Video Game / Fear & Hunger: Termina

"Termina is upon us..."

After the Second Great War, 1942.

It's a homecoming.

Fear & Hunger 2: Termina is the sequel to the horror RPG Fear & Hunger, developed by Finnish game developer Miro Haverinen. You don't need to have played the previous game to understand it, but it does help fill in the blanks regarding the lore and setting.

The year is 1942, months after the end of the Second Great War. Fourteen travelers are on their way to the mysterious town of Prehevil, each brought there seemingly by a quirk of fate. However, as they near their destination, the train they've boarded comes to an abrupt stop. Something terrible has happened to the town, its residents morphed into indescribable horrors... and each of the passengers has begun to have strange dreams, whispering about a festival, the moon, and an ancient tower. Unbeknownst to them, the travelers have become "contestants" in a mysterious game, from which only one can emerge alive...

Fear & Hunger: Termina combines traditional turn-based RPG gameplay with a Survival Horror experience. The player controls one of eight characters who have traveled to the haunted town of Prehevil, each of whom has their own abilities and gameplay style. Given only three days to complete a mysterious task, the characters must explore the town, defend themselves against hostile entities, and work to survive against all odds. Termina marks a distinct change from the previous game by easing up on some of its unforgiving brutality, while also introducing new mechanics and quality-of-life upgrades, like "lucky coins", which became so popular that they were quickly added to the first game. As with its predecessor, the game is notable for its depictions of graphic violence, nudity and sexual assault.

The game was released on Steam on December 9, 2022. The game, as well as a very dense demo, can also be be found on itch.io here.

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This game provides examples of:

• Actionized Sequel: Whereas the first game somewhat discourages fighting enemies due to their high lethality, Termina encourages combat to a much greater extent. Combat has been updated with the "rev-up" system (which allows the player to use more consistent, powerful attacks), and many enemies are less likely to inflict permanent status debuffs. Ammo for ranged weapons is much more available, making it easier to kill enemies without risking injury. Sacrificing sawed-off heads is also the only way to gain soul stones in high quantities, which are then used to learn skills.
• Addled Addict: Anyone who takes even a single dose of heroin will become permanently addicted, suffering serious stat debuffs while not high and worsen if time passes (-10% to attack, magic attack, defense, magic defense, and agility, -30% if withdrawal is severe). Levi in particular will have the addiction by default, unless you choose to play as him and avoid the backstory decision that leads to it.
• A.K.A.-47: Applies to all of the guns in the game.
  • The Lugr Pistol is obviously the Luger.
  • The Rifle .303 Mk I is meant to be a generic Western European rifle, although it's caliber and being magazine-fed, combined with the name, call the Lee-Enfield to mind.
  • The 12-Gauge Trenchgun resembles the Winchester Model 1897 shotgun.
• Already Undone for You: Most of the contestants will often travel ahead of you, even into areas that you didn't already clear, yet there are no signs of them fighting any monster on their way there. It's justified with August, however, as he engages in Le Parkour to get around Prehevil, allowing him to avoid any enemy in his path.
• Alternate-History Nazi Victory: Zig-zagged. The Second World War is won by the Bremen Empire, the setting's equivalent of the German Reich. However, the war ended much earlier, in 1942; the Bremens abruptly signed a peace treaty after an all-out push to conquer their neighbor, Bohemia, with special interest being placed on the city of Prehevil.
• Alternate Universe: The game's setting, Europa, is an alternate-universe version of World War II-era Europe, where magic and eldritch gods are well-documented.
  • The Kingdom of Rondon, the setting of the previous game, appears to be a mixture between the United Kingdom and France.
  • The Bremen Empire is an alternate version of the German Reich.
  • Bohemia, the setting of the second game, is equivalent to Czechia.
  • Oldegard is equivalent to real-life Scandinavia.
  • The Eastern Sanctuaries replace the Middle East, with its capital, Jettaiah, being based on Jerusalem.
  • The Vatican exists in-universe, where it appears to rule over the rest of Italy, with Ancient Rome being called Ancient Lombardia.
  • Abyssonia is likely located somewhere in the Horn of Africa, as it's similar to a historical name for Ethiopia, Abyssinia.
  • The Kingdom of Edo is equivalent to Japan.
  • Voroniya appears to be equivalent to Western Russia.
  • Vinland is an interesting case: it represents the entire "New World", including what would be the United States. The continent is a Death World inhabited by monsters and various horrors, and as such, was never colonized in a great capacity by Europa's powers.
• Always Accurate Attack: The Red Arc spell, unlike other spells, has neither a chance of missing nor a possibility for the enemy to dodge it (such as when their head is targeted). This makes it well-suited for hitting heads.
• Always Night: Playing on the "masochist" difficulty will have the entire game take place on Night 3, where sleeping will result in a Game Over.
• An Arm and a Leg: As in the first game, limb loss is a core mechanic for player characters and enemies alike, and with the introduction of firearms, the player has yet more ways to manipulate a foe's limbs before a fight even begins. Unlike the original, limb loss is mercifully less of a permanent game changer thanks to drawn Sylvian ritual circles restoring lost limbs up to 4 times throughout the game.
• Anachronism Stew: Due to the Alternate Universe nature of the game's setting, the lingo and technology of the world after the "Second Great War" differs from what was present in real-life 1942:
  • There seems to be an absence of fully-automatic firearms in any capacity — even the Bremen Elite soldiers carry either a rifle with a bayonet or a flamethrower. Most other weapons seem to be more in line with WWI level of technology.
  • Computing seems to be far more advanced with rectangle-display screens, input consoles and so on — which wouldn't exist until at least the 50s. This might be tied to the creation of the Machine God.
  • On a side note, "Chad" as a synonym for hypermasculine men appears to have already been coined, as Marina initially refers to Marcoh as "the big chad", while in our world the term didn't enter common use until the 2010s.
  • Karin Sauer uses "Jumped the shark" as a phrase in her Kaiser Critique, which was only coined in 1985 in our world.
  • Monty Python also seems to have existed about 27 years earlier than it did in our world, as Henryk quotes them at one point.
  • Diagnosing an Elite or Flame Trooper, regardless of whether the player character or a recruited Daan does so, results in a mention of the Uncanny Valley, 28 years before Masahiro Mori proposed his initial theory about the effect.
  • Daan's Nonstandard Game Over will have the Pocketcat call him a "dirty degenerate furry" before the former's transformation into his Moonscorched form (essentially another incarnation of the Pocketcat). In our world, the Furry Fandom wouldn't become fully established until around 40 years after the game's events.
• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • After selecting your character, you can choose to skip either their Character History, the strange dream, or both. It's less obvious, but the intro conversation among the contestants outside the train can also be skipped with a dialogue choice.
  • If your character is equipped with a gun, you can now see how many shots are remaining with an ammo count in the bottom-left corner of the screen.
  • Once you have a character's backstory finalized, the game will allow you to save the character, enabling you to restart a run without going through much fuss.
  • When playing as O'saa, the game gives you the option to choose an abridged version of his backstory, as the text adventure contained within it is by far the longest.
  • The game is far, far more generous with save spots than the previous game. The train you start out on is a completely safe place where you can save, complete with a Perfected Ritual Circle for drawing Alll-Mer's sigil on and unlocking fast travel there. Drawing the God of Fear and Hunger's sigil on a Perfected Ritual Circle will summon it as a save point to use, and many of the beds around Prehevil are perfectly safe to sleep in if the areas is cleared of monsters. In particular, the bed in the Mayor's house is safe to sleep in once you kill the priest just outside the room, which is fairly easy to do if you nabbed a gasoline can (or even just come with backup).
  • If you're having trouble finding contestants to kill, Rher's skill tree will allow you to learn Reveal Aura, which will show you where the contestants are once they turn into monsters.
  • The game added "lucky coins", which allow you a chance to flip twice during a "coin flip" event, dramatically increasing your chances of succeeding. It also decreased the number of coin flip events which can insta-kill the player.
  • While the game gives quite a lot of potential book drops, it's very easy to get screwed out of a necessary God of Fear and Hunger or Sylvian book. Thus, Pocketcat sells every Skin Bible in the game for three contestant heads a pop. To add onto this, you can scrounge together three contestant heads easily if you know where to look — Olivia is a free target at the train past Day 1 Morning, O'saa can be ambushed at the church, Pav can kill Marcoh (and then be killed relatively easily himself) on Day 2, and Karin can be ambushed very early on in the far eastern part of Old Town. And if you don't feel inclined to kill actual contestants, Levi, Marina, and Olivia's doppelgangers can easily be found relatively early into the game as well, whose heads are still accepted by Pocketcat.
  • If you screw up with Henryk and forget to get the city/sewer keys from him (or kill him too early, making them completely unavailable), the game will spawn bolt cutters in a luggage box on the train, thus allowing you to get through the gates normally and avoid a potential soft lock.
  • Some otherwise disposable but critically useful items have fixed locations to make progressing a little easier. You'll always find at least one helping of rotten meat in the shed to the west of the train, so you can freely kill at least one of the two Headless Hounds on the way to Tunnel 7, and a bonesaw is always found in a basement to the east of the Imperfect Ritual Circle you can use to sacrifice heads to the Tainted One, so that RNG can't screw you too badly out of learning new skills, as two examples. The leechmonger ring in the abandoned mall guarantees you'll always have some form of health regeneration.
  • If you go to sleep on Night 3, Per'kele will briefly insult you and your character will immediately wake up to the moonscorched game over sequence, without the option to access the Hexen or save ever appearing, as the latter would effectively brick your save file, and the former would just be a waste of time at that point, anyway.
  • A combat manual accompanies the map found at the start of the game explaining mechanics relating to exploration and combat.
  • On Day One, finding party members to recruit can be difficult, as the characters available in the early game are some combination of out of the way, locked behind very specific tasks and dialogue choices, and weak and/or crippled with an addiction. If you've been struggling to progress and have slept enough to make it to Day Two, Daan, Karin, Olivia and eventually Marcoh are all made available as party members with very little in the way of requirements or caveats. One is a competent healer, the second can be used to aid in exploration if your luck with keys is bad, and the last is the best fighter in the game, which is particularly valuable if you missed the very brief window to recruit Abella.
  • Unlike in the first game crates and barrels you've searched are now clearly marked so players don't have to keep track of which they've opened.
  • While expensive you can obtain valuable accessories from Dr. Kefer's magic shop, including ones that grant mind regeneration (valuable for spellcasting builds) or boost agility, making it much easier to get your party to 16 agilty and unlock the ability to act twice each turn.
  • Unlike the first game, where party members can be dismissed only by killing them or in special events, you can freely leave your party members at the train and PRHVL Bop.
