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  • Anti-Climax Boss: The Final Boss's One-Winged Angel form, which most players regard as an easier fight than the first form. It's much easier to hit, and its attacks are easier to avoid.
  • Anvilicious: The game's condemnation of racism is as frequent as it is blatant, which can make it seem like the single most important plot point in the game. While it does tackle the idea of discrimination from different angles, and most of these angles are done with some nuance, a player is likely to get the message the game is trying to send well before the game starts really laying it on thickest.
  • Awesome Art: While the OVA series wasn't perfect, it cannot be denied that it had gorgeous animation, courtesy of ufotable.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Mithos Yggdrasill, the game's Big Bad. On one hand, many players love him for being the Evil Counterpart to Lloyd, and how threatening he is when first introduced. His interactions with Genis, and his past as a victim of racism as a half-elf also help give him weight to the story, making him interesting of a threat to want to stop. On the other hand, detractors find him to be overly whiny for the Big Bad, and feel that his motives are really shallow for someone setup as a huge threat, especially when you factor in the awkward and somewhat-incestuous relationship he seems to have with his sister, or feel that he doesn't work as the Evil Counterpart for Lloyd due to not having enough of a connection compared to someone like Genis. The main draw stems from how effective he is seen as a villain with his motivation in mind; if you find his goals understandable or sympathetic, he makes for a compelling villain, but if you don't, he comes across as not that compelling of a Big Bad due to the way he is characterized.
    • Colette has always been a hugely polarizing character. Some find her cute, funny, and sweet, others get pissed off at her Damsel in Distress tendencies and find her martyr complex annoying.
  • Captain Obvious Reveal:
    • You probably figured out that the Tower of Salvation wasn't actually the end of the game before you set foot in it, since the opening cutscene shows a bunch of characters and locations you hadn't seen in-game yet.
      • If you played on the GameCube, there was a whole second disc that you hadn't even used yet.
    • Mithos actually being the Big Bad in another form is pretty obvious from the get-go, given the fact he just happens to be found by the party in the ruined Ozette, yet doesn't have a scratch on him in the middle of an enormous fire, looks eerily similar to Colette, the incredibly suspicious fact he not only stole a Rheaird without being spotted by the Renegades but has a flute that can summon Aska, and the odd breadth of knowledge he has for a supposedly isolated half-elf. Even Zelos comments on how quickly he's accepted by the party and wonders how they can trust him so easily.
  • Catharsis Factor:
    • Kratos brutally cutting down Kvar after the latter caps off a long string of atrocities by nearly killing Colette. It gets even better when it turns out that Kratos is avenging his wife and Lloyd's mother.
    • The mayor of Iselia might have had a point when he banished Lloyd and Genis, but he's also racist, indifferent to the plight of the prisoners of the nearby Iselia Ranch and blames Colette for not sacrificing herself to merely temporarily save the world. As such, it's rather pleasant to see the citizens of Iselia stand up for the "Sylvarant team" members of the party, whom they've known for many years, and call the mayor out on his attitude.
  • Character Perception Evolution: Colette was once seen as an egregious case of Damsel Scrappy, bringing the plot to a screeching halt every time she needed rescuing throughout the story despite possessing godly powers and very rarely using those powers to try to help herself or her friends out of their binds. Fans decried her as a frustrating character that would have been better off left behind. However, as time progressed, more fans became willing to forgive Colette due to her manipulative upbringing by the Church of Martel and her young age making her extremely self-effacing and thus very passive. While she remains a Base-Breaking Character, there are many more fans willing to go to bat for Colette than there were at the game's release.
  • Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
    • Your party will pretty much consist of Lloyd, Genis, Raine, and whoever else you feel like using. Lloyd because he is The Hero and the first character you play as (Thus most people become comfortable with him). Genis because he is a mage with spells that hit almost every element in the game and he keeps his distance. Raine because she is the healer. It helps that the three of them, especially Lloyd and Genis, are most often forced into your party by default when you don't have enough members for people to sit out.
