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Alternative Character Interpretation | And The Fandom Rejoiced | Awesome Bosses | Broken Base | Complete Monster | Die For Our Ship | Game Breaker | Moral Event Horizon | Narm | Player Punch | Rescued From The Scrappy Heap | Scrappy Mechanic | That One Achievement | That One Attack | That One Boss | That One Level | That One Sidequest | The Scrappy | The Woobie


  • Alternate Aesop Interpretation: As mentioned by a few players, the first ending sounds an awful lot like Asbel talking someone out of committing suicide.
  • Awesome Music: The game's theme song, Mamoritai ~ "White Wishes", is J-pop at its finest. Listen to it once and it's a sure bet that you'll abuse the replay button.
  • Base-Breaking Character: A minor point which still generates plenty of heated discussion is whether Aston, Asbel and Hubert's father, was a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who really wanted the best for his sons and whose actions were poorly thought-out, but still justifiable, or whether he was just a plain Jerkass who was painfully oblivious to the way his actions nearly singlehandedly destroyed his family and sparked off the exact conflict between his sons that he was attempting to avoid.
  • Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
    • Frederic's Mystic Arte "Butler Bomber" makes no sense. Why? Because the dead Aston Lhant appears out of nowhere and joins in to kick your butt.
    • Several of the sidequests in "Liniages and Legacies", such as "Birth of a Turtlez", which the characters in-universe remark makes no sense and poses more questions than answers, and gives you no reward whatsoever, and "Victoria the Diplomat" which pulls random Swimsuit Fanservice on you out of nowhere. The "Fiery Joe" line of sidequests in the main story is a massive BLAM too.
  • Character Tiers:
    • While there's thankfully no hideous imbalance, a lot of players prefer a party of Asbel, Sophie, Hubert, and Cheria for the fact that that particular team is very diverse. (Plus, Sophie and Cheria are the healers, with Hubert also having a handy healing spell). It's not that the other characters you don't really see much of (Pascal, Malik, and Richard) are bad, just that the higher difficulties are Nintendo Hard and once you find something that works, you WANT to stick with it.
    • The other issue, at least in the main game, is that the above four characters have the most Nova Artes, which is a dominant strength against a lot of enemies weak to them in the late game, with many needing to be hit by a Nova arte before they can be damaged by anything else.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Speaking broadly, characters who have access to Nova artes are more predominately used over other characters. This is because late game enemies can only be really hurt by them, and Asbel, Cheria, Sophie, and Hubert all have a quick and easy to use Nova arte. Both Malik and Pascal lack them, so while both are still good, the need for Nova artes first and foremost makes the "childhood friend" squad better to invest in.
  • Die for Our Ship: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise here.
  • Difficulty Spike: The Ghardia Shaft is absurdly difficult compared to what came before, especially playing on higher difficulty levels. You go from "confident and decisive victories" in the area immediately prior to "wiped within fifteen seconds by the very first random encounter."
  • Fan Nickname:
    • Manlik for Malik.
    • Tales of Code Geass for the game as a whole, owing to the almost-blatant promotion of the latter in the game, from appearances of some main characters down to outright references in DLC costumes.
  • Fridge Brilliance: A minor one with two post-battle skits. One has Asbel, Cheria, and Pascal complaining about Strahta's heat, and another has Asbel, Cheria, and Hubert complaining about Fendel's cold. Why not involve the same characters? Because Hubert was raised in Strahta and is used to the heat, while Pascal lives in Fendel and is used to the cold (Asbel and Cheria, being from a temperate region, have cause to complain about both extreme climates).
    • At first glance, it seems strange that Asbel, Sophie and Richard are so invested in their friendship pact. They only knew each other for a short while as children, before allying briefly years later. However, Asbel promised to protect them and care for them, even as a child, simply because they had no one else. At the end of the Child Arc, he felt like he'd failed. When he gets a second chance to keep his promise as an adult, he's desperate to do so, particularly in the face of failing as Lord of Lhant. Sophie and Richard, meanwhile, have never had anyone they could trust and rely on. Asbel (and by extension, each other) was the first true friendship they ever had. Even several years later, after the Child Arc, this remains true and the friendship pact remains a tangible reminder of it.
  • Fridge Horror: Sophie has to watch Asbel's lineage for all eternity, meaning she will continuously watch people die as she remains the same. Sure, she came to terms with it, but who's not to say she will hold up for so long?
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game made it to the top 5 best selling games list on EBgames Canada before release, and it's also one of the games up for sale in the store's July sale.
  • Heartwarming in Hindsight: One of Pascal's win quotes is "That one was for the lady next door!", which seems like another one of her meaningless Non Sequiturs at first. Then you visit her home and find out the lady who lives next door to her is her sister.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ho Yay: Richard's crush on Asbel, Asbel's admiration for Malik, Pascal's fascination with Sophie. Lambda!Richard is also yandere for Asbel.
    Richard: He's such a kind man. It's the trait I love most in him. I must take... Good care of him...
  • LGBT Fanbase: Malik got pretty popular on Bara Genre Image Boards in celebration for the games international release.
  • Magnificent Bitch: Little Queen, the manifestation of Fodra's consciousness, experienced experiments conducted on her planet's core by scientists two thousand years ago. Witnessing the desolation of her home, she responds by slaughtering every last scientist responsible. Intent on preserving nature, the misanthropic Little Queen is the reason for the monster epidemic on Ephinea, suggesting she wanted to free another planet from humanity's grasp with as little as involvement as possible. Manipulating Sophie with a simple hallucination about friends' mortality, Little Queen tries to sway the Fodran Artificial Human to her side so neither can be alone. When the heroes arrive, Little Queen often attacks them without hesitation and uses her large numbers and monsters in attempts to overwhelm them. After losing as the Fodra Queen, Sophie is able to assuage the Queen's sorrow, and before she fades, receives the last bit of her power—and her hopes for humanity and nature to prosper in harmony.
