YMMV / Gotcha Force

• Annoying Video Game Helper:
  • Goddammit Kitsune, your Magnet Robots are not helping.
  • Goddammit Yuji, get your Jelly Diver away from me!
  • Usagi will occasionally, when using a Quick Valkrie, pelt you with shots before unleashing a Quick Spell buff on you.
  • If you bring melee specialists in a fight with Tsutomu as your partner, expect to periodically get hit with a tank bombardment.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Generally, in any mission where Kou's ally isn't locked in by the nature of a certain mission, the recommendation by far is to either go without a partner or to go with Mana. New borgs are recruited by landing the flinishing blow on opponents, so going in with any of the more offensive partners runs the risk of seeing them Kill Steal on the player. Mana specializes in healing/support, so she's the least likely to pull this off. How much she's worth bringing versus going solo depends on whether the player is ready to deal with the fact that she'll occasionally heal the opponents by accident, particularly if the player is trying to melee their foe.
• Critical Dissonance: Probably the biggest death blow for this game was the near-unanimous panning by big-name industry reviewers. Plenty of fans who enjoyed the game obviously had an issue with the ratings.
• Cult Classic: Incredible combat? Yes. Insane replayability? Yes. Addictive team building? Yes. Stellar multiplayer? You're goddamn right. Professional reviewers hated it and nobody bought it? Unfortunately...
• Fan Nickname: Power Burst, the Super Mode only named in the manual, is often referred to as "Hyper Mode".
• Game-Breaker:
  • For much of the game, a single Barrier Girl in the hands of a skilled player can take out hundreds of opponents, and in the endgame a Beam Gunner can finish a level solo.
  • The Death Saucer, a borg which costs only 1000 GF energy, can pretty much beat the entire game minus the final boss by using it in every fight and tapping the B button. It has an obscene amount of health and sports tracking, auto-targeting lasers that are strong, difficult to dodge, and recharge quickly, meaning you can keep an enemy stunned until it simply dies.
  • Neo G Red, being the upgraded form of the main character, is pretty powerful for a measly amount of GF Energy. Amazing melee capabilities along with incredible range make a powerful dual-function borg whose only real problem is...not a lot of defensive options.
  • While not unlockable by normal means, only by a long-gone event or an exploit, G Black is effectively G Red on steroids.
  • Believe it or not, Dragons can end up like this, slow as they may be. By tapping the jump button before using their Breath Weapon, you cut out the charging animation and can aim the beam MUCH better and faster. This allows you to one-hit KO even the toughest of borgs with ease.
  • Certain mutant borgs created by the 20th Force Glitch can become this, with most known ones having better health, higher ammo, and better recharge rates. One example, dubbed "Super Normal Ninja", has 9999 HP and 999 shurikens.
• Good Bad Bugs: The game has a rather strange, complicated one commonly called the 20th Force Glitch. Referring to the buggy 20th force slot in the force creation screen, it's possible to create sequences of borgs placed in the force slots, that allows you to change borgs into other borgs, making it possible to get G-Black and Galactic Emperor without using cheat devices by sacrificing another borg you don't need. The glitch also allows you to adjust a borg's level, color, and certain attributes.
  • Several years after the glitch was initially discovered, people have also discovered that it's possible to create "mutant borgs" with other sequences that give them the attributes of other borgs. The effects of these changes range from borgs losing body parts/attacks (ie. a Bug Witch lacking hands and being impaled by her staff), to borgs getting larger ammo capacities on their attacks, significantly more HP, significantly faster recharge rates, etc.
• The Load:
  • Aside from the in-game example Kotaro, every ally can be considered this. They usually attack the same enemy that you're attacking. It seems tactically sound in theory, but what ends up happening is that you'll either keep getting interrupted by ally when you're trying to attack in melee, or your ally keeps getting in your way when you're trying to attack from range. Even more annoying if your ally is a Pop Honey or Ice Valkyrie. There's also some strange behavior where if your ally is using a character that buffs, they should only use the buffing move on their ally, but they also tend to use normal attack moves as well. Both the enemy CPU and ally CPU does this.
  • Mana is a bit of a subversion, while she has very limited fire power, she can heal your borgs back to full health, which could be a life saver in some of the tougher battles, the unfortunate side is that she can accidentally heal the enemy back up to full health.
  • You need the final hit on an enemy borg in order to get a chance to receive it at the end of a level. The ally CPU steals kills all the time, denying the player a chance to obtain that borg.
• Narm: The voice acting. Samples here.

• The Scrappy: Kotaro. While all of the characters are irritating in their own ways (mostly thanks to the almost non-existent characterization, poor voice direction, and Crippling Overspecialization making them less viable in gameplay), they still have their fans. The same cannot be said of Kotaro: he's clearly meant to be the Sixth Ranger of the group, coming in a little over halfway through the story mode, but if he was intended to be The Load by design, it's safe to say that they did their job a little too well; he's a Bratty Half-Pint Tagalong Kid who doesn't understand anything about borg battling, always brings ranged borgs to every fight he's involved in (which typically only excel in ranged combat and little else), and charges headfirst into the heat of combat without considering the disadvantages he's under. He also never seems to bring anywhere near enough borgs whenever he's available as an ally (most of you other allies — with the exception of Tsutomu, but even he has an excuse — bring along at least three or four borgs at this stage in the game. Kotaro is almost always ever seen packing one or two at most), which usually means he's quick to get knocked out of a fight. To add insult to injury, for as middling as their usefulness in gameplay gets, anything Kotaro can do everyone else can do better, even as meat shields for the player, so there's practically no purpose in using Kotaro in gameplay. Add to the fact that he's involved in several story missions the player is required to complete in order to progress, and that he shows little to no improvement despite the training missions dedicated to him, and it's easy to see why he's loathed by even the most forgiving and patient fans of the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Partners can sometimes be this due their diminishing usefulness late game, sometimes questionable decisions during combat, and arguably most damming, denying the player a potential borg drop if they manage to get the final hit on a borg. Thankfully on additional playthroughs, the player can set to go solo in any battle that doesn't force a partner.
• Smurfette Breakout: Usagi is the only character to have appeared in later games since this one (namely the Japan-exclusive Minna to Capcom All Stars, Onimusha Soul, and Street Fighter x All Capcom).
• That One Attack: The Galactic Emperor's Roboteching lasers it fires when only a third of it's health is remaining. These are pretty much all range attacks that can hit you anywhere. They can even hit you when you are directly beneath it.
• That One Boss:
  • On the first play through, the first two one-on-one fights against Sho can be difficult. The first one in particular, your best borgs are limited to G-Red and Command Girl (if you were lucky to pick one up before facing Sho), where Sho's borgs can fly and have exceptionally strong attacks at melee and range. The last one... not so much.
  • Sapphire Knight and Ruby Knight.
  • Orochi as well, at least during the first couple fights. Doesn't help that she is backed up by the aforementioned Knights.
• That One Level: Any of the "Showdown! Hero Borg Unit!" stages can qualify, as it is essentially fighting five different opponents at once, all of them being borgs of at least decent strength. Even worse, you cannot bring a partner to these battles.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Orochi is female — actually mentioned early in game in passing and in the manual and in one late-game mission by Usagi if Orochi is recruited, but most people miss it.
    • It becomes more obvious at the end of the game, after she's released from her mind control.
  • Met. Concept art and fan art more befitting of a girl, but the voice is either a very masculine girl, or a guy. Never referred to in the game or instruction manual as a guy or girl. The baggy clothes concealing the figure don't help. Supplemental materials reveal that Met is a boy.

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