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  • Anti-Climax Boss:
    • The Dimensional Rift Volcanion. It's a legendary Pokemon that has what's functionally identical to a Mega Evolution, and it's the one thing keeping Team Xen's Carotos Mountain base from blowing up. Seems like great material for a brutal, epic Boss Battle... except it has pathetic offensive statsnote , has pathetically weak movesnote  and has an abysmally low Speed stat. Sure, it has titanic Special bulk, but its lower physical bulk is exploitable and it's at a low enough level for it to not matter as much. Justified though, since it's an infant (and one that's been abused by Team Xen, at that), which makes the fight harder for a different reason. This gets subverted in v13.5, where it receives much better stats and a stronger moveset.
    • Dimensional Rift Aelita. In a rather odd case of the game stacking the odds in your favor, it's a 12-on-6 fight with Erin as your partner who turns out to have a very useful team while the boss itself is mostly just a couple of mutated Golems and while the Rift has astronomically high Special Attack and Speed stats, their physical Defense is very lacking and their special defense is not much better. What's more: The boss' Rock/Fighting type combination gives them seven total weaknesses, many of which can be exploited by your partner alone. Similarly to the example above: Rather than a Pokémon turned into a Dimensional Rift you're fighting a human this time, one who you know, which makes the fight harder for another reason.
    • The Princess of the Ruined Timeline, Melanie, is this. Like the Rift Aelita fight that you'll be facing soon, it's a 12v6 battle alongside Melia in your favor, and her pokemon are the same level as yours. All things considered, you likely won't have much trouble unless you're fighting her on Intense Mode (in which case it becomes a 12v12).
  • Anvilicious: In-universe, Chapter 15 drops the anvil that Axis High University isn't about giving students opportunities, it's about turning them into slaves for Grand Dream City's corporations.
  • Arc Fatigue: The Valor Mountain arc. Just getting in there in the first place takes an incredibly long amount of time and backtracking, the best example being the need to return to Sheridan Village, one of the first towns you visit in the game, to get a MacGuffin you need so you can melt ice (And said MacGuffin happens to be located at the very bottom of a big dungeon, and is guarded by Groudon). Not to mention you also get two badges in the process. And to make things worse: The whole point of the arc is rendered completely pointless at the end, since the group fails to rescue Nim and she gets dropped into a pool of lava and taken by Crescent... except that Crescent later turns out to be the red-haired girl. In earlier versions, too, the worst part comes from the story branch in which you lose the Magma Stone: Turns out Crawli has a perfectly safe and easy to reach entrance into the mountain right underneath his gym, meaning that you've basically been running across the entire region for nothing. In Version 13, this was updated so that the door can only be opened if the Mountain is in the correct "Mood" - the mountain changes based on what "mood" it is in - if it's feeling "firey", there's lava on the other side of the door, and it won't open at all. Version 13.5 fixes this issue by reworking the entire Terajuma arc so that you need 3 relics scattered around Terajuma to access Valor Mountain, making traveling the island far more logical storywise.
  • Best Boss Ever: The Dimensional Rift Ferrothorn is almost universally considered to be this, since it proves to be a very challenging yet also fun battle that puts your skills to the test, not to mention having what is probably the best visual design of any Dimensional Rift Pokémon in the entire game.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse:
    • Dr. Jenkel. He only shows up for a little while after the first badge, and for a couple of sidequests; despite this, his quirky sense of humor makes him well-liked by the fandom.
    • Piano Girl, for being a Badass Bystander who helps the player during some of their darkest hours.
    • Alain, one of the playable characters, skyrocketed in popularity after Version 11 introduced their redesign which most of the game's fanbase found extremely appealing, to the point a lot of people restarted the entire game from scratch just to pick them as the player character instead.
    • Aevia, another one of the playable characters, was extremely well received after the launch of Version 13.5 redesigned her appearance again, receiving a great deal of fanart.
  • Good Bad Bugs: While playing as Ren in Hiyoshi City, an oversight allows the player to replace caught Pokemon with his, sending them to the PC and allowing you to steal them. This is fixed in later versions by disabling the NPC that sells Poké Balls while you play as him.
  • Growing the Beard:
    • Earlier versions of the game suffered of severe mapping, balance and writing issues that made the game feel way too lackluster, especially when comparing it to the vastly superior Pokémon Reborn. Since Version 8, a lot of older areas have been completely remade from scratch, the script was fixed and given a more professional feel, and most of the balance issues have been fixed. Common consensus is that each subsequent Version has improved the game significantly.
    • Even more so with the V11 release of the Crest system, a series of held items given to Pokemon, that have made many "lower-tier" Pokemon far more unique and playable competitively.
    • V13 brought along even more improvements, revamping most of the game’s chapters to improve the visuals, writing and cohesion. It also included Gen 8 Pokémon, Aevian forms and more original music tracks and character artwork.
    • V13.5 is all about this, with much of the early and mid game revised, to the point of the Terajuma arc getting reworked, as well as even more Aevian forms and quality of life improvements.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Zetta's angry reaction towards Melia's death becomes this once you find out that he's a clone of Melia. For all he knew, he just lost the closest thing to family he ever had.