  • On the Fear & Hunger difficulty, death masks can't spawn in the Old Town until you've unlocked a path into the rest of Prehevil, ensuring that you won't be attacked before you can actually get a proper party and some decent gear. The gloves do come off on the Masochism mode, but it's called that for a reason.
• Apathetic Clerk: Dr. Kefer, who runs a shop specializing in magical and smoking goods in northern Prehevil, opens with a hardy "fuck you" after asking your protagonist's name, and never improves his manners much from there. He does ask with some concern what you were doing if you root about in his shop's basement, but mostly just because a violent rapist genie will start to haunt a variety of locations in the game afterward if you touch its lamp, and it's likely he's afraid more for his own safety than yours.
• Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: Despite firearms being available, you'll likely end up spending a decent amount of time using swords (which are still carried by officers, out of tradition) and spears. Not just to save ammo or because some enemies are Immune to Bullets, but also because the unique weapons are usually superior to firearms in damage.
• Arc Symbol: The Game Over screen features the title of the game featuring a stylized "M". This is the symbol of the god of Fear and Hunger, hinting that she's more involved in the plot than is obvious.
• The Artifact:
  • The rate at which your characters' hunger gauge depletes is a holdover from the first game's mechanics, where it's made clear the dungeon is sapping your strength through supernatural means, forcing you to eat more frequently than a person normally would. While Rher's influence and the Festival of Termina may be a factor, there's no explicit text suggesting they are like there is in the original, and the game takes place over a fairly short 3 days otherwise.
  • Sawing off limbs to stave off infection or for emergency rations borders on completely pointless given how common green herbs and other alternatives are for the former and how relatively plentiful food is for the latter, even in a party of four, but it remains nonetheless.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Ending A has the protagonist (and likely the rest of the party) ascend into the realm of the Machine God, with them not being considered to have survived the festival.
• As You Know: Lampshaded if you ask Abella about the recent peace treaty between the Bremen Empire and the Eastern Union, as she'll wonder if you grew under a rock.
• Autocannibalism: Sawing off a party member's limb will add it to your inventory, and there's nothing preventing you from feeding them with it as it's now considered fresh food with no downsides.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Cutting an enemy's legs is encouraged in order to expose their weak points, which can be destroyed to instantly kill them. However, unless the enemy has a skill attached to those limbs, it's often more lucrative to dismember the arms (which most enemies have weapons attached to) or the torso (which will also kill them, though it often has higher health). While removing the legs makes it more likely to hit the head, by the time you've cut them off and finally manage to beat the head, you could have spent it hitting the torso for much quicker results.
  • The Blood Sword and Longinus spells give you a powerful melee weapon for the rest of the battle, but the need to waste a turn equipping them means they'll take multiple turns to deal enough damage to make up for the time you spent equipping them, especially as removing enemy limbs as quickly as possible is the standard strategy.
• Ax-Crazy: The moonscorch causes the majority of its victims to become homicidally insane, with various kinds of rationalizations being used for their violence. Over the course of the game, most of the contestants can become moonscorched as well, mutating them into violent, unrecognizable killers.
• Axes at School: Due to random loot drops, it's entirely possible to find weapons at the orphanage (which also functions as a school), including firearms.
• The Bad Guy Wins:
  • Ending C results not only in the festival succeeding, but also in Per'Kele getting what he wanted — a new recruit to the Cult of Sulfur, who will be reborn in the sulfur pits.
  • Daan's Ending B, meanwhile, doesn't have Per'Kele getting a recruit, but it does result in Pocketcat succesfully persuading Daan into becoming a copy of him, effectively meaning that Daan's victory in the festival was completely meaningless.
• Battle Royale Game: The Termina festival is a giant game of this, where the 14 contestants are being forced into one, and have 3 days to kill each other. Much like other Batle Royales there is a time limit: Moonscorching. If none of the participants successfully manage to kill everyone else by the end of day 3 everyone will be moonscorched regardless of their willpower causing them to go insane and mutate into bloodthirsty monsters. Notably being moonscorched does not count as a death so the remaining survivors still have to go out of their way to kill the participants even after mutating into potentially more powerful threats.
• Bayonet Ya: Versions of the rifle with a bayonet attached can be found, which do less damage in combat, but also don't spend ammo.
• Bear Trap: Usable by both the player and by enemies. The player can set bear traps down on pathways, which can wound and halt weaker enemies. On the other hand, there are also bear traps already set around town, which can hurt the player if they're clumsy enough to wander into one. Certain villagers can also set down bear traps in battle, which will cut off a character's leg the next time they try to attack. The trap can be disarmed by guarding.
• Being Evil Sucks: Following orders and killing every one of the other contestants will leave you as the sole human party member, and while gaining all their skills can make you very powerful, the gaggle of ghouls, blood golems and maybe a goat you can scrape together don't make up for the loss of a full party.
• Being Good Sucks: As a general rule of thumb, the more moral choices make the game harder, particularly in Hard Mode. Refusing to kill other contestants means your protagonist will never gain their often potent abilities, and for the non-playable ones on Normal, there is often little to no reward for sparing them beyond some exposition and an image on the ending card. The ending where all other playable characters live also involves your protagonist sacrificing themselves. This is framed more positively than it sounds, but they are nonetheless no longer among the living after the fact.
• Bestiality Is Depraved:
  • The Woodsman's wife left him for the goat Black Kalev, and describes how he managed to pleasure her in ways he couldn't in… a lot of detail, to say the least.
  • The Centaur is heavily implied to be a Marriage between a human and a horse. Looking closely at its silhouette shows two distinct bodies under its bandages in a rather compromising position, along with the fact that it triggers any erotophobic characters.
• BFS: The Gaelian Greatsword is a downplayed example, as while it's length is comparable to the height of the player character, it's akin to a Zweihänder in form.
• Bigger on the Inside: The museum is noted to be larger than what its exterior suggests, adding to its Alien Geometries.
• Bittersweet Ending
  • Ending A: Although you witness the birth of the Machine God and the rest of the contestants manage to escape Prehevil off-screen, you and your party are lost to the artificial green.
  • Ending B: Per'kele and the traces of Rher allow you to go free, but every other contestant has died (possibly by your hands before they even turned into monsters). If you fought what remains of Rher, the moonlight also tainted your existence, altering the person you are.
    • Abella: Decides to seek answers by reaching the Moon and becomes a rocket scientist to reach the Moon with science. Whether that is a good idea remains to be seen.
    • O'saa: He realizes that the yellow mages aren't that different from the church of Alll-mer, or the other groups they oppose. He tosses Nas'rah's head into a lake and returns to Abyssonia, where he founds a sect of his own that overtakes the local temples in popularity.
    • Karin: Wants to expose to the world the mysteries she's experienced first-hand, and decides to delve deeper into the occult to find hard evidence.
    • Levi: The events of the game haunt him to the end of his days. He wanders from place to place until his nightmares start, and off he goes again.
    • Marcoh: He atones for his misdeeds by becoming a boxing coach who trains his pupils to fight otherworldly beings.
    • Olivia: Years later, after therapy, she realizes that the experience has made her a stronger person, as despite having a handicap, she managed to become champion of Termina. She can also feel the presence of her sister beside her.
    • Daan: Fails to find anything about what happened to Elise or what the baron did, and falls into despair. As there's nothing to go on for him, he is tempted to take the offer of Pocketcat, who stalked him even before the festival.
    • Marina: Feeling relieved at having all her ties to the family and her past cut, she drops her studies and settles down in Valland's capital, finding kindred spirits among the red lights district. Although she forgot about Samarie, who died in Prehevil, Samarie somehow still returns to photobomb the ending photo.
• Blatant Item Placement: As usual, you're encouraged to search every container you come across for items. The ability to find goodies (such as heroin or ammo) in trash cans gets lampshaded in Marina's bar event when Daan refuses to serve her, as she notes that she could just look for vodka in the trash cans.
• Bloodstained Glass Windows: The church of Alll-Mer is no less dangerous than the rest of Prehevil, with monsters lurking near the ceiling and in the basement, making it likely that you'll fight in the church. The first fight with Rancid the Sergal, in particular, takes place at the altar.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The rifle, among the three available firearms. It doesn't have the sheer damage or stunning potential of the shotgun, but it removes arms from enemies, has more available ammo (as several enemies use it, and ammo can be looted or stolen from them), and it still does more damage than the pistol.
  • Any melee weapons that give +34-36 attack. They're nothing exceptional, but they do their job without spending ammo, and equipping them should be one of the first priorities of a playthrough.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: Get to the end of the White Bunker on the first day, and unless you're playing as O'saa, August will turn up and shoot the Kaiser in the face with his bow before being struck down. This makes the boss easier by removing his head's resistance to Blindness, but will result in the death of the contestant that intervenes to help.
• Boss Bonanza: Ending A forces you to fight three bosses consecutively (the Platoon, Kaiser, and Logic), though winning each battle will give you an opportunity to use recovery items and spells between fights.
  • Endings B and C also force you to fight the moonscorched versions of your entire party if you reach the Moon tower with a party. After that, you have to fight Per'kele, and, depending on your choices throughout the game, Rher's remnant without time to recover.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Defeating the Heartless One will net you The Darkness and the Red Virtue, which act as the best armor and weapon in the game, respectively. If you can beat her, however, then you really don't need these items.
• Broad Strokes: It seems that multiple endings from the first game are considered canon in the sequel. The God of Fear and Hunger has ascended; Le'garde (the Yellow King) returns as the Kaiser; and Nash'rah is burnt, which only happens in the first game if he fights Gro-goroth. Additionally, it appears that multiple characters from the first game achieved their S-endings, including Enki (who lived to write the Skin Bibles), Ragnvalder (whose descendent August is present and has a bond with Moonless), and D'arce (who may have resurrected Le'garde, as the Kaiser's skin can turn the color shown in her S-ending).
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
  • In Ending A, while the remaining contestants are saved, your protagonist (and their remaining party members) get absorbed into Logic's collective unconscious, implying they lose their individuality.
  • Daan's and Levi's B endings. While they do defeat Per'kele and (potentially) survive the traces of Rher, Daan is left hopeless as he never finds out what happened to his wife and father-in-law and feels guilty about killing the other contestants, and the game implies he is going to take Pocketcat's deal. Levi moves places constantly as he feels his past is always following him, with the game ominously stating that it may eventually catch up to him.
• Chainsaw Good: The Meat Grinder, an angle grinder modified with a table saw blade, and to run without having to be plugged in. Used by an enemy, it's just a scary weapon. Used by the player, however, it's the best weapon you can have.
• Character Select Forcing:
  • Only if you want to save all contestants except for the protagonist, though. Due to how an early-game choice determines the fate of two contestants, the only way to have both Abella and Henryk survive past the first morning in the same playthrough requires you to play as Abella. Then again, Abella (as the protagonist) cannot survive in any ending where any other contestant survives, since you're also railroaded into ending A while doing so.
