The player takes the role of Gaulen, an explorer from a war-torn land who is suddenly sent on a quest to the mythical continent of Xulima by Golot, the Architect of the gods. Arriving there with a hand-picked group of companions, he learns that the gods, the Lords of Xulima, are at war and that the world's fate hangs in the balance...and that is up to him to sort things out. Of course, things turn out to be a little more complex than that...
The game contains examples of following tropes:
- Absurdly High Level Cap: If this game even has a level cap, it won't be found without combing through the source code. Enemies do not respawn, ever, and there's no repeatable xp gain. Depending on how early and how high you stacked xp bonuses, you'll end up somewhere in the 60s to 80s if you kill everything.
- Actually Four Mooks: An encounter sprite on the map can represent from one to ten actual enemies.
- Affably Evil: Xabraluz, the demon king. Mentions right away that he has no personal quarrel with you, invites you to share a drink of stat-enhancing blood with him and is willing to give away a powerful artifact if you can prove to him that you killed his enemies.
- Anti-Grinding: Random encounters are limited; each area has only so many of them before it is considered "cleared", which gives the party a significant one-time experience payout. However, the number of possible encounters is still high enough to make running around an area to gain a few more levels an effective (albeit tedious) tactic.
- Beef Gate: Aside from the locked temples, many areas in the game are technically fully accessible from the moment you first set foot on Xulima. The reason it's usually better to progress in the recommended order is this trope: The entrances to areas you shouldn't be in yet are guarded by enemy groups that'll wipe out a low-level party within seconds.
- Circling Vultures: A common background element in the desert environments of Varaskel, they can be annoying because their presence makes the giant ravens waiting to attack the party quite a bit harder to see.
- Don't Fear the Reaper: In the game's pantheon of nine gods Yûl, the Guardian of Souls and god of death was originally a positive figure, serving to maintain balance together with his siblings. He was also the one who gave mortal beings souls in the first place, along with free will. Then he went insane and tried to take over the world. The ending reveals that Yûl was a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to stop the other gods from wiping out humanity and replacing them with "improved" creations, without any of that pesky free will.
- Everybody Hates Hades: Out of the nine gods of Xulima, Yûl the god of death is the one who rebels against the others and becomes the main antagonist of the game. It's actually a subversion. Yûl was trying to save humanity, which has no place in the other gods' new order.
- Feathered Fiend: Oversized and highly aggressive ravens ranging from "slightly larger than in real life" to "carries off live elephants to its nest" are a commonly-encountered enemy type in many regions. There are also Terror Birds which neatly combine the most painful features of birds and dinosaurs.
- Foreshadowing: In their brief pre-battle conversations, each of the eight Heralds of Yûl, bosses you need to defeat to progress in the game, foreshadows the events of the ending. The four witches also get in on the act to some extent.
- Framing Device: The story is told through Gaulen's narration from a point after the game's events.
- Giant Spider: Found in several sizes from the starter dungeon to the mid-game. All of them are bad news due to powerful poison attacks, a stacking web debuff and the chance to cause sickness that requires a trip to the nearest temple to cure.
- "Instant Death" Radius: Fairly early in the game the party has to sneak through Sporia Meadow, which is filled with giant hostile mushrooms about twice the party's probable level. Entering their rather extensive aggro radius is a nigh-guaranteed trip to the game over screen.
- Lethal Lava Land: Vilak, the volcanic homeland of the demons. Without a divine artifact to protect your party, even going near the great lava lake will cause significant damage with every step.
- Katanas Are Just Better: They're hands down the best weapon type in the swords category, with good speed, massive bleed damage and solid hitting power.
- Mission from God: Gaulen gets his orders directly from one of the nine gods of Xulima.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In the game's Twist Ending, it turns out that Gaulen's efforts to save humanity have actually brought it closer to complete extinction...exactly the way the gods planned it.
