Video Game / Last Scenario

From left to right: Lorenza, Thorve, Ethan, Hilbert, Randolph, and Matilda.

"This — is a hero's work?"

Hilbert is an idealistic village boy, the self-declared (and much ridiculed) protector of his hometown, and an aspiring hero. One day, he is approached by a mysterious robed woman named Zawu, who tells him that he is a descendant of the hero Alexander and destined to become a hero himself. So begins a legendary quest to defeat an ancient, evil power and bring peace to the world.

From there the story goes pear-shaped.

The basic premise of Last Scenario is to start out with the most cliched CRPG plot imaginable, and then twist it into something else. Before long, the cliches start to fall apart at an alarming rate, and what emerges is a long, compelling plot involving (among other things) international politics, betrayal, and the occasional bit of geology.

A freeware RPG by SCF, Last Scenario can be downloaded at SCF's website. While you're at it, check out Exit Fate by the same guy.

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Provides Examples Of:

• Abandoned Laboratory: The Third Seal when you re-enter it.
• Ability Required to Proceed: Crystallized energy, which requires the Bergheim Ray to be destroyed.

• Action Bomb: Cubes, and their stronger variant Vorpal Cubes.

• Air-Vent Passageway: How Phantom and Ethan left the biorite facility. The party later uses it to sneak back in.

• And I Must Scream: Ethan spent 3 years trapped in biorite, semi-conscious but unable to move or act. That's bad enough, but then the party meets Tiamat, who spent the past 300 or so years sealed away under the Ether Well. No wonder she's so deranged.
• Antidote Effect: Mostly inverted due to the sparseness and importance of spellcard slots and low cost of status cure items, which make it likely for you to have 99 of each one third into the game.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Any of a number of things that run on biorite.
• Armor and Magic Don't Mix: Armor is split into light and heavy variants; casters such as Thorve can only wear light armor. Interestingly, however, fighters such as Matilda can only wear heavy armor and thus have the opposite problem (cripplingly low magic defense).
• Armor Is Useless: Due to an oversight in the way defensive stats are handled. Defensive stats on their own do nothing; they merely influence a second defense value that involves percentile reduction. However, due to the way this is scaled, defensive stats do virtually nothing until late in the game, and since armor only augments defensive stats it's nothing but a money sink for most of the game (this may be a reason for the game's intense difficulty).
• Armor-Piercing Attack: The spells Laser, Rage, and Gamma.
• Art Evolution: SCF's drawing blog occasionally contains Last Scenario character art. It advanced quite a bit from the Character Portraits found in the game.

• The Atoner: All of the Elysium bosses, as they're the four "heroes" who committed atrocities in the war 300 years ago. They regret all they've done, and want nothing more than to right their wrongs and pass on peacefully.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • The Gamma spellcard deals huge damage, but is rather unreliable and has a huge MP cost and an unpleasant stat malus.
  • The Fury spellcard heals your entire party, and pretty well, too. The problem? It makes them berserk. The crisis spell heals even more but causes confusion. Again, though, it can become Awesome Yet Practical if you equip the right status protection...
  • The Ruin equipment that you can steal from smilie type enemies are all phenomenally powerful, but are all cursed in some way or another. The Ruin Mask is poisoned, for example. Under certain circumstances it can become Awesome Yet Practical:
    • Ruin Mask increases stats, but has the permanent Poison status. However, if you equip Sacral Gown, which is obtained by trading Lorenza's Hex Tile, Auto-Regen will cancel out Poison damage and keep the Regen status. You also get a nice Acquired Poison Immunity.
    • Ruin Gear absorbs all elemental damage, but confuses the wearer. If you equip Party Hat, it will cause enemies to attack the wearer. Confused allies do the same. Therefore, if you equip a weapon with elemental damage, you get a "Regen". Which you can combine with actual Regen. Moreover, if you give it to someone like Randolph, you get a very, very annoying for enemies Stone Wall.
  • The Unholy Mitre greatly boosts your stats but makes you take damage from healing.
• Back Tracking: Returning to the Biorite Facility ruins nets you a Hex tile.

