Video Game / Prayer of the Faithless

"It's a sobering thought, isn't it? To be able to look out your window and see the end of the world."

Prayer of the Faithless is a 2022 Freeware Eastern RPG made in RPG Maker VX Ace, by Vermillion Nova, who also made Soul Sunder, a game set in the same world, but otherwise unrelated.

Miasma, the evil substance from which monsters are formed, constantly boils under the earth's surface. Born from this mire and able to rise from the ground at any time, Miasma Monsters wreak havoc among those unfortunate enough to be outside a settlement protected by a magical flame known as a Kiyoma. However, the threat always remained just outside their doorstep, and the people looked to a prophecy that dictated a hero would come to destroy the Miasma for good.

You play as the cynical Aeyr Wilder and the kindhearted Mia Alacruz. Soon after their training is complete, catastrophic events destroy the very foundations of their daily lives, and they are forced to make the choice between their precious friendship and following the path that they believe is right.

The first demo / prologue was released on 05/31/2016.

The full game is out on Steam and itch.

---

Tropes used in Prayer Of The Faithless:

• 11th-Hour Superpower:
  • During the Final Boss fight, Aeyr and Mia gain the Perfect Partner passive, which gives them a total of six actions per round.
  • In the Tower of Sinners, Trill gains access to all of her Trance abilities rather than being limited to one element at a time.
• Alliterative Family: The latest generation of the Wilder family, sort of. Aeyr possibly could have had a sister whose name started with A, because Thane's past is explored by Mia's party, and we learn some things about the naming of the family. That is, Amalie was named what Aeyr would have been named if he were born a girl.
• Anadiplosis: The Lavingard Chapel talks about a "blessing of the stars" that acquiring requires the opening of the gate "within thine heart", connecting the steps by sharing "believe" at the ends where they connect:
  To adore, one must believe. To believe, one must witness.
• Anti-Grinding: Higher level characters get less EXP from lower level enemies. Additionally, characters with the Unbroken passive will have their EXP gain heavily lowered until they kill a human or Manna enemy, encouraging the player to advance the story far enough to remove that passive.
• Apocalyptic Logistics:
  • Averted with Vanessa's plan is to convert as many people as possible into Infused so that humanity can adapt to the Fog. Gauron states that she will never be able to convert enough people before the Fog overwhelms humanity and leaves the population too small to survive. Due to the kingdom's dwindling resources and the Infusion process's low success rate, the plan was doomed from the start.
  • Zigzagged with food resources, which are so low that people are trying to give away their rations to their loved ones in the hopes that the latter will outlive them. However, Vergio prepared a massive amount of rations in preparation for migrating their people to Kakuri.
• Arrange Mode: After beating the game once, the player can access Chaos Quest Settings. Some settings include not just statistical changes to difficulty, but also increasing aggro towards low SP characters, making save points one-use only in exchange for healing, and making loot either double or disappear.
• Assist Character: Serra has no combat skills, but she can provide her Oracle abilities to Reyson in battle in order to buff the party. Since these abilities belong to her, they don't cost Reyson any SP, though they still use one of the party's three actions for that round. When she's separated from Reyson, she grants these abilities to Trill to make up for the latter being unable to use Trance abilities in Kiyoma-protected areas.
• The Atoner: Reyson is unflinchingly loyal to Serra because of a mistake he made in his past. He is actually Serra's father who abandoned her and her mother. He later learned that during his time away from them, Serra's mother died in childbirth, so he used his connections to get himself assigned as Serra's bodyguard.
• Attack Failure Chance: Offensive actions in this game never miss outside of the target having a counter stance. However, the Skill stat determines the chance for an attack to graze the target and deal less damage.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: When the Forsaken Fortress is taken over by Miasma monsters, one of the rooms contains a monster along with two crucified Manna. The Manna were tortured into helping the monster, to the point where even if the party manages to kill the monster first, the Manna will still continue fighting the party. As a result, the party has no choice but to Mercy Kill them.
• Big Bad: Gauron was once a researcher of Miasma trying to find a way for humanity to survive, but used unscrupulous experiments to do so. After Vanessa kills him, he returns as a Revenant and now seeks to wipe out humanity so that the Manna can inherit the planet in their place. He also turns Aeyr into a Revenant in order to convince the latter to become his ally, but this causes Aeyr to be labeled as a public enemy.
