feminine design compared to the rest of the bugs around the ant kingdom, but he is male. It's not helped by his name being traditionally feminine.
  • The Spider Wizard is often misquoted as being a Witch by most players thanks to the garb more resembling a witch's outfit rather than a sorcerer's robes.
  • Despite having the masculine prefix, Monsieur Scarlet is typically mistaken as a girl because of his pink coloring. The fact that he wears a red dress, scarf, and sun hat while carrying a parasol doesn't help. He's also the only male ant character in the game.
  • Crisbee is often mistaken for a female honey bee by players for several reasons. He has a modest and somewhat timid personality, he has a flower on the fur around his neck, and the fact that he has a stinger, which male bees lack. Not helping his case is the fact that the majority of the bees encountered in the game are female, making it easier to assume that he's another bee girl. He's actually a male carpenter bee, also making this a case of Viewer Species Confusion.
  • Professor Neolith sometimes gets this due to his relatively soft and high-pitched Voice Grunting, which is often associated with this game's female bugs.
• The Woobie:
  • The entirety of Team Snakemouth.
    • Vi was ostracized and bullied by the rest of the bees for wanting to be an explorer. It was especially bad with her sister, Jaune, who kept insulting and mocking her, saying she'll never make it. Vi couldn't take it, and snapped, insulting all the other workers and Jaune, bad-mouthing the queen, and abandoned the hive. When she comes back later in the game, she's apprehensive about talking to the other bees, but secretly Vi, Jaune, and Queen Bianca all felt extremely regretful of the situation, and wanted to make amends. Thankfully, they do.
    • Kabbu only made it to Bugaria from the north because the rest of his adventuring party died protecting him from a massive monster in the Wild Swamplands. He blames himself for this, and feels that he isn't worthy of being an explorer as a result.
    • Leif is revealed to have died and been re-animated by a Cordyceps fungus that inherited his body and memories, and was left behind by his friends. He almost completely shuts down upon discovering this.
  • Queen Elizant II. She's completely aware of the fact that not many insects like and respect her as much as her mother, and worries constantly if she can live up to her legacy. When she's forced to surrender the artifacts to the Wasp King, she almost gives up on being queen.
  • Queen Vanessa II, the true ruler of the Wasp Kingdom. Before the game starts, she has her kingdom stolen from her by a usurper, who brainwashes the army into turning into his psychotic attack dogs and imprisons anyone else who disobeys him. Said usurper proceeds to run her kingdom into the ground, turns most of Bugaria against them and is also heavily implied to have tortured her. Is it any wonder that she crossed the Despair Event Horzion until Team Snakemouth managed to save her?

---