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Once upon a dragon...

Sdorica is a 2018 puzzle-RPG and hero collecting game by Rayark Games, makers of Cytus, Cytus II and Deemo. The first arc, Sunset, concluded on December 2018. The second arc, Mirage, started in spring of 2019, while a third arc called Eclipse began in summer 2020. Season 4, Aurora, began in earnest in 2022.

Once Upon a Time, the dragon Sdorica ruled over an eternal darkness. Mankind existed as Sdorica's immortal slaves, until Vendacti rose to lead a rebellion. Many followed him and the promise of freedom, but those content with their immortal lives fought back, until finally Vendacti overcame them and their dragon-god, and plunged his spear into Sdorica's breast. Fire erupted from the injury, and a great light drove back the darkness—the very Sun itself. Humans gained free will... but lost their immortality. And there are those who are willing to do anything to get it back.

But that's Another Story for Another Time.

You've awoken from a strange dream: a village under siege by monsters, defended by soldiers led by two men and a woman. As the three guard the retreating villagers, one boy falls to his knees, clutching his eye as a second vision starts: a battlefield covered in the corpses of soldiers and a woman in red. The lone surviving soldier begs for explanation from the woman, who he calls "Princess Angelia".

And that's all you remember, except your name, to the surprise of the blue-haired woman standing next to you. She calls you a Watcher of the Bequeathers, the Bequeathers being an organization watching history as it happens with the Book of the Bequeathers. They use their knowledge to predict the future—and change it, if need be. You are especially skilled with the Book due to your power to touch the ever-flowing soul energy of the world, and imbue it into Soul Bookmarks that represent people important to history. As the explanation concludes, the book conveniently starts glowing. Somewhere in the Sun Kingdom, three people are about to start a new chapter in history...

Characters fall into one of three classes: support (white), attacker (purple-black) and tank (gold). The typical team has one character in each role, and one or two advisors providing either an active skill with a cooldown or a passive effect. In battle, a 2x7 grid holds orbs representing each position. Selecting single gems, pairs, triads or quads of a single color triggers the corresponding character's 1st, 2nd or 3rd skill. Unusually for the mobile gacha genre, every character can be raised to the highest tier, meaning that even common characters are viable into the postgame.


Sdorica provides examples of the following tropes:

  • Achievements in Ignorance: Played for laughs as Dumb Bear wins his wife's heart by being good hearted, forthright, and deeply stupid.
  • Action Girl: Sione, Naya and Sharice are soldiers in the Kingdom of Sun's army, Fatima is the Panthers' war leader, Kittyeyes is a bandit, Tica uses her spare time to go adventuring, etc. The only exception is Angelia, who still leads an army from the frontline in SP form.
  • Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Guild facilities produce useful things like resonance materials, crystals and bookmarks but require hundreds of thousands of Curren (and hundreds of crystalline) per day to operate, when the most Curren you can gain in a single battle is 8000 through the dedicated grind mission.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Each character has a personal storyline. Given Sdorica's Ensemble Cast, this is the only place some characters show up for great lengths of time.
  • A Father to His Men: Dylan. He protects his men with a shield in battle and knows how to cook well enough to feed a small city. In Sione's story he allows one of his men to free his lover, a noblewoman, from her Arranged Marriage.
  • The Ageless: Charle hasn't aged in decades. Neither has Nolva. And Izumi doesn't look nearly their real age.
  • All There in the Manual: Light novel, really, and two of them. "Before Sunset" and "After Sunset". One is about Theodore, and the other is about Atlas and Nigel's grandparents. Both fill in details about the setting and backstory that the game has only just started getting into. A third novel called Before Mirage has begun as a web serialization, and after that there's also "After Mirage".
  • Alternative Calendar: Sdorica still uses a 12-month calendar, but the months are instead named after certain aspects of nature. To wit:
    • January: Ice Month
    • February: Flower Month
    • March: Dawn Month
    • April: Rain Month
    • May: Sea Month
    • June: Sun Month
    • July: Fire Month
    • August: Dew Month
    • September: Mist Month
    • October: Maple Month
    • November: Frost Month
    • December: Snow Month
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: Justified in-universe: every battle that has one takes place in a Wonderland, a Pocket Dimension used at Rune Academy to study otherwise impossible magics. Or prevent collateral damage.
  • Ambidextrous Sprite: In-game sprites flip when facing different directions without regard to asymmetry: see Roger's missing arm, Nigel's broken horn...
  • Ancient Conspiracy: The Sdorica-worshipping Dracontines. But they're just a myth.
  • And Now for Someone Completely Different: The Book of the Bequeathers tends to jump between characters between chapters. The Watcher and Rei override it once to follow one plot thread just a bit more.
  • Another Side, Another Story: Some character stories happen alongside one another, or build on the main story.
    • Kittyeyes/Koll/Roger
    • Lisa/Ned, intersecting the main
    • Dylan/Jahan/Theodore
    • Nigel/Yamitsuki
    • Pang/Puggi
  • Anti-Armor: Armor Penetration attacks deal double the listed damage to armor, and return to normal when that armor is cleared.