• Bittersweet Ending: The Resolve ending ends on a surprisingly positive note despite the situation. Aeyr and Mia don't fully reconcile their differences, but agree to live together so that if the other goes too far in opposing or leading society respectively, they'll cut each other down. Unlike the Love ending, the other party members don't attack the duo, meaning this is the only ending where the entire main cast survives. However, like all other endings, the Fog hasn't fully dissipated and humanity's survival is still uncertain.
• Broken Ace: Mia is a skilled swordfighter with a versatile moveset, but her reluctance to fight holds her back, to the point where she automatically gains the Panic ailment when unsheathing her blade. Her refusal to kill also causes her to forfeit the Proving ceremony. Though she later helps the party kill a trio of rogue Manna when doing so is necessary to save Luke.
• Bully Turned Buddy: Aeyr used to be like the other Asalan military trainees in mocking Mia for her meek personality, but after he saw how hard she worked, the two formed an Odd Friendship.
• Cap:
  • The level cap is 50, which isn't hard to reach since the end-game enemies give a level every 2 encounters at most, and is reached at around level 40.
  • The party can only hold ten of each consumable. At the end of the game, the cap gets raised to twenty because both parties' inventories are combined.
• Cardboard Prison: Asala castle has a standard prison, but it's not capable of holding Aeyr, who has Soulfire abilities that work independently of his equipment. He only stays in prison out of the hope that Mia will eventually give up on trying to rule Asala and agree with his view that humanity isn't worth saving. In all endings, Vanessa escapes by knocking out the guards and stowing away on the Odyssey ship.
• The Chains of Commanding:
  • Emperor Daigo shows remorse for scapegoating Serra Cadmus for her prophecy and taking Mia's party prisoner, but he believes he must do so because as a leader, he must follow the will of Vergio's citizens and prevent mass panic. He carries so much guilt that he calmly accepts being killed by Aeyr.
  • Despite seeming like a callous authoritarian on the surface, Vanessa reveals that she's not truly proud of her decisions and that she believes most of her past efforts to maintain order in Asala resulted in failure. Eventually, the king kills himself, leaving Vanessa with the burden of running the entire kingdom. This, combined with losing the throne to Mia, causes her to lose all hope and seek death in the Tower of Sinners.
  • Mia originally wasn't trying to be a leader, but ended up becoming the de-facto leader of the Honneleth refugees after defeating Vance. Unfortunately, her goal of bringing everyone to the safety of Asala falls apart when she's labeled a Stranded by Vanessa. Even when she eventually finds a safe island to evacuate the refugees and overthrows Vanessa, most people won't follow her plan and she doesn't have the backbone to stand up to the dissenters. In the Love ending, Mia gives up on ruling humanity after realizing how much the pressure is twisting her morality. In two other endings where she survives, she continues her role as leader, but is at least more aware of her limitations and tries to rule in a way that won't cause her to fall apart mentally.
• Chase-Scene Obstacle Course: During Aeyr's run through Purgatory, the player will notice that the final section has a room full of bridges that disappear and reappear in an interval. When Mia goes through this section, she has to run from Gauron's Revenant body while trying to cross these bridges. Getting caught doesn't kill her, but it does result in Gauron doing some damage to her HP.
• Color-Coded Characters: Multiple:
  • Aeyr has red armor, and, and on the Start Screen, he's the red highlighted silhouette.
  • Mia has blue hair and blue armor, and on the Start Screen, she's the blue highlighted silhouette.
  • Amalie has red hair and red armor.
  • Trill has green hair and clothing with green accents.
• Combat Clairvoyance: As her character description, says, that's how Serra uses her powers. In practice, this means she can buff the party to dodge better, land more criticals, and have a guaranteed chance of reflecting an attack, all of which is possible because of her predictions of enemy behavior.
  when it's time to fight, Serra stays close to Reyson and uses her powers as an Oracle to predict the future, providing him with her Burst Drives.
• Combat Medic: Aeyr has high Power growth and later learns Soulfire Mend, which lets him consume his Soulfire Blaze buff to recover a single target's HP. Even before that, he has a passive that allows him to increase the amount healed by consumable items.
• Counter-Attack: There are several skills that allow a character to counter physical attacks, magic attacks, or both, such as Mia's Viper Fang, Amalie's Resonant Shield, and Serra's Vision of Assault. Although the magic version of this mechanic is called Reflect, in practice, it always deals non-elemental damage regardless of the element of the attack that is being countered.
• Crutch Character: Amalie starts at level 16, Aeyr and Mia start at level 5. The latter two have low defenses, making it necessary to use Amalie's tanking abilities to keep them alive. However, due to the EXP scaling mechanic, lower-leveled characters will get more EXP and close the level gap faster. By the time they do catch up they're likely to be much stronger than Amalie, as she's a Broken Bird saddled with negative passive skills that impede her combat ability.