    • Colette is either the first character benched or put under player control. Many people wrote her off as a bad character but the real flaw is that the AI really doesn't know how to use her effectively—a player who knows how to properly position her or stand back when casting can make her into an utter Game-Breaker.
  • Complete Monster: Tales of Symphonia has these two mad scientists:
    • Kvar the Fury Tempest is infamous for being the cruelest of the Desian Grand Cardinals. Heartless and sadistic, Kvar runs a Human Ranch where his prisoners are turned into Exospheres in a process that leaves the party horrified. Discovering that some of his prisoners escaped from the ranch to the village of Luin, Kvar attacks Luin, destroying the village, killing many and capturing the survivors for his experiments. When Lloyd encounters Kvar, the Cardinal brags about how he removed the Exosphere from Lloyd's mother, causing her to turn into a monster and attack both her child and her lover, Kratos, which resulted in Kratos killing her to save their son. The depth of Kvar's depravity is such that even his own men are appalled by him.
    • Iron Will Rodyle is another Desian Grand Cardinal. Taking over Kvar's experiments following his death, Rodyle manages his own Human Ranches and is working to create a superweapon, the Mana Cannon, in order to destroy the Tower of Salvation, overthrow his boss, and become the ruler of two worlds. When the party frees the Ranch's prisoners, Rodyle manages to trap the prisoners again and floods the room they're in, forcing the party to watch. Following his defeat, Rodyle activates the self-destruct sequence of his Human Ranch to make sure the heroes and everyone else in the Ranch dies with him.
  • Die for Our Ship: Shares a page with the rest of the franchise here.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: Remiel is only a supporting villain, but the reveal that he was Evil All Along makes him a well done example of a character the audience can Love to Hate despite his short screen time, especially after it's revealed he was a villain.
  • Fan Nickname: Yggdrasill is occasionally called "Disco Lord Yggdrasil", due to his clothes looking somewhat like a disco outfit.
  • Fanon: It is almost universally accepted that Symphonia takes place four thousand years before Tales of Phantasia because the Reunion of the two worlds is just that logical as a starting point for Phantasia's calendar.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: As far as sales go, it's the Tales Series equivalent to Final Fantasy VII: in Japan, it was a very good, important Tales game due to the 3D jump and the advances made in game mechanics, and is well-remembered and even stands out a bit, but it doesn't completely dominate the discussion, even though every Tales game that followed does owe a little to it. Outside of Japan (in America in particular), it defined the entire first generation of international Tales fandom (outside of the tiny handful who had played Destiny and the fan translation of Phantasia), and is the game people will think of when casually mentioning the series as a whole. This is largely due to a combination of being released on a console that was starved for RPGs at the time, and Nintendo Power magazine hyping it up every chance they got.
  • Good Bad Bugs:
    • The Tech Glitch. Normally, the Tech Tree is set up so that you can't learn skills from opposing branches simultaneously. However, with clever use of C-stick shortcuts and party member swapping, you can learn the final-tier skill from the branch you aren't taking, as well as the skills from the branch you are.
    • Just before the final boss fight with Mithos, during the cut-scene, if you advance any of the dialogue before the audio finishes playing, then when the boss changes into his young form he'll glitch out for the rest of the cutscene. He will just stand there, talking to you, mouth not moving, arms lifeless, body totally inert.
    • As mentioned in the main article, the dragon that gives 10,000 Gald upon defeat only does so because of a typo that resulted in an extra zero—the Japan-only PlayStation 2 Updated Re-release has it only give 1,000 Gald instead. Chronicles's version, being a PS3 port of said Updated Re-release, is the same. This unfortunately makes completing the Luin Rebuilding sidequest a lot more cumbersome than it already was; the next best Money Spider is the Gold Dragon, which gives almost as much Gald, but appears in a later, more troublesome dungeon.
