Video Game
- Accidental Innuendo: "I'll penetrate it!". Said by a confident-looking Erunoa in the localized version...
- Audience-Alienating Era: By December 2018, the game started going downhill, mostly due to the absurd Difficulty Spike the main quest and events received, events being released with dubious quality and with less frequency (not introducing Chaos Heroes anymore is what takes the cake), a big focus on exclusive paid skins and Heroes (which the game never had at that point), and character portraits getting even more blurred out than usual to the point of making them look armless. Lots of players were driven away by these changes, and by 2020, Grimms Notes was deemed too unprofitable for the developers to keep working on it, and simply urged the playerbase to move on Grimms Echoes.
- Awesome Art: The characters' arts are quite beautiful and very detailed.
- Awesome Music: The battle theme
of the Beanstalk Guardians is just godly. - Breakaway Pop Hit: Ever heard of the popular song Wasureji no Kotonoha, the Magnum Opus of Mirai Kodai Orchestra? Did you know it is the first main theme of this game? Exactly. Checking the game will help you make more sense of the song's lyrics.
- Broken Record: In gacha games you are expected to play them and grind on a daily basis, so most of these have multiple battle themes so you do not eventually get tired of listening to them quickly (such as Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story and Arknights), but Grimms Notes? It only had two normal battle themes during its 4-years lifespan. The first one got replaced when Repage was launched, but that one was arguably more dense to listen due to its off-key violin... Unless you wanted to hear it lots of times every day, muting the BGM and putting on a different soundtrack would make grinding and finishing daily quests way more tolerable.
- Captain Obvious Reveal: Apprently the fact that Deus Prometheus and the Mirror Plate Fiend were Andersen and the Shaman of the Mirror all along is considered a huge spoiler... Even though the former only wears a non-convincing mask alongside his hair middle-dyed, and the latter's One-Winged Angel form still has obvious hints of her original form.
- Complacent Gaming Syndrome: It was very common to find Arena parties that consisted only of Story Tellers. This is because of the Imagines (floating mini-heroes) that follow them, which add extra hits to their normal attacks, and their overpowered stats and ultimate skills (Charles Perrault being quite dangerous because of his explosion skill).
- Continuity Lock-Out: Several important stories and plot points are only showcased in past-events, it is not enough with just watching the Main Quest's cutscenes (for example, new characters suddenly tagging along with the party, as if they have been there all along). While you can watch every cutscene in the offline app, the problem is more about in which order should you start watching them, since the game does not offer a chronological timeline. Luckily, the Recap page here can help you around with that.
- Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Lost Epitaph is almost memetically famous between Japanese players, to the point where it is not hard to find fanart of him.
- Evil Is Cool: Deus Prometheus, for his sleek design and being a Diabolical Mastermind. The fact that he never got to be a playable character is such a boomer.
- Fanon Discontinuity: The character event Chaotic Paradise was so widely panned by the playerbase that it is outright purposely skipped in most websites and wikis dedicated to the game. Mostly because it is a story where the party is tasked by a Harem Seeker emperor (who objectifies women, by the way) to bring him a group of girls for him to get married. One of the targets is a child. And the party has no issue with it.
- Goddamned Bats: The Nobodies, who come with four different variants and a different skill for each one. While dealing with only one isn't big deal, the tedious hurdle comes when you have to face a mixed group of them. Doesn't help that they have tons of HP and defense, giving trouble to even the most powerful heroes. And then there is the golden big one, who can use all the skills from the other variants.
- Harsher in Hindsight: One of the monsters that could be hunt for its body parts to craft special weapons was a rhino. Due to a lack of plot in multiplayer events, there is no indication that the bosses are purposely hostile, so it's easy to interpret that the monsters are simply trying to defend themselves from your party. This might be difficult to stomach, considering the rhino species are currently at the brink of extinction, no thanks to poaching and habitat loss.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: This is not the first time Oz is portrayed as an evil floating green head.
- Ho Yay: Chaos Marie and Chaos Aurora. The few times they show up outside of their debut event, they are mostly seen together, and one interaction between them in Viehmann Story Zone implies that Marie is into Aurora, with the subtlety of a bulldozer.Chaos Aurora (to Hahn): The hell, are you serious!? Hold on... Your legs look... smoother than mine... No way...Chaos Marie: Don't be such a downer! Worry not, your lovely chubby legs definitely have their fans out there, I should know!Chaos Aurora: Marie, not now... Also, they are not THAT chubby!
- It Was His Sled: The death of Fam, Ex murdering his own friends, and the fact that the game takes place After the End. These twists are practically common knowledge nowadays, and discussions about them are rampant among fans.
- Scrappy Mechanic
- The Gacha. So, you want to get that pretty good-looking new 5* Hero? Well, you'd better have a big bunch of gems in hand and a lot of patience, because the odds of getting said hero will vary from 0.3% to 0.6%, meaning that you may end up obtaining a rare hero you didn't want, or pieces of paper. These low rates put Fate/Grand Order to shame! Not to mention that first you have to pull 30 times in order to get a single 5* Hero (which will cost you 750 stones, and it's quite uncommon to get one between every roll).
- The Epic Gacha. Here you have the option to trade 5 Poems of Trascendence for a random 5* Hero. These can only be obtained when you get a 5* Hero you already had. What's the problem here? You are NOT absent from getting a repeated character, which means that you may throw 5 poems... and get 1 poem in exchange. Absolutely wonderful.
- Special Effect Failure: This game has some of the worst Visual Novel-styled cutscenes you will ever see. While the artwork is top-notch, the way some Character Portraits are placed will make you facepalm so hard that you will get a concussion. The worst offenders are the overly-blurred out sprites, so much it looks like the characters' arms were torn apart (just take a look at Chaos Little Pig's artwork).
2019 Anime Adaptation
- Ass Pull: Just before Chaos Aladdin is about to off the party, Ludwig Grimm suddenly lends Ex his powers to turn the tables on, with no explanation of how it happened. A Hero's soul reaching out to help a Blank Tome owner in the middle of a battle is something that never happens in the game, and the people who never played it will be probably left wondering who is discount Shun'ei supposed to be and where did he come from. This being the final episode of the series, we are never told who this guy is.
- Magnificent Bitch: Curly is a member of the religious cult known as Church of Fortem and also a member of the Rogue Storytellers known as Chaos Tellers. Believing that people in their own Story Zones have accursed fates that were given to them from the Book of Fate, Curly teams up with another Chaos Teller, Loki, to manipulate the people in their Story Zones who had a horrible fate in their books by turning them into a Chaos Teller, which resulted in the Story Zone getting distorted and several innocent citizens turning into creatures known as "Villains". Eventually, Curly's plans culminate as she attempts to destroy all of the Story Zones and recreate them in their own image along with Loki in order to liberate people from their accursed fates as a last resort. Despite her beliefs being refuted by the heroes, she remains affable towards them, making her one of the most compelling enemies the heroes have faced.
- Narm
- Chaos Aladdin's death, right from the crude animation of Ludwig's candy rain attack (which may have risen various eyebrows from people who didn't play the game), to the former's hilariously horrified scream and sudden explosion.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Grimms Notes The Animation got hit with this. Many of the characters' designs were simplified, and some scenes from the game were omitted, with the first episode starting from the second Story Zone rather than the game's prologue. Even the limited-time events were Adapted Out, leaving some characters like Robin (Sky) and Chaos Aladdin without a proper introduction. While some people do not mind the changes, there also others that feel like the anime had a rushed plot and did not respect the original game.