• Defend Command: Averted. The battle system doesn't have a Defend Command. Instead, it has Focus, which restores some Stamina, a stat that determines how much damage is taken.
• Double-Edged Buff:
  • Some magic falls under this category:
    • Phantom Trick reverses the effect of buffs and debuffs on the targeted foe.
    • Power Dilation extends the length of all buffs and debuffs on all foes, by one turn.
  • Emotional Afflictions are usually applied by Abilities and are removed at the end of battle. Other than Despair and Joy, they have negatives and positives:
    • Rage: Drops Armor. Boosts Power.
    • Fear: Drops Power. Boosts Armor.
    • Panic: Drops Armor. Boosts Skill.
• Duel Boss:
  • The first fight against the Junsunia is conducted in Aeyr's nightmare, where he has to fight alone. The second fight has Amalie backing him up, but once Aeyr becomes a Revenant, he has to fight the Junsunia alone again.
  • After the Junsunia is slain in the real world, Amalie attacks Aeyr believing that as a Revenant, he's Always Chaotic Evil. The player then has to play as Aeyr and use his new Revenant powers to defeat her too.
  • After the proper Final Boss fight with Gauron, Aeyr and Mia will fight each other over their conflicting ideals, and the duel plays out six times. Before the start of each match, the game checks if a character completed a Resolve requirement, and each character has three checks. If the character succeeds in a check, the player takes control of them. If not, the player takes control of the other character.
• Dramatic Irony: Mia's party wants to travel to the east in case the Revenant is to the west, not knowing that Aeyr the Revenant is actually to their east. Meanwhile, Aeyr's party heads east in the hopes of finding Mia, not knowing that she's actually to their west. This is to create suspense for the moment Mia learns the truth about Aeyr and about how her traveling companion, Amalie, knew about Aeyr being the Revenant all along.
• Dual Wielding: While all other playable characters have personal off-hand equipment, Reyson can equip two weapons of any type, giving him access to almost all weapon Drives.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness:
  • In the Tired and Judged routes, Aeyr and Mia's face portraits change to remove the shine in their eyes, showing that they hit emotional rock bottom due to killing each other. According to the developer, this something they have in common with Vanessa, who has already hit rock bottom a long time ago.
  • Similarly, Amalie's eyes only shine in flashback cutscenes before her community forcibly removed her powers, showing that this event weighs heavily on her.
• Et Tu, Brute?:
  • When Aeyr becomes a Revenant, Amalie turns on him because she believes Revenants are mindless monsters, ruining the trust Aeyr had in her and causing him to believe that if the world is going to see him as evil, then he should no longer care how he treats anyone outside of his circle of friends. At this point, he's willing to run roughshod over civilization in order to protect his best friend, Mia, at any cost. After taking over Asala, Mia sends Aeyr to Purgatory to kill Gauron, but omits that if he succeeds, he'll die without his Revenant-induced Miasma immunity. When Gauron reveals this to Aeyr, the latter spares Gauron, makes the Fog traversable to normal humans, and sends a letter challenging Mia to confront him in Purgatory.
  • When Mia's party discovers Vanessa's Infused experiments in Lavingard, Vanessa orders Amalie to kill the rest of the party. When Amalie fails, Vanessa abandons Amalie and labels her a fugitive along with the rest of them. This causes Amalie to fall into despair, since she considered Vanessa to be her savior in her time of need. Although Mia convinces Amalie to fight to save the people of Asala from Vanessa, it's possible for Mia to betray Amalie's hopes in the Love ending, where Mia gives up on saving Asala, causing Amalie to join the rest of the party in attacking Mia.
• Everybody Lives: Downplayed in the Resolve ending. While many NPCs die over the course of the story in all routes, the entire party survives in this ending. In the other endings, Aeyr, Mia, or their party members are killed.
• The Exile: Amalie was exiled from Manna society, and they punished her by scarring half her face and removing her Miasma powers. This is because she caused a cave-in on their home in order to force them to escape the Asalan soldiers, since they wouldn't have budged otherwise.
• Face Death with Dignity: Although Emperor Daigo justifies his horrible actions as being for the good of Vergio, he respects Aeyr for being willing to turn against society in order to save Mia. As such, he gives Aeyr his blessing right before the latter kills him.
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Humans detest the Manna for being born from the Miasma and having resistance to it, since this reminds them of monsters.