  • Anti-Frustration Feature:
    • Daily missions have a number of free plays per day which are only used up when you beat said mission, so if you accidentally jump into one you can't beat, you keep the play after you quit or lose.
    • Being in a guild unlocks the Guild Advisor slot, where you choose one out of ten (a limit later raised to 20) randomly selected advisors from your guildmates. Guilds with insufficient members have phantom guildmates with R-Tier characters so that you always have plenty of advisors to choose from.
    • Wonderland Trials has a special Guild Advisor that lets you reset the Command Board while the turn count is still 0.
    • In Explore, initially you would lose all your inventory if you lose a battle or have Stamina/Vitality hit zero. A latter update makes it so that you lose only farmable items instead of everything. Another update makes it so that you can restart the wave upon failing the exploration.
    • In case you are in the last enemy wave (as in winning the battle leads to the result screen), you still win even if all of your characters die at the same as all the enemies.
  • Anti-Grinding: Characters who are overleveled compared to the level rating of the quest battle they participate in will receive suitably less Exp.
  • Anti Poop-Socking: If you play a given quest too many times a day, the Curren, Watcher experience, and Soul Energy reward you receive will gradually decrease, as indicated by a red exclamation mark.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: True Damage attacks ignore armor and goes straight for HP.
  • Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The creed of the Desert Kingdom is taken straight from Plato: "Justice is nothing more than the interest of the stronger". In Eclipse, we see that the East Alliance follows a similar concept. They have their own royalty but the Arbiter who essentially functions as the middle man for disputes between the various tribes has the final word for the decision everyone goes for. The arbiter is selected via Martial Arts Tournament.
  • A Taste of Power: The prologue has your three characters at high tier and high level, showing off what kind of damage you'll be able to deal later on.
  • Artifact of Death: Rayzor, a weapon from the Mechanical Kingdom that fires lasers strong enough to vaporize the landscape.
  • Back from the Dead: When a character falls in battle you can spend their orbs to revive them. Several characters have skills that expedite or take advantage of this.
    • In the story, Aosta's life mission is to raise his mentor from the dead, and he succeeds.
  • Background Magic Field: Soul Energy pervades everything on the continent, though it's particularly dense around Whistlewood Valley. The player uses it as experience points for characters.
  • Bastard Angst: Elio Ceres is popular, good looking, talented, and more than a little bitter about being a Sun Kingdom noble's bastard child.
  • Beach Episode:
    • Sdorica has annual MZ summer events where select characters have fun in the waters. Each year, four characters receive MZ variants, and one or two characters receive cosmetic beach skins.
    • Introduced in season 4 is the onsen event featuring new OS units, though compared to MZ, OS units' fanservice are more varied instead of just showing off skin.
  • Bears Are Bad News: Especially when they walk and talk and carry totem weapons with mystical significance. Luckily they get along just fine with their neighbors when treated politely.
  • Beauty, Brains, and Brawn: Angelia, Sione and Naya have this dynamic in Sunset. Angelia has the charm and royal bearing, Sione has the discipline and education, and Naya is called a gorilla for her strength (despite wielding bows). Diana in Mirage embodies these three qualities and in Eclipse, the main trio has the role of beauty going to Tindoiimu the princess of the insect tribe, the brains being Juan Yun whose quick thinking and smooth talking sometimes hints that he's much more perceptive than he lets on, and lastly the brawn being Maeok since she is the current Arbiter.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: A recurring element; lasting relationships start from small moments of empathy and kindness.
  • Becoming the Mask: A major theme of Mirage: sometimes people end up in positions of responsibility that they do not deserve. But they grow into that role by living up to it.
  • Beneath the Mask: Hyde is a gentle schoolteacher and genius strategist who comes to work for Princess Angelia, while Izumi is a deceptively clever tease supporting Nigel's dream of a demihuman homeland. Oh, and they're both Consummate Liars working with the organization plotting to resurrect Sdorica.
  • Beneficial Disease: Void Disease is almost always lethal, but has beneficial effects on the rare survivors.
    • Nolva contracted Void Disease in utero, but her case developed a personality as Nolva grew up. Today it's her companion, Waverlyde.
    • Hyde's case is slowly killing him, but he can see the future.
    • Roger cut off his infected arm but only slowed his infection. When his Heroic Willpower fails, he grows a spiky purple arm and becomes The Berserker.
  • The Berserker: Roger and Rune, and Ned to a lesser extent.
  • Bizarro Universe: The Christmas Hero Adventure sees Pang tumble Down the Rabbit Hole where Sdorica characters behave opposite of what they usually do, such as carnivorous Karnulla embracing vegetarianism and normally platypus-loving Hestia raising them as livestock.
  • Black Magic: Shows up as black soul energy in Atlas, animating the evil puppets. The fact that it's spread by Void Monsters has interesting implications.
  • Blood Magic: The "power from the North", first seen in chapter 16.
  • Body Surf: Sdorica's Immortals are named such because they jump to a new one if their current one gets too old or injured. If there is no body within reach when the current body dies, the immortal will die as well.
  • Bond Creature:
    • Played for Laughs during Summer Fantasy event, where Naya and Sharice ends up 'befriending' a jellyfish and a slime monster respectively which they use to fight.