  • Moral Event Horizon:
    • Madelis crosses it when she converts a baby Volcanion into a generator through a Dimensional Rift and uses it to melt down Carotos Mountain, then plans to unleash all of the mountain's newly-created magma onto Sheridan Village... just to cause as much suffering from Volcanion and Keta as possible and to gain the "energy" created by the deaths of the people in Sheridan.
    • If Geara doesn't cross it when he attempts to have his Haunter choke Narcissa and Aelita to death, then he definitely crossed it when he orders his Giratina to throw Professor Jenner into the lava atop Valor Mountain, attempts to kidnap Melia, drops Nim into the lava after his defeat, and knocks the protagonist into the lava.
    • Crescent pushing a suicide-contemplating Sharon off a cliff is a pretty nasty Kick the Dog moment. What really pushes it over to this is how she coldly tells the grieving Eli that since he doesn't know what to do without her, he might as well jump off the same cliff.
    • Flora blowing up the Grand Dream Ball, killing an untold number of civilians including several of her own grunts and injuring Erin, Alice and Allen in an overblown attempt to assassinate Cassandra (who ends up surviving anyways) is what drove many players to regret choosing to team up and join her back in Darchlight Caves.
    • Madame X was never portrayed as anything besides a Card-Carrying Villain. But the moment where she truly proves she's beyond hope is in Version 13 is when in a flashback, she approves of Cassandra's plan to use the Xenpurgis to murder everyone in Grand Dream City.
    • And for that matter, Cassandra herself arguably crossed it much earlier when if the player tells her everything, and Flora is found out as the leader of Team Bladestar, she has the Grass-type Reserve Leader Florin, her own subordinate, executed.
    • In what's possibly the cruelest twist of all: The protagonist themselves cross it in the very first chapter of the Renegade Route, by using the End of Night spell on both Talon and Amber, which not only kills them, but also wipes out all memories that everyone else had of them.
  • Player Punch: Quite a few:
    • First, Melia's apparent death. It was faked, and she's perfectly okay, but still.
    • Additionally, The protagonist's mother Nancy sacrificing herself to save them from Madame X.
    • There's also Nim getting trapped in stone, kidnapped by Geara, dropped into lava, and getting resurrected by Crescent... only to get brainwashed. Poor kid has it rough.
    • Venam getting turned into stone, and Melia's subsequent breakdown.
  • Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: During the game's early days, Ren was often considered one of the most disliked characters in general due to his boring characterization and his lack of development compared to Melia, Aelita and Venam. The poor way his supposed betrayal was initially shown didn't help at all on matters. In Chapter 13 however, he finally got the chance to have the spotlight shine on him and to get proper development and explanations for his betrayal. This, combined with his rekindled friendship with the protagonist and a brief part where he's Promoted to Playable finally got the fanbase to warm up to him and see him as a very likeable character.
  • That One Attack:
    • Thrash Rift (Dimensional Thrash in older versions), the Signature Move of the Dimensional Rift Gyarados. The attack does a truckload of damage, gets a massive boost from the field, and does type-neutral damage, meaning that no Pokémon resists it or is immune to it. It's possibly the biggest reason why the fight against the Dimensional Rift Gyarados is so freaking hard. Thankfully, you don't have to win the fight, and once you come back later after losing the boss is fought on a different field, meaning that Dimensional Thrash is weaker. It was so bad, the move was straight up removed in later versions!
    • There's also Ghostly Wail, the Signature Move of Narcissa and the Dimensional Rift Chandelure. The attack does at least as much damage as Shadow Ball, and gets a big buff from the field of the bosses who use it. Even worse, it has a chance to raise the user's defense, meaning the user of the move gets very bulky very fast. Luckily in later versions this one attack was replaced by the much more manageable Spectral Scream, which has a much lower base power of 65 and is also sound-based, meaning that Pokémon with the Soundproof ability can completely nullify it and all its effects.
    • Decimation, oooh boy. The Signature Move of Madame X's Yveltal (and also its only move). A One-Hit Kill move with 100 accuracy (normal OHKO attacks only have 30), ignoring the effect of Sturdy with the same priority of Quick Attack and 20 PP, instead of 5. It will fail if the opponent has a higher level... except Yveltal is Level 100, which removes the weakness. The only means of protection are moves like Protect and Endure. Ironically Decimation's high priority became its main weakness since Quick Guard completely prevents Yveltal from using the attack and causing Yveltal to eventually have to Struggle.
  • Too Cool to Live: A non-human example with Kanon's Salamence.
  • Visual Effects of Awesome: The Dimensional Rift Pokemon have amazing designs. Special mention goes to the Chandelure, in both its old and new forms, Ferrothorn, Volcanion and Gardevoir.
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: "It's a Pokemon game, how bad can it be?" Well, let's see: we got a terrorist attack, Abusive Parents, dead parents, Eldritch Abominations, flat-out murder, Cold-Blooded Torture, Cruel and Unusual Death, swearing...
  • The Woobie: Isha. During the SyxtenBit Cave chase, multiple characters express sympathy for him and wish that there was something that could be done for him, as he's both the victim of his father Isiah (who pulled an imperfect Grand Theft Me on Isha when he was a child) and an unwilling participant in his father's crimes, with it being very clear that he's questionably sane at best. Alas, it doesn't seem that there is anything that can be done.

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