  • Emperor Daigo is an interesting case, since he has a surface level understanding of the Manna and believes that they're inherently more peaceful and innocent than humans, but Trill point out that the Manna are far from perfect because like humans, they are capable of committing foolish acts and conforming for the sake of the many.
  • Gauron is another unusual case, since he acknowledges that the Manna can be flawed, but believes that because their culture is relatively younger than humanity's, they can still be led on the right path. Unfortunately, he believes that Aeyr should wipe out humanity to prevent them from corrupting the Mannas' culture.
• Fate Worse than Death: The Tower of Sinners is supposedly a place that allows worshipers to ascend to the afterlife and escape from the horrors of the world. However, a tablet states that God despises empty faith, which indicates that the process of ascending isn't that easy. When the party makes it to the top of the tower, they're trapped in crystals that trap them in a nightmare that recounts their sins. Although the party and Vanessa escape those crystals, there are many other crystals in the Sin area that indicate most people ended up trapped and forced to wallow in their failures for eternity. The tablets also praise those brave enough to stay in the mortal realm, which implies that the tower is actually a means of punishing those who would abandon their fellow people for paradise.
• Flavor Text: For some items, like:
  • Knight Sword: The standard blade for Asalan Knights. Plain, but deadly.
  • Iron Scabbard: Scabbard reinforced with iron.
  • Thanatos: A Soulfire axe that feeds off the malice from within its wielder.
• Flunky Boss:
  • When Mia refuses to abandon Parker, Paladin Vance and his soldiers attack her, though Amalie joins Mia to even the odds. Unsurprisingly, the nameless soldiers go down much easier than Vance.
  • Emperor Daigo can summon six elemental swords that initially attack, then switch to mainly trying to debuff the party. While the swords have fairly low health and defense, Daigo will revive or summon at least one every turn.
  • The second fight with Vanessa has a twist on this boss design. The win condition is to heal her back to full health, but she'll constantly spawn shadow versions of the party members, who will deal damage to her every turn.
• Fog of Doom: Gauron and Vanessa's research led them to the truth behind the deadly Fog, which can turn people and animals into monsters with prolonged exposure. All people have Soulfire, which burns more intensely if they deny their true nature in some way. The current fog is the result of many eras of human negativity, and it's practically guaranteed that the Fog will be constantly produced due to humanity being constantly in peril.
• Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: When Aeyr yells at Trill for relying too much on the concept of a clan and tells her to leave, Luke calls out Aeyr for his insensitivity to her plight. He then points out that although Aeyr was ostracized by the Asalans, the latter's antisocial behavior is also a major factor for his lack of bonds. In the Tired route, Aeyr admits that it's hypocritical of him to demand acceptance from others without also giving them a chance in return.
• Friendly Enemy: Emperor Daigo treats Aeyr like a human being despite how most people treat Aeyr like a monster for being a Revenant. He's also apologetic about scapegoating Serra for giving an ominous prophecy that she has no control over. Unfortunately, he believes he has to kill Aeyr's party in order to keep Vergio from falling into anarchy, since the population is filled with paranoia.
• Genghis Gambit: In the Tired ending, Aeyr plans to destroy the city of Asala in order to force the inhabitants to join forces with Vergio, knowing that his reputation as a Revenant will force humanity to unite against him.
• Geo Effects: Trill can use element-based drives to buff the party, but each one requires specific environmental conditions or terrain. However, her personal gear can give her constant access to one element regardless of location. The Tower of Sinners gives her access to all elements, due to this location containing the power of the entire world.
• Golden Ending: Subverted. Although the Resolve ending takes the most prior knowledge to obtain, the developer's Twitter account states that none of the endings are considered more canon than the others and that every ending has a trade-off.
• Grass is Greener: After his defeat, Emperor Daigo admits that human society is sinful and corrupt. He wonders if the relatively more innocent Manna will inherit the planet and build a better society, but Trill points out that the Manna are also flawed due to their conformism.
• Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Due to limited healing opportunities and the focus on Resources Management Gameplay, regular enemies are likely to wear you down significantly over the course of a dungeon, especially as they tend to come in groups. Bosses, however, usually aren't that much stronger than regular enemies, and as they tend to fight alone, it's much easier to wear down their SP and force them to waste turns Focusing. (The exception to this are the black miasma spouts, but they are, fortunately, Optional Bosses.)
• He Knows Too Much: Mia, Amalie, Serra, and Reyson end up making a major enemy because they learned something they shouldn't have. They discover Commandant Vanessa's lab in Lavingard, Vanessa orders Amalie to kill everyone else, since this knowledge could throw Asala into chaos. When Amalie loses, Vanessa decides to falsely label the four of them and the Honneleth refugees as undead Stranded so that all of human civilization will try to kill them on sight.