  • Similarly, the game heavily favours Marina if you want to play a full-on mage. O'saa technically starts out with a better magic stat and useful magic buffs out of the box. However, Marina can just steamroll most of the early game if you have her start with Necromancy and Gro-Goroth's Skin Bible, since it gives her access to better spells faster than any other character. O'saa can also be straight-up eliminated on day 1 morning, which lets Marina unlock his side of the Hexen straight away, anyways.
• Charge Meter: As combat goes on, you'll gain a rev point for each turn, and are capable of storing 3 at once. Revving up will increase the damage done by your attack, and doing so thrice will allow performing a second attack. In addition, some spells demand that you rev up before being able to cast them.
• Cigarette of Anxiety:
  • Daan can sometimes be seen smoking, usually while discussing the disturbing events of Prehevil, and is implied to be depressed due to the death of his fiancee and father-in-law.
  • Tobacco and wild dagga can be smoked with a pipe to recover Mind.
    • With spells costing Mind to use, smoking supplies are also considered to be magical supplies, as O'saa brings tobacco if he decides to stock up on magical supplies, and Dr. Kefer sells smoking supplies.
• Confessional: If the player enters the church's confession booth on days 1-2, they'll see a mysterious figure in the other booth to whom they'll be able to confess to some very intimate things. Upon leaving the booth, they'll discover the figure was actually O'saa, who was playing a prank on them.
• Checkpoint Starvation: Nowhere near as bad as the first game's Hard Mode, but Termina still makes saving something of a luxury — you either save by resting in a bed, which advances time and may provoke an attack afterward, through a Book of Enlightenment, a very rare item found at random on bookshelves or purchased from Pocketcat, or through a Perfect Ritual Circle after finding or starting with the God of Fear and Hunger's Skin Bible, which grants you a 1 - 3 time save without advancing time per circle. While sleeping isn't an option on the hardest difficulty, the latter choice still is, giving you a bit more room for error compared to the first game's equivalent mode.
• Closed Circle: Marcoh offhandedly mentions attempting to follow the train tracks to leave Prehevil if spoken to later into the game, only to wind up right back where he started, suggesting no one can leave once the festival's underway until its conclusion or interference via an ascended New God renders it moot.
• Combat, Diplomacy, Stealth: It varies from enemy to enemy in some cases, but many human foes can be reasoned with with surprising consistency — particularly if you have Karin's Persuade and/or Caligura's Intimidate — and even some of the less human ones can be convinced to skip turns at least. The otherwise deformed and extremely violent moonscorched villagers can be talked into becoming worry-free sources of valuable supplies, even! The rest, barring a tiny handful of bosses, can be avoided through careful positioning and maneuvering, as they have limited line of sight, and of course, just about every NPC in the game can also be attacked and killed, either directly or with firearms and/or traps.
• Commonplace Rare: The lighter, which functions as an infinite-use match, is so extremely rare that you're more likely to find a salmonsnake rune (a much more useful item which prevents limb loss, arguably overpowered) than a single lighter in the entire town.
• Cool Sword: A few of the swords you can get qualify as this:
  • The church holds a sabbath, a type of sword with an unusually thick blade that is used by the Penance Knights of Vatican. It's one of the few weapons to do otherwordly damage, making it suited for fighting intangible enemies.
  • The Red Virtue, obtainable from the Heartless One, is a red sword that was mastefully forged for the king of Ma'habre. It performs two attacks with one swing and inflicts otherwordly damage.
  • The Black Steel returns from the first game, and still does respectable damage with a high chance of a critical hit.
• The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The Defense and M.Defense statistics given from equipment don't actually do anything to protect you against enemy attacks. Rather, damage is affected entirely by the percentages given in the statistics of your gear. The Defense given from the hexen and any engravements does work, but it actually decreases damage taken by a percentage, instead of a flat number.
• Controllable Helplessness: If the player character murders someone on the train or in PRHVL Bop around the other passengers, one of the passengers (Abella, Daan, Marcoh, Karin, or Tanaka) will restrain them and tie them up. The player will be left in the back and, while allowed to struggle, won't be able to escape (with the game only displaying messages like "you feel hungry" and "your arms are uncomfortable") until night 3.
  • Being defeated by a Moonscorched while near a pig pen will result in that Moonscorched throwing your character inside it, wounded and only able to crawl. No matter what you do, you can only evade the pigs so much before they devour you.
• Cosmic Horror Story: Similar to the first entry; though this entry emphasizes combat more, there are still plenty of elements that fit.
• Corrupt Church: Prehevil's Church of Alll-mer is rotten to the core, and this is a setting where that's really saying something. The basement holds evidence of mass human sacrifice rituals, otherworldly monsters, and some amount of worship of the Old Gods. O'saa even remarks that whatever this church worships, it certainly isn't Alll-mer. Various bits of lore hint that this church, and perhaps the wider Church throughout Europa, in fact worships Sulfur in the guise of Alll-mer, but it's kept vague enough to be uncertain.
• Creator Cameo: One of the posters in the city advertises Heartless Angel, made by Ketsueki, referencing a game that is being developed by one of Termina's testers (Ketsueki also being the name of the game's protagonist). A New God version of Ketsueki herself even appears as a secret superboss, referred to as the Heartless One.
• Crucified Hero Shot: Simultaneously a twisted parody of the trope and, by virtue of your character having the potential to (unwittingly) sacrifice themselves to save the rest of the contestants, potentially played completely straight when all is said and done, failing a Decrepit Priest's coin flip attack gets your protagonist strung up, stripped naked, and dismembered for Prehevil's townsfolk to dance around. If August is alive and well, he'll rescue you the following night, but if he isn't….
• Cue the Sun: Ending B shows your character watching the sunrise as Day 4 comes, signifying an end to the festival and the horrors of Prehevil.
• Cutscene Incompetence: If you anger Karin by killing another contestant at the train/PRHVL Bop, she'll threaten you into surrender by holding you at gunpoint, and trying to attack her will cause you to instantly die on the spot. However, if you actually fight her in combat, she has pretty average stats, and her pistol only does mediocre damage, to the point that you can easily survive 3-4 shots at full health.
• Cutting the Knot:
  • Thanks to the introduction of guns, you can actually kill certain bosses without going through the standard boss fights just by shooting them. The trade-off is, of course, the loss of precious ammo.
  • Getting to the inner city normally demands either opening the lock at the gates or finding ways to bypass it. If you have a trenchgun, however, you can open the gates by blasting out the lock.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Logic has a very large amount of health, and it's incredibly unlikely you will defeat it without either a full party or a setup that allows you to heal indefinitely.
• Dark World: Interacting with ritual circles with Rher's sigil transports the player into an alternate dimension mirroring the real world, filled with rotting wooden pathways, dark pits, and strange monsters. Traveling here is often necessary to complete objectives around the city, and can also be used to discover secrets.
• Denial of Diagonal Attack: Though you can move diagonally, diagonal shooting is not available, likely due to RPG Maker limitations.
• Developer's Foresight:
  • Because accessing the Hexen by sleeping is unavailable on Masochism mode, and the player can't find a Tes'tich table until the orphanage at the earliest, the sacrificial pit in the two-story house is replaced with a blank asymmetrical ritual circle instead.
  • The very first person or thing you encounter and fight, no matter how far into the game that is, has special dialogue in which your protagonist will attempt to reason with them. This changes based on what the enemy encountered is, and seeing some of them requires some very deliberate avoidance of combat to encounter.
  • Karin has dialogue for using Persuasion against her, even though the only way to know the skill before killing her is to use cheats or a mod. The same goes for using Intimidate against Caligura, although it's also possible to learn it by starting as Marcoh with Steal, which will unlock Caligura's hexen tree.
  • Talking to a Bobby will have it say that you violated the order to stay indoors. If you talk to the one in the library, you can point out that you are indoors, causing its head to stop spinning without having to use Persuasion.
    • Notably, this dialogue wasn't actually present in the initial release, but was added in later updates after players were disappointed by the lack of a special interaction.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • Downplayed with the New Gods. The Tormented One and the Heartless One (the strongest New God in combat so far) can be fought, and they do appear to die, but it's made clear that the New Gods are not capable of truly dying, and the only thing you'll manage is forcing them to return to the Grand Hall.
  • Also downplayed with Rher, as while you do manage to fight him off, it's stated that these are actually his traces, and that they just retreated. Still, not too bad for a mortal.
  • Completely averted with Logic, however, as all you accomplish by fighting is ensuring that you get absorbed into the Artificial Green instead of just dying in battle.
• Distant Sequel: The game takes place in 1942, 352 years after the events of the first game.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: You cannot dash while holding a gun, as it would be too easy to shoot enemies otherwise.
• Door to Before: The streets of Prehevil have a few of these, as do some indoor areas. Unlike most games, however, it's possible to force these doors open, but their high health (since they're usually made out of metal) makes it very hard to do it.
• Downer Ending:
  • One character's Ending B epilogue is particularly harrowing. Daan decides that life is not worth living since his trip to Prehevil doesn't really give him the answers as to why his beloved was killed. He becomes a Pocketcat out of despair.
  • Another one's is only somewhat better. Levi gets overwhelmed by nightmares from the war and the festival, combined with his hometown getting destroyed, which causes him to become an aimless drifter travelling across the world to escape his nightmares. The ending itself expresses doubt about whether he'll be able to finally escape them, and being an army deserter makes it impossible for him to return to the Eastern Union.
• Driven to Suicide:
  • As usual, going below 50 mind gives you the ability to kill yourself and end the game.
  • August is implied to have done this if he dies in the forest on night 3, as his throat is slit, and there are no enemies nearby who could've done it.
• Duct Tape for Everything: Duct tape is handy to have if you know Weaponcraft, as it's required for all craftable weapons. You can also improve makeshift armor by taping a few bits of scrap metal to it.
• Dueling Player Characters: What the Festival of Termina intends to have happen — the 14 contestants^note of which, as of this edit, only 8 are playable, though the developer plans to eventually extend this to all 14 all at each other's throats, scheming and killing until only one remains. In gameplay terms, this means that every single playable character is also optionally a boss twice over, given their moonscorched forms, though if you take one down prior to their transformation, you won't have to worry about it later.
• Dungeon Bypass:
  • With enough damage, you can skip significant chunks of the game by breaking locked Doors to Before. This includes the entire effigy hunt and its subsequent encounter with Rancid, cutting out roughly a third of the game in the process.
  • Instead of finding the two keys to the gate into central Prehevil, you can cut the chain with Bolt Cutters or blast them with a Trenchgun. Alternatively, you can use the sewers or summon vines with a Vinuska sigil and go through the deep woods instead.
• Dungeon Shop: There are two of these in the city, justified by the fact that their shopkeepers already owned them before the festival, and kept their sanity after being moonscorched.
