Kyou Tsubasa is the bodyguard of Miyu Regami, and the two are invited to attend Kazuri High to hone their Flow abilities. Along with their friends Aya Mikami and Hitoshi Ichiro, they are placed into Class C, which specializes in Crisis and Disaster Prevention. Unfortunately, the world is under the threat of terrorists with very advanced technology and powerful Flow users, who are more than capable of matching the talented students of Kazuri. Along the way, the protagonists will have to learn some dark truths about the very nature of the world of Caelum and their Flow abilities.
The in-universe retro game, Star Warrior, received a 2024 standalone sequel, Star Warrior II, which is used as a way to experiment with new mechanics for the second episode.
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This game contains examples of:
- Action Bomb: The Zwervers summoned by Gigarths in his second battle will explode if left alive long enough. However, if they are killed quickly enough, they'll explode on their own side instead.
- And Now for Someone Completely Different: As part of the story, Kyou and Miyu will be required to give Aya advice on what type of Armor Unit to buy. Afterwards, the player is given control of Aya, who is now equipped with whatever armor was recommended.
- Anti-Grinding: On True Mode, the game will prevent the characters from leveling up past a certain point until they advance the story. However, any excess EXP earned will be applied once the soft cap is lifted.
- Attack Reflector: Claire Elizabeth's Flow ability can reflect half of the non-item damage she takes.
- Badass Normal: Hitoshi Ichiro has no flow ability, but can keep up with his peers using his swordsmanship. He manages to hold his own against Kyou when the latter uses the full power of the 6th Eye, even while suffering from a type disadvantage.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: Kyou Tsubasa and Kenzo Vanguard are pugilists who practice different martial arts styles, though Kyou more closely matches the Warrior Monk ascetic due to the religious beliefs of the Kanotians.
- Barrier Change Boss: Euphi Moji's Flow ability, Gear Shift, allows them to change their discipline, which changes their resistances and the type of damage they deal.
- The Battle Didn't Count:
- Downplayed with Keisar and Vanu, who are still able to stand after their boss battle, but realize that they're outmatched and need to retreat.
- The trio of government traitors working with the bandits, Gigarths, Auburn, and Haze, form a Wolfpack Boss and are no worse for wear in the following cutscene. The party is considered outmatched enough that Syou has to teleport them away.
- BFG: Miyu wields a railgun and is capable of jumping with it in her animations. Unlike most examples, she uses a primarily defensive combat style.
- Blood Knight: Downplayed with Kyou. While he's a disciplined martial artist and doesn't intentionally seek out fights, Miyu believes he and Hitoshi are in a contest to see who can blow a hole in the planet. Kyou's response is to half-jokingly approve of that goal.
- Break Meter: Every combatant has a stance count that determines how many hits it takes to break their stance, which drastically increases the damage they take. However, combatants won't have their stance count lowered if they resist the attribute of the attack.
- Bully Turned Buddy: Aya used to feel inferior about her lack of control over her Flow ability and bullied Miyu to compensate. After she loses to Hitoshi, Miyu forgives her, resulting in them becoming friends.
- Combat Medic: Miyu's Flow ability enhances her healing spells and allows her to heal the party with her unique defend command. Her Limit Break, Aloerus, fully heals the party and buffs their Max HP as well. She can also deal damage with her railgun, and one of her techniques allows her to recover a small amount of the damage dealt to the enemy.
- Counter-Attack:
- At low HP, Kyou's 6th Eye ability increases his evasion and lets him counter with Volt Drop.
- Claire can cast a buff that lets her counter any non-item attack with a powerful laser.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: On the Astral route, Kado and Mai give a dramatic speech and attack Elysion with their BURST cards, but she defeats them with a single strike, making them seem like a joke. On the True route, Kado uses his Flow ability, Ego Break, to attack Elysion's soul and immobilize her. Kado then uses his ability again to transport himself, Mai, and the party into a mental space, allowing him and Mai to challenge the party to a Dual Boss battle. Both turn out to be formidable combatants who can use their BURST cards as weapons, with Kado using his cards to inflict multihit damage and Mai using her cards to summon monsters.