• Healing Checkpoint: Some Save Points, like in Asala, Honneleth, and Mia's camp, are near places to heal, like inns or Mia's tent, respectively. This mainly applies to the beginning of the game, since facilities like inns aren't available in later parts of the game. However, Chaos Quest Settings can make it so that save points heal the party, but disappear upon use.
• Healing Hands: As said in his character description, Aeyr is able to "heal an ally". This is due to his powers as a Revenant, which allows him to convert his held Soulfire into a healing skill. In the Tower of Sinners, Aeyr, Mia, or both will gain the ability to heal their enemies, which is necessary in order to heal Vanessa and convince her to live.
• Hero with Bad Publicity:
  • While Aeyr isn't a straight-laced hero fighting for higher ideals, he does risk his life to defend Asala for Amalie's sake. When he becomes a Revenant, everyone in Asala, including Amalie, sees him as a threat and tries to kill him. This causes Aeyr to completely abandon Asala and give up on playing nice with society.
  • Mia tries to be a good leader to the Honneleth refugees, but due to numerous setbacks, the refugees become impatient and lose trust in her. When she reveals that she hid the truth about Vanessa's experiments from them, they angrily demand that she takes them back to Asala, despite how Kakuri is obviously safer. When Mia overthrows Vanessa and takes over Asala, most of the population riots against her rule, since they fear a regime change. Ironically, Vanessa points out that Mia's least heroic act in the game, sending Aeyr on a suicide mission to kill Gauron, would probably cause history to recognize her as a heroine.
• Heroes Prefer Swords: Four of the protagonists start out with swords of some kind.
  • Aeyr starts with a Training Blade equipped, although he can also use axes.
  • Amalie uses rapiers.
  • Mia uses katanas and scabbards.
  • Reyson starts out with Solar Blade in his first weapon slot, though his second weapon slot is the Lunar Crasher axe.
• Heroic BSoD: At some point, Amalie gets this as a passive ability, which randomly causes her to be afflicted with the Despair ailment in battle. This is because Vanessa was the only person she could depend on after her exile, but Vanessa decided to label her a fugitive to prevent the party from revealing the Infused experiments to the public.
• Hope Is Scary: When confronting Vanessa, Mia tries to propose a plan that could work in both their interests. She wants to move the Asalans to the island Kakuri, allowing them to save the population from the Fog without turning them into Infused. Unfortunately, Vanessa refuses because the offer sounds too good to be true and because it doesn't solve the problem of the Fog spreading in the long term and because all she is too used to having her own plans to save Asala go awry. In the Resolve route, when she learns that Mia was telling the truth, she falls into despair because this meant all of her actions were for nothing. The Tired ending also reveals that she didn't want to believe it because it would render her Infused experiments meaningless.
• Hope Spot: In the Glutton dungeon, Trill's Manna community is kept captive at the bottom floor. The party breaks them out of the test tubes and the coast seems to be clear, but the floor itself opens up and eats all the Manna civilians.
• Iaijutsu Practitioner: Mia practices an iaijutsu-like sword style that gives her sheathed and unsheathed stances, which change her moveset. All of her Bladelord skills in her sheathed stance will cause her to change to her unsheathed stance, and vice-versa.
• The Immune: Miasma and Fog can transform living beings into monsters, but this doesn't fully apply to all beings.
  • Manna and Revenants are a downplayed example. Both are more resistant to Miasma and Fog than humans, but Manna will eventually die from the Fog when they reach the age of 10 while Revenants eventually turn into Hellspawn monsters.
  • The Infused play this straight, since they are completely fused with relics that allows them to process the Fog safely. Since they have the best immunity to the Fog, Vanessa wants to turn as many humans as possible into Infused in order to preserve human civilization. Unfortunately, the Infusion process is unreliable and tends to destroy the subjects' minds, so Vanessa is unlikely to be able to make enough successful Infused to repopulate humanity after the Fog kills them all.
• It Gets Easier: Playable characters are stuck with the passive, Unbroken, which lowers their stats and EXP gain because of their inexperience with taking another human or Manna life. This passive is removed when they kill a human or Manna for the first time. Commandant Venessa exploits this by making the final round of the Proving ceremony a deathmatch, all to break in the survivors and make them more efficient combatants. This is also to make them more willing to sacrifice people for The Needs of the Many, as shown when Vance insists on killing an injured Parker so that he doesn't slow the rest of the refugees down.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One:
  • The Vergio Oracles lost their clairvoyant powers, but Serra Cadmus is the only one who regained her powers. Unfortunately, Oracles cannot refrain from announcing their prophecies, and the one she gives is "Fear the Revenant: The Vanguard of Ruin," which causes human civilization to panic about the end days. In order to quell this panic, Emperor Daigo orders her execution, so Serra has no choice but to flee Vergio and take her chances with the Fog.