• Beef Gate: While you can technically enter the four Towers early on, don't even think about going in there until much later, as the enemies are usually at least ten levels higher than you. A good rule of thumb is to leave each tower alone until you can access the next one.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Antagonist example: When Matilda is about to kill Tazar, Felgorn arrives in a flash of light and strikes her down.
  • On the good guy side, at one point Ethan shows up out of nowhere to stop Castor killing Lorenza.
• Bishōnen Line: The penultimate form of the final boss is a deformed slug-like block thing, and the ultimate one, while still a One-Winged Angel, is much more humanoid again.
• Blatant Lies: "Grandmaster Ortas was killed by the enemy." As Keltena's Let's Play put it, "And by 'the enemy,' I mean me, personally."
• Block Puzzle: On Grey Peak, complete with Frictionless Ice. The four Towers are fond of these as well, only with pillars.
• Blood from the Mouth: The sign that Selene and Ortas are screwed.
• Bonus Dungeon: Oh so many. There's almost one for every Side Quest. The most notable ones are Gate to Elysium, where you can fight the 4 Heroes or the Black Mausoleum (housing several powerful bosses).
• Bonus Level of Heaven: The Gate to Elysium is themed like this.
• Boss Banter: Hyperion's "DIE! DIE! DIE!" and "I'll stop you!"
• Boss in Mook Clothing: Some of the smileys are significantly stronger than the other enemies you encounter in the area they're in. Also, the Black Dragon from the Black Mausoleum, and one enemy type for each tower.
• Brick Joke: One of the books lying around at the Biorite Facility is a report specifically on Ethan, and it mentions that, "Physical change in subject is largely superficial." A dungeon or two later, you learn what they meant: he used to be blond.
• Broken Bridge: The "energy crystals" are used to prevent you from going to the second and third Entalar seals (and the Tower of Punishment) before going to the first. They're not very hard to get rid of once you do, though.
• Cap: Interestingly, while levels cap at 99, HP caps at 9999 and MP caps at 999, there does not seem to be a damage cap, though there are only few attacks in the game that can ever get into five-digit damage.
• Character Portrait: Many characters have alternate portraits as well.
• Chess Motifs: Most enemies and all bosses in the Black Mausoleum are themed after chess pieces.
• Chest Monster: Those infamous killer crystals!
• Chromatic Arrangement: Blue for the Imperial solders, green for the Royal soldiers and yellow for the troops of the Republic.
• Circling Birdies: The symbol of the Chaos effect.

• Climax Boss: Almost everything that isn't a Giant Space Flea from Nowhere.
• Cognizant Limbs: The Wall Sentinel's faces, Thanatos' arms and the Fire Dragon's wings.
• Conspiracy Theorist: A minor NPC, Played for Laughs.
  Hans: Don't believe everything they tell you. There's a vast conspiracy manipulating all of this. That's right. Aliens from another planet are the real power behind this world.
• Contrived Coincidence: Ethan just happened to be the one that killed Thorve's friend.
• Cosmetic Award: The Sign of Eternity, a useless item awarded for defeating the hardest boss in the game.
• Cool Ship: The Brunhild, which is then succeeded by the even more ridiculously cool Brunhild II.
• Creepy Child: The Hex-playing and grey-haired little girl in Herzog.
• Cutscene Power to the Max: Lorenza instantly vaporizes a soldier trying to grab her arm with a single lightning spell in the scene she's introduced in, but in the following fight, you need quite a few of them to defeat one.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: A lot of the Giant Space Fleas From Nowhere.
• Damage-Increasing Debuff: The crisis cast of Aquabeam lowers the victim's magic defense. It's the only debuff the player characters can inflict, actually.
• Decon-Recon Switch: The game explains how Hilbert's excessive idealism makes him a gullible idiot and the people everyone see as Ideal Heroes aren't, then turns around and hits Hilbert with the Character Development stick until he develops enough common sense to actually accomplish his dreams and help people.
• Defeat Means Friendship: People will play Hex with you in areas you just conquered.
• Defend Command: Appears to be a stock RPG Maker implementation, reducing incoming damage to the character using it.
• Degraded Boss: The Prototypes, who are presumably subjects of the Artificial Key project.

• Disc-One Final Dungeon: The Temple of Gaia.
• Disc-One Nuke: A relatively minor one: if you play a ton of Hex, it's possible to get 10 Brigand tiles and trade them in for a Steal spellcard before you even leave for Farin Island. As a reward for being way too dedicated, you can steal a unique weapon for Matilda from the boss that's stronger than anything you can get until about fifteen levels later.
• Doomed Hometown: Lorenza is forced to leave the village she lives in by its mayor to avoid this.
• Door to Before: The Black Mausoleum, Temple of Gaia, and Entalar Prison, though the latter's doesn't bring you back to the entrance.
• Down the Drain: The Underground Waterway.
• Dual Boss: Helio and Earp together. Also Prototypes 4 and 5 and the necromancer with the Swamp Beast. The entire Omega Team is a Triple Boss.