    • One funny bug that's manifested in at least the PS3 and Steam versions is the "dirty Sheena" bug, wherein if the player takes the "hard path" first and meets Sheena in the newly destroyed Luin, her character model will still be in its "dirty" state even after moments when it would have been cleaned up in the original version. The bug sorts itself out if you change her title to an alternate costume title and back but is otherwise kept on generally so that serious moments are Narmed up a bit by Sheena looking like she hasn't had a bath in forever.
    • The PS2 version onward removed the skill tree glitch, but one REALLY useful glitch somehow slipped by them. By moving the cursor around the artes menu in a certain way, you can scroll PAST the menu and into an almost entirely complete collection of artes for everyone including some Dummied Out ones. While most of these won't actually work, the Mystic Artes can be mapped to a single button, allowing you to perform them at any time regardless of requirements. Physical Mystic Artes are still subject to their usual once-per-battle limitation, but spell-based Mystic Artes are now freely spammable, which means great things for Genis, Raine and Zelos.
    • Normally, to get Zelos's "Gigolo" title, you must first talk to every woman in both worlds with Zelos as your display character and his Personal EX skill equipped, so they all give you a gift. Once you've done that, you can get the title from Zelos's butler... or you can skip all that running around and talk to him at a very specific point in the plot, which causes him to ignore the requirements and grant the title for free. This was fixed in later releases.
    • In the GameCube version, it's possible to trigger Holy Judgment far more reliably than intended by repeatedly cancelling a cast of Holy Song—as a buffing spell, a normal Holy Song has an ally targeting cursor, while if it would become Holy Judgment it does not. This is fixed in later versions — while you can still try listening to Colette's Magical Incantation and cancel if it's not the "mistake", this takes far longer and is at least plausibly intentional.
    • The Fruit Cocktail recipe claims to require two of any fruit. However, the game doesn't actually check whether you have two of any fruit — it checks whether you have one of any fruit, twice. As a result, you can cook this recipe with only a single fruit. While this does reduce the effectiveness accordingly, it still means you can easily recover TP off of single random fruit drops.
    • On the GameCube version, swapping what tech a buffered C-stick shortcut points to before it comes out will cause the character to use the shortcut's new target, allowing any character to use any tech (almost; a few specific combinations will crash the game). Notably, this is the only way to hear Lloyd and Presea's spellcasting voice lines, since neither of them has any spells to cast legitimately.
  • Growing the Beard: This is unquestionably where the series really began to find its stride. While Tales of Eternia had previously used some of these plot and gameplay elements, it was Symphonia that really fleshed out concepts like the skits and character customization, and is where many of the later games pulled ideas from to flesh out the story.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • It's cute when Colette is drawing on Lloyd's hand in the opening cinematic, until you get to the point in the game where she does this, and the player learns why: she can't talk.
    • The skit "Lloyd's Thoughts on Angels" has Lloyd point out that angels' wingsnote  would get in the way when they're trying to sleep. Upon breaching the second seal, Colette loses the ability to sleep.
      Lloyd: Being an angel is pretty inconvenient, huh?
    • The skit "Pretty Boys Die Young," in which Lloyd and Sheena comment that Zelos seems like the type of guy who just won't die. You can see where this is going. In one of the endings, he dies.
    • During one of their training sessions, Lloyd compares Kratos to an older brother. Coming from Lloyd, its genuine acknowledgement over how he appreciates Kratos' lessons. Kratos knows full well that Lloyd is actually his son. Imagine how awkward it must feel to have your son compare you to a brother, especially after you've already been trapped in the same youthful body for 4,000 years.
    • The Clara sidequest manages to do this to already very harsh events in several of your party members' backstories. It turns out that people who mutated into monsters because of the Exspheres can be turned back into humans after all. Kratos, Regal, and Genis may not have needed to kill their loved ones, and Lloyd and Presea could have possibly kept their family members.
