YMMV / Guardian Tales

• Best Boss Ever: The Other Guardian in World 13 may be one fairly easy boss, especially coming after the brutality of preceding Worlds, on account of the relatively straightforward attack pattern and Little Princess constantly healing you throughout the first phase, but the sheer emotional impact, progression and several timed events make this not only the single most involved battle for the player yet, it's such a spectacle it practically feels like a reward when you finally face off with this boss.
• Breather Level:
  • Surprisingly, World 6 Nightmare. This is because you're accompanied by Big Jack after the first encounter for the entire world, who still makes every fight a Curbstomp Battle.
  • World 10 Nightmare also counts as this. Again you'll be playing as the Little Princess, and you won't be doing much damage on your own with your battleball bat, but you'll be accompanied by heroes from previous worlds with largely boosted stats compared to your enemies.
• Broken Base: The Knight Lock Post Word 12. Some players like it because it creates a more immersive story and being forced to play knight allows for some more interesting and balanced boss fights instead of the usual Damage-Sponge Boss. Others hate it for the fact that they are basically forced to play a unit that has very simple and repetitive gameplay instead of using the variety of units they've built and earned themselves.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • Cursed Towers, or any type of enemy that fires a beam attack. Not only do they hit several times at once per attack, the AI of the other party members can easily die to said attack.
  • Invader Wizards and Advanced Invader Archers, along with their variations. Both introduced in World 11, these two types mostly make up the world's infamous difficulty. Invader Wizards are either shoot a traveling laser or a massive nuke with a large blast radius, both of which can wipe out an unprepared party, if not interrupted. And the worst part being that they hide behind walls. Advanced Invader Archers are no better as they shoot a ton of Pinball Projectile that can wipe out a team in seconds if they don't get out of the way and there's often more than one so there could be multiple projectiles bouncing in different directions, meaning often times avoiding one can lead to running to another. They are also durable enough to act as walls to protect the Wizards behind them. Needless to say, there's a reason why many players get stuck in World 11 passages.
  • Twisted enemies are unique as they only take 1 point of damage regardless of how much DPS you can deal to most enemies. They are insane to slow DPS heroes, especially on that one stage in the solo evolution crystal dungeon that pits you against twisted enemies. And they are from a distance so you have to bring ranged.
  • Certain enemies with blue/yellow shields (blue for melee immunity, yellow for ranged immunity) can become even more annoying to deal with, like Lavi with yellow shield, which as explained, Lavi's 5* ability is where she gets a 50% defense increase by taking damage, and that also includes Craig in Orbital Lift, who also wields shields to further boost his defense. Yellow shields are arguably worse than blue shields, considering most of the best DPS heroes are ranged, and there are only like a few melee DPS heroes that are at least decent, like Beth & Lilith.
  • Dolf can be one of these in Kama-ZONE, as his bouncing shots can easily find your backline. In elite battles, his boosted health means he has a higher chance of using his weapon skill.
• Difficulty Spike:
  • World 5: City of Shen is where the enemies' damage output starts to increase, further getting to a point where upgrading your heroes' gear (weapons/shields/accessories) becomes even more mandatory. This is also the point where the level cap starts to slow down, but the stat boosts with each level get larger. Oh, and if you are playing as the Knight, he/she is at an elemental disadvantage as more and more of the enemies are Dark-type, and Dark-type characters deal more damage to Basic-type characters.
  • World 11: Unrecorded World Pt. 2 is considered to be one of the hardest worlds by the playerbase with the introduction of two really powerful enemies as well as the fact that the common enemies themselves have a ton of health and deal a lot of damage compared to the previous world. This was so bad in fact, that many players would often get stuck in this world, in Passage 2 specifically, with it's abundance of Wizards and Advanced Archers. This would lead to the devs nerfing the world multiple times and yet currently still regarded as one of the hardest worlds.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Lana proves to be very popular despite not being summonable and thus playable at the time of this writing, thanks to a combination of her Hotbloodness, Fun Personified personality and an Once a Season tradition that began since the first one as she challenges you to a race for a Star Piece.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Future Princess, who is not only a hybrid ranged/melee DPS, but also serves as a defensive hero who is also capable of healing her allies & giving hits, but is also capable of wielding shields. As of this writing, only four nat 3* heroes (Lapice, Oghma, FP, and Erina) are capable of wielding shields.
  • Noxia holds the title of being the most unique out of the heroes, as she is the only hero that is capable of summoning an entity, which marks it as the 5th hero/character in action. Not only can the summon take damage in her stead & taunt enemies, she is also capable of healing the summon as well with her basic attacks.
  • Kamael, for similar reasons to Future Princess. He was made to be a ranged support hero, but he has a lot of abilities that make him an effective tank as well; his Circle of Life heals him on hit, his Chain Skill removes all debuffs and heals the whole party, and he increases shield upon beginning a fight, a rare thing to see outside of Kamazone. Fitting that he's the founder and owner of Kamazon.