• Duel Boss: At one point, you have four of these in a row, with different characters. The only one that's really a boss is Drakovic, though; the rest are Elite Mooks.
• Dungeon Town: What's left of Cromwell only contains some treasure and an undead monstrosity. There's also a segment on Pargon Island, where you clear out your old home village from bandits occupying it and oppressing the population, and the Entalar quest.
• Easy Levels, Hard Bosses: This says a lot considering most encounters require your full attention and careful maintenance of your resources.
• Emergency Energy Tank: Orbs. And you will need them.
• Encounter Bait: The Siren and Lure accessories.
• Encounter Repellant: The Camo Cape and Invisibility Ring accessories.
• Enemy Summoner: Guard Pillars, Watch Discs and Defensive Drones. Guard Pillars call others of their type, while Watch Discs and Defensive Drones alert guards or watch dogs.
• Equipment Spoiler: You will sometimes find weapons of a type that isn't used by any of your characters yet at a hex trading post. Lampshaded in Keltena's Let's Play:
  I am happy beyond belief to finally have access to a Hex trading post. Although I'm not sure why they think we'd be interested in throwing knives.
• Experience Booster: The Mental Booster.
• Everything Trying to Kill You: There are many strange random enemies, including mushrooms, dolls, wood walls^note :which actually don't try to kill you, being the random encounter equivalent of a Joke Character. They have no attack and HP on par with a boss, so they just stand there while the heroes smash them, pots of gold^note which do counter-attack, but naturally drop lots of gold upon defeat, moles, two very different types of idols, emoticons, and in a Bonus Dungeon biting "Killer Crystals" disguised as save crystals with a slightly different color. The bosses are even stranger: you will e.g. come to fight a wall with an engraved face, not to mention the Zeitgeist, which is basically a big clock. Don't forget the Tomes and Keys either (which are Exactly What It Says on the Tin) .
• Exposition Break: A considerable amount, considering this is a very story-heavy game. There is even one that lasts around 45 minutes... which is followed by a save point, and then another cutscene.
• Face Palm: Matilda does this in a couple of cutscenes.
• Fate Worse than Death: Tiamat considers being sealed for centuries this and hates Barasur for doing so instead of killing her. Also Tazar's punishment.
• Fantastic Racism: Turned around from its usual form; while humans tend to distrust the Havali, it's the Havali who really hate humanity. And with rather good reason.

• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The main - and first - three elements of attack spells.
• Final Boss Preview: Sort of a boss preview (leave out the "final"), when Felgorn is attacked by Hilbert the first time.
• Fixed Damage Attack: A mushroom Palette Swap in the Entalar Caves has an attack called "One-Hundred Spores".
• Flunky Boss: The final boss and the hardest optional boss, though the latter revives its helpers only once.
• Flying Seafood Special: Flying Fish. In a forest.
• Four-Philosophy Ensemble: Hilbert is the Optimist, Matilda is the Cynic, Thorve is the Realist, Lorenza is the Conflicted, and the other three are all, each for a different reason, Apathetic.
• Gambit Pileup: There's lots and lots of people manipulating things from behind the scenes for their own gain, though this trope lessens as the series goes on and most of them start dropping dead.
• Game-Breaking Bug: If you just try to play the game on Vista or Windows 7, no text is displayed (some issue with the font). There are two workarounds though, one of which seems to be always successful.
  • After you beat the magic beasts that Castor summons on the Rosehart bridge, you're told to go back to Southbridge, but you can actually keep going and end up in Northbridge after the Global Airship is captured. The glitch also prevents the next dungeon from showing up on the map, rendering the game unwinnable.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • The boss battle against Ortas. By the time you fight him, he has a gigantic stab wound, Blood from the Mouth, is very mentally unstable, and is quite clearly on the verge of death. And yet he has over 10,000 hit points and can toss out devastating attacks every few rounds. Hate to think what he'd have been like at full power... Though you can probably thank Critical Existence Failure for that. What's most odd about this is if you scan Helio during your first fight with him, his max HP is 3000, but his HP is only 1000 at the start of the battle, since before the fight he got smacked by a rockslide. It was odd that SCF didn't do the same thing with Ortas.
  • A small thing near the beginning: it is mentioned that dying people turning into spectres is an extremely rare case requires the person to be died under extreme regret. But a bit later, spectres are randomly-encountered enemies in Alexander's tomb.
• Genius Loci: The Cluster and by extension Biorite itself. And let's not forget the "Planetary Consciousness"...
• Giant Space Flea from Nowhere:
  • The Marid King, the Viviones, the Earth Golem, Pestilence... the list goes on. There are many, many plot-unrelated boss monsters in this game.
  • The Marid King is actually (just barely) a subversion, as you find out soon afterwards that it's the reason nobody was there to meet you at the start of the dungeon like there was supposed to (nobody wanted to take the risk and try to fight their way past it to get to you.)
  • The boss fight against Saraswati (or rather, the sorceror possessing her) comes out of nowhere and is started by just talking to an NPC who normally just asks to play Hex with you.
  • Planetary Conciousness is the mega mac daddy of Giant Space Fleas From Nowhere, just suddenly appearing out of nowhere on the World Map (with no explanation as to why you're apparently fighting the planet itself) if you beat the game with all 100 hex tiles.
• Good Republic, Evil Empire: It starts out looking this way, but it's quickly subverted. Turns out it's Gray-and-Grey Morality of the more idealistic kind (i.e., being manipulated by a third party).
• Gory Discretion Shot: It's partially this (or at least a "massacre discretion shot", since Last Scenario's sprite style isn't prone to being gory anyway) and partially a "spoiler discretion shot" when the Northern Outpost is singlehandedly taken over by Felgorn.
• Gratuitous German: The imperial capital is called Herzog (duke), and a mining town is called Kohlen ("coals"; the word "Kohle" doesn't actually have a plural, though), among many others.
• Gratuitous Greek: Castor's second and third phases: "Alpha" and "Omega" Castor.