    • In a skit, Lloyd also says he avenged his mother after killing Kvar, even after Kratos points out his father actually killed her. It turns out Kratos is said father. It's also one of the rare moments he actually has a "sad" expression on his portrait.
    • One of Lloyd's possible KO quotes is ”I'm sorry... dad..." If this occurs if he's KO'd by Kratos, after you know their relationship... yeah.
    • Corrine comforting Sheena and promising to protect her should Volt go berserk... which he does, and Volt electrocutes him to death.
  • Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Ho Yay: Zelos occasionally acts flirty towards Lloyd. In Japanese, he even refers to Lloyd with the exact same epithet he uses on all his lady loves—"hunny."
    • It certainly doesn't help that he's one of the only male characters Zelos shows any real affection for. Other guys might as well be pieces of furniture to him.
    • Genis cooks for him, and he totally resents it if he's not chosen to be in Lloyd's group in the times you have to split the party in two. His friendship with Mithos also has elements of adorable Toy Ship (especially when Mithos goes, "Who do you like better, Lloyd or me?", which actually makes Lloyd react jealously), except... then the whole thing gets much more serious.
      Friend: It's awkward talking about it, but it represents the bond between the two.
    • Zelos prepares a meal with sleeping drugs. Just before serving, he grabs Lloyd from behind and hugs him tight. "'Cause we're best friends, right? I worry about you. You must be tired." Or verrrry uncomfortable. Still, cue the Squee. Or just run with it altogether.
    • The first thing he says to Lloyd and Genis when he meets them is, "I'm not interested in talking to guys". Which makes some people think that it's a case of Suspiciously Specific Denial.
    • When raising Zelos' affections to the max, his interactions with Lloyd grow noticeably more intimate. Granted, most characters grow closer to Lloyd when their affections are raised, but considering how Zelos replaces Colette during Lloyd's Heroic BSoD, along with calling him "hunny" in certain scenes, fans have begun to ship him with Lloyd.
  • Hype Backlash: Given that it's often dubbed "The best Tales of game" by its fans, it's not surprising that some get disappointed with it as a result. Doubly so when coming back to this game after having played later Tales games, where Symphonia shows its age heavily compared to games released after it. Not bad by any means, but in comparison to advances and changes in the gameplay later titles offered, Symphonia will show its age.
  • I Knew It!: Some people saw the somewhat unorthodox Luke, I Am Your Father twist coming. Others came close by believing the two characters to be brothers or connected in some other way.
  • It's Popular, Now It Sucks!: Before the series became super popular in the states, fans held it as one of the best games ever. Since the series has gotten more fame now, fans of the original Nintendo GameCube version tend to have this mindset, at least in regards to the PS3 version.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The Chronicles re-release gets this a bit due to all new features that weren't in the PS2 version being largely superficial. Particular points of contention are the lack of Free Run, and the preservation of the spell queuenote , the latter of which was only in the original version due to technical limitations. And that it runs at 30 fps (because the PS2 version did), while the GameCube version from 10 years ago ran at 60.
  • Like You Would Really Do It: In the Tower of Salvation, the party members sacrifice themselves one by one to get Lloyd through to the end. Considering that you haven't even hit The Very Definitely Final Dungeon yet, it's pretty clear that the characters aren't gone for good.
  • Love to Hate: Remiel is a well-done example, requiring just one scene to make you utterly loathe him, and then you immediately get to beat the piss out of him. And it feels very good.
  • Low-Tier Letdown:
    • Sheena is seen as low tier by a lot of players, despite being a fan-favorite character-wise. Her stats are extremely low, and one key skill she learns is not until Level 56, which is right around the time the party is ready for the final dungeon. That said, it’s not uncommon for people to use her anyway, even if it’s just because they like her. Others use her for her summons or because a player controlling her can make up for some of her deficiencies.