    • Insect tribe's Rite of Passage involves adolescent tribesmen finding and bonding with their fated insects for life.
  • Braving the Blizzard: The point of the Deep Into Atlas explorations. Preparing for your first serious expedition will take a lot of reading guides and in-game resource gathering.
  • Brutal Bonus Level:
    • Wonderland Trial, especially its higher levels, are loaded with enemies with massive health reserves and powerful abilities that can destroy unprepared teams in a hurry.
    • Balzac explorations, especially Adventurer's Workshop, is pretty hard.
    • Battles in Venture Quest 3 and 4 have a Numerical Hard mode version. Despite being harder, these battles do not reward more Exp than the normal battles, but clearing them for the first time grants trinkets which can be exchanged for rare items.
  • Cannot Spit It Out: Cin's feelings for Nigel are obvious except to him.
  • Captain Ersatz: Sione Aldric is practically a Saberface. Not only is she a noblewoman swordmaster voiced by Ayako Kawasumi, her alternate skins all mimic Saber's various forms: Sione SP is Saber Lily (elegant white-dressed swordmaster), Sione MZ is Archer-class summer Saber from Fate/Grand Order (water gun in place of sword), and Tanabata Sione wears similar blue yukata as a Saber collection figure.
  • Catch-22 Dilemma: If you send an underleveled monster into a bonfire mission, you will receive a penalty for the mission's success rate. However, monsters can only gain exp by successfully completing bonfire missions, so having a full stable of underleveled monsters will make it hard for you to successfully clear bonfire missions, in turn making it hard for you to level up those monsters.
  • Charged Attack: Lio and Leah get a buff after three and four turns respectively.
    • Lio SP and Hestia SP also charge up, Lio from taking damage from allies and Hestia through casts of her 1st skill.
    • Dylan's armor charges up his 2o skill. It's also consumed when used.
    • Pang's 1st and 2nd skill give him stacks of Wind Up, and after four stacks, the next time he attacks he instantly follows up with another attack.
  • Chekhov's Gun: The crystal tower structure in Mirage Attract Mode is Sdorica's Tooth, falsely worshipped by the Desert Kingdom as the Rib of the Snake God.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Sometimes the story mentions in passing a character who becomes more important much later, often overlapping with Promoted to Playable. The character sheets have more details.
  • Civilized Animal: The Panthers and the Bears stand on two legs, speak, wear clothes, use weapons, and have independent nation states. The Eastern Alliance is full of other kinds of animal people and is at least as large geographically as the Kingdom of the Sun.
  • Civil War: Between Theodore and Angelia, which makes up the second half of Sunset.
  • Colony Drop: In Chapter 7, Nigel sabotages Theodore's flying castle to kill everyone aboard including himself.
  • Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: A character's position is indicated by the color of the emblem on their page: gold with a shield to represent frontliners (tanks), black with a sword to represent midliners (attackers), and white with a heart to represent backliners (support). Referenced in game by Puggi, and becomes a minor plot point in Alice's "Past Interlude" character story.
    • Subverted in clashes between Angelia and Theodore's armies. Both armies wear the same uniform, making it impossible to tell which soldier belongs to which army. Not that it matters.
  • Combo: There exists several characters whose power increase dramatically if you execute their skills in the correct order. For example Nolva's power increases dramatically immediately after you use her 1o or 4o skills to slap her allies with temporary Vulnerability, while Law and Naya MZ rewards you with incredible damage output if you do their skills exactly in 1o, 2o and 4o order.
  • Cool Mask: Lazer Bernard, and he's had it at least since he killed Angelia's father, King William.
  • Counter-Attack: Karnulla, Rune and Sophie SP retaliate whenever they're attacked, Jahan when he's attacked while taunting, and Crushfang uses his first skill twice if his armor runs out (often due to enemy attack).
  • Creepy Doll: Common enemies at Atlas levels. The local religion made dolls to remember deceased relatives, and later doll-makers created animated marionettes via craftsmanship and rune magic. Today most of the dolls are infected/possessed by Void Monsters and attack living beings on sight.
  • Crossover:
    • First with Deemo, where they have an annual limited time event featuring three characters from that game: Deemo himself, Alice and the Masked Girl.
    • A second collaboration involved Cytus II, and came with its own annual limited-time event and four playable characters: PAFF, Neko, Nora and Ivy. A few years later, ConneR and Cherry join the line-up.
    • A third collab involves Mandora, Rayark's second mobile game, and features Mandora-flavored character variants of Sherlock, Sharice, Yan-Bo, and Puggi.
  • Cute Bruiser: Leah SP and Sharice. Lisa SP as well.
  • Damager, Healer, Tank: Most characters of each color fit one of these archetypes:
    • Gold characters are tanks, taking up the front position and often having skills that increase their durability.
    • Black characters are attackers, using direct offensive moves to deal damage.
    • White characters are supporters who keep teammates alive with heals, armor and buffs.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!: 3-orb skills may be executed in three different ways among the characters who use them: A straight line of three orbs, an L-shape, or both. Getting these three mixed up is a real possibility. 4-orb skills are now available in multiple shapes as well, so getting those mixed up may also happen.