• Goddamned Bats: Any enemy that is a level above you, or require a cannon ranged DPS to take down. Not only do they mess up your party members to be unable to attack (including Future Princess, who is hybrid melee/cannon ranged), but they can also screw you into being unable to attack just because you didn't bring any cannon ranged heroes. Its also why in the Tower they have notices when a cannon ranged hero is required.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The Side Story "Halloween Night" requires multiple playthroughs to finish. First, going through each house normally, then rescuing the Pumpkin Kid for two runs then not going to any house during the fourth playthrough. Only after that can the stage be truly finished. The only problem is the game tells you basically none of it! So good luck finishing that side story blind.
  • Have you found the last snowflake in 8-4 yet? No? Have you tried melting the snow block in the middle of the snowball fight area that made no indication that it could be melted? Well, the game expects you to. What's worse is that the player is taught that there are meltable blocks early on, it's just that the snow block looks so different and so in place, players would often just dismiss it as a set block.
  • Hey, did you know that after 10-5's Flunky Boss spawns minion incubators, her very next attack will blow them up if it hits them, saving you from being overwhelmed? No? Sure would've been nice if the game had told you or indicated it in any way, wouldn't it?
  • In 13-1, if you don't stop to pick up and save the lost kid, an NPC will do it in your stead and die for it, which impacts the ending of the chapter.
  • In 13-3, the player will be given an ally, be separated from them and then be prompted to press a button to conclude a Hold the Line segment at their discretion. The trick comes from the presentation of the sequence: the ally leaves to seemingly perform a Heroic Sacrifice and pressing the button will save the lives of three innocent bystanders. However, pressing the button before the policeman comes back after a time is actually the wrong choice, and it permanently affects the ending of the chapter.
  • The Boss of World 16 will regularly use an unavoidable One-Hit Kill attack and being hit by it at any point is game over. How do you survive this? By picking up light blue orbs dropped by the Boss to charge and create a shield that will protect against one cast of the attack, indicated by a special bar showing up at the bottom of your screen. The first time the boss prepares this attack, it will drop no blue orbs. How do you survive this? By breaking its Deflector Shields in order to force it to drop orbs. The boss also drops red orbs that have their own mechanics and none of these mechanics are explained or even hinted at before the boss battle, forcing players to either intuit the mechanics through trial and error or simply look up the answers online.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • There is no way to manually lock on enemies, as your heroes will automatically lock on to the closest enemy. This is seen as a huge A.I. Breaker especially when your other party members just stand around on ranged enemies.
• Tear Jerker: Suffice to say, this game has tons of these. Enough so that it gets its own page.
• That One Attack:
  • Future Princess with Liberator's Weapon Skill is one of the most notorious attacks in PvP for one simple reason: If the attack scores a direct hit, it WILL stun the target. Expect Arena opponents to become much more defensive when it can be used, and endless coliseum teams with Future Princess as the leader.
  • Beth's normal attack has a large area of effect, making it hard to dodge in PvP while dealing insane amounts of damage. While equipped with Predator, it also decreases the target's Dark resistance on hit and gives her a shield based on 10% of the damage dealt. Not that it makes much of a difference, because you'll probably be dead within seconds of her getting ahold of you.
  • Phase 2 of the World 11 Boss has the bomb and claw attack, which combines a delayed horizonal strike on the upper half of the arena with dark bombs randomly spawned roughly around the lower half. The random element of the bomb's appearance can trap the player so they will be forced to take damage no matter what, whether by not allowing them room to maneuver or by having a bomb spawn on top of you. This can result in a nasty chain of damage as the bombs have significant knockback and will jostle the player's Heroes around the boss room, including into other bombs or the boss's clawing follow-up.
  • Both phases of the boss of World 16 have an unavoidable One-Hit Kill attack and the boss will use them regularly. In order to survive this, the player has to pick up some light blue orbs to generate a shield that will protect them from the attack, and do so while avoiding the boss's attacks leading up to the lethal blast. If the player messes up at any point and fails to either generate the shield in time or stay in the protected zone, it's instant game over. The main reason this attack is problematic other than how many times the player will be forced to survive it is the fact the game does not AT ALL explain the mechanics behind the attack and how to survive it.
• That One Boss:
  • The Viper Clan Leader from World 5. He has a tendency of teleporting around the stage while getting some cheap shots in, hitting hard with quick punches that aren't telegraphed. Any area where he's scaled up to your current level cap makes him particularly annoying to fight, but he's especially dangerous in automated sections of the game such as Kama-ZONE.
  • The Mimic in World 7-5 is one of the toughest mini-bosses in the entire game, as it moves incredibly fast, has the lowest cooldown of any monster in the game, and has absolutely no windups for any of its attacks. It also has an absurd health pool (over 200,000 HP). Even if you try the trick of throwing the fireplace in the middle of its body, you will still have a hard time fighting the Mimic.