  • Bandage Man's shop opens up on day 2, selling commonplace basic supplies.
  • Dr. Kefer's Tricks & Magic specializes in magical items, along with smoking supplies.
• Eldritch Abomination: Many of the enemies present throughout the game have bizarre disfigurements or impossible proportions, many of which are presumably caused by the moonscorch.
• Emergency Weapon:
  • Every Player Character starts with a knife, as so do a few recruited party members. Being a kitchen knife, it's also horribly weak, and should be replaced with literally any other melee weapon.
  • Characters who are disarmed (typically due to throwing a wrench or losing both arms) or have no other means of fighting intangible enemies can resort to punching (or drifting, in case of Olivia). However, these attacks are very weak, unless used by Marcoh.
  • Enemies who lose their arms will typically resort to tackling, usually doing lower damage than their standard attack and without being able to dismember or inflict status effects.
• Encounter Repellant: How Caligura's (and potentially Marcoh's, if he chose to go through with killing his boss) Killing Intent passive ability works. A handful of weak enemies will now flee the player rather than attempt to engage. Fighting most of them anyway will cause said foes to cower in fear as the encounter begins.
• Early Game Hell: Even just getting into the main part of Prehevil is a struggle for many new players. Once you get some good loot, recruit some party members, and get your affinity up with gods to spec into their Hexen trees, you rapidly begin increasing in power.
• Enemy Summoner:
  • Rat Hags summon a rat every turn. However, the rats will die if the hag does.
  • If you fail to sever an Inquisitor's hand, they will summon a Bobby to aid them in battle.
• Epic Flail: The lantern flail is a variant, using a burning lantern as it's head, thus allowing it to set enemies on fire with each swing.
• Eternal Recurrence: As implied by Pocketcat (formerly Daan) and confirmed by Per'kele should the player attempt to confront him and Rher, the festival of Termina has repeated many times over many years, as Rher's last echo before he left this world. The festival serves as a form of mass ritual sacrifice in order to reach Rher's levels, and depending on if the player killed the other contestants, they can either reach this level or only be granted their freedom as their grand prize.
• "Everybody Dies" Ending: Ending C results in everybody dying, as you win the festival, and then agree to die and be reborn in the sulfur pits.
• Everybody Lives: In a downplayed variant, playing as O'saa or Abella makes it possible to ensure everyone's survival in ending A by either recruiting Abella and doing everything at day 1 morning (O'saa), or by saving Henryk and getting to the white bunker at day 2 morning (Abella). Your character can then be the only person to ascend into the Artificial Green, while everyone else gets to escape Prehevil.
• Exploding Barrels: Gasoline canisters can be set up in battle, then attacked, causing them to explode and do a lot of damage to all body parts of the enemy as well as applying the very useful Burn damage over time.
• Extremely Short Timespan: The whole game only takes place over 3 days at most, and it's entirely possible to finish the game on the day 1 morning. The masochist difficulty, in particular, takes place over a single night.
• Eye Scream: Glass shards and the black smog can blind the enemy, with a message remarking on their eyes bleeding. A few spellcasters can also blind you with black smog, with the blinding lasting permanently (and actually making the screen go black if the protagonist is blinded) until cured.
• Facial Horror: One of the primary symptoms of the moonscorch is severe facial disfigurement. Many of the villagers have warped and "burnt" features, with some having clawed parts of their faces off. Other enemies, such as the bobbies, have their faces twisted and mutated beyond recognition.
• Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: When fighting the Woodsman, the player might discover that his phallus is actually some sort of parasite, which will attack the party. Should they fail a coin toss, it will orally assault the main character similarly to a headcrab, making them vulnerable, before skittering away.
• Fashions Never Change: The yellow mages still wear the same outfits as they did 350 years ago, making O'saa rather noticeable among everyone else wearing much more modern clothes.
• Fission Mailed:
  • Using the Blood Sacrifice skill will make your character slit their own throat, in the same way as committing suicide or lethally sacrificing oneself to Gro-Goroth. Fortunately, it'll simply reduce your Body to 1.
  • Losing to some enemies won't end your game, but will have consequences otherwise. Needles in particular assaults you but leaves your protagonist alive. Your party members, however…
• Food Porn: Daan's bartending comes with beautiful illustrations of the drink in question, and is good enough to inspire your protagonist to describe his cocktails at length… barring the glass of milk, anyway.
  It's... well, it's just milk. It doesn't exactly inspire the poet inside you.
• Gameplay and Story Integration:
  • Fighting other main characters has them use their unique skills, like Olivia using poison attacks and Abella using bear traps and Wrench Toss.
  • When you recruit O'saa, you'll find him with an arrow stuck in the shoulder. Indeed, he'll be at a reduced Body once recruited, requiring you to heal him. Not only that, but it's possible for him to pull out the arrow when talked to, causing him to suffer from bleeding that will have to be patched up.
  • Daan's loss of an eye in his attempts to resurrect Elise is heavily implied to be a use of Magna-Medicinal from his skill tree, which resurrects a target at the cost of a body part. The reason that it fails is also supported by game mechanics, as you have to sacrifice a limb rather than an eye, and it has to be done in combat, whereas Daan tried to resurrect her long after she died. He also doesn't actually know the skill if chosen as the protagonist, meaning that he attempted it without any training.
  • Caligura's Killing Intent skill makes weak foes run away and cower in fear. His confrontations with Levi and Henryk have both cowering, the former suffering from a withdrawal that significantly weakens him, and the latter being a Cowardly Lion who knows of Caligura's scary reputation. Marcoh as the protagonist isn't fazed at all during his confrontation with Caligura, however, as he already took on a group of mobsters in his backstory, and is a much better fighter than Caligura.
• Gardening-Variety Weapon: The kassara, which is originally a billhook for cutting tree branches, but also makes for a decent weapon.
• Good Guns, Bad Guns: While averted with the Lugr Pistol (a "bad" gun) and the Rifle .303 Mk I (most similar to the "good" Lee-Enfield), which are used by everybody, the trenchgun is exclusive to the player as a "good" gun.
• Guide Dang It!:
  • The paths to endings A and B are telegraphed pretty well, but your only hint at the requirements for ending C are Per'Kele complaining you aren't bloodthirsty enough during Ending B. You actually need to kill all the other contestants and reach the Hollow Tower before Day 3, which is challenging when it comes to the more obscure ones like August.
  • Finding the other candidates to recruit or kill can be very difficult given the size of the town and how they'll only appear during specific time windows, or when other conditions are met. Rher's skill tree provides an Aura Vision ability which marks them on your map, but only works once they've transformed into their moonscorched forms. Pav, August, and Caligura are especially difficult to locate due to leaving the train early and only appear in scripted scenes.
  • Unlocking the fight with The Heartless One requires you to ignore the standard route through the Church of All'Mer (dropping its chandelier) and instead reach its basement through the sewers and Foundations of Decay.
  • Learning skills is a fiddly, multi-step process that can be hard to figure out for new players. You need to use a bonesaw on a dead enemy to remove the head, swap them for soul stone shards at an imperfect ritual circle, combine the shards into soul stone in the Combine menu, and only then sleep to use them at the hexen. That's on top of getting the contestant souls or affinity with the game's gods to unlock them for learning in the first place. And if you miss any steps before sleeping, you'll still advance time without being able to unlock anything.
• A Handful for an Eye: Glass shards are used this way, having a decent chance to blind with a throw to the head. They're pretty effective, too, as the accuracy debuff will make it practically impossible for the enemy to hit anything.
• Hand in the Hole: Some of the alternate dimensions created by Rher have strange, dark holes which the player can stick their hand into. Thankfully, most of them just contain items.
• Hate Plague: The moonscorching, which usually makes the victims act extremely violent against the non-moonscorched. It's also implied that these mental changes may occur before the physical transformation, as a few contestants will eventually behave rather violently with no prior indication.
• Have a Gay Old Time: If you play as Daan, the intro may result in Karin calling you a "Queer eyepatched foreigner". "Queer" is clearly being used in the original meaning of "Weird" (since the setting is an Alternate Universe of the real 1942), but it does get a few players confused due to the term's modern associations with LGBT.
• Have a Nice Death: Much like the previous game, being defeated by certain enemies will treat you to gruesome scenes of your protagonist being mutilated or violated by the denizens of Prehevil, from being Fed to Pigs by the still mostly lucid villagers, to being crucified if August isn't alive to save you, or becoming part of a human centipede. Likewise, sleeping past night 3 or spending 30 seconds outside in Masochism mode provides you the pleasant sight of your protagonist being moonscorched as you're taken to the title screen.
• Headbutting Heroes: Daan and Karin start arguing for petty reasons from the moment that Daan opens his mouth, and it never lets up from here, as one is an experienced doctor who accepts the supernatural, while the other is a Conspiracy Theorist that rejects the supernatural in some rather ridiculous ways. The festival, however, forces them to tolerate each other and possibly fight together, and either of them will intervene if you kill the other in the train/PRHVL Bop.
• Hearing Voices: Many of the moonscorched talk about hearing a voice telling them to kill. Several contestants also end up with them before becoming moonscorched themselves. Per'kele not so subtly nudges you towards murdering the other contestants in your dreams, as well, which is implied to be the voice in question given the many flyers found around town describing Per'kele and his influence while people sleep.
• The Hero Dies: Ending C results in your character dying after fighting Per'kele, as the prerequisite to being reborn in the sulfur pits.
• Heroic Sacrifice: An accidental variant occurs in Ending A, as your party's ascension into the Artificial Green allows the rest of the surviving contestants to escape Prehevil without having to participate in the festival. Your character had no way of knowing that this would happen, however, having stumbled into Logic by accident.
• Homage:
  • Marcoh's character design and fighting style are a homage to both Rocky Balboa and Jotaro Kujo. His early sprites even wore a purple shirt, referencing the latter.
  • Caligura's early design was a nod to Marilyn Manson, though it was later changed to give the character his own identity.
  • A recruitable party member, Black Kalev, is a black goat that is implied to have brought madness to a family living in the woods, mirroring Black Phillip from The VVitch.
  • One early boss enemy, Needles, bears a heavy resemblance to Art the Clown from Terrifier. At one point, he was even more similar, but his design was later altered to make him more unique.
  • The Gull Bros, a pair of boss enemies unique to Masochism Mode, are an Internal Homage to the first game's Crow Mauler, who was inspired in turn by Silent Hill's infamous Pyramid Head.
    • The alternate versions of areas accessible through Rher sigils bear a strong resemblance to Silent Hill's own Dark World. In particular, the way of navigating from one to the other on-demand was needed for puzzle solving in Silent Hill: Origins.
    • The map of Prehevil you can pull up to gain your bearings strongly resembles those found in Silent Hill as well.