• Guide Dang It!: There's a larger version of the world map, with locations marked. It's possible to play the game through multiple times and not realize this. (Press the A key on the overworld, if you're wondering.)
• Hat of Power: Helio wears a speed-increasing hair ribbon, and Flynn has a beret protecting against some detrimental effects. Also, there are items like the Arch-Angel's Halo, which immunizes against all negative status effects and gives huge defence boosts, the Spring Hat, massively increasing HP, and the Crystalline Crown (automatically P-Shielding).
• Healing Shiv: Elemental weapons or strikes can be used to "attack" an ally absorbing this element.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Rather spectacularly averted. Hilbert uses a bow, and the rest of your party uses, in order, spears, magic crystals, staves, axes, and throwing knives. It's not until the very last Player Character joins you that the party gets a sword-user.
• Heroic Lineage: The story starts out with Hilbert finding out that he's the descendant of the great hero Alexander. Later, this is subverted. By Playing with a Trope, Alexander later declares the entire party his descendants, not in blood but in spirit. Heroic Adoption?
• Heroic Sacrifice: Alison throwing herself and Tiamat out of the Lemuria to save the party from the explosion. Doubles as a Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Hidden Elf Village: Subverted. At first it seems that the Havali are living in one of these somewhere, and Lorenza was taken out for unknown reasons. But eventually we learn that the Havali are actually the "demons" from the legend, and the ones who've woken up are really, really pissed about being attacked three hundred years ago for no good reason. A few are some of the primary antagonists as a result.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Melchior is level 99, either immune to or absorbs every element, does thousands of HP worth of damage with his normal attacks, and his Regen spell restores HP in the tens of thousands per round. It is possible to beat him (though very, very, very unlikely), but you're supposed to flee the battle, after which he gives the party a special, unique spellcard.
• HP to One:
  • Thanatos has one that hits your entire party. So do the Black King and the third Elysium boss. The King's one even ignores all shielding spells.
  • The Rage crisis cast Erosion and the Chi crisis cast Transfer do this to the user, as a prize for great damage or mana restoration.
• Ideal Hero: As you can see from the page quote, this is one of the most prominent tropes the game deconstructs.
• In a World…: The introductory text is very much like this. Though it contains hardly anything but Blatant Lies.
• Infinity +1 Sword: Interestingly, there's everything but an Infinity Plus One Weapon. The thing coming closest to them are the "ultimate" weapons of each kind, which just are unique and deal most damage.
  • Infinity Plus One Accessory: The Hero's Soul, which increases all stats by 50 and grants immunity to all elements. Can only be equipped on Hilbert, though. Arguably, the Gold Sceptre for everyone else, which just grants elemental immunity.
    • Infinity Minus One Accessory: Warding Charms, which make the wearer immune to all status ailments. You will need them if you want to take on the Bonus Bosses.
  • Infinity Plus One Helm: The Arch-Angel's Halo, only obtained by defeating the second-hardest optional boss. Grants huge physical and magical defense boosts, and grants immunity to all status ailments.
    • Infinity Minus One Helm: The Crystalline Crown, auto-P-Shielding, and the Spring Hat, increasing the wearer's max HP.
  • Infinity Plus One Armour: The Lord-Sorcerer's Gown, which grants a significant intellect boost and halves MP cost.
    • Infinity Minus One Armour: The Sacral Gown, which grants auto-regeneration of HP, and Mashimizu's Robe, which gives an extreme speed boost.

• Interface Spoiler: Two companions who never are in your playable party? Conspicuous.
• Involuntary Group Split: In Entalar, an earthquake hits that splits the party into 4 disparate groups, and you wind up going through most of the arc without Ethan or Lorenza.
• It's All Upstairs From Here: The four Towers, although they're Bonus Dungeons.
• La Résistance: The "Republic Freedom Army".
  Drakovic: If the Kingdom thinks they can take control of our country, I'll make their lives as miserable as possible.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia: Biorite can do this to humans.
• Last Disc Magic: Gamma and, to a lesser extent, Vortex.
• The Last Title: The name of the game.