  • Decoy Protagonist: Season 2's announcement and opening cinematic suggest that Elio would be the central character of Season 2. And he is, because his kidnapping kicks off the real plot. The protagonist role passes on to Sophie instead.
  • Delaying Action: Several characters have skills that can delay enemy turns, though usually some condition has to be met.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Theodore hurls two people right over it, and they're both family members.
    • Losing Cin shatters Nigel, though he recovers better than most. ...Or not. He just decides to commit suicide while wiping out Sun Kingdom's entire nobility and bureaucracy.
  • Diabolus ex Machina:
    • Diana's storyline is one of these after another, culminating in an unnecessary assassination letting the wrong person take the throne. In more ways than one.
    • The ice tail moths seen only in chapter 1 of season 3 infect one minor insect tribe NPC, and from there things quickly go From Bad to Worse.
  • Didn't See That Coming: The final battle between Theodore and Angelia in chapter 17 over the portable Rayzor is a trap set by Angelia to get Theodore in position for Yamitsuki to take a shot at him.
    • Even more impressively, in the same chapter, Hyde's been using his precognitive powers to play both sides and arrange a Mutual Kill between Angelia and Theodore, only for Angelia to use Hyde's own advice to expose him and avert his plans.
  • Doesn't Know Their Own Child: Headmaster Charle Ceres doesn't want to show Elio any favoritism and also wants to keep Elio away from Sun Kingdom politics. He's completely shocked when Elio signs up for the Civil War, and breaks down when he hears about Elio's reveal and subsequent flight.
  • Dub Name Change: A few characters have names that change depending on localization. Examples range from literal translation (Yaiba means blade, not that far off from Dagger) to noticeable pronunciation difference (Tindoiimu in English, Titorima in Japanese).
  • Dying Moment of Awesome:
    • Even after Devious turns him into a savage monster, Lazer still manages to regains some semblance of sanity to protect Diana by shoving the Beast of Earth void monster, which has been tanking our heroes' attack like nothing, back into the portal it comes from and keeps him there until its seal is successfully restored.
    • Even when fatally injured, Maeok proves herself an arbiter by taking on Qing Feng and the honey badger tribe, killing dozens of assassins, blowing away Qing Feng and allowing for Tindoiimu to flee to safety.
  • Dynamic Difficulty: Some battles are adjusted to your Watcher level. Keep your characters up to par or you'll lose the number game.
  • Dynamic Entry: Some characters like Sharice immediately attack at the start of a battle, while the likes of Fatima and Rune immediately order your team members to attack.
  • Endless Winter: Atlas is permanently locked into winter. Unusually, it's south of the entire Desert Kingdom, and west of the perfectly temperate Sun Kingdom.
  • Enemy Within: Pang faces a manifestation of his suppressed rage and bitterness in a Journey to the Center of the Mind in chapter 6...
  • Enemy Without: ...but Pang SP is that manifestation manifesting.
  • Ethereal White Dress: SSR Shirley and Masked Girl wear pure white dresses and are both associated with death: Shirley has been dead for many years before the start of the story, and Masked Girl is a physical embodiment of a girl's suicidal thoughts.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Theodore is a complete bastard but he's never wanted Angelia dead. In fact his dearest wish was for her to fall in love and choose that love over the crown.
  • Even the Guys Want Him: Nigel, if one assumes Izumi is male. Also Pang assuming Puggi's not just nattering.
  • Evil Laugh: Of all characters, Hyde, to Memetic Mutation levels.
  • Exposed to the Elements: Nigel runs around Atlas shirtless at SSR. Other characters mention the place is warming up but still.
  • Failure Is the Only Option:
    • Some battles tell you outright that you have no chance of victory and all you can do is hold on.
    • Subverted by some other battles that give you healer or support character with no offensive abilities. There's usually a trick to those.
  • Fantastic Fragility: Ally debuffs strengthen Angelia's skills. Nolva’s passive boosts her attacks when allies have a defense debuff, and Roger does more damage at low hp.
  • Fantastic Racism: Residents of the Kingdom of the Sun look down on the poor, and doubly so on poor demihumans, like the Atlas refugees who live in the slums.
    • Leah's classmates tease her for being a rabbit demihuman.
    • Nigel and Eve were brutally assaulted by a human for daring to beg from him. This in turn feeds Nigle's own racism against non-demihumans.
    • A rumor that Theodore had an affair and bastard child with a demihuman drives him into a cold rage. Because it's true, and the woman in question was a spy sent to create the scandal in the first place.
    • The Desert Kingdom inverts the dynamic, because up north it's humans that are the oppressed, poor minority, while reptilian demihumans run most of the kingdom.
    • The various sects of the Eastern Alliance joined together to smash the Insect Tribe, and kidnapped their princess. And even discounting insect tribe, the various tribes within the alliance themselves are not on civil term all the time, as evidenced by their practice of sending political hostages to secure some peacetime.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
    • Sun Kingdom is a classic medieval European fantasy setting.
    • Desert Kingdom is visually middle-eastern but with Spanish-named populace.