  • Memetic Badass: You can't spell "Hubert" without "uber."
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • Pascal's drill-trailer.
    • Somebody has finally taken that to its logical extreme.
    • Malik is also known as a King Troll or Manlik.
    • "Mamorenakatta..."
    • Richard's slashing frenzy has also become rather popular.
    • "TOMODACHIIIIIIIIIIII"note  (spoilers).
    • "Everyone thinks we should go out the butt. Let's search for the butt, Cheria, it's the only way."
    • Richard himself is a walking meme. He also has by far the most Fan Nicknames; such as Flag Prince, Princess or Tiger Festival; which is actually used in-game.
    • Because of the game's opening song being owned by Avex Entertainment, videos of the opening theme tended to have the audio muted by YouTube. This has led to a fad where the opening is posted, but dubbed over with the openings from other Tales games.
  • Misaimed Fandom: The conflict between Cheria and Asbel in the early chapters is one in which both characters, while still sympathetic, make mistakes and acknowledge as much in later parts of the game. However, some fans fail to recognize that Asbel running away from home at age 11 and cutting off all contact with Cheria at a time when he was the only friend she had left were not good decisions, and characterize the matter as Cheria being mean to Asbel for no reason.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Go here.
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The sweet serenade of the Rockgagong Flute.
  • Never Live It Down: Cheria gets captured once, she actively tries to escape on her own and the whole sequence hardly lasts longer than 10 minutes. Yet for a lot of Cheria haters, this is enough to demote her to a Damsel Scrappy or a Faux Action Girl.
  • One-Scene Wonder: Emeraude's stint as a villain lasts for barely one cutscene and one boss battle, but that cutscene consists of some of the finest scenery-chewing in the game, and the boss battle is so tough that it's one of the most memorable parts of the game.
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: The general consenus by series fans. The gameplay is considered fun and exciting, with the Titles allowing for players to adjust the characters attributes in ways that create for unique challenges, while each character has a unique and distinct fighting style that all create a refreshing gameplay system after several years of the same basic formula. The story however is seen as pretty weak, largely due to being a Cliché Storm about The Power of Friendship, lacking the Deconstruction elements that past games had used to expand the story, and while the characters are well liked and fun, a good half of the cast are just there for the ride (Cheria, Malik, and Pascal) after a decent point into the story, and the only character to have a meaningful character arc is the protagonist Asbel.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Asbel and Cheria in the base game. The romance plot line ends and never gets resolved, but then the ending of the game shows a child clearly meant to be their son as he has Cheria's eyes but looks like Asbel. The endings attempt to make it clear they do get together but not developing the plot made it come across as cheap and lazy. Graces F went out of its way to try and improve this, but it still has this issue because the original ending still plays before the F part of the story is introduced, leaving the F story line as a clear case of trying to justify it.
  • Subbing Versus Dubbing:
    • A variant. The actual English cast has been fairly well received. It's just that the arte name translations have been met with much criticism for being lackluster compared to previous titles and for having some pretty poor grammatical structure (spaces are notably absent in a lot of Asbel's moves).
    • The game is also bound to suffer a bit of regional wording confusion. Hubert's first Mystic Arte was translated as "Broadside Waltz", which to many Americans would bring to mind the idea of a ship cannon bombardment; which is a pretty badass comparison. In England, however, "Broadside" is a popular beer.
  • That One Puzzle:
    • The infamous colored eleth lines puzzle in the Sandshroud Ruins Bonus Dungeon. You have to control the flow of several colored eleth streams (red, blue and yellow) so they all converge on a door and pass through every colored floor panel. Some of the floor panels are purple, green or orange, meaning you need ensure the colors mix at the right points too. There are over 20 junction points and all of them have to be set up correctly. But the worst thing is that if any three colors mix at one intersection, the entire puzzle resets and you have to start from the beginning! Even following a guide it's possible to hit a reset if you don't do the steps in exactly the right order, which most guides don't bother to say. And some floor panels summon monsters when triggered, so you'll be coinstsntly interrupted by battles while you're trying to solve the puzzle.
    • Magic Carta on the higher difficulties is a horrible minigame, thanks to the generous amount of computer cheating.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Richard being possessed by Lambda and becoming all Ax-Crazy. While the game is all "Richard can't be killed because he's our friend!", the game could have explored how they can't kill Richard because if they kill him, Windor's royal family will cease to exist and the party and Asbel will be guilty of regicide and will likely be killed for his actions and Lhant will pay the consequences. Sadly, this didn't happen. Though, one can make the argument that this all went without saying and that the perspective of the story focused more on Asbel's dedication to his friend without compromising his integrity.
  • Values Dissonance:
    • Fermat is a minor NPC character who is part of the Amarcians, a group of scientists and researchers that's led by a woman. All the major Amarcians characters happen to be female. For some reason, Fermat decides to retire to become a housewife as soon as she gets engaged. Everyone thinks this is wonderful. This seems odd from a Western perspective, especially considering the situation in Fendel and the world at the time.
    • Fiery Joe in the "Strange Folk" series of sidequests is clearly physically and emotionally abused by his older siblings. Not only is this moslty Played for Laughs, but everyone tells him he should forgive them and be a big happy family. Granted, that sidequest is so weird it's almost surreal, but still.

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