- Disc-One Nuke:
- If the player chooses to farm for casino coins, they can obtain the Aloeguard, which surpasses most armor units in the early game. Equipping one on each party member can trivialize even True mode, at least until the enemies catch up.
- If the player clears the Star Warrior game, they receive the Terra Gear (SW), which has good stats and three mod slots.
- There's nothing stopping the player from farming enough money to max out all the PomPomYu donation rewards and expanding their shop inventory, which includes powerful equipment. However, the December 20 2022 patch increased the prices of the more powerful items above the wallet cap to prevent players from getting too overpowered too early.
- Difficulty Levels: Played with. The game gives the player the choice of Astral and True paths, with the latter being harder in almost every way. However, these paths also change the story and True mode has additional boss fights.
- Dual Boss:
- Vanu and Keisar attack the party after the latter finds the first relic of Souen Forest.
- In the True path, Kado and Mai attack the party and transports them to a Mental World to do battle.
- In Souen Caverns, the party is worried that they'll run into the powerful Apex Pike. When they get to the bottom, they end up fighting two Apex Pikes.
- On the day of the second mission, Claire and Nanase challenge Kyou and Hitoshi in order to take the latter pair's ranks.
- During the gauntlet in the West Azure Mall, the party fights two upgraded versions of the Junkyard Frame.
- Although Cyril and Cecil were supposed to have a third member for the Underground Tournament, that member runs late, forcing the two to fight the party while being one person short.
- Dual Wielding: Hitoshi wields two swords and is skilled enough to keep up with Flow ability users, despite not having a Flow ability himself.
- Duel Boss:
- The very first battle of the main story is Kyou image-training against himself.
- The full release of Episode 1 adds a duel between Kyou and Miyu in Souen Fields, with the player controlling Kyou.
- In Souen Forest, Kenzo uses a binding spell on Miyu, forcing Kyou to fight him one-on-one.
- When Kyou reveals that he was hiding a red-eyed Super Mode from his friends, Hitoshi is angered that Kyou held back in their previous matches and challenges him to a fight on the roof. The player will control Hitoshi for this fight, which means they'll be on the receiving end of Kyou's hidden 6th Eye powers.
- Early Game Hell: The first dungeon of the game can be very difficult, since the starting gear has few stances, making it easy for the enemy to break the party members. Later armor units have enough stances and stats to let the party survive most situations. Additionally, having a third party member makes a big difference in breaking enemy stances quickly and budgeting turns for healing.
- Episodic Game: The game is being released in episodes on Steam, with Episode 1 being released as a free game. However, later episodes might not be free.
- Everyone Has Standards:
- On the True route, Aruke calls out Kenzo for threatening to sexually assault Miyu and states that he completely deserved the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown Kyou delivered to him. This is despite the two of them being friends and adopted siblings. Aruke also states that their mother might disown him for his deplorable behavior. After the Souen Forest events, she invites Kyou and Miyu to her restaurant as an apology for Kenzo's behavior.
- A Snapboard message shows that Kenzo is ranked last in the list of hottest guys, even though he looks fairly handsome. It's implied that his sexist words against Miyu caused the majority of the female student body to turn against him.
- Evil Counterpart: Kenzo Vanguard is a pugilist like Kyou and his Enemy Scan entry implies that he's also of the Speed discipline. Both have a tendency to snark at their friends and are obsessed with training their skills to perfection, but Kenzo is much more malicious and openly takes pleasure in humiliating others while Kyou is more honorable but can be wrathful when Miyu is hurt.