    • East Alliance as a whole is an oriental wuxia, further separated into Wind sect which is Chinese, Water sect which is Korean, and Fog sect which is Japanese.
    • Insect tribe borrows from indigenous tribes, particularly aboriginal Taiwanese with regards to East Alliance.
  • Fiery Redhead: Naya, incredibly so.
  • Flesh Golem: The products of the Restricted Area.
  • The Freakshow: Morgan's Marvellous Circus has a number of beastperson performers with unusual deformities that they use in their acts. Rune joins them after winning his freedom, but learns juggling rather than becoming a strongman.
  • Friendly Fire: There are a couple of characters such as Rune, Sharice and Elio SP who hurt their teammates as part of their skills, usually as a Necessary Drawback for their immense damage output. However, there are characters who actually benefit from getting hit, such as counterattackers like Karnulla or stance-changers like Jerome and Lio SP.
  • Gameplay and Story Integration: Aosta owns a Character Mineral. He uses it to animate Experiment.
  • Generation Xerox: A recurring element of the Rune Academy characters: Charle in his youth was an explorer and troublemaker like Tica. The ABC trio of Annie, Betty and Cara is the second to follow the theme, after Morris's three disciples Aosta, Barbara and Clio.
  • Going Home Again: Pang decides to return to the Eastern Alliance during Eclipse, after hearing that his friend Yao may be alive and connected to the ongoing instability there.
  • Gory Discretion Shot: Character deaths are often hidden with a blacked-out screen and sound effect or similar, until chapter 16 where clashing soldiers start dying with gratuitous blood splatters.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: Teams are assembled without regard to in-universe allegiances or philosophies. Mortal enemies in the same team? No problem.
  • Gratuitous Spanish: Despite the Qurac motif of the Desert Kingdom, quite a number of characters living there or the nearby Poleva Desert have Spanish-sounding surnames.
  • Growing Wings: Members of the Feather Tribe grow retractable wings upon awakening to their heritage. Extending the wings increases their physical and magical abilities.
  • Guide Dang It!: Many explore missions doesn't have an in-game guide, leaving players to trial and error their way through the survival systems, crafting, equipment, and unique character interactions.
  • Happily Adopted: Lisa, Elio, and Angelia. The player gets to watch all three of those parental relationships break down. And only one father/child pair mends bridges.
  • Heal It with Water: Hestia and Misa both have water-themed healing powers.
  • Heroic Bastard: Elio. Ironically, his father's the other kind of bastard.
  • The High Queen: Both the Sun and Desert Kingdoms are ruled by women as of Mirage. East Alliance is a variant; while it has several different animal tribes led by beastfolk of either gender, the top chief of the Alliance, the Arbiter, is a woman.
  • Hidden in Plain Sight: The ultimate plot of Mirage revolves around Sdorica's Tooth. It's the white tree on the start screen.
  • Hologram: Duplicate status is represented by a featureless hologram. It reduces the next attack's damage by 99%.
  • Hope Bringer: Sophie does a lot of inspiring people to be better.
  • Hopeless Boss Fight: There's a few story battles in which you just can't win. Some of them are blunt about it by one-shotting your team in one attack, while others require you to just hold on until you inevitably lose.
  • Horse of a Different Color: Unique to Desert Kingdom are giant crabs that can be ridden, and Summer Sports Day event even features a crab-racing tournament.
  • Immortality Inducer: According to legend, Sdorica is one. He kept humans enslaved but immortal, and his death put and end to that immortality.
  • Immortality Seeker: Long after Vendacti took down Sdorica, there are people who long to revive the dragon to regain their immortality.
  • Instant Runes: A common effect of Rune magic.
  • Interface Screw: Completely unexpectedly at the end of chapter 17. And it's not the last time...
  • Interface Spoiler: Characters receive new sprites and portraits, and lines in their Info page at SSR tier, some of which give away major turns in the story.
  • I Shall Taunt You:
    • Taunt status. Good way to keep heat off squishier party members, but tricky to get around when enemies have it. Skills that target enemy positions will ignore it, as will attacks that target random enemies, while Yamitsuki's first skill can strip it away. Area of Effect moves render it almost completely moot. Fatima SP is especially punishing to enemies with Taunt.
    • The lovingly nicknamed "bait tanks" reduce enemy cooldowns but have passives that benefit the party when they are attacked.
  • Kill It with Water: Both Sione MZ and Sharice MZ have powerful water-themed offensive skills. Yamitsuki MZ also has water themed abilities as a surfer. And Jerome MZ can hose enemies with his water cannon.
  • Later-Installment Weirdness: "A Midsummer Night's Scream" is unusual compared to the previous summer events as the story is set at night on a haunted house and thus more of a Kimodameshi, and two of the featured MZ units, Joan and Miranda, occupy positions they have previously occupied via their other variants (Joan MZ is black like her base form, and Miranda MZ gold like her SP)note  Also, unlike the previous summer events that are concurrent with the latest storylines, A Midsummer Night's Scream is a Flashback Episode.