  • The Pink Lava Slime in World 7 Nightmare. Not only do his attacks deal ridiculously high amounts of damage, he's considered the first boss to be able to one shot your heroes regardless of how high your Toughness is. However, as an Anti-Frustration Feature, any guests who temporarily join as party members are invincible, which also makes World 6 and World 10 Nightmare complete breathers as you run on a fixed party.
  • The Purple Harvester at the start of World 10. Its level is higher than your maximum possible level without limit breaking, you're forced to use a single character, and the area you fight it in is half the size you usually fight bosses in. Combined with the fact that half of its move set involves projectiles, it's the closest the game has to Bullet Hell. It actually becomes easier when it Turns Red, due to the fact that it isn't spamming so many projectiles anymore and is staying in one spot when it uses its cross laser attack.
  • The Beta Weapon, a optional brutal boss that is level 99 as opposed to level 76 to all World 11 enemies. You are supposed to dodge its red vision when he appears, but instead of simply sending you back when you get caught like with most of these scenarios, you end up fighting it. Because it's level 99, it has 1.7 million HP, capable of one-shotting all of your party members thanks to its insanely-high stats, and the reward you get is just a shield costume. Unless if you know how to trap him via exploiting movable obstacles, you are going to have a hard time as World 11 only allows one revive (later increased to three) per stage. Not helping things is that if you also haven't completed a certain side-quest, it has ranged and melee immunity buffs as well, meaning that if it sees you in this state, you have to let it kill you, as you can't hurt it anyway.
• That One Level:
  • ANY level where you have to fight without your party members, especially in World 5: City of Shen, including the battle against a mob of guys with only Fei and Mei. Not only does it make losing too much health much more riskier, unless you're maining a healer, you would sometimes have to face parts where the enemies outnumber you.
  • World 11 passages (specifically 1 & 2) have been the source of many complaints due to their sheer difficulty because of two factors:
    • 1) The enemies hit hard, so much that some of them can take a chunck of health from even Tank heroes (even if they're 3* and maxed out), and if you don't have attacks that can phase through walls to reach said enemies.... Now that would be hard on its own, but what makes it harder is...
    • 2) You can only revive once (a later update upgraded this to three times), unlike previous Worlds where you can revive for many times as you want but at the cost of each revive slowly getting more expensive. So even Bribing Your Way to Victory isn't an option if you saved up a lot of gems.
    • In fact, some people to this day still can't beat those levels despite a few months passing and owning meta heroes like FP and Beth, and players post for bragging right about beating these two passages rather than the World's Final Boss!
• That One Sidequest:
  • Heavenhold Tower 29, which requires either Akayuki, a free 2* hero that can dash through dummies with her basic attacks, or a weapon that has a "jump" mechanic in their skills^note specifically, Eugene's Brave Heart (if you're lucky), the AK, and the Desert Hunter rifle. You have to stop lasers & injury towers that have shockwave range. Not to mention, the floor starts you off with two invincible^note not really, but they have such a ludicrous amount of health they might as well be dummies, and you have to jump over or dash through it.
  • Become the Best Criminal. While the enemies are incredibly easy; you have to kill civilians and gain demon dollars. However, there is a catch; with every star you gain, the more debuffs are applied to you; critical chance reduction, weapon skill cooldown increase; and debuffs being enhanced. While this is easy, the boss that appears when you get "Public Enemy" status (Erina) is extremely difficult; because you have all the debuffs active she can one-shot you, and she's Light-type which means Dark-type heroes are ineffective. The one saving grace is that Erina follows a strict pattern of moves, so if the player is able to identify the pattern, a skilled player is fully capable of even taking her down solo so long as they can avoid making too many mistake; pattern aside, the enhanced debuffs on the player still make this a deadly foe to face. Not for nothing was she named National Security Chief.
  • Lana's races. At best, you will be dodging through obstacles while racing against her. While most of them are at best average, some are much more difficult;
    • World 5's iteration is the first example, as you have to dodge through dummies as bumping into one causes you to collide back. Doing this without a jumping weapon skill or an attack that pierces through dummies will be extremely hard. As seen in Heavenhold Tower 29, this was pretty hated for.
    • Folktale's race (against Lana's mother Lala) is another example, as you have to perfectly align yourself on gales that send you up in the air, and one slip-up is enough to send you falling.
    • After World Inc's race (against Lana's ancestor Kiki from Dungeon Link) involves you racing with duck boats, which requires you to get used to the difficult control scheme, including turning the boat and avoiding the obstacles that slow you down.
• That One Puzzle:
  • The invisible maze puzzle in World 7: Dungeon Kingdom. Not only do you have to control very precisely, you have to be very careful not to slip off while also getting the Star Piece as well.
  • Tower 48 is where you have to talk to guys who will deploy powder kegs. You have to perform a extremely difficult stunt which is stopping on the keg before it explodes. Not only is this suicidal, but it takes several tries as you must be centered perfectly to perform the keg bump to prevent being thrown around by arrow tiles.
  • Heavenhold Tower has some crazy puzzles. One floor has torch patterns where you must deliver a powderkeg through, one has you destroying powderkegs, and one has you playing Snake.