- Faux Affably Evil: Kenzo is capable of sounding polite and refined, but he's really a smug Jerkass who is obsessed with upstaging Kyou and Miyu through any means necessary. His Establishing Character Moment is to apologize to Kyou and Miyu for stealing their kill, only to trap Miyu and threaten to kidnap her and to sexually assault her. According to his character profile on the game's website:A smooth-talker with the appearance of a charming gentleman, yet arrogant and dishonest.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: If the player loads a save file, the game will occasionally throw an exception that would normally crash the game. However, the error message itself glitches out and refers to either the protagonist or the player as the Child of Faith before allowing the game to continue. This happens once per playthrough, which means this fake glitch can keep happening if the player reflexively quits or resets the game before completing this event.
- Fragile Speedster:
- Kyou has low defenses, but can quickly deal multiple hits due to his Speed Discipline. At low HP, he has a higher chance to dodge and counterattack.
- Aya has the skill discipline and all of her techs deal at least 10 hits, with the second one increasing the party's accuracy. She also has higher base agility than Kyou while dealing less damage and also having low defenses.
- Vanu has the skill discipline and can easily dodge most attacks, especially if she's at more than 2/3 of her HP, but her HP is very low for a human boss. She can also use a buff that increases her offensive power at the cost of instantly breaking her stance.
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: The Underground Bandits were once Karsandan immigrants seeking Souen citizenship, but they turned to terrorism in response to constant racism against them. Ridal Laufel states that despite their tragic pasts, this is no excuse for harming innocents and that they could have used their talents more productively and legitimately.
- Gamer Chick:
- Miyu is a streamer and believes that playing games while interacting with viewers trains her concentration in ways that normal combat training cannot, but most people believe that this method is less effective than focusing on normal training.
- Mai Yagiyu is a Card Battle Game example of this trope, who is skilled in playing the card game Burst. She can also use her cards in battle to activate her Flow abilities.
- Gladiator Subquest: The Underground Tournament of La Dame Du Lac can be accessed by showing a VIP ticket to the bouncer. However, the ticket will be consumed upon entering the tournament, which consists of a gauntlet of increasingly difficult fights. While it's possible to rearrange equipment and item loadouts between fights, the player has no access to a save point.
- Graceful Loser: When Kyou and Miyu defeat Keisar and Vanu, the latter pair warns them that there's a Drake prowling Souen Forest and that defeating it will earn a lot of points for the event.
- Guide Dang It!: The Star Warrior game-within-a-game is an in-universe example. The process for upgrading the Inferni spell is well-hidden, since it requires finding rare random events to get an egg and finding the node where the egg can hatch. Fortunately, there is a guide that can be purchased in Souen's convenience store, which was written by Miyu herself.
- Guns Akimbo: Aya wields two guns, but can also summon additionally floating guns that can shoot remotely.
- Hard Mode Perks: The True path is more difficult than the Astral path in terms of enemy AI and weather conditions, but it also increases the drop rate to compensate.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the ending of Episode 1, Gigarths Alkazen tries to blow himself up to kill the party, but Elysion uses a spell to protect them. Unfortunately, the spell also causes her to be "decommissioned" indefinitely.
- Hollywood Hacking: Aya can hack certain terminals to activate machines or unlock doors, and this hacking takes the form of a bullet hell obstacle course. Some puzzles can be either solved normally or solved through hacking.
- Hopeless Boss Fight:
- When Aya and Hitoshi attempt to escape the bandit hideout in Rhom, N'raijar intercepts them. The first half of the battle is doable, but when N'raijar's HP reaches 50%, his Flow ability lets him resist any damage, including the fixed damage from grenades. He'll even offer to stop attacking just to demonstrate how hopeless it is for the party to whittle down his HP. If the party survives long enough, the bandits capture them in a cutscene.
- When Miyu, Kyou, and Lunari infiltrate the bandit hideout, they're accosted by a large group of bandits, only for Syou to wipe them all out with a single fire attack. He then challenges the party, promising to reveal an important truth to them if they prove themselves worthy. After a few turns, he uses God's Punishment, which seemingly nukes the entire continent. Fortunately, this was only a illusion, but it knocks the entire party out for several hours.