  • The mini-boss Stitches sews humans together ala the antagonists of The Human Centipede, and it's entirely possible to suffer a similar fate with your party if she defeats you.
  • Heavily lampshaded in the Pocketcat encounter with regards to the many similarities the game shares with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask.
  • Many enemies resemble the various cenobites from the Hellraiser franchise.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Like the previous game, Fear and Hunger: Termina features three difficulty levels.
  • Easy(er) Mode halves the amount of damage enemies cause, improves loot drops, removes environmental traps, allows the player to utilize the God of Fear and Hunger's saving power three times per statue, and removes several more challenging enemies from the game, like Death Masks.
  • Fear & Hunger Mode is the game's "normal" mode. Environmental traps and more challenging enemies are present, and the God of Fear and Hunger's saving power can only be used once per statue.
  • Masochism Mode doubles the amount of damage enemies cause and halves the amount of damage the player can deal. In addition, the mode automatically starts on Night 3, meaning the player cannot save the game by sleeping at a bed, and it is impossible to recruit other playable characters, who are all either moonscorched or dead. Access to Tes'tich tables and level up is very limited too. Several challenging unique enemies are present in this difficulty (like the Gull Bros, a second Platoon, or many more Death Masks), as well as new environmental challenges. You cannot spend more than 30 seconds outside buildings or on the surface or Rher moonscorches you, resulting in a Game Over. Contrary to popular belief, battles do not give time; they only pause the timer and give time only sometimes, and only if you killed the enemy.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Returning from the first game are the Devour skill (for eating dead enemies) and the ability to consume any human legs and arms you come across.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: If the player falls into one of the spike pit booby-traps in the Deep Woods, they'll be treated to a cutscene of their character being impaled on a massive metal spike at the bottom.
• Improvised Armour: The makeshift armor is noted to be made from random kitchenware, with the breastplate made from the lid of a stove. You can further increase the protection by attaching bits of scrap metal to the bottom of the breastplate.
• Infinity -1 Sword:
  • For characters capable of using two-handed weapons, there is the Sergal Spear, Gaelian Greatsword, and the Mauler, adding from 60 to 72 to one's attack, making them a significant improvement over the generic weapons
  • For one-handed weapons, the Black Steel returns from the first game, doing decent damage with the highest crit rate in the game.
  • The crafted Sandman's Kiss doesn't have higher damage than the sword it's made from, but it does cause poisoning with every attack, which can end fights rather quickly if inflicted on the enemy's torso.
• Infinity +1 Sword:
  • The Meat Grinder. It hits 3 times for a decent amount of damage (making it near-certain that you'll get at least one hit), is guaranteed to cause bleeding, and its total damage is the highest among any weapons available (35 attack x3 vs Red Virtue with 50 otherworldly x2). However, it requires you to learn Abella's weaponcraft (which requires you to be or kill her), and obtaining the bench grinder (in the deepest woods bunker, the mob fight, or by stealing from Abella), some scrap metal, and a saw blade, the latter being unreliable to find outside of fighting the mob.
  • Defeating the Heartless One will net you her Red Virtue, which strikes twice with otherworldly damage (which few enemies are resistant to) and hits for a lot of damage (50 attack x2), making it comparable to the Meat Grinder (35 attack x3). It's also a one-handed weapon, allowing it to be used by characters that can't wield two-handed weapons.
• Informed Equipment:
  • As in the first game, the appearance of the characters reflects what they start with, even if you give them different armors.
  • The villager ghouls still have the same appearance they had when alive, causing them to appear to have a sickle even though ghouls can't use weapons. They also inexplicably have a Bremen military uniform when raised, instead of civilian clothes.
  • Averted with the knives used for suicide and Gro-Goroth self-sacrifice, unlike the first game, as every protagonist will start with a kitchen knife in their inventory, even if they won't have one otherwise as a party member.
• Insurmountable Waist-High Fence:
  • One of your first obstacles is the gate to the Old City. Despite the fence not being too tall (to the point that August just jumps over it) and not even having spikes or barbed wire on top, you still have to look for keys (or a trenchgun and a shell) or ways to bypass the gate entirely.
  • The shortcut doors in the inner city are short enough to climb over, but you instead have to look for a way around to unlock them from the other side, or somehow break them open.
  • The worst, however, are the blue pushable crates, which are waist-high, but can't be climbed, pulled, or pushed sideways. One, in particular, blocks the straightest way to the tower, forcing you to go looking for three effigies to unlock a way through the church.
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Small keys fit into the majority of simple locks, but they can only be used a single time for each door.
• Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Japan is referred to as the "Kingdom of Edo", despite its real-life equivalent having shed the name "Edo" in 1868.
• Jesus Was Crazy: Played with. The in-universe equivalent of Jesus, Alll-mer, has an extremely similar story to the Bible's Jesus, right down to being a "mortal" born to a virgin mother, who gained twelve apostles and was ultimately crucified. The story diverges in that after his ascension, Alll-mer was driven by vengeance, slaughtering the kings and sultans who ordered his death and forming a new world order with himself at the center. It's perhaps fitting that the Decrepit Priest enemies are described as crossing themselves backwards (and while there's plenty that's sketchy about those priests, there's no indication that they're performing the gesture incorrectly in-universe).
• Joke Character:
  • In the clothes store, the party can encounter the the Irrational Obelisk, an enemy which resembles a massive pile of shirts. It stands in place until the player enters combat with it, and combat just consists of it constantly dealing mind damage to your party while absorbing anything the player throws at it. It has the largest health pool of any enemy (999,999), and will respawn if killed. Players have theorized that the Obelisk is meant to represent the player character going insane and attacking a pile of clothing for no reason.
  • Black Kalev requires you to waste one of your handful of ritual circles to recruit him, and despite that, he's just a functionally ordinary goat who at best might be of some use in the very early game as a body on the field that might lob off enemy limbs, soak up a hit or two, or, if you're very lucky, land a headshot here and there.
• Jump Scare: Mercifully rare and used somewhat sparingly, but here and there the game will punctuate its horror with a loud, sudden noise — screaming female villagers in old Town and the Mob tossing a glass bottle near you before barreling down the street for your blood are two stand-out examples.
• Karmic Jackpot: If Marcoh is alive on Day 2, he'll have a confrontation with Pav near the restaurant. Should you intervene and kill Pav, your reward is a pistol and a lot of ammo from Pav's body, and the ability to recruit Marcoh (one of the best party members when it comes to combat) and Olivia (who isn't all that good, but is still an extra fighter).
• Land Mine Goes "Click!": Subverted HARD. Step on one and you become meat. Load save.
• Last Chance Hit Point: The Hardened Heart accessory and the Sisu skill both provide this, allowing you to survive any fatal hit while above 1 HP. Combined with counter-stance and the leechmonger ring, you become unkillable against any enemy that doesn't do multiple hits per attack. Sadly, all Final Bosses have multi-hit attacks, but feel free to absolutely stomp the rest of the game with this combo.
• Late to the Tragedy: By the time the contestants arrive, the entirety of Prehevil has already turned into a hellscape full of corpses and monsters due to Rher's influence.
• Lawful Stupid: The Bobbies patrolling inner Prehevil will attack you with shouts of "for justice and order!", doggedly enforcing the high priest's lockdown edict with lethal force.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The initial meeting with Pocketcat has him treating the protagonist as an old acquaintance, asking if they may have met earlier (perhaps in a past life), then telling them of how things have changed since then. All of this makes it seem as if he's actually talking to the player, not to their character.
• Legendary in the Sequel: Enki the Dark Priest manages to have books written by him survive in the present day, hinting that he was an accomplished and respected figure well after the events of the first game. Of course, the God of Fear and Hunger is also mentioned, having driven humanity into an advanced age.
• Leitmotif: Pulse and Anxiety from the first game returns when fighting the Kaiser, adding to the implications that he is a reincarnated Le'garde.
• Life Drain: The leechmonger turns every attack of the user into this by healing them in relation to damage dealt, with adjustments for the Health/Damage Asymmetry.
• Lighter and Softer: No, really. While it's still an oppressively dark game, Termina does manage to be this in comparison to the original — the psychosexual and violent elements are relatively downplayed in favor of more abstract and impossible Body Horror, much of the graphic content of the original is implied instead of directly shown, and the fact that player characters are more powerful this time around puts less emphasis on the pervasive theme of hopelessness.
• Little Useless Gun: The Lugr pistol is incapable of shooting off arms or stunning enemies, and it takes a lot of rounds to kill any enemy with it. Subverted if you have the Gunslinger skill, however, as it then becomes capable of removing arms from enemies, making it useful for weakening them before combat.
• Luck-Based Mission: Items found in containers and chests are completely random, and what's more, you need to call a coin toss every time you open a chest to get anything at all. Several enemy spawns, including the particularly dangerous Death Masks, are also somewhat random.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Plank and ballistic shields can be found and equipped for extra physical protection, with the unique Shield of the Four also giving some protection against otherwordly damage. Unlike the first game, they're equipped as accessories (rather than having their own slot), can be combined with a two-handed weapon, and no longer require arms.
• Lunacy: The affliction that has struck Prehevil was caused by the moon god, Rher. Those residing in the city have become "moonscorched", mutating their appearance and driving them insane. As time passes, the train's passengers will also become moonscorched, transforming them into powerful, deadly monsters unless the player intervenes. By night 3, all of the passengers save for the player's party members have been transformed. While exploring at night can be extra dangerous because of the limited visibility and the dark draining your characters' minds even outdoors, most moonscorched human foes are enraptured by the sight of the moon, letting you sneak around them more readily.
• Major Injury Under Reaction: If you lose to the Janitor at the start of the game, everyone reacts in shock or at least quiet anger at having their legs amputated. Afterward, every contestant will suffer the sawing of their limbs off without so much as a grimace.
• Mercy Kill: Many of the moonscorched appear to be in great pain or badly warped mentally, to the point that one can argue that killing them is the most merciful thing to do. In fact, several of the moonscorched in the eastern part of the Old Town will beg you to kill them, not fighting back at all.
  • The Weeping Scope, Moonscorched Levi, will actively try to hide and avoid fighting after the first warning shots. He will be found hiding in the Orphanage in fetal position, crying, and will not fight the player unless engaged first.
  • The Cocoon, Moonscorched Marina, will constantly ask their imaginary father why they have to fight and will die if you run from the fight. Probably a bug, but has not been fixed since release.
• Multiple Endings:
  • Ending A: "The Machine God": After fighting The Platoon and Sylvian Trooper and then The Kaiser, who is New God Le'Garde, and learning this was a (now foiled) new plan of his to ascend to Old God status, your character survives Logic (Reila, the host of this new god and Olivia's sister) and witnesses the birth of the Machine God, a god that came from the ingenuity of humanity. They join this new god and their collective consciousness of wisdom and scientific knowledge will be used to help mankind.
