YMMV / Knights of the Otherworld

• Captain Obvious Reveal: In the first few arcs the fic tries to say the Kamen Riders aren't really related to the Knights of the Round Table. That's just a trick Merlin came up with to get them admitted to the school. Except over the Thronecoming arc it's a big reveal that, yeah, they actually were descended from the original Knights of the Round Table the whole time. It's ruined by a couple things, like finding out that yes, the main protagonist actually is a modern teenager named "Arthur Pendragon", and asking you to think that's just a funny coincidence in a story about the Knights of the Round Table, along with some of the others having dead giveaway names too like Lance, Max le Fay and, honest to god, Gawain. Not to mention how the story happens in the setting of Ever After High, where the premise is literally everyone's related to a character from a legend.
• Growing the Beard: The first few arcs are merely a recap of Ever After High with riders in them, and is fairly typical of rider crosses of this nature. Then comes the Arc where the Order of the White Dragon attacks, and the stakes are considerably raised, showing that things will not be the same again.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: The fanfic uses Kamen Rider Ryuki characters given their knight motifs, but the heavy ties to the Arthurian mythos and the fact that they were knights become hilarious when a later Kamen Rider show has not only knights but also has a slight King Arthur motif in the form of a power up.
• Strangled by the Red String: The knights all get matched up with their respective princesses very quickly. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but in the Legacy Day chapter, the characters are basically trying to act like having one chapter of focus on each OC's relationship means they already have an amazing, timeless love. One that's used to say the princesses should forget about their old stories and live their lives with the knight they're paired off with instead. By the ninth chapter.
• Uncertain Audience: The author seemed to have a hard time deciding if he was writing a story about a terrifying monster invasion, or an optimistic fairytale romcom.
  • A really good example is when the Rogue Knights stage attacks on all the heroes at the same time. Blade Knight's deck is destroyed and he's devoured by his own monster partner, which traumatizes most of the other knights and seems to signal a turning point in the fic's tone. The very next chapter, though, Rex uses his Time Vent card to go back and change history so Blade Knight doesn't die, as if the author changed his mind about going that dark. He goes on to have a string of extremely light chapters, a bunch of them adapting plots straight from Ever After High.
  • Similar to that, there are some heroes who are supposed to have darker compulsions, mainly Max and Kyle. But because of the uncertain tone, the writer didn't seem to know how to write that while still ultimately making them likable and accepted by the rest of the group. Max is supposed to be studying to be a villain, but his antics consist mainly of low-key stuff like pranking Daring Charming (who's portrayed as a Jerk Jock who deserves it), or stealing the answers for an upcoming test (which is framed positively because he generously shares it with his friends). He always comes to help when he's needed, and late in the fic gets mad at another knight for stereotyping him as a villain. Meanwhile, Kyle's snide, arrogant, dates multiple girls at the same time, and is fine with murdering their enemies, or even suggesting he kill classmates giving them problems. Yet in the end we're clearly supposed to want to see him win, and for his relationship to succeed, even though he never changes.
  • The fic couldn't seem to decide what its stance was exactly on real people visiting a fairytale world. Sometimes it threw around heavy talk about how stories have to evolve and people are owed the freedom to choose their own future. Other times it had the knights enjoying being there over the real world, because life is simpler and people are nicer with a lot less drama than the world they come from, while seeming to forget how it's also trying to say this system is not perfect and how unjust it is people like Raven Queen are forced into futures that will make their lives hell.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Scout and Rebellious. The story goes out of its way so many times to rub in how pathetic they are for their first few chapters at least, it just starts seeming mean for the narration and heroes to fixate so hard on what egotistical losers they are compared to the "real" Kamen Riders.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The fic opens as if the heroes being people from the real world who know all the stories will be a big element. It never does that much with the idea, except sometimes to justify some questionable decisions (Like the people of the fairytale kingdom are too weak-minded to protect themselves against kaijin. Only teenagers familiar with violent media are fit to be Kamen Riders). While also not striking a solid balance between that idea, and how it uses fairytale tropes in its own narrative (The Power of Love is what unlocks the Kamen Riders' Super Mode).