- Humiliation Conga: When Kenzo threatens to sexually assault Miyu in front of Kyou, he gets beaten up to the point of being hospitalized for days. His interaction with Kyou and Miyu is made public, causing the media to hound him and causing many of the students to hold him in contempt, including his cousin and adoptive sister. The only break he gets is that he managed to get a high rank for his accomplishments before the fight, but it's implied that he would have scored higher if he had left Kyou and Miyu alone.
- Jerkass: Kenzo Vanguard is an arrogant and ambitious student who seeks to attain the highest class rank through any means necessary and wants to humiliate Kyou and Miyu. He goes as far as to threaten to kidnap Miyu in the Astral path or sexually assault her in the True path. Throughout his Duel Boss fight, he smugly talks down to Kyou and gloats about the things he plans to do to Miyu. Despite Aruke's attempts to convince him to change, he doubles down on his antagonism, to the point where he takes advantage of Kyou's Kanotian curse to cause the latter mental pain. According to Aruke, he wasn't always this bad, at least until middle school.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Kado Seto Endo likes nothing more than to dig at people's character flaws in order to break their egos, but he's usually honest in his criticisms. Kyou admits that Kado is correct that the former's brutal beatdown of Kenzo in the True path scared Miyu.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: After Kyou's Duel Boss against Kenzo Vanguard, the former can choose to kick the latter. Doing so repeatedly is necessary to get all the Drake drops that Kenzo stole.
- Killer Rabbit: The Pomshires look like cute, overly saccharine dogs, but one of the developer's Youtube videos shows that they're capable of using firearms to defend themselves against poachers. The developer states that this video is canon, which may explain why the PomPomYu cafe sells powerful equipment if the player donates enough to them.
- Knight Templar: The Arc Villain of Episode 1, Gigarths Alkazen, believes Caelum's governments are corrupt and need to be toppled through terrorism, and he gained this mindset due to the mismanagement of the Saith Facility and due to the racism against Karsandans. He goes as far as to claim that he's carrying out the will of God.
- The Magic Goes Away: In the in-universe retro game, Star Warrior, choosing to seal the Cosmic Darkness removes all magic from the world. Unfortunately, the titular Star Warrior is a magical lifeform and dies as a result.
- Mercy Kill: At the end of the prologue, Shiro is forced to kill Ten after the latter is possessed by a demon.
- Mighty Glacier:
- Miyu has decent offensive power, good defense, can apply regen and defense buffs, can Draw Aggro, and has a technique that can steal HP. However, she depends heavily on SG to perform any of her actions, so she has to spend several turns charging her SG. Said charging action also grants her additional defense and regen.
- As a boss, Claire has low agility, high offense, and high defense. She also cannot initiate an attack, but she only needs one or two counterattacks to KO a character.
- Mini-Mecha: Frames are combat machines capable of firing missiles and magic attacks, and most are smaller than buildings.
- Mirror Boss: The tutorial boss of the game is Kyou's projection, which he fights during his meditation. The projection can be fought again, but strangely, the entire party can help Kyou in this fight, despite this supposedly taking place in his own mind.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Aya and Hitoshi attempt to go after the Underground Bandits on their own, but N'raijar captures them while planning to use them as hostages against Souen. The most they accomplish is defeating a prototype Frame, that that only serves to provide combat data to the bandits.
- Nintendo Hard: The in-universe retro game, Star Warrior, is intentionally balanced as a reference to the difficulty of real retro RPGs. There is only one party member, upgrades are expensive, and the RNG can be brutal when it comes to healing and enemy crit rates.
- Non-Standard Game Over: During the prologue, at the end of B44F, Shiro can leave the room without killing Ten, but this will result in him staying in the Saith Facility while it blows up, and a mysterious voice states there is no hope for the world. The player is then sent to the title screen with no chance to save or start the main game.