  • The messages in Kakuri talk of a chosen one who was supposed to cleanse the Fog, but because his community didn't realize who he was, he lacked the training to control his powers, causing them to consume and kill him. This is a Continuity Nod to the previous game in this setting, Soul Sunder, which depicted this event.
• Item Caddy:
  • Luke has skills that use up consumable items while giving them different effects from normal.
  • Downplayed with Aeyr. While he can't use the varied item effects that Luke can use, he can increase the amount healed by consumables.
• Knight Templar:
  • Vanessa is a major proponent of making necessary sacrifices for the greater good of the country, which is why she makes the final round of the Proving consist of deathmatches, which she believes will make the knights ruthless and efficient enough to protect Asala. She also believes that she needs to turn as many humans into Infused as possible so that humanity as a whole can continue surviving in the fog. She had the residents of the village of Lavingard experimented on for this purpose, and she's still seeking out unwilling test subjects.
  • Gauron started out researching Miasma in order to learn how to save the world from it, but resorted to inhumane experiments on his own people. In Purgatory, he reveals that he wants to wipe out humanity for being corrupt and have the Manna build a utopia in their place. He also wants Aeyr to lead the Manna in order to prevent them from making the same mistakes as humans.
• Leaked Experience: When there are more than three party members, the three that are in the active party at the end of battle get full EXP while the reserve members get half EXP. However, the player spends most of the game controlling two three-person parties separately, so this feature isn't used until the endgame when they have to fight Gauron's first form. In the Tired and Judged routes, the party consists of the five surviving characters, meaning the player will be able to continue using this feature in the Tower of Sinners. In contrast, the Resolve and Love routes, only have Aeyr and Mia in the party, leaving this feature unused for the Tower of Sinners.
• Life Meter: There is a HP meter, representing the amount remaining as fractions of a red meter.
• Lying by Omission: Aeyr is sent to an inadvertent Suicide Mission because completing it will turn him human again, which he wants to be. But, what's left unsaid is that he'll die as a result, due to how the environment he'd be in would be lethal to humans.
• Mana: It's called Stamina, contracted into SP, and the amount possessed when an enemy attacks affects how much damage is taken.
• Mana Meter: There is a SP meter, representing the amount remaining as fractions of a blue meter.
• Mana Shield: The amount of Stamina available when an attack is taken affects how much damage is dealt. More Stamina, less damage.
• Mighty Glacier: As a boss, Vanessa has 272 Power, which means even her normal attacks are deadly. However, she only gets one action per round, unlike most bosses that get at least two.
• Modular Difficulty: After beating the game once, the player can access Chaos Quest Settings. Some settings include not just statistical changes to difficulty, but also increasing aggro towards low SP characters, making save points one-use only in exchange for healing, and making loot either double or disappear.
• Multi-Melee Master: Thanks to his experience and skill as a mercenary, Reyson can equip any weapon type and starts out wielding a sword and axe. This gives him a very wide selection of Drives to choose from, making him versatile despite his lack of personal Burst Drives.
• Multiple Endings: According to the developer's Steam guide, there are four endings based on how "in-character" the player can make the protagonists act, which will grant them invisible "Resolve" points:
  • Tired: Aeyr has more Resolve points than Mia. Aeyr kills Mia, but heeds her final words to give other people a chance. He gathers the rest of the party and makes plans to attack Asala so that the citizens will be forced to unite with Vergio, with Vanessa taking charge again.
  • Judged: Mia has more Resolve points than Aeyr. Mia kills Aeyr and declares martial law after showing his head to the Asalans. She plans on recruiting Vanessa to help her run the country, but without performing Infused experiments.
  • Resolve: Aeyr and Mia are tied with 2-3 Resolve points. Aeyr and Mia keep to their ideals without betraying who they are, but acknowledge that they need to keep other in check so that they don't go too far in their ideals.
  • Love: Aeyr and Mia are tied with 0-1 Resolve points. Aeyr and Mia give up on their ideals after realizing that they're being twisted into people they don't want to be. Unfortunately, the rest of the party attacks them for giving up on their ideals, so the duo kills them.
• Named Weapons: Some Soulfire weapons, such as Thanatos, a Soulfire axe that feeds off the malice from within its wielder.