  • Ending B: "Day 4": Your character is the last one standing and the traces of Rher, fought after breaking free from the death of Per'kele, allow you to see another day. Your character also has a unique epilogue detailing what happens to him/her after the festival.
  • Ending C: "The Sulfur God": The player learns the truth: Sulfur Cultists led by Per'kele hijacked the Termina festival and the traces of Rher's power; following a trial by fire by Per'kele, the player dies with him and goes to see the Sulfur God to be reborn as a Sulfur Cultist. It is implied that after dying and living through the same hell as the Sulfur God, now full of resentment and free of the limitations of morality, they are returned to life to let all of their sickest desires come true.
• Multiple Persuasion Modes: In the form of Persuade and Intimidate skills, both used in combat to weaken enemies:
  • Persuade is Convince, typically consisting of you placating the enemy or telling them that they don't have to fight you. It also works as Bluff against contestants, as you try to make them hesistate by claiming to want to stop fighting, only to attack them afterwards.
  • Intimidate is obvious, but it also includes taunting the enemy, often causing them to do increased damage in exchange for defense or accuracy.
• Nerf:
  • You can no longer use the faux-battles that take place when trying to break down doors to replenish body or mind passively. There are other "fights" that these tricks can still be exploited in, but they're a lot less common than in the first game.
  • Dash was an incredibly powerful skill considered all but mandatory in the original that could be used to trivialize a lot of otherwise very dangerous enemies. Here, it's a baseline universal mechanic with a Sprint Meter tied to it so that getting around the map is easier, but that also drains much faster when enemies are nearby, and for 3 seconds after defeating an enemy, or leaving a screen with one in it, to hinder its ability for players to completely circumvent foes with it a bit.
• Never Bring a Gun to a Knife Fight:
  • Gun-wielding foes are slow enough to shoot that you can easily charge in and engage them with melee weapons. This is downplayed with riflemen and elite troopers, however, whose shots will still do a lot of damage in combat.
  • On your end, firearms are rather impractical to use in combat, as their high damage and piercing type is overshadowed by them spending ammo, as well as most unique weapons being more damaging.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: Many monsters can be easily gunned down on the overworld with good use of Hit-and-Run Tactics, as they have no way to retaliate.
• Non-Standard Game Over:
  • Sleeping past Day 3 will lead to your character becoming one of the Moonscorched.
  • O'saa's backstory is his exploration of the entire Dungeon of Fear and Hunger from the first game. If you choose not to abridge it, there will be many, many ways your game will end before you can even set foot off of the train for the real story to begin, such as staying in one area for too long or jumping into a toilet hole.
  • Once your Mind falls to below 50 while exploring, the game will let you take your own life.
• Noob Cave: The Maiden Forest and the Old Town serve as this, with most of the regular enemies being weak enough to be killable on your own with starting gear, and the bosses only being about as strong as the enemies that can be encountered in the other areas. It still has it's share of nasty encounters, however, and it's possible to get beset upon by a Death Mask.
• Off with His Head!:
  • As with the previous game, cutting off an enemy's head is usually the most reliable way to kill them. However, the head is more difficult to hit; the player is encouraged to take out an enemy's legs first, to make their head more vulnerable.
  • Provided you have one, you can use a bonesaw to take the heads of enemies you have killed. The heads can be offered to a ritual circle in exchange for soul stones. Some enemies do not have discernible heads to take, and some are so thick you risk breaking the bonesaw.
  • If the party ventures into Bunker 7, they'll see a unique enemy, Needles, killing Tanaka by sawing off their head. Tanaka can only be saved if the party ventures into the city and kills Needles before entering Bunker 7, which requires a pair of bolt cutters or going through the sewers.
• Ominous Fog: All outdoor areas are covered in fog, which gets heavier at evening and night. Not only does it add to the creepy feeling of Prehevil, but it also restricts your visibility and hides enemies in it. It's also justified, as O'saa states that the air tends to become more humid when reality or a plane of existence starts to flicker.
• Ominous Visual Glitch: When you're near an enemy, the screen turns static, like in the old television screens. It also appears when you enter the Tower of the Moon God when you sleep, which is a bit strange.
• One Crazy Night: The Masochist difficulty takes place over a single night, during which you'll either kill the moonscorched contestants then fight Per'Kele and Rher, or end up helping a god ascend.
• One-Hit Kill: Several enemies, most tied to the coin flip mechanic:
  • August will one-shot your character's head during their coin flip attack. They will also use it at the very start of the battle if you have a spell assigned to the green spice (instant spell before the battle even starts, mostly used to summon a Blood Golem or incapacitate enemies with blindness or a nuke).
  • The Chaugnar will make a character's head explode if they can connect Doomsday Trumpets twice on them. It also has a coinflip instakill grab.
  • If Decrepit Priests succeed their coin flip attack, they will instantly end the battle. As opposed to the other examples, you can avoid the actual game over even if the attack connects (i.e. you only lose the battle). However, the state you're left in after the fact, crawling with no legs, reducing speed to 25%, will make you want to restart from your latest save anyways, unless you were lucky enough to score Sylvian's Skin Bible beforehand, as you can regrow limbs with it.
  • Gull Bros/Gull Maulers, like the original Crow Mauler, will Peck your head for a guaranteed instant kill.
  • Owl Cultists will summon an Owl Sprite that will use a coinflip variant of the infamous Peck attack. If failed, it does around 30-40 damage, but still beheads the character.
  • The Platoon will use Heavy Mortar; if the coin flip is failed, it will always do around 135+ damage, more than the max health possible for a player character.
  • Poes (a.k.a. "Genies") will go from doing nothing for the first turn to spamming a coin flip instant kill grab on the main character every turn. Thankfully, it can be guarded.
  • Pocketcat, as well as the second one, Moonscorched Daan, is not allowed to interfere by Rher, so it forces you to pick a limb to be dismembered from a random player character each turn, as he is simply following your commands and not fighting you. If you dare to choose head over arms or legs, it beheads a character, resulting in an instant kill. And if the character picked has no remaining limbs, it will behead the helpless contestant.
  • Rher's eyes will spam All Seeing Eye every turn, draining around 15 Mind each. If you reach 0, failing a coinflip will drive you mad with visions of eldritch knowledge, your brains melting out of your eye sockets.
  • Ronteals will use Guillotine Swing, doing minimal damage on a failed coinflip but beheading the character in a clean horizontal sweep.
  • Flame Troopers play with this, as they'll actively attempt to attack you in the overworld, which will kill you instantly if they're successful. Actively engaging them in combat is safer than attempting to get around them.
  • The Vile, an early game miniboss, will ironically use one coinflip on itself if you talk to him and insist 3 consecutive times you can't understand him. If you win the coinflip, he removes the mask in frustration and the pesticide fumes kill him. If you fail, he shouts his prayers instead of removing the mask and then attacks a character once with each remaining weapon, the pesticide spray, and the canister. You only get one try, as he refuses to talk to you again after a failure.
• One Stat to Rule Them All: Agility. Not only does it allow you to act first in combat (preventing you from taking unnecessary damage), but raising it to 16+ (through a combination of Hexen buffs, Marcoh's backstory, facial engravements, and accessories) will let you have a second action after the first turn against most enemies, which doubles the damage you can do in combat. Every other stat may as well take a backseat, especially since they (with the exception of mind and body caps) can be raised with gear that is far easier to get.
• One-Word Vocabulary: The Giant, Marcoh's moonscorched form, is only capable of screaming the word "guilt", relating to his guilt for killing a former member of the mafia who hired him in an underground boxing match when his sister's life is threatened by the boss.
• Only Sane Man: Dr. Kefer, who owns a store specializing in magical supplies, is the only moonscorched person you meet that doesn't attack you or have weird quirks. While he's a Jerkass, it likely has nothing to do with him being moonscorched.
• "Open!" Says Me: As in the first game, you can force open doors with sufficient damage in one round. You can even do this to shortcut doors, if your damage output is extremely high.
• Optional Boss:
  • If you go for ending A, you're not obligated to kill anything but the final three (technically four) bosses. You're just heavily encouraged to do so.
  • Endings B and C do require some amount of slaughter. You still don't have to fight most, though, as they can also die by themselves as time passes. Even for the ones you have to kill yourself, you can still choose to fight them while they're human, or after they succumb to Moonscorch. Unless you go for ending C, which is the same as B, but requires everyone to be dead before day 2 ends.
  • Regardless of the ending you want, you can choose to offer certain items at Imperfect Circles to fight a couple of bosses: The Heartless One, and returning from the first game, Ron Chanbara The Tormented One. They drop very good loot and a unique spell, respectively, if you can survive the encounters.
• Optional Party Member: All of the potential party members are optional, so you can go through the game solo if you want. Unlike the first game, none of them are required to unlock any endings.
• Orphanage of Fear: St. Domek's Orphanage was a hellhole even before the festival, with orphans being badly treated and disappearing without a trace, chained child skeletons in the basement, one of the head priests implied to be molesting the orphans, a complete lack of privacy (with several folders being devoted entirely to personal information on the orphans), and there being a Gro-Goroth circle (implying child sacrifices) and a Sylvian one. Levi, having grown up there, will be traumatized and anxious if you bring him to the orphanage.
• Pacifist Run: Players have discovered they can get through the game fighting only four enemies, only one of which will actually die (two on Masochism). ^DetailsIf you break the metal gate to the museum district, you can skip Rancid the Sergal and only fight the mandatory bosses for ending A. Of these, only the Sylvian Trooper actually dies, as August will save Moonless and both Kaiser and Logic are confirmed to survive being defeated. The Platoon will be skipped if you defeat the Trooper quickly enough.
• Painful Transformation: The moonscorch is rather painful, with your character screaming if they end up suffering this fate. It's no surprise, considering that it happens over just a few seconds. Except O'saa, who stoically accepts it and transforms in silence, his flesh and bone cracking loudly without a single cry of pain.
• Permadeath: Any character who dies or falls in battle is dead, permanently (unless Daan can revive them with Magna Medicinal before the battle ends). Every time the player sleeps, they are given a list of which of the fourteen contestants have died so far.
• Permanently Missable Content: Every time the player sleeps (which is often required to save), time passes, meaning they may miss certain events or the chance to recruit certain characters.
• Pipe Pain: Rusty pipes are used by some villagers, as well as Caligura, and can be used by the player as a somewhat weak weapon.
• Planning for the Future Before the End: At the bridges of the White Bunker, your party members will start discussing as to what they'll do after surviving the festival. This is despite the fact that the narration tells the player that this place is going to be their tomb, since the party's only way out has been slammed shut:
  • Levi wants to lead a much less violent life and maybe learn how to play the piano.