- Old Save Bonus: If the player loads a completed save from the demo, the game will tell them to start again under "their rules" to get a reward. The game then deletes all save files and creates a config file that causes a secret package to show up in the Regami mailbox.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Lunari normally doesn't speak without telepathy because she claims that doing so could cause the future to change in a bad way. After Elysion sacrifices herself to save the party from Gigarths, Lunari openly expresses her grief towards Elysion's death and her gratitude towards the party for comforting her.
- Open-Ended Boss Battle:
- The duel with Miyu will have the story continue no matter the outcome, since this is just a friendly spar.
- No matter the outcome of the boss battle against Kado and Mai, the mysterious voice will command them to stop fighting, resulting in Elysion regaining mobility and knocking them out.
- Power Limiter: After accidentally nuking part of the planet with his power, Syou sealed most of his power in the Inverse Towers.
- Privileged Rival: Kenzo Vanguard comes from a more prestigious family than the Regami and Tsubasa families, and he seeks to humiliate Miyu and Kyou. This factors into his boss battle, where he uses a Medi item of a higher rank than what the player can obtain.
- Puzzle Boss: The Drake has high defenses and takes too many hits to break its stance. However, its legs have their own HP bars, and depleting the HP bar of a leg causes the Drake to take massive damage and have their stance broken.
- Rare Random Drop: Refightable bosses like the Drake, GU-12 Fortress, and Apex Pikes have their own set of rare drops. The miniboss enemy, the Gee Nest, has a rather egregious drop rate of 1/22 for its Cocoon Needle.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The first half of Kyou's duel with Kenzo is a Hopeless Boss Fight, since Kenzo uses Heal Jammer to prevent Kyou from using healing items while he's free to use them on himself. However, Kyou gets a sudden power up that turns his eyes red and allows him to dodge all of Kenzo's attacks. This is revealed to be the fully unlocked power of Kyou's 6th Eye, but this mode also makes him more willing to kill enemies.
- Resurrective Immortality: Mareige is a member of the Underground Bandit who leads "Suicide Trains," where she and other terrorists hijack a train and blow it up, even while they're onboard. However, she survives each one because her Flow ability allows her to revive.
- Sacrificial Lamb: At the end of the prologue, Shiro kills the Exodus rookie, Ten, because the latter got possessed by a demon. This is to show that even promising graduates of Kazuri can easily die in the line of duty if they let their guard down.
- Save Token: The E-Terminal item can be consumed to access the save menu, even without a proper save point.
- Sink or Swim Mentor: Syou knows about Kyou's 6th Eye and intentionally leaks this information to Kenzo Vanguard, even though this information could endanger Kyou. He claims he's doing so to provide a challenge to Kyou, and it's implied that he wants to force Kyou to learn to control his powers, which Syou failed to do himself in the past.
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: Syou once had the power to nuke a crater into the planet, but sealed away most of this power. When he uses this attack on the party in a Hopeless Boss Fight, the battle background changes to show a completely desolate wasteland. Fortunately, it was only an illusion, meaning the party and surrounding area are intact.
- The Stinger: At the end of Episode 1, the cloaked figure backing Gigarths and the bandits gathers with the rest of his associates, one of whom is Kyou's mother.
- Summon Magic: Mai's Flow ability, Mock Tamer, summons artificial monsters to fight alongside her, but if she's incapacitated, the monsters will despawn. According to the developers, she does this by putting Flow energy into her BURST cards so she can manifest the holograms as minions.
- Taking You with Me: The Arc Villain of Episode 1, Gigarths Alkazen, attempts to detonate his Bioslayer Frame in order to take kill the party along with himself, but Elysion sacrifices herself to protect them.
- A Taste of Power: Downplayed in the prologue. Shi, Kei, and Ten are at level 60 and can easily win battles of attrition with the Saith Facility's mobs, but they can't use specific inputs to activate techniques like the main story party members.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Downplayed with the Underground Bandits and Gigarths. While N'raijar doesn't trust Gigarths and implies the latter betrayed the bandits in some way, the latter is sympathetic to the plight of the bandits and believes that the government treated them unfairly by failing to stop discrimination against Karsandans.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: N'raijar and Kesteri's group of bandits used to be Karsandan immigrants seeking Souen citizenship, but they were persecuted because of rumors that they were terrorists. This leads to them becoming actual terrorists to get back at Souen.