• The Needs of the Many:
  • Commandant Vanessa preaches this philosophy to the Asalan knights and believes that it's necessary to make sacrifices to protect the community at large. Unfortunately, said sacrifices include making trainees kill each other in the final round of the proving, just to make sure that they're ready to make further sacrifices before they see actual field combat.
  • When Paladin Vance takes command of the Honneleth refugees, he insists on killing Parker because the latter has a broken leg and therefore will be a burden on the rest. He's only stopped when Mia and Amalie defeat him in a boss fight.
  • Aeyr is a deconstruction of this idea, since people like him who are ostracized by the community aren't going to be very receptive to the idea of making sacrifices for that same community. When Asala labels him a fugivite Revenant despite his service as a soldier, he decides to stop caring about the consequences his actions have on society at large, so he kills Emperor Daigo in order to break Mia out of prison, even if it means dooming Vergio to anarchy.
  • The incident that branded Thane Wilder a criminal further deconstructs this idea because two conflicting sides have their own idea of the many to save. The prince of Asala wanted to wipe out Amalie's clan because their village was in the way of a trading route with Vergio. Thane wanted to stop the knights and force the clan to flee, but the only way to do this was to cause a cave-in, which would kill many Asalan soldiers and some of the Manna, but allow most of the Manna to live.
  • As Emperor Daigo points out, even if the leaders come up with good policy that saves the majority of the population, it's hard to implement it because the public is constantly living in fear, which means they won't be rational enough to go along with these plans. Mia finds this out the hard way when she tries to get the Asalans to move to Kakuri to avoid the Fog, which most of the public opposes because they fear the sudden regime change and because Mia's plan sounds too good to be true.
• No Place for Me There: Gauron seeks a utopia where the Manna are the dominant species while being free of the flaws of humanity. He acknowledges that he's a flawed and evil human who doesn't deserve to lead the Manna, which is why he wants Aeyr to kill him and lead the Manna in his place.
• Not Me This Time: Mia's party suspects that Vanessa is forcing the king of Asala to work for her and that she usurped him behind the scenes. In reality, the king committed suicide due to the built up trauma of his son's death and the appearance of the Revenant.
• Off with His Head!: In the Judged ending, Mia presents Aeyr's severed head to the public in order to prove that she ended his threat to Asala and to show that despite being pushed around earlier, she's capable of being a ruthless leader.
• Only Friend: As her her character description, says, Mia is:
  A timid young woman who somehow managed to be Aeyr's only friend
• Percent-Based Values:
  • The Unbroken condition confers a 10% reduction in stats and receive less Experience Points from battles.
  • First Aid Kits heal 50% HP.
  • Aeyr's Applied Knowledge passive increases the effectiveness of all healing items by 10%.
• Post-Climax Confrontation: Gauron is the main source of the conflict in the endgame, since killing him will limit the Fog being produced and end the threat of him becoming a rampaging Hellspawn. However, there's still a lower-stake conflict to be settled with Vanessa, since she wants to die in the Tower of Sinners while the party wants her to live and/or atone for her crimes the hard way.
• Pre-existing Encounters: Green and black enemies will track the player upon noticing them, red enemies move randomly and quickly, and blue enemies are stationary but tend to block important paths. Only green and red enemies respawn upon entering a map, though the Tower of Sinners has respawning black enemies.
• Purposely Overpowered: Aeyr and Mia's Perfect Partner passive gives them six turns per round, which is more than enough to set up buffs and make the most out of them. This passive is meant to even the odds against Gauron's Final Boss form, but it's overkill against the Tower of Sinners enemies and bosses, which are all weaker than Gauron.
• Rage Against the Heavens: In the Tired route, Vanessa learns the truth about the people of Kakuri and decides to climb the Tower of Sinners in an attempt to kill God for abandoning those outside of Kakuri. However, just like in every other route, she also wants to die in the Tower because she can't handle the weight of her crimes.
• Refuge in the West: The starting town, a refuge against the monsters outside, is at the western edge of the continent, and an Eastward Endeavor is taken by the protagonists later.
• Regenerating Health: Miasma Charge grants the user regenerating health on top of increased stats and additional effects for their skills. Only Miasma monsters and fully-powered Manna can use Miasma Charge.
• Respawning Enemies: Most enemies will reappear if an area is exited and reentered. It's the Stationary Enemies that block paths and powerful minibosses who thankfully don't respawn.