    • Colette, but only when used by the AI. The AI's main problem is that it just does not know how to position her or chain her artes effectively. When put in the hands of a player, Colette moves from useless party member to Game-Breaker.
  • Magnificent Bastard:
    • Kratos Aurion was a former hero of the worlds of Sylvarant and Tethe'alla who escorted the very first "Chosen", Martel to defeat evil. Having ascended to be an Angel of the Four Seraphim some 400 years prior to the game's story, Kratos wed a human named Anna Irving and she gave birth to hero Lloyd. Being forced to kill her. Thinking his son also died he decides to work as a Double Agent for the Angelic organization of Cruxis, manipulating the current Chosen of Sylvarant and her retinue to become an angel and vessel for Martel. After defeating his son while holding back, it strengthens the boy's resolve to defeat him and stop Mithos Yggdrasil which is exactly what Kratos wanted. Snarky, brooding and very intelligent, Kratos was an honorable adversary to Lloyd and constant wrench in Mithos Yggdrasil's plans.
    • Yuan Ka-Fai, one of the Four Seraphim, is a cynical, calculated half-elf who rose in the ranks of the Sylvaranti military. When the capital of Tethe'alla was beseiged, Yuan joined Mithos, Martel, and Kratos to revive the Kharlan Tree and "expose his hypocrisy." Applying his military might, Yuan became one of the four heroes of the Kharlan War. After his beloved died, Yuan ultimately grew disillusioned with Mithos's methods. Spurred by Martel's desire to eradicate discrimination for all races, Yuan established the Renegades as its secret leader meant to oppose the Desians and Cruxis. Stopping at nothing to see Mithos foiled, Yuan orders assassinations on Colette to stop the Journey of Regeneration and, failing that, takes Lloyd hostage for leverage whenever the opportunity suits him. When traps and his contacts don't work, Yuan advises Lloyd and crew to make pacts with Summon Spirits in order to weaken the Kharlan Tree. An enemy as often as an ally, Yuan employed all manner of tricks to stop the cycle and reunite the worlds.
  • Memetic Badass: Regal and his Kamehame Hadoken have become a minor case of this, with people theorizing that if he'd just use it during combat, he'd be the most powerful character in the entire game.
  • Memetic Mutation:
    • The "Coffee Mind Fuck", where Lloyd repeatedly lies about the temperature of the coffee Colette is holding, saying it's hot, then cold, then hot, in order to prove that Colette can't tell what temperature the coffee actually is. This scene has generated a minor meme cluster, with Lloyd being referred to as Coffee-kun on certain Image Boards, and often being portrayed as an enraged Starbucks employee who offers only two options for an order—"motherfucking hot coffee" or "motherfucking cold coffee," offering none of that "Espresso or Frappucino bullshit."
      • It got to the point where there's an image floating around of Hideo Baba (the director/producer of the Tales series) holding up a fanmade "Lloydbucks" shirt.
      • The Coffee scene is so memetic, that it got three references in the "Successors of Hope" novel.
    • Kratos's apparent dislike of tomatoes (he never willingly uses them as an additional ingredient while cooking, and is less proficient at recipes in which they're required) shows up quite a bit in fanart. Lloyd's dislike of tomatoes is also brought up in various fanworks on a regular basis, especially when people are trying to come up with father son similarities/bonding experiences.
    • Referring to Mithos Yggdrasill as Disco Lord Yggdrasil, due to his fabulous white bodysuit.
    • Though small, Plantix, the first boss you fight against in Disc 2, has gotten some humor when one person decided to replace the final boss with him, and it rolled on from there with jokes of Plantix being the (true) final boss. It does become Hilarious in Hindsight when another player's game locked up once after the Plantix battle, cementing its status as the "last" boss to fight.
    • home along on a fridey night? juts remember... the Z man. Explanation 
    • The infamously Narm-y line from Regal is very often quoted by fans of this game:
      Regal: What is this ominous light that threatens to engulf us??
