Discussion VideoGame / OracleOfTao

Let's see some of these, and try to sort them properly. (Had no idea this page actually had any discussion on it). Hmmm, moot point in some cases, having been outright removed. Let's try to add some of these back in, with proper sorting and corrections...

Yet more subbullets misuse:

• Video Game Effects and Spells:
  • Area of Effect: Many, many spells.
  • Auto-Revive: Both accessories and status does this.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Ambrosia's final move.
    • Also Nevras's ultimate attack, simply because it takes too long.
  • Chain Lightning
  • Combos: Nevras's ultimate attack, up to 8 (increased further by the sword wielded)
    • Death or Glory Attack: After 8 charges, if you use Nevras's final skill once more, you get this (well, technically, it's a death AND glory attack, but it doesn't always work).
  • Elemental Rock-Paper-Scissors: Although the effects are based more upon specific enemy weaknesses.
    • Also there are elemental statuses, like Seal (earth), Freeze (water), and Burn (hmmm... fire?) that can be beaten by their opposite (lightning for earth).
  • 11th-Hour Superpower: Averted. See Awesome, but Impractical above.
  • Enemy Scan
  • Evolving Attack: Azrael's binding can seal stronger ghosts as it is used (alot) or if certain books are read.
  • Field Power Effect: Sort of. Aqorm gets a sort of geomancy spell, but there's a default terrain which is useless in terms of giving spells.
  • Fixed Damage Attack
    • Cherry Tapping
  • Gradual Regeneration: Both types.
  • HP to One: A few of these. Plus, for some stupid reason, the poison effect won't do the final blow.
  • Last Ditch Move: A plot version of this, that gives you a bad ending if the right party isn't around.
  • Magikarp Power: Tamashii's stats are like this.
    • Also, her Empathy technique is just a healing power, but later it is effective against the final boss.
  • Mana Burn.
    • And Mana Drain.
  • Non-Elemental.
  • Percent Damage Attack.
  • Random Effect Spell: Yay! Except see above on Beating A Dead Player

Again, needs more proper treatment:

• Soundtrack Dissonance.
  • And likely some Mood Dissonance.
  • And even some Weather Dissonance and Moral Dissonance.
• Space Whale Aesop: Likely many of the morals taught by the game.
  • A Green Aesop is "don't pollute or the Earth with turn into a black hole, and God will need to split existence in half."
  • The Chain of Harm. "Don't hurt living things. It has no side effect on you, but they tend to take it out on weaker things, who in turn take it out on weaker things, until that single action causes some chain reaction that kills off the mice (possibly causing an insect infestation)."

This needs a more proper example use:

• Painting the Fourth Wall: More specifically, some of its subtropes:
  • Art Shift.
    • Or maybe Off-Model or Medium Blending.
  • Deliberately Monochrome: The Void world has much of the landscape in grey, with the characters in Splash of Color.
    • Also, some Flashback Effects.
  • Also Interface Screw: mainly Ambrosia, when hit by confuse or blind (possibly justified, since she is the leader, after all).
    • Outside of controls however, the game functions are constantly tweaked (such as the day/night system being tweaked by the Void world so if you stay too long outside you die, or the weather system changing due to seasons, or some of the assumed game rules being bypassed by certain effects).

This section needs a more proper sorting:

• Cerebus Tropes: Largely since this game is based loosely on Taoism, there are dramatic swings in mood.
• Cerebus Ending: May or may not be. Depending on the circumstances at the end of the game, and choices you make, the otherwise cheery story can end on several different bad notes. Sorry, not giving it away.
• Cerebus Syndrome: Much of the game is Sweet Dreams Fuel with various moral lessons about love being taught. Then, around the fourth of these, there is everything from a Family-Unfriendly Aesop to the implication that Ambrosia at some point died and the other characters are part of a dream.
• Cerebus Retcon: Double Subverted. Ambrosia has a sudden flashback where she thinks she was dead, and can't explain why she had no wounds after that. At the time, this turns out to be a test for her resolve, before gaining another Crest, so she denies it showing . It turns out this might have been true later, and she starts to again not exist, this time fading to nothing (that is, the original retcon was subverted, then retconned again as a symptom of another, more horrifying conclusion). Which is then subverted again, as she manages to force herself into existence. Which is then retconned again, this time, applying to everyone but her.
• Reverse Cerebus Syndrome: More a Cerebus Rollercoaster, but immediately after a terrible point in a story where someone gets Impaled with Extreme Prejudice you have three choices as to whether to finish them off, leave them, or kill them. Killing them makes the story head south, while either of the other options causes the ending to take a dramatic upswing.
• Knight of Cerebus: Unless you count the author, or Ambrosia herself, strangely averted.

Needs expansion:

• Badass Family.
• Battle Couple too.
• Divine Parentage.
• The Heavens Dont Care instead.
• Hidden Elf Village.
• The Power of Love.