• Save the Villain: In the Tower of Sinners, the win condition is to heal the boss, Vanessa, to full health. This is because the party wants her to live so they can convince her of the philosophical conclusion they came to, which varies depending on the ending.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: The final fate of the Big Bad Gauron is for his soul to be sealed into Aeyr, allowing the latter to maintain his Revenant powers and survive the Fog.
• Secretly Selfish: Although Vanessa claims to enact her draconian policies for The Needs of the Many, Aeyr believes her real motive is to prove her ex-lover Gauron wrong regarding how to best save humanity. In the Tired ending, it turns out that she rejected the Kakuri plan because she already committed so much evil for her Infused plan, making this a case of the Sunk Cost Fallacy.
• Shoot the Messenger: The Empire of Vergio tried to put Serra Cadmus to death for telling the prophecy of the Vanguard of Ruin, since such terrible news would cause panic.
• Sins of Our Fathers: Aeyr's father, Thane Wilder, was once a respected Paladin until he committed regicide, causing most people to distrust Aeyr as well. Thane killed the prince because the latter wanted to commit genocide on Amalie's clan.
• Smarter Than You Look: Despite looking like a delinquent and having a brutish fighting style, Aeyr is surprisingly perceptive. When he visits Luke's house to gather information, he realizes that the place is so unkempt that Luke is most likely about to skip town to flee persecution for being an Infused.
• Stone Wall:
  • Amalie is an unusual example. She actually has low Armor growth, but her high skill means she has a chance of grazing enemy attacks and she has high Psyche growth to resist magic damage. Her offense takes a massive hit after she's wounded in a fight with Revenant!Aeyr.
  • The Fear emotional condition increases the target's Armor while decreasing their Power.
• Strong and Skilled:
  • Reyson is a seasoned mercenary with high Power and Skill growth, along with the ability to use almost any weapon type.
  • A lategame boss proves to be highly skilled with a sword while possessing Herculean strength. Vanessa's sword can be obtained after defeating her, and it's so heavy that it comes with a massive Skill penalty. Vanessa has high Skill as a boss and has a high chance of parrying attacks, showing that she has both the strength and technique to use the sword effectively.
• Too Broken to Break: In the Tired and Judged endings, Aeyr and Mia gain the Faithless passive, which prevents them from having any emotional ailment. This is because the guilt of killing their best friend means they've hit rock bottom emotionally and have nothing more to lose.
• Treacherous Checkpoint: When Mia goes through the final section of Purgatory and tries to use the save point, the save point disappears and she's forced to run from Gauron for the rest of the section. Fortunately, the save point after this section is real. Additionally, ignoring the false save point allows Mia to gain a slight head start on her pursuer.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Downplayed. Aeyr has very high Power growth, but low Skill growth, meaning his strong attacks have a higher chance to graze the enemy instead of dealing full damage. He makes up for his low Skill growth slightly by having drives that buff this stat. Once he becomes a Revenant, he's powerful enough to defeat a Hellspawn by himself while still having enough steam to defeat Amalie in a duel.
• Walking Wasteland: Revenants burn Soulfire, which produces the Fog that's killing life on the planet. Aeyr realizes that this means his very existence is a threat to all living things regardless of his intentions.
• We Are as Mayflies: Inverted when comparing the lifespans of humans and Manna. Manna age twice as fast as humans and most don't live past 10 because the Miasma within them eventually overwhelms them.
• Weak, but Skilled: Amalie has high Skill growth to make her attacks more accurate, make her more likely to crit, and more likely to graze enemy attacks, but her Power and Armor growth are mediocre. She also lacks the Miasma abilities and telepathy of other Manna, so she has to fall back on combat skill to compensate.
• Wolfpack Boss:
  • After taking over Asala, Mia, Amalie, and Reyson fight Aeyr, Luke, and Trill because the latter party doesn't want Mia to try and fail to save Asala.
  • In the Love ending, Amalie, Reyson, and Serra are upset at Mia for giving up on leading Asala while Luke and Trill are upset at Aeyr for giving up on opposing Asala. They then team up to fight the two protagonists.
• The X of Y: Prayer of the Faithless. The meaning of the title as described by the creator:
  As for the title, well, there are a few reasons why it was chosen. What each player believes when they read the word faith and how it relates to them praying will be different, but not necessarily wrong. Note the word faith used in the description. That's just one meaning. It could be religious faith, faith in humanity, a brighter future, or even in one's self. Maybe it's all of these, maybe none.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Vanessa compliments Mia for sending Aeyr to kill Gauron in Purgatory, which would kill Aeyr because doing so would remove his Revenant powers, along with his immunity to the Deep Fog. This doesn't make Mia feel better about her decision at all.

---