  • Moe: Colette, in spades: Cute face: check. Small, delicate body: Check. Adorably clumsy: Check. Adorable voice, courtesy of Nana Mizuki in Japanese and Heather Hogan-Watson in English: OOOOOH! Soooo check! The Woobie as big as you can get: CHECK, CHECK, CHECK!
  • Moral Event Horizon: Go here.
  • Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Narm:
    • Colette learning Judgment immediately after completing her pilgrimage. This is because it's done right after Colette is effectively mind controlled by Yggdrasill and the Desians, a Wham Episode is revealed about the nature of the world and its people, and there's genuine doubt as to how the heroes can possibly do anything now. A text prompt popping up in the middle of all of that is a little bizarre, and draws you straight out of the scene.
    • Regal: "What is this ominous light that threatens to engulf us?!" That one is pretty much a meme.
    • Colette in the OVA tells Lloyd that Kratos is "A wonderful father!" after being a floating, soulless shell for ages. As a human doormat in the first place, she has no right to make a judgement call on the weather, let alone the complicated feelings of an estranged father who has betrayed the group multiple times by that point.
    • Due to the slow movements and wooden animations outside of battle, many supposedly action-heavy cutscenes can come off as undynamic and laughable. One example would be Genis running slowly in front of someone to block a fireball that got cast over 5 seconds ago and then casually wandering off again.
    • Related to that, the standing and running animations for Desians are so ridiculous that it can be impossible to take some of their story scenes seriously.
    • There's also the scene where Yuan is on the ground and Mithos proceeds to kick him and do an Evil Laugh. It's totally hilarious if you don't continue, and Mithos just keeps kicking Yuan while he's down. The icing on the cake is Lloyd in his idle pose like he's thinking, "Huh, so that's how gravity works..." It's massive spoilers but it can be seen in this video. (Starting at around 47:34)
    • Nothing quite beats Kratos after undoing Origin's seal. There's an intense Duel Boss, and then he stares up at the camera, neck at an entirely impossible angle, and says with dull frustration, "it looks like I've failed to die once more."
    • Rodyle mocking Presea when you confront her at his Ranch. After, Presea goes, "DIE!!" ...And then just stands there. It's as awkward as it is hilarious.
    • After a rather heavy scene in which Regal reveals himself as the murderer of Presea's sister, Regal receives the title "El Presidente".
    • In the Devil's Arm sidequest, once you defeat Abyssion, Genis cremates the body with a fireball and Presea earns the title "Empty Shell" ...while the same cheery jingle you get with every title plays up.
    • In a series of cutscenes starting atop the Tower of Salvation on disk 2, the cast starts pulling a comical number of Taking the Bullet dives in rapid order. Each time is supposed to show how much Character A cares for Character B; but the shot is so overused that somebody's hurling themselves across the screen every other minute, turning back-to-back plot twists into a total farce.
    • Colette throwing a chakram at Kvar during the first infiltration of his ranch, and he apparently ice-skates out of the way.
    • Like most other Tales games? This can be forced through the use of silly looking costumes.
  • Once Original, Now Common: While a major Growing the Beard for the series in both gameplay and writing, and is often seen by some as the best game in the series, as time has gone on, Symphonia tends to be seen as being less polished and refined than it was seen as in 2003. Its story was unique for its time, but some games after can make Symphonia look dated and not as interesting, while the gameplay can be outright unrefined compared to the many innovations the later titles were able to make (in particular, the lack of full field control in this version of the LMBS tends to drive people crazy). While it still is recommended for newcomers as an entry point to avoid this issue, later games like Tales of the Abyss or Tales of Vesperia are often recommended first due to the more developed gameplay and more complex stories. The fact that Symphonia's had porting troubles hasn't helped either.