  • Leaking Can of Evil: Although the immortals successfully sealed the Beast of Judgement under the Udumbara tree in the past, the Beast's poison seeps into the land, giving birth to the equally-poisonous Insect Tribe.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Puggi, all the time. He calls himself the main character, justifies recklessness by invoking his Plot Armor, references game mechanics... and not just this game's mechanics.
  • Lethal Harmless Powers: Some characters can turn defensive buffs into offensive tools. Examples include Karen who converts your gold unit's defensive buffs such as taunt and damage reduction into power boost for your black unit (who may be Karen herself), and the likes of Izumi MZ, Tindoiimu SP and Yao SP who use Regen buff as a catalyst for skill chaining and further damage.
  • Life Drain: The rare Drain attack type, used by Roger SB, Devious and a tear-powered Yao. Also Ralph on the rare occasions he's available in Wonderland Trial.
    • In story, it turns out that Rune's Healing Factor works on this principle, draining the life from his environs to strengthen and heal him.
  • Like a Son to Me: Crushfang to Dagger, albeit with a healthy dose of You're Not My Father from Dagger before Character Development.
  • Little Bit Beastly: Demihumans are typically human in appearance with some animistic traits such as ears, horns, tails, and so on. Leah and Lio have rabbit ears and feet, for example.
  • Living MacGuffin: Feather Tribe demihumans are rare and have enormous magical capabilities, and are hunted across Sun Kingdom by every bandit and unscrupulous magician who hears a rumor of one.
  • The Load: In universe, Puggi, since he constantly needs saving from the consequences of his latest adventure. There's a bit of Gameplay and Story Segregation since Puggi is essential to several Venture Quests, but he's mostly this.
  • Luck-Based Mission:
    • Some characters have skills that activate by chance, including as Jahan's advisor skill and Leah SP's passive.
    • Others have attacks that hit random targets, such as Leah and Joan.
    • Several exploration maps, such as Deep Into Atlas and A Daughter's Voyage, have randomized paths, enemy encounters and loots.
    • There is currently no way to guarantee your success of transferring skills to your monsters in the ranch.
  • Magikarp Power: N-tier characters don't do much. Raise them to R, SR and SSR then Exceed and enhance them, and more gets added to their toolbox until they're some of the best characters in the game.
  • Meaningful Appearance: Nobility in the Kingdom of the Sun are identified by a glowing lock of hair. Theodore has a purple stripe in his grey hair, Angelia has a bright green streak in her blonde hair, etc.
  • Motor Mouth: Puggi's bizarre, Breaking the Fourth Wall rants. Usually pretty funny too.
  • Ms. Fanservice: Fredrica, Lisa, and Shirley.
  • Mugging the Monster: Some bandits attack the market on Paradise Prarie and threaten a sleepwalking Nolva... who happens to be possessed by a literal Void Monster when she sleeps.
  • My Rules Are Not Your Rules: AI-controlled characters tend to have a lot more HP than their playable equivalents, and their skills almost always work differently, even when they share animations.
  • Necessary Drawback: Characters with strong abilities have strong downsides as well. Experiment and Elio have some of the best damage potential in the game, in exchange for strictly negative passives. SSR Roger's third skill is one of the game's strongest single target attack period, but using it kills him.
    • Certain characters turn it around though: Nolva's Area of Effect attacks debuff the party's defenses, but since Nolva gets stronger when that exact debuff is in effect...
    • And with the right team, drawbacks can enable viable high-power combos. Several top-tier meta teams involve repeatedly damaging and killing party members to trigger certain passive abilities.
  • Nintendo Hard:
    • In the higher Wonderland Trials and explorations, enemies boast HP in the 6-digit range (or more), requiring specific strategies to deal with them. Wonderland Trial's hardest battles even boast a level rating of 85, way beyond the current maximum player level of 70.
    • Chapter 16-5 is a nightmare. You need luck to pass this.
    • Story battles in Mirage are more varied, with win conditions beyond reducing the enemy's HP to zero. In battles with multiple stages, it's recommended to play through the easier wave while carefully stockpiling the necessary orbs for the second wave.
    • Balzac-flavored exploration maps, such as Balzac's Heritage and Adventurer's Workshop, tend to be incredibly brutal.
  • Non-Indicative Difficulty: Every battle has a recommended level, but the levels aren't always indicative of the relative difficulty.
    • The hardest daily character mineral quest sits at a mighty level 90, but it doesn't hold a candle to level 80-ish Legendary Wonderland Trial battles or level 70 Adventurer's Workshop.
    • The daily material/curren/soul energy quests are all capped at level 65, but curren and soul energy quests are generally much easier than item quests of similar level.
  • Not Completely Useless: There are some features in the game that seem useless in most everyday situations, but can be useful in specific cases.
    • Even after you have upgraded a character to SSR, you can still choose their lower tier when going to a battle. For most characters, this serves no purpose as SSR characters tend to have better abilities and access to their enhanced skillset, but for the remaining few, there are times you may want to downgrade to access a different ability.
    • You can reset a character's level back to 1, and the game will refund you half the Soul Energy that character has had. Most of the time this is only useful to redistribute Soul Energy to your more favorite characters, but in some cases it may be beneficial to deliberately keep a few characters at low level.