  • Daan isn't sure, but would like to open up a bar.
  • Marina would like to open an occult store in Rondon.
  • Karin wants to expose all the dirt about the events at Prehevil.
  • Marcoh desires to open a boxing gym.
  • O'saa doubts his chances of survival, but he plans to return to his homeland and see how it's doing.
  • Olivia is going to retreat into nature, as it's her only home.
  • Abella plans to either return to Oldegard and start a family, or go back to school and learn about all the new tech that has been invented.
• Player Headquarters: The train and the PRHVL Bop jazz club/bar serve as this, serving as a place to dump off party members, go to sleep, or draw an Old God sigil in.
• Point of No Return: If you pursue Ending A, the door to the White Bunker slams shut after you enter, with the narration telling you it is now your tomb. This is true whether you die from the various threats therein or are absorbed into the Artificial Green.
• Poisoned Weapons:
  • The Poison Tip skill in Olivia's tree is the classic example, which makes weapon attacks inflict poison.
  • The Sandman's Kiss is a purpose-built variant of this, with a syringe full of neurotoxin (likely created from the contents of a heroin syringe) attached to an officer's sword.
• Power at a Price: Heroin provides a huge 30% buff to all your stats for the next few screens, in return for making you permanently addicted and losing 10% and later 30% of your stats due to withdrawal until you use it again, though that won't matter if you save it for the final area.
• Press Start to Game Over: Choosing to go through O'saa's full character history throws you into a text adventure it is possible to die in. If this happens, the game has a few words to say before throwing you back to the title screen:
  Looks like your story ended before it ever even properly began…
• Press X to Die:
  • Just like the first game, being at a low mind will make your character consider suicide, with the game giving you the skill to do it at any time.
  • You can also jump into the latrines and get a game over, like the first game.
  • The skill of Spontaneous Combustion will set you on fire (which is unavoidable death), and the spell Inverse Crown of Thorns will pierce your head with a spiked crown.
  • You can sacrifice yourself on a Gro-Goroth circle. Obviously, this will result in your death. Unless you perform a blood sacrifice, which leaves you at 1 hit point.
  • You can have a party member hack off the last of your remaining limbs, or simply your other arm in Olivia's case, to end the game as well.
• Previous Player-Character Cameo: Some party members from the first game make reappearances:
  • Nas'rah is the Yellow Mage's master. He works as an accesory that can be talked to and will comment on story events. As an amulet, he has a 30% chance to reflect magic.
  • Moonless comes back as a boss fight.
  • It's heavily implied that the Kaiser is actually Le'garde in his "Yellow King" form, indicating that he succeeded at ascending to Godhood.
  • It's also implied that August is Ragnvaldr's descendent if not his reincarnation. The skills "Devour" and "Bloodlust" can be seen in the skill tree.
• Psycho Serum: Heroin is treated as this, granting full Mind restoration and large stat boosts. The price is an incurable addiction, with withdrawal significantly draining one's stats.
• Purposely Overpowered: The Red Arc spell always hits, deals a decent chunk of damage, always stuns enemies if it's possible, and it can be accessed without getting any affinities. However, this is very intentional, as it can only be unlocked after getting Ending A.
• Raised as the Opposite Gender: Marina. She was the firstborn son to a dark priest and would have been destined to become one as well if her mother hadn't intervened and raised her as a daughter.
• Redemption Demotion: The player character can learn all of their character's skills with use of a Hexen, but other contestants recruited as party members can only use the abilities they arrive with. The only way to get access to their higher-tier skills is to kill them and claim their soul.
• Regenerating Health:
  • Body regeneration in combat can be provided by the wraith ring and dark blue roots, while photosynthesis provides it outside of combat so long as sunlight is available.
  • For Mind, meanwhile, there are just Betel's stones, which provide regeneration in combat.
• Real Is Brown: The colors of Termina's 1942 setting are just as drab as it was since the medieval era. The human characters still have a deathly pale white complexion (with the exception of O'saa).
• Red Herring: A minor one pops up with the clocks — with all of them having stopped at 14:35, a player may try to use this as the solution to the clock puzzle in the Museum. The actual solution, however, is 13:35, off by just one hour.
• Reluctant Monster:
  • Despite, or perhaps because, their sorry state of affairs is a direct result of failing to fully participate in the Termina festival in the past, most of the villagers in Old Town, even the ones that otherwise attack you, can be circumvented without much violence, as each of them still harbors reservations about killing their fellow man. You can exploit this to defeat each of them easily or even extort supplies out of them in some instances.
  • A few of the Moonscorched contestants aren't openly hostile, with some being all but trivial to defeat due to their reluctance to fight back.
• Rule of Three: A relatively sane moonscorched reveals that the game takes place during the third Termina festival in the city. The first was between the citizens of Prehevil, while the second was shortly after, between the Bremen army that marched into the city. The moonscorched wandering around the city are the survivors who didn't want to kill their friends and family and were burned by Rher as punishment. You quickly realize they won't hold back against strangers.
• Running Gag: The toilet hole from whence there is no escape returns thrice over. O'saa can encounter the original and leap to his doom in the text adventure version of his backstory, Prehevil has an outhouse that all the contestants can be trapped in, and the well outside the Woodsman's house acts as a 3rd, non-fecal variant, though if circumstances line up properly, it's actually possible to climb out of this one.
• Sacrificial Lamb: On top of the obvious many, many potential plights of poor Tanaka, two of which could occur within fifteen minutes of leaving the train, one of two participants is guaranteed not to make it past Day 1 morning as themselves. Open up Tunnel 7 and meet Abella, and Henryk will vanish entirely, emerging in the evening as the Moonscorched Gentleman. Reach the Mayor's house and aid Henryk, and Abella will become the highly aggressive Chaugnar. Presently, the only way to avoid this is either to make Abella the protagonist and save Henryk, or complete the game within the span of the first morning before Henryk can turn... A time window that also effectively dooms August unless playing as O'saa.
• Sad Battle Music: Denied The Light, which plays in the battle with Moonless, emphasizing the sadness of being forced to fight (and possibly kill) a character returning from the first game.
• Sadistic Choice: In all but the hardest difficulty (where that choice is made for you before the game even begins), you have to choose either to work with the other contestants, who can prove to be invaluable allies both for exploring the doomed town and fighting its many dangerous inhabitants and visitors, or kill them, which grants you their souls, which you can use to make your sole character much stronger. The former requires you to split healing and food between up to 4 people, while the latter opens you up more to the possibility of being felled in a single hit by powerful enemies' coin flip attacks. You can technically mix and match both depending on your party composition, but this can be tricky to pull off without pissing off some of the particularly moral ones.
• Sanity Meter: The Mind gauge acts as both this and a Mana Meter simultaneously, as in the original. If at any point it empties entirely, your character becomes panophobic, hobbling their abiltiy to dodge attacks and granting every single foe in the game a 50% physical damage boost against them.
• Saw Blades of Death: Table saw blades may sometimes be found as loot. While mainly used to make a Meat Grinder, you can also throw them in combat, which is useful if you don't have time to equip a weapon (or don't have arms in the first place).
• Schmuck Bait:
  • Just like in the first game, you can jump down the toilet hole. If you were stupid enough to do so, there is clearly no way out of the toilet, leaving you to starve, take your own life, or return to the title screen.
  • If you kill a contestant near Karin, she'll hold you at gunpoint, rather than restrain you physically the way the other 4 contestants who hold you accountable for murder do. You're given the option to attack her, rather than struggle, and she'll blow your brains out for an immediate game over if you do.
  • A fairly cruel example can occur with the Talking Board you can find in the orphanage. Using it in an area near the train can indirectly lead you to an instant death spike pit that is otherwise hidden from view.
  • When you finally reach the Hollow Tower Per'kele told you about, you find it's the scene of a massacre, are told you have a very bad feeling about it, and party members will actively warn you about the dangerous occult energies surrounding it. Go ahead and touch it anyway? Every party member will immediately be transformed into their moonscorched monster form, potentially making you face three minibosses in a row.
  • The spell "Inverse Crown of Thorns", the last one you can recieve from Alll-Mer, costs nothing to cast and says that the pain it induces might bring you closer to him. It induces pain, all right… in the form of the giant metal crown that messily bursts from your character's head. "It seems that the crown of Alll-Mer was too heavy for you."
• Sequel Hook: The ascension of the Machine God Logic hints at a future game set in the modern era.
• Shoot Out the Lock: If you have a trenchgun, you can unlock the gates of the Old Town by shooting the lock in the overworld.
• Shotguns Are Just Better: The trenchgun has a low availability of ammo, but it can stun enemies (preventing them from shooting back or getting into combat), and it tends to kill most mooks in 2-3 shots. A slug from it can also serve as a makeshift key for Old Town's gate in a pinch.
• Shout-Out:
  • The initial dialogue when you leave the train will have Karin attempt to prove her credentials by saying "I've covered wars, you know."
  • If you use the Intimidate skill on Needles, a clown miniboss found early in the game, you can choose to ask him "Why so serious?" It makes him furious.
    • Adding to the details mentioned in the Homage entry above about how Needles resembles Art The Clown, if you cut off his arm, he pulls a gun on you and shoots.
  • One of the bosses is a sergal, a species from the Vilous setting/manga series.
  • The 'Man in Dreams' Flyer, which you can randomly find lying around the town, is a clear reference to This Man. They even include an eerie depiction, and ask you to contact 'us' if you've dreamt of him or if you can help identify him. Curiously enough, we actually can: the Man in Dreams depicted in the flyer is Per'kele, the same guy who "saved" you from the Janitor's sweatshop during the intro sequence and the man behind the festival.
  • The bookstore in Prehevil carries books such as "The Count Dragul of Lyrra", "Nineteen Eighty-Five", "The Little King", "A Tree Grows in Rondon", and "Leaves of Blue Grass".
  • If you talk to Jeeves at the museum, he'll tell you he'd love to introduce you to his acquaintances, but he does not know where they went. He then asks you to greet them if you find them, and that you would know who they are when you see them. The people in question would be the Sun Priestess, the Red Devil, and the Happy Mask Salesman.
  • The Older God Vinushka is named after the song of the same name by Dir en grey, and the logo of the game is based off the album art of UROBOROS, which contained the song.
• Sinister Minister: The Decrepit Priests, who were once the town's ministers, were responsible for the abuses at the orphanage and condemning many of Prehevil's moonscorched residents to its Old Town slums. By the events of the game, they have become twisted, mutated brutes with Slasher Smiles. If the party falls to them, the player will be crucified in the Old Town square with their legs cut off.
• Sinister Scythe: Sickles serve their role as the second-worst weapon of the game, although they're still a substantial improvement over the knife. They're also used by some of the old town's villagers.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: If a party member dies or permanently leaves your party, all of their equipment will be gone. You can also obtain their loot drops only if you killed them in combat; any other death (including killing them with the bonesaw) will not allow for that.