• Leaked Experience: Characters not currently in the active party still gain experience from boss fights.
• Leitmotif: Thorve, Lorenza, Zawu, Ortas, and Alexander. And Bergheim gets one that doesn't fit his personality in the slightest.
• Lethal Joke Item: The Trick spellcard, pretending to be detrimental with its uses: The normal cast inflicts confusion on the user, and the Crisis cast kills them. Why use it then? Because wearing it boosts almost all of your stats by a huge amount.
• Let's Split Up, Gang!: Happens at many points, but especially prominent in the Entalar storyline, which starts out by splitting your seven people into four groups and slowly reunites them.
• Level Grinding: Averted, thankfully. Though the bosses are usually really hard, it's more a matter of "you didn't equip the right equipment/spellcards, use a different setup and try again" than "go back and grind levels for an hour".
• The Lifestream: Biorite. Castor states that it's where all life originated.
• Life Drain: A low-level spellcard. The crisis cast is a Mana Drain.
• Limit Break: Interestingly, the spells, not the characters, have these. Whenever a character's "Crisis" bar fills up from being whacked around enough, they can use a spell's special "Crisis" ability, though it usually costs a lot of MP. ^note Party members can attack each other, but to prevent abuse, this won't count into the crisis score. As a Final Fantasy Shout-Out, one of these spells (Crisis cast of Bolster, a Desperation Attack) is called Limit Break.
• Look Behind You: During the first arc, where Thorve and Lorenza are trying to infiltrate the Herzog art gallery. The guards say "No one is allowed to pass!", and Thorve says "Can't pass? Then who's that person over there?"

• Mana Burn: Mindblow.
• Mana Drain: The crisis casts of Life Drain and Mindblow, and the signature ability of the Brain Leech enemy line.
• Marathon Boss: Almost all of the bosses have incredibly high health that can take quite a while to whittle down. The fact that they're constantly tossing attacks that can put one or more characters in critical health doesn't help things. Two bosses take the cake, though: the most difficult Bonus Boss in the main game, who has a whopping 200,000 hit points, and the New Game Plus boss, which has one million.
• Meaningful Name: Lots — quite a few pages ago, there is a gigantic comment about name etymology here. Of note is "Entalar", which means "adapted", "appropriate", or "adequate", "Castor", which comes from a Greek word that means "shine" or "excel", and Saraswati, who is named after the Hinduist goddess of arts and learning (and think about her way of mastering Hex and ensuing Character Development!).
• Metal Slime: The "smiley" enemies. They give hefty amounts of experience, and can drop very powerful, albeit cursed, equipment.
• Mini-Game: Hex, a collectible board game that has taken the game world by storm. Hex tiles, once won from NPCs or random encounters, can be traded in for items.

• Money Grinding: Money is sucked by the costs of new equipment very fast, so it's almost certain that you'll need to do this at one point or another. The experience gotten along with it doesn't hurt either.
• Money Spider: Played straight. Additionally, some item drops are rather weird... why the hell can you steal rubber boots from some sort of magical thunder deer?
• Mook Maker: The guard devices Watch Disc and Defensive Drone are a justified version of this, alerting pillars or guards.
• Mutually Exclusive Power-Ups: The last two pages of Hex tiles are unique "face" tiles of which only one copy exists anywhere (barring New Game Plus). They're the game's most powerful tiles, but can also be traded in for powerful items, ranging from huge heaps of stat increasers or high-end expendables to accessories that grant immunity to status effects or all elements, to armor that grants 500 hit points or auto-regeneration, to the most powerful weapon in the game for one of your characters. Many can be gotten nowhere else, but once you make the trade it's permanent, probably to prevent you from "borrowing" equipment.
• New Game Plus: However, in order to access it you need to beat the game after finding at least 90 different Hex tiles.
• News Travels Fast: At some points, the protagonists receive news while on a boat without encountering any other ship or messenger.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: No one among the heroes ever mentions directly that they caused Tiamat to be freed. Granted, it was involuntary, but since Lorenza already felt something wrong and decided to stay outside the chamber for this reason at first, maybe bringing her closer wasn't that great of an idea...
• Nintendo Hard: Many of the boss battles, although some dungeons are pretty dang hard even without that.
• Nominal Importance: Averted - all the characters have names, but everyone of any importance has a Character Portrait.
• Non-Damaging Status Infliction Attack: Enemies use them, such as the spectre using Blind Rage on a character.
• Non-Elemental: The Grenade line of items, and the spells Laser, Rage and Gamma.
• Non-Lethal Bottomless Pits: As a puzzle element in the Kohlen Mine, the First Seal and the Hall of Judgement, they in some cases transport you to other areas.
• Noob Cave: The Abandoned Copper Mine. Your objective is to find a lost cat, and your enemies are various kinds of weak animals. This is quite a contrast to the opening scroll, which prepared you for world-shaking happenings...
• NPC Roadblock: An accidental example is found in the Condor Library, and a few places contain entrances blocked off by guards.
• One Degree of Separation: Thorve, Felgorn, and Randolph's son Wolfram grew up and joined the army together. Wolfram was killed by a little boy, who turns out to have been Ethan trying to protect his older brother Castor. The random soldier who chased Thorve and Felgorn away from the boy was Zawu.
• One-Hit Kill: Various enemy attacks, most notably Hyperion's "Die! Die! Die!", will inflict instant death like a status effect unless their equipment prevents it, no questions asked.
• One-Time Dungeon:
  • The Biorite Facility. Unusual for a game in which hardly anything is Permanently Missable.
  • The forest where Helio's Villainous Breakdown/Psycho Serum freakout happens cannot be revisited after the boss fight there.
• Opening Scroll: Provides an Infodump about the backstory and mythology. The whole thing is wrong.
• Opening the Sandbox: The majority of the game's sidequests are only accessible right before the final dungeon, due to the fact that that's also when you get the Global Airship.
• Orphanage of Love: Zawu founded one about 14 years ago. Ethan, Castor and Flynn all grew up there.