  • Not Quite the Right Thing: Elio stops Angelia from killing the uncle who raised her. Theodore does not at all appreciate the gesture, and forcefully rejects Elio before leaving to plot revenge against the kingdom.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: Angelia confesses to Elio that from a historical perspective, there may be little difference between herself and Theodore, and that she now appreciates the thinking behind his decisions, though she still believes he's in the wrong.
  • Numerical Hard: Some battles in the game possess a harder version where the enemies are all the same, but with higher HP and attack power. Venture Quests 3 & 4 and Wonderland Trial's adjustable difficulty are the most prominent examples.
  • Older Than They Look: Most characters because of the game's cutesy artstyle. But Charle is in his 60s while Nolva is in her 30s. Both characters look much younger due to magical interference.
  • Ominous Visual Glitch: Rei's chapter 17 dialogue, to the point that players thought the game had crashed. And that won't be the last of them...
  • One-Hit Kill: On player's side, we have Dylan SP and Lazer who can instantly kill an enemy regardless of their buffs and debuffs if said enemy has less health than them. On the AI side, quite a number of quests are essentially Puzzle Boss who can kill your character or your entire team in one hit if you slip up.
  • One-Steve Limit: SP and MZ characters cannot form teams with their regular selves.
  • Our Ghosts Are Different: Shirley is dead in the story and has a different sprite entirely when she dies in gameplay, traits she shares with Deemo.
  • Our Mermaids Are Different: They float on land and grow up based on their emotional maturity.
  • Parental Substitute: Theo and Dylan to Angelia, more or less explicitly in the former case. Also Sherlock, Charle and Crushfang adopted Lisa, Elio and Dagger, respectively.
  • Pimped-Out Dress: Angelia's queenly gown, Fredrica's ridiculous SSR outfit...
  • Pintsized Powerhouse: Sharice, Leah, and Lio are smol and capable of some of the highest damage in the game.
  • Poisonous Person: In-game, some characters like Lazer SP and Diana SP has skillsets that revolve around poisoning their enemies. In-story, Insect Tribe are able to utilize poison, which gave them major advantage against East Alliance until the Alliance discovered that the Udumbara tree can be used as the antidote.
  • Posthumous Character: Shirley, who's been dead for nearly two decades by the time the story starts. Morris has been dead even longer.
  • Power at a Price: In-universe, characters who survive the initial exposure to Void Disease pick up superhuman abilities... in exchange for bouts of pain, mood swings, having your body hijacked by a monster, and death. Not necessarily in that order! And then there's the red Soul Energy Ralph uses in chapter 17...
    • In gameplay, Roger's passive boost the power of his skills as he passes certain damage thresholds.
    • Several runes exclusive to Balzac exploration maps provide both benefits and drawbacks.
  • Power Crystal: The Dragoneye Gem. taken from Atlas by the Kingdom of the Sun holds enough Soul Energy to levitate a castle and fire a Wave-Motion Gun over and over.
  • Power Trio: Keeping with Sunset's Arc Number, part 1 characters tend to come in threes. The bandit trio, the Maple Lake trio, the starter trio and the army trio, to name a few.
    • In Mirage, Sophie, Elio and Rune form their own Power Trio. Later on, Clark replaces Elio.
  • Punny Name: There are many, many puns in character titles and skill names ranging from wordplay to pop culture references.
  • Qurac: The Desert Kingdom's primary architectural style, mostly noticeable on the building domes and the crescent moon imagery.
  • Really 700 Years Old: The mythical Immortals of Sdorica, natch.
  • Redshirt Army: Kingdom of the Sun soldiers on both sides of the Civil War wear red, and they drop like... well, redshirts.
  • Religion Is Wrong: According to Mirage chapter 10, the Snake God and Goddess are completely fictional, and Sdorica is the true god.
  • Revision: The prologue and first chapter of Sunset were completely rewritten in an October, 2019 update. The dream where Angelia chases Uzziah was replaced by Fredrica, Charle and Dylan (SB) defending a town against Void Monsters, while On To Three was heavily altered to better show off the team's animation and writing skills.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Characters like Dagger and Koll immediately attack should a teammate go down.
  • Royals Who Actually Do Something:
    • The Dawn of the New Year event has Angelia enter the slums as "Queen Angelia" as opposed to Angel, and organize a New Year's celebration. As the party enters full swing, she quietly slips away to get back to her work.
    • Diana can be pretty active outside her throne if the situation calls for it, such as investigating Lazer's sudden leave and helping an underdog team beat a cheating competitor during Summer Sports Day.
  • Satchel Switcheroo: The crux of conflict in "Christmas Antics" event is that Tica and Dagger are planning to give presents from their respective bags to their respective recipients, but a collision results in Tica running off with Dagger's bag instead, much to his horror.
  • Scars are Forever: Yamitsuki's many, many scars. While they don't detract from her beauty in the slightest, they're everywhere on her face and body.
    • Kittyeyes has a burn scar on her stomach at SSR. It's visible on her model as well.
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: The entire reason Angelia starts her Civil War against Theodore.