  • One True Threesome: While there was a modest following for Lloyd/Colette/Zelos, the OVA ended with Lloyd travelling not only with Colette, but Zelos and Sheena too, effectively launching a new OT4.
  • Porting Disaster:
    • While patches later fixed many of its problems, the initial version of the PC port had a number of issues that ranged from annoying to game-breaking. This included typos that weren't present in previous release of the game, text appearing incorrectly or not appearing at all (especially if the language setting was changed), large amounts of lag when saving or opening the menu, frequent crashes, the game outright refusing to load up, and dodgy DRM that created a new .exe file whenever the game was opened. It was also locked at 720p resolution and 30fps, despite the original Gamecube release running at 60fps.
    • The 2023 Nintendo Switch port features missing screen transitions, backgrounds, longer load times than the 2003 original and has random frame drops outside of battle that aren't in any other version, on top of still being locked at 30fps. Namco released two patches, the most recent patch on August 23, 2023, that addressed almost all of these issues other than the 30fps (which is common to all versions other than the Gamecube), and the Switch version is now much better.
  • Ron the Death Eater: Colette gets a lot of this treatment in Lloyd/Sheena fanfiction. Sheena does in Lloyd/Colette fanfiction.
  • Sequel Displacement: In America especially, this is probably the first Tales game many people played and is the most well-known. It's also the first game in the series to sell over a million copies. It gets to the point that a lot of fans forget that Destiny and Destiny II/Eternia even got releases outside of Japan, or that a lot of Symphonia's mechanical and plot elements appeared in embryonic form in Eternia.note 
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: The aforementioned Colette VS Sheena war, plus the numerous gay ships. The various skits and Ship Tease moments do not help one bit. Nor did the sequel, which decided to make any given pairing happen, depending on a question you ask Lloyd.
  • Special Effect Failure: The explosions that occur when the human ranches are destroyed look terrible.
    • Several titles allow the characters to change costume; however, anything that requires the alteration of the character's model (Sheena getting dirty, Colette's sleeve being blown off, etc) only has alterations for their original outfit, most of Kratos' costume changes are fix-scripted, and the fights with Sheena, Regal, Kratos, and Zelos feature their normal outfits in battle.
  • Spoiled by the Format: The Dwindling Party in the Tower Of Salvation is an absolute Player Punch as party member after party member performs Heroic Sacrifice after Heroic Sacrifice... leaving you with Lloyd, a solo Fragile Speedster with no defense, no self-healing to sustain him through long battles, and no additional mechanics to compensate for these weaknesses. "It would be impossible for him to complete the game on his own!" Correct.
  • Starboarding: Among those fans who read the incredibly fast connection between Genis and Mithos before the latter reveals himself to be the Big Bad as a childhood crush on Genis's end, a fairly large subset agrees that Mithos wouldn't reciprocate, either because he's actually an adult and would never see a child that way, because he's too obsessed with Martel to think of romance at all, because his intention in joining the group at this point was a sham the whole time, or any combination thereof.
  • Stoic Woobie: Regal, especially in the anime, which takes his already tragic backstory and elevates it to outright Tear Jerker status. Despite all the bad things that happen to him, however, Regal never angsts unless the issue's being pressed.
  • Strangled by the Red String: Lloyd and Colette, but only if you don't pay attention to the Relationship Values (Colette is the easiest to please, especially by idealistic decisions that are in character for Lloyd) and end up with her as Lloyd's "default" soul mate. Actually investing in the relationship proves to have quite the opposite effect. It can get annoying if you're trying to get some of the more elusive party members to be Lloyd's closest partner. (Especially Zelos, which is by far the hardest to win over.)