- Time-Limit Boss: In the Silk Road, the GU-12: Fortress boss has both a real time limit of 6.5 minutes before self-destructing and a turn limit of 15 before it uses its Extinction Protocol to wipe the party.
- Time Stands Still:
- Lunari's Overdrive, Alter Boundary, freezes time for the enemy party for a few turns and also freezes any active in-game time limit. However, the turn count will still increase, so any event that happens on a specific turn will still occur on time. Unfortunately, it doesn't work on Syou during his Hopeless Boss Fight.
- In the second fight against Gigarths Alkazen, he'll somehow copy Lunari's Alter Boundary and uses it to buy a few turns for his robotic minions' self-destruct attack.
- Token Evil Teammate: The current generation of Kazuri students are mostly benevolent and even when they challenge the party for their ranks, they're good sports about it. The same cannot be said about Kenzo Vanguard, who is actively malicious towards Kyou and seeks revenge for losing against the latter.
- Ungrateful Bastard: The party saves Kenzo from the Apex Pikes in the Souen Caverns. He repays them by mentioning his knowledge of Kyou's 6th Eye, knowing that this will cause Kyou mental harm.
- Unstoppable Rage: During Kado and Mai's boss fight, defeating Mai first causes Kado to become angered, so he throws any pretense of fairness out the window and attacks continuously without letting the party members get their turn.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: The game doesn't give much focus to Elysion, who is introduced as a close friend of Lunari, but never joins any combat operations. At the end of the first episode, she sacrifices herself to save the party from Gigarths Alkazen's suicide attack, though there is hope that Hitoshi's clan might have a way to rebuild her. The only hint given about her backstory is that Gigarths created her as a prototype for his Hi-Frames, only for her to align herself with Lunari instead.
- Well-Trained, but Inexperienced: Miyu is a Combat Medic with decent offensive stats and her Aloerus Overdrive is a powerful group healing skill. However, during her Duel Boss fight, she flubs the Overdrive and ends up weakening herself out of nervousness, despite all the training she did to catch up to her peers. Kyou points out that if she pulled that move off, he wouldn't be able to win against her in a battle of attrition. Fortunately, she can use Aloerus consistently after a week of offscreen training.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Hitoshi is angered that Kyou would insult his pride by holding back against him. He then challenges Kyou with killing intent and the two nearly kill each other in their duel. Aya calls out Hitoshi for putting his warrior pride above his friend's life, and Hitoshi apologizes for doing so.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: Lunari claims that if she were to directly speak to people instead of using telepathy, she could end up changing how the future unfolds. This is supposed to be related to her mysterious Truth Flow ability.
- Wolf Pack Boss:
- On the second visit to the Underground Bandits' hideout in Rhom, the party has to face three government traitors, Gigarths Alkazen, Haze Ringlade, and Auburn Maxima.
- In Episode 1, for the final round of the Underground Tournament, the party has to face Euphi, Kane, and the XS-222 Mega-POM robot.
- Worf Had the Flu: Cecil and Cyril are reserve students who can fight on par with official Kazuri students on an individual basis. Unfortunately, they're at a disadvantage during the Underground Tournament because their third member is running late, only showing up after the party defeats them.
- Year Inside, Hour Outside: Kado uses his Flow ability, Ego Break, to transport himself, Mai, and the party into a space where time flows differently. Their entire boss battle inside the mental space takes a while, but in the real world, only a few seconds passed.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Mareige claims she and her fellow Underground Bandits are justified in committing terrorism, since they believe Souen society is corrupt, racist, and classist. To that end, they're working with a mysterious backer to use Frames against the Souen government.