• Our Monsters Are Weird: And how. The random enemies Yin and Yang, Belgugon, Ectoplasm, Starshine/Sirius Lux, Ripper, Belgugon, Tiahaunacu, Gerethog, and many others will make you say "What the heck was that?". Not to forget the Land Sharks, though Dungeons & Dragons had this kind of creature first. Many bosses are even weirder, like the Riftgate, Erdgeist, the Viviones, Yad-al-Jauza and the Strangelets.
• Paper Talisman: Spellcards probably are this.
• Party in My Pocket: Especially awkward in various cutscenes when Matilda is seemingly talking from Hilbert's pocket, including one in which he has his worldmap size on top of it!
• Permanently Missable Content: Several items that you can only get by stealing from bosses, as well as anything in the Biorite Facility, since you blow it up on your way out.
• Poison Mushroom:
  • Subverted by the Trick and Gamma spellcards, which are, in a way, two sides of the same coin. Trick's abilities are purely detrimental, with the base confusing the character and the Crisis cast killing them. However, it grants a huge boost to almost all of your stats. Gamma's abilities, on the other hand, are the strongest offensive spells in the game (see Awesome, but Impractical, above), but decrease most of a character's stats.
  • Played completely straight with the Ruin equipment, which inflicts a status ailment on whoever wears it — this cannot be prevented or cured in any way. Some of the status ailments make a character completely unusable, negating any potential advantage they might give.
• Post-End Game Content: The Planetary Consciousness.
• Precursors: Humans are descended from Havali that left the Imperial continent.
• Prepare to Die: Said by Felgorn after you are creamed by him in a Hopeless Boss Fight. You are saved by Thorve and Lorenza entering, and Thorve turns out to be an old acquaintance of Felgorn.
• Psycho Serum: Biorite, when used improperly, has this effect.
• Puzzle Boss
  • The Riftgate is completely immune to elemental damage and extremely resistant to physical attacks, making it nearly unbeatable unless you realize it takes full damage from Laser and non elemental single-use attack items(which can be stolen from certain enemies in the vincinity).
  • The Viviones, a group of five monsters that heal and revive each other in between blasting your party with spells, get much less annoying once you notice that each one only heals the one directly clockwise of it- if you kill one and Mindblow the one before it, it breaks the chain.
  • The second-hardest Bonus Boss, Alexander. You need to stack various means of damage protection on your sturdiest character and redirect all his attacks to them, or he will absolutely wreck you with That One Attack.
• Ragnarök Proofing
• Rainbow Pimp Gear: Lots of probably silly-looking equipment: rubber boots, a party hat, unisex dresses... Though you sadly can't see it.
• Random Encounters: In dungeons. However, it's possible to get items that prevent them.
• Rare Candy: The Capsules, one for each stat. All except speed capsules can be stolen from late-game enemies.
• Rare Random Drop: Several. For example, you can get a then-expensive polearm from the orcs in Braunwald Forest, but the chance is very low.
• Really Three Hundred Years Old: The Havali, though they normally live as long as humans.
• Redemption Demotion: Zawu can't use any of the skills she used against you as a boss once she joins your party. Justified in that her increased power came from the last energy of Entalar's barrier.
• Reduced MP Cost: The Lord-Sorcerer's Gown. Also inverted with the Spellcard Mod, which doubles MP cost but multiplies damage by 1.5.
• Revive Kills Zombie:
  • There are several undead monsters that are weak to recovery magic.
  • Although it won't cause a One-Hit Kill, there's often a specific spellcard that makes taking down a boss enormously easier. Perhaps most egregiously, the Riftgate is about three steps away from unbeatable unless you move Ethan's Laser spellcard to one of the mages and Beam Spam away. See the Your Mileage May Vary page for the That One Boss entry.
• Sad Battle Music: In the boss fight against Ortas and all of the Gate to Elysium bosses.
• Save Scumming: This is the way many players treat Hex: If they lose a tile, they just press F12 and return to the main menu.