  • Tainted by the Preview: When it was revealed that the Remaster, like the Chronicles and PC versions, would be locked at 30 fps, fans were quite displeased and made unfavorable comparisons to the Gamecube version, which ran at 60 fps, questioning why its called a "Remaster" and costs $40 when it runs worse than a two decades-old game. The fact that the Switch version has additional framerate drops that aren't in any other version doesn't help either.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Forcystus' backstory is a case study in He Who Fights Monsters, and is largely understood to be A Father to His Men and a hero to half-elves who suffered at the hands of oppressive, even genocidal humans. Lloyd finds this out after killing him, so we're denied him giving a What the Hell, Hero? moment that could have shown us Forcystus' Hidden Depths firsthand.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: So, it turns out Kratos is Lloyd's biological father. He gets approximately one scene interacting with the adoptive father, Dirk. The OVA series did have a brief scene of them discussing Kratos exiling himself to Derris-Kharlan in the last episode. Think about the potential for them to talk about how Lloyd was raised, how he grew up, and more depth into Dirk's decision to adopt a human boy (since a dwarf will most likely outlive him and might not understand human customs as well). The game already puts heavy Foreshadowing and emphasis on fatherhood. (Remiel and Colette, Kilia and Dorr, anyone?)
  • Viewer Gender Confusion:
    • Be honest, did you think that figure in pink in the back of the box art was going to be a man? Not only that, but a total Casanova at that? The fact that he's way in the back and in a very androgynous pose doesn't help. Raine can also be mistaken for a very hot effeminate guy... well, until thirty seconds of playing. Later, the kid Mithos also has a quite girly design, rather similar to Colette. Granted, Colette and Mithos looking similar is quite deliberate and is meant to foreshadow the game's later developments.
    • It's very common for people to assume Genis is a girl. The voice and hair don't help.
    • Apparently, that rainbow Kitsune with a feminine sounding voice and name (Corrine) is male. Except in the manga, unless that was a translation error or something.
    • Remiel is pretty effeminate. His voice shows he's a guy, but his clothing and face aren't very masculine.
    • When Zelos betrays the party, three angels show up to be fought. Two of them are obvious female enemies that you have fought already. The third also looks very feminine until he speaks with a voice deeper than Remiel's.
    • A side quest has you looking for four little girls. One of the girls, Jo, has a sprite that makes her look like a boy. She even says she is impressed you found her and thought she was a girl.
  • Wangst:
    • It's understandable that Regal still carries around guilt over his crime, which is killing Presea's sister Alicia. Even though Alicia had been corrupted by the Cruxis Crystal in her body, and had explicitly asked Regal to Mercy Kill her, Regal still feels terrible about having to do it. But Regal continues going on and on about it long after it's been established that Vharley is the real one to blame, and mitigating circumstances forced Regal's hand. Regal keeps insisting he's unforgivable and refuses to use his hands, even in situations where it could have really been helpful, and also refuses to ever take off the handcuffs on his wrists. As a result, while Regal certainly has every right to feel bad about what he did, the fact that he never even tries to move on just makes him come across as selfish.
    • While he has some understandable reasons for it, Mithos, the Big Bad, spends a huge amount of screentime after he is revealed as Yggdrasil effectively whining about how bad the world is, how he wants his sister back, and that he's doing what should be done. It detracts from the seriousness because he sounds like a child throwing a temper tantrum instead of a complex Anti-Villain who wants to see his sister again. This may have been intentional of course, but for those who didn't sympathize with him, it's eye-rolling to see the Big Bad acting in such a manner after seeing him initially be a cold and threatening foe.
  • Woolseyism:
    • Raine and Genis were originally named Refill and Genius, respectively, in the original Japanese. While the Japanese would find this incredibly funny in a good way (especially since "Refill" is a healer, thus, she refills your HP), Namco's editorial team wisely realized that Westerners would find the names eye-bitingly stupid and dropped the "u" from Genis' name to preserve the joke without being too obvious, and came up with a nice equivalent for Raine without being quite as blatant as the Japanese version (that is, her English name invokes the image of a soothing rain washing away pain).
    • The doomed village Ruin was renamed to Luin, since the original name was a little too on-the-nose for English speakers.

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