• Someone Has to Die: Activating Logic and thus cancelling the titular festival, allowing everyone remaining to walk away with their lives, requires whoever goes into the White Bunker where Logic resides to be absorbed into the artificial green. Only two playable characters are capable of doing so before the others begin to die off — there is no way for all 14 to survive.
• Spikes of Doom: Spike pits are hidden beneath fallen leaves in various parts of the forest. If the player falls into one, it's Game Over.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: The Blood Sword (associated with Alll-Mer) and the Longinus (associated with the Sulfur God) both create powerful weapons that only last for the duration of the current battle.
• Sprint Meter: You have one for dashing. While it's typically pretty generous (so as to help you speed through empty areas), you lose stamina significantly faster when spotted by an enemy.
• Starter Gear Staying Power:
  • While the starting clothes of the contestants are the worst at protecting against physical attacks, they tend to have higher fire and/or otherwordly protection than most armors you can find later on. As such, they're the best choice when facing down spell-casting enemies.
  • Abella's pipe wrench remains relevant even to the end, as her Wrench Throw skill is one of the few guaranteed stuns. It's perfectly possible to go through the entire game without equipping anything else on her.
  • If you start with a firearm, it will always work adequately well for killing enemies in the overworld, as few enemies are Immune to Bullets.
• Stealth Pun: The Bellend enemy has the ability to harden itself and its two main attacks are a thrusting attack (with a spear) and a choke attack. No points for guessing what it looks like.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Nothing in Prehevil is truly Immune to Bullets, excepting the ghosts who are otherwise impervious to nearly all forms of physical damage. Some enemies will play at being unaffected by your shots, only for each of them to die to concentrated fire anyway if you're persistent. Even the Kaiser will fall if you empty enough rounds into him in his boss fight, despite seemingly shrugging off Pavel's assasination attempt earlier in the game, suggesting he'd be susceptible too if the player were ever afforded an opportunity to gun him down on the overworld.
• Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: In Masochism Mode, the Tes'tich Table, used to access the Hexen for character development, in the orphanage that is normally only intact on Easy(er) Mode is in proper working order and fully functional, an unusually merciful addition to the difficulty. The moment you finish with it, the Gull Brothers will show up, smash it to prevent you from using it again, and likely corner and force you into a battle given the cramped room the Tes'tich Table's remains are in. Better hope the skills you learned from using it made you beefy or crafty enough to slay or dodge them!
• Taken from a Dream: Despite the intro seemingly being a dream, you can still take the Janitor's rust-colored pearls and kassara. Getting the latter item, in particular, will cause your character to get shivers down their spine, as they realize the implications.
• Talking Is a Free Action: While normally averted (as talking requires the protagonist to spend a turn), the Diplomacy skill of Karin will make you open up each fight by talking.
• Talking the Monster to Death: While it also requires you winning a coin flip event, you can make Vile accidentally kill itself. By using the Talk command, and subsequently insisting that you cannot understand what they're saying multiple times, you effectively annoy the enemy enough for them to poison themselves with the very weapon they're wielding against you.
• Tamer and Chaster: Compared to the first game, the amount of nudity has been greatly toned down, with the number of graphically nude enemies being relatively lower, and there being a reduced amount of sex/rape scenes. The "Marriage" mechanic has also been removed, though it's still present in the story as The Centaur and possibly Father Hugo.
• Technically-Living Zombie: The moonscorched can be considered this, as they were turned into monsters, and are (usually) murderous towards the non-moonscorched. However, they're still alive, and they tend to remain sapient enough to talk and use firearms. There are also several crazed moonscorched who appear the closest to ghouls — unarmed, badly injured, and fighting with a combination of scratching and bites.
• That Was Not a Dream: Though the intro has your character wondering if it was a dream or not, they still retain any items obtained in it. Killing the Janitor and taking his kassara will also cause your character to get cold shivers down their spine, likely due to how it increases the implication of the whole thing being real.
• The Lost Lenore: Elise, the Baron's daughter, for Daan.
• There Can Be Only One: The festival demands that only one contestant remains standing by the end.
• Timed Mission: The player only has three days to complete their mission. Resting at a bed (one of the only ways to save) will advance time: first to the next morning, then afternoon, then nighttime. Each timeskip will cause things to change, and may result in missed opportunities.
• Token Minority: O'saa is the only dark-skinned character in the game (implied to have East African origins), Tanaka is the only Asian character, and Marina is the only transgender character.
• Took a Shortcut: Rushing to Tunnel 7 straight away will result in you seeing Tanaka being decapitated by Needles, even though Tanaka himself stays behind you initially.
• Treacherous Checkpoint: The player can often save the game by sleeping at a bed (except in Masochism mode). However, several beds may have negative consequences:
  • Sleeping in the Woodsman's house will result in the Woodsman attacking the party if he's still alive.
  • Sleeping in the house in Old Town may end in a pipe-wielding villager attacking the party.
  • If playing as Abella, sleeping in the bed in the Mayor's house can result in Caligura attempting to rape her, which will trigger a combat encounter. In a bit of an inversion, doing the same as Marcoh will result in a confrontation with Caligura. Despite the extensive dialogue trees involved, here, you have to actively choose to attack him for a fight to happen, and given how much weaker Caligura is than Marcoh, doing so is ultimately to your benefit.
  • Sleeping in the above place as any character whilst the decrepit priest on the second floor is still alive will result in you being forced into a confrontation with them.
  • Sleeping in any of the beds in the Moldy Apartments will result in an instant Game Over. Though the game gives a fair warning before.
• Trial-and-Error Gameplay: Progressing in this game without a guide requires constant failure and experimentation. It's not entirely clear how to gain new skills or affinity with the game's gods for starters, and many combat encounters are puzzles to be solved rather than brute forced through.
• Überwald: Even before the festival, Prehevil was an awful place to live in, being ruled by dark priests who enforced backwards traditions and abused children in the orphanage, as well as having a lot of weird or even murderous people (such as a Serial Killer managing the hotel, or an insane sulfur cultist in one of the apartments). After the war and the festival, it became outright hostile, full of monsters and corpses.
• Unnaturally Looping Location: The Museum loops as one goes through it, turning a simple layout into a confusing maze.
• Victor Gains Loser's Powers: Killing a fellow contestant will gain you their soul, allowing your party to learn the corresponding skills.
• Videogame Caring Potential: You can go out of your way to save the contestants, even the more unpleasant ones. You won't get any reward for saving the non-recruitables, but they do get shown in the end screen.
• Videogame Cruelty Potential: You can also simply attack any contestant whenever they're not in your party, so as to take their soul and get closer to the B/C endings.
• Videogame Cruelty Punishment: Murdering a contestant in the train/PRHVL Bop while some other contestants are present (who aren't currently in the party) will get you grabbed and tied up with no possibility of resisting, with you escaping only on day 3 with severe starvation and a lot of lost time. Any party members will also refuse to do anything in such a battle until they're attacked.
• Vodka Drunkenski: With alcohol still being the primary Mind recovery item, and Bohemia, where Prehevil is located, being parallel for Czechia, it's easy to see the trope applying. And for bonus points, vodka itself gives you the best healing of all alcohol available.
• Wall of Weapons: The Speakeasy of PRHVL Bop has one of these. Unfortunately, most of the guns are broken, so you can only grab a few, and little ammo is available.
• Warp Zone: The "golden gate" ability allows you to open the eponymous golden gates in Rher's alternate dimensions, bringing the party to a room where they can access any other golden gate present throughout the game.
• Weird Currency:
  • Contestant heads, which are used to buy books from Pocketcat, though you can also dupe him with doppelganger heads.
  • Rust-colored pearls, meanwhile, can be used to buy items from the Radiating One once you summon him. And for some reason, potentially stun perpetually the Decrepit Priests. They become enthralled if you give them one and will be stunned until you attack them and won't move if you leave the battle. Though the one at the Mayor's Manor will give chase through the streets if you leave the building. Good luck farming them from Ronteal nests, though.
  • Silver Shillings are a rare item that you can steal from August, Rancid the Sergal, and Rher. Despite its description claiming it's a much more valuable coin for the elites of Prehevil, it serves no purpose in game and cannot be used as currency nor sold as treasure.
• Wham Episode: Day 3 contains two such moments:
  • If you rescue Henryk, bring him to PRHVL Bop, and sleep to the day 3 morning, you'll be told of many contestants dying. Once you check the bar, it turns out that Henryk has poisoned everyone in the bar, then ran off to get moonscorched at the mayor's manor.
  • Once you sleep to the night, it'll turn out that any human party members will have abandoned your party with all their gear, leaving you alone in Prehevil. Checking around will reveal that every other contestant is moonscorched by now.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The train personnel are stated to have disappeared before the passengers of the train became contestants and woke up from the shared dream. There is no explanation on what happened to them, however, even in Ending A, which has the train depart Prehevil.
• What the Hell, Player?: Attacking a fellow contestant will have your party members call out how unnecessary it is, with them refusing to participate until attacked. Some contestants, if they witness the murder, will also restrain you while calling out your murderous behavior.
  • Strangely averted if you go out of your way to kill Henryk on day 2 morning while he's on the train. Absolutely nobody will notice or care about the corpse. You can even strike a friendly conversation with Olivia, who is right there, and she won't even comment on how you just ended a man in front of her. At least if you go the other way around and kill Olivia, Henryk will have a line about choosing to ignore what just happened, and to "live and let live".
• With This Herring: All you have at a start is a basic weapon and maybe a few bullets (or even just a knife), some meager supplies, and your starting clothes that barely protect against anything. This is justified by the fact that most of the characters didn't expect the festival, and while O'saa did expect it, he was coming in a hurry from a disastrous expedition, leaving him no time to prepare.
• Worst Aid:
  • As in the first game, amputations are done without anesthesia or even a tourniquet, using a rusty saw of dubious cleanliness. It gets even more ridiculous here, however, as you may have used the same saw to remove dozens of heads, making it a wonder as to how it cures infections instead of making it worse.
  • If you want or are desperate, you can use dirty toilet paper to remove bleeding. Of course, it has a high chance of causing an infection, since you're literally putting feces into your wounds, but infections don't stack, so you may safely use it if you already have an infection.
• Wrench Whack: The wrench is one of the better generic melee weapons, as it combines decent damage with a chance to stun. It becomes even better in the hands of Abella, who can learn the skill Wrench Toss to throw it for huge damage and possibly stun. Remember to equip it after every throw, as it will bounce back to your inventory and leave Abella disarmed until her next action.
• You Fight Like a Cow: Talking to an enemy may give the opportunity to taunt them, sometimes resulting in a comeback. The Intimidate skill may make your taunts actually weaken the enemy.

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