• Save the Villain: Justified; two members of the party are his brother and his mentor/surrogate mother, and when Grauss suggests collapsing the island on top of Castor they state outright that they'll start killing people if anyone tries. Doubly so when Hilbert refuses to leave the biorite cluster without Castor thanks to a sudden attack of Chronic Hero Syndrome.
• Sequential Boss: The final one.
• Serious Business: Hex. No, really - it's all part of a crazy Gambit Roulette by an ancient sorcerer to obtain immortality.
• Ship Tease:
  • Lorenza/Ethan; they seem to be close, but the age difference makes a relationship unlikely.
  • Alison/Ethan.
  • Drakovic/Matilda, even though Matilda's already married.
  • Lorenza/Hilbert; Lampshaded.
    Matilda: Are we interrupting something?
• Shout-Out:
  • The rare Smiley enemies are from Something Awful.
  • Mittermeyer and Reuental stand around discussing fallen heroes, ambition and seizing power in the castle of Germany-inspired Herzog.
  • Drakovic's lecture on the importance of protecting democracy in the face of a benevolent autocracy is straight from the notes of Yang Wen-Li, as are his strategies and tactics.
  • In a town, there is a witch named Marisa and a maid named Sakuya.
  • The title of the game is a play on "Final Fantasy".
• Shrouded in Myth: Turns out most of the world's history is either incredibly slanted or flat-out lies. Especially regarding Alexander.
• Side Quest: Oh so many, though most of them are only accessible or doable right at the end.
• Smash Mook: Most of the stock RPG Maker enemies and their Palette Swap versions, low-rank Mooks and also some more memorable enemies like Killer Crystals or Black Pawns.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Grey Peak.
• Solemn Ending Theme: "Moji no dengon" by Sound Horizon.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: There are points in the game where one or more party members are unavailable. Usually they're not long, the exception being an entire arc without Lorenza and most of it without Ethan either once you reach Entalar, but it pays to unequip people who aren't in the active party, and to be careful who holds spellcards you can't do without, also, when beginning a New Game Plus.
• Spam Attack: The Dual Strike spellcard (the Quad Strike crisis spell even more). Magical versions are Rage and Vortex, as well as some attacks possessed by boss enemies.
• Status-Buff Dispel: Disenchant.
• Stock Video Game Puzzle: A Water Level Puzzle in the Waterway, an Invisible Floor Puzzle in the Hall of Judgement, and a Timed Switch Puzzle two other Bonus Dungeons, lots and lots of Block Puzzles of various types in the Towers, and a Frictionless Ice puzzle on Grey Peak.
• Stock Weapon Names: The ultimate weapons of most characters, and some others; for example, Ethan's ultimate weapon is the Ragnarok, Ortas wields the Lightbringer, and Castor's glaive is known as Lifetaker.
• Superboss: The game has several. Saraswati is fought at the end of a side-quest involving Hex. The Black Mausoleum has several (Black Rook, Black Queen and Black King). There are the 4 Heroes (Xolon, Lucien, Durile and Alexander), the last of whom is the hardest one on a normal playthrough; though he's surpassed by the Planetary Consciousness on New Game Plus. And those are just the notable ones!
• Swamps Are Evil: The Dark Marshes.
• Swirly Energy Thingy: The Riftgate. And it attacks you.
• Take Your Time:
  • The Big Bad is quite content to sit in the Very Definitely Final Dungeon while you run around clearing out Bonus Dungeons and playing Hex. Justified, though; he's literally waiting for the heroes.
  • Inverted in the Serinal Woods. No matter how much time it takes you to get through there, the Omega Team will always be on the run at the exact same spot.
• Tempting Fate:
  Gunther: What are you worried about, with no enemies in sight? You think they're just going to drop down from the sky?
  (ladder drops and Matilda's team climbs down)
• There Are No Therapists: Most of the plot could have been prevented had Ortas seen a grief counselor and Castor gotten some help with his dependency issues.
• They Plotted a Perfectly Good Waste: About the first quarter of the game is a Cliché Storm purposely... only to subvert everything afterwards.