- One Stat to Rule Them All: Speed determines evasion, which is useful, but also how often a character gets to act in combat, which is vital. Without high Speed even the strongest or toughest character will get overwhelmed by enemies hitting 2-3 times for every action they get.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: The Yotum are the largest members of the ogre race and are massive enough to cause damage to the whole party just by stomping the ground. The elemental titans fought near the end of the game dwarf even them, the first of them that is seen (from a great distance) towers over a mountain.
- Our Goblins Are Different: They're named "Askary" and are considered part of the ogre race. Other than that, they are standard fantasy goblins: short, green, with big ears and noses and a tendency to attack from ambush in huge swarms.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Called "Ulrogs" and part of the greater ogre race along with the goblin-like Askary, they fill the "savage warrior race" niche in Xulima's fantasy ecology.
- Palette Swap: Most creature models are reused to create more difficult higher-level versions.
- Pixel Hunt: The buttons that open secret doors tend to be rather difficult to spot. This becomes particularly annoying in places like the Temple of Kersket, where the buttons and switches are by no means guaranteed to be anywhere near the doors they operate.
- Poor Communication Kills: If the Heralds of Yûl had just been a little less cryptic and hostile in their conversations with Gaulen, they could have avoided the plot.
- Portal Network: The fantasy version makes a welcome appearance in the game: Dimensional Portals can be found in many regions of Xulima to make travel a bit easier.
- Rare Candy: Certain types of late-game enemies such as higher-ranked demons can drop items that permanently increase stats.
- Scary Stinging Swarm: The Odendros enemy type uses a swarm of bees living inside it as a Breath Weapon.
- Spider Swarm: In some areas, the ever-popular Giant Spiders come in groups of 6+ at a time. There are also areas of webbing filled with smaller spiders that work as an environmental hazard: Walking through such an area both slows the party down and causes a significant amount of poison damage.
- Sand Worm: Found in the desert of Varaskel. Being hard-hitting, tough and resistant to all damage-over-time effects, they're one of the nastier random encounters to run into.
- Save Scumming: Almost required at higher difficulty levels where the RNG can easily make the difference between a cakewalk and a total party wipe. In addition to scumming your way through tough fights, you can also save-scum chest contents if you find one containing an item you have no use for.
- Sequel Hook: The ending leaves Gaulen with a new mission, this time without any divine guidance: To defeat the Lords of Xulima before they can wipe out humanity.
- Stealth-Based Mission: Sporia Meadow is full of extremely nasty mushroom monsters. Waking them up is a nigh-guaranteed trip to the game over screen at the level they are typically encountered, and creeping past them requires extremely precise movement to avoid entering the "Instant Death" Radius. Later on in the game Prince Khornil's castle has groups of elite guards significantly more powerful than anything the party should be able to handle at that point, meaning they usually need to be bypassed in the same sneaky way.
- Twist Ending: Gaulen defeats the Heralds of Yûl, god of death, and the gods return to the world promising to end the war ravaging Gaulen's homeland. Only it turns out that Yûl was a Well-Intentioned Extremist trying to save humanity, which the other gods considered flawed and were intending to wipe out and replace with new creations...without any of that pesky free will. Gaulen's new goal is to free the world from the Lords Of Xulima.
- Wicked Wasps: Giant (hawk-sized) wasps are a major annoyance to parties of low-to-mid levels due to being nigh-impossible to hit with physical attacks and extremely fast.
- When Trees Attack: The Odendros is a rather territorial animated tree that beats opponents with its branches or spits swarms of insects from its hollow trunk at them.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: The Food Reserves counter ticks down with every minute of in-game time, and how quickly said time passes is determined by the terrain the party is traveling through. Desert or arctic terrain will deplete your food supplies with terrifying speed, forcing repeated trips to the nearest town to restock while exploring. Food is also needed to rest and recover hitpoints and mana, and being stranded without this ability far from town can be the end of your party.