• Timed Mission: Sections of both the Biorite Facility and the Third Seal if you revisit it, though for differing reasons.
• Title Theme Drop: Used as the BGM for the Temple of Gaia and the Geo Science Station's projector room.
• Too Awesome to Use:
  • Averted. In most boss battles, you will find yourself using those hard-found Soul Elixirs, Healing Orbs, and Meteor Shells you found during your trek through the dungeon if you want to live.
  • The "Throw" spellcard has a high damage potential, but most players won't actually exploit it since that requires permanently destroying valuable high-tier weapons.
• Training Boss: Melchior.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Varying this trope, during his biorite imprisonment, Ethan clinged to what he wanted to remember most and forgot his most traumatic memories.

• Trippy Finale Syndrome: The entire final dungeon seems to be designed from the ground up to confuse you as much as possible, although it's really deceptively simple to figure out. Then there's the background during the final boss battle and the interior of the biorite cluster...
• Two Scenes, One Dialogue: Three scenes, actually, of the Info Dump variety. It occurs in Entalar, where Alexander, Barasur, and Ortas tell your party members about what really happened in the Havali war.

• Unreliable Narrator: The opening scroll lies to you!
• Useless Useful Spell: Gamma. It can deal epic amounts of damage, but the random factor is extreme, the MP cost is horrible, and it decreases HP and strength of the caster.
• The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Biorite Cluster.
• Villainous Breakdown: Castor loses it bad after you beat him a second time. It reminds him of how powerless he was as a child that Ethan had to save him, and he's distraught that Ethan doesn't remember that he's Castor's older brother. It gets even worse after Helio sacrifices himself, which is something Castor blames his own weakness on.
• Villainous Valor: The Omega Team, when they're defending the unconscious Castor from the heroes. Bonus points go to Helio, who defies his alleged characterization in a You Shall Not Pass! moment.
• Wake-Up Call Boss: The Marid King is basically a little note to players. It reads, "You thought those were boss fights? This is a boss fight. Prepare to Die." And making it worse, there's no way to backtrack; if you didn't come in with enough supplies you've got no choice but to reset to an earlier save file.
• War Is Hell: One of the game's major themes.
• Weapon Specialization: Subverted. Aside from Lorenza and possibly Cool Sword user Zawu, no one in the party has a personality that fits the weapon they use.
  • The Archer is a Wide-Eyed Idealist Idiot Hero who tends to charge straight into everything.
  • The Improbable Weapon User is a laid-back and down-to-earth guy who is happy to support his superiors.
  • The spear user is a Hot-Blooded Sergeant Rock. The other one is the Big Bad.
  • The guy with an axe is a quiet stoic.
  • The knife-wielder is a Cool Old Guy scientist who occasionally gets distracted from the main objective by ruins and artifacts.
    • They do tend to have the corresponding battle role, however. The exceptions are Randolph, who's mainly defensive, and Ethan, whose focus stat is evasion of all things. And Thorve, though his gem-claw-thing isn't common enough to have an expected role.
• Wham Episode: The second trip to the Ether Well and conversation on the ship afterward pretty much mark the point where the plot makes a sharp turn into "Subvert ALL the tropes!" territory.

• Wham Line:
  • "Call for Zawu." Wait, the Mysterious Informant is working for the creepy guy who Augustus is reporting to? Oh, Crap!.
  • Ethan barely talks for the first quarter of the game. Then all of a sudden he drops this on us: "You aren't even related to Alexander."
  • After defeating Castor for the second time, he has a Villainous BSoD and says "Where... Where are you, brother? Wait! Don't leave me, brother!! Wait!! Ethan!! No... Don't tell me... You don't recognize me anymore? You... You saved my life!"
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Seemingly played straight with Tazar, but take a good look at the mutant you fight at the end of the Biorite Facility.
• White-and-Grey Morality: Most of the villains are eventually revealed to have fairly sympathetic backstories/traits.
• Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him?: Subverted and justified; the Lemuria has enough firepower to destroy Heart Island, which will bring the caverns down on top of the Big Bad. Of course, the party wants to Save the Villain instead.
• Wolfpack Boss:
  • The Viviones are a quintuple boss. They also brought many players to the edge of madness, even though they're only Giant Space Fleas From Nowhere.
  • Same thing with the Strangelets, which are also five identical creatures.
  • And the six Sentry Pillars in the Ether Well.
• Written by the Winners: All of the commonly accepted history of Alexander's time is actually propaganda.
  Alexander: It is easy to rewrite history when the few who know the truth are unable to make themselves heard.
• Wrong Genre Savvy: In addition to the whole premise of the game ("Set up the biggest Cliché Storm in RPG history, then turn it upside down"), it plays around a lot with the trustworthiness of the information you're given. Not only are all myths not true, but generally speaking, you do NOT expect the opening text scroll to flat-out lie to you. The Mysterious Informant is a Manipulative Bastard playing on the hero's gullibility, and the guy who claims he can't remember any of his past actually remembers a lot more than he lets on, and is keeping quiet for his own reasons.
• You All Look Familiar: Particularly obvious in Entalar; there are only three generic Havali sprites, so the town seems to be populated by an army of clones.
• You Can Barely Stand: The party tries to point this out to Ortas before their battle, but he has none of it.
  Hilbert: Ortas...just give it up. You can barely move.
  Ortas: "NEVER! I, I'll never give up!!"
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: This happens in the game a lot:
  • Inverted and then played straight with Felgorn (jusified, he spared them before, so they did the same).
  • Tiamat does this once.
  • The omega team abuse this. They always run away after you fight them, and usually Hilbert & Co just let them go for some reason, despite the fact that they would harass them again in the future.

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