  • Sealed Evil in a Can:
    • The rib of the Snake God, a holy religious relic of the Snake God religion in the Desert Kingdom, happens to harbor a void portal that not only houses myriads of void monster, but also a gigantic ancient void beast that the Eternals themselves didn't want to deal with.
    • The Udumbara tree in East Alliance serves the same purpose: A seal made by the immortals to keep a very dangerous void beast at bay.
  • Secret A.I. Moves: There are several buffs and debuffs that only enemy AI have access to, such as Death Cursenote  and Antibodynote 
  • Secret Circle of Secrets: The Dracontines' entire hat, going by their uniform, ancient magic, and secrets. Plus the whole "resurrecting Sdorica" thing.
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story: What "A Midsummer Night's Scream" event ultimately becomes. An evil beastman uses a summoning tome to drag a ghost into a haunted house for cheap scares, so our heroes wrestles away the tome and uses it banish the ghost back to the afterlife. However, the banishing ritual has a side effect of wiping out the tome and everyone's memories of the ghost, leaving our heroes confused and wondering just what happens in the past few days.
  • Single-Use Shield: Duplicate status reduces the next damage taken by 99%, but expires immediately after.
  • Sinister Geometry: Void monsters often take geometric form, such as spheres, cubes and pyramids. Larger ones keep the outline, but start growing spikes, tentacles, and teeth.
  • Small, Secluded World: The Watcher's room is completely isolated from the outside world, with Rei as their only human contact.
  • Spoiled Sweet: Lisa was adopted by Sherlock, who spoiled her absolutely rotten, as evidenced by him giving her enough money to buy out an entire clothing store at the Bazaar.
  • Stance System: Several characters can change their skillsets mid-combat. Triggers include dedicated stance-change skills (Yan-Bo and Sherlock), the actions of other characters (Jerome and Lio SP), and more esoteric (Izumi SP has three stances, each with different method to switch to).
  • Status Buff: Enhance, Damage Reduction, Regen, Taunt and Vigilance (dodge buff) are the common buffs. But they're eclipsed by the uncommon buffs:
    • War Cry and Rage are variations of Enhance, while Charisma instead enhances their owner's teammates.
    • Tank Up gives a character armor when they're struck, and Armor Shift restores a character's HP based on their armor.
    • Beyond that, certain characters have unique buffs:
      • Bubble: Hestia SP
      • Clockwork: Tica SP
      • Close Immunity: Izumi
      • Foresight: Hyde
      • Game Tag: Kittyeyes
      • Guilt: Pang SP
      • Lasting: Sherlock SB
      • Mage Power: Charle SB
      • Overload: Lio SP
      • Qi: Yanbo SB
      • Rant Rave: Ned
      • Shock Lock: Experiment
      • Support: Kittyeyes SP
      • Vigor: Kittyeyes SP
      • Wind-Up: Pang and Tica SP
  • Status Effects: Poison, Stun, Exhaust and Vulnerability, as well as Tear (like poison but only goes off when the character acts). Each stacks up to three times.
    • Certain challenge missions involve the Death Curse debuff, which kills a character instantly under certain conditions.
  • Stellar Name: Each season's moniker so far is named after atmospheric and even astral phenomena:
    • Sunset is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • Mirage refers to an illusion that happens in very hot days, when the sun is shining unobstructed.
    • Eclipse is a space phenomenon where a celestial body in the sky is obscured by another celestial body, such as the sun being blocked by the moon.
    • Aurora is the visual aftereffect of charged solar ejecta crashing onto Earth's atmosphere.
  • The Straight and Arrow Path: Diana's SSR self carries a staff, making her seem like another healer... until she folds it out into a giant crossbow.
  • Survival Of The Fittest: Leadership of the Desert Kingdom is decided by the candidates competing in a fight to the death.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: Season 3 Wonderland Trial update introduces a new scoring system called "Achievement", where you get a flat 600 for every wave you manage to clear regardless of your performance. However, the waves are often very extremely hard; just surviving them at all will literally be an achievement, forget scoring quick kills with no damage.
  • Theme Music Powerup: When a Cytus II character uses their strongest skill, their theme music replaces the current battle BGM (or the theme music of the previous Cytus character) until the wave is cleared.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Sometimes, the game tells you that an enemy deals One-Hit Kill by making them deal 8-9 digits worth of damage. For comparison, even your tankiest tanks won't have even six-digit HP.
  • Timed Mission: Many battles in latter Civil Wars feature an unstable machine that you have to destroy within 36 turns, lest it immediately kills your entire team. The saving grace is that if all of that machine's allies are killed, the machine itself will become so brittle a Cherry Tapping will definitely end it.
  • Tsundere: Sharice. Her squad isolates her for the attitude until her Character Development in her character story. Tragically/hilariously, the Summer Festival event implies that her parents act the same way towards her.
  • Understatement: Enemies whose status reads "this enemy's skill power will increase significantly if (a condition is met)" usually deliver a One-Hit Kill if that condition is met.
  • Undying Loyalty: Most of the main characters feel very strong personal loyalty to their faction leaders.
  • Unexpected Genre Change: Resources Management Gameplay elements are major a part of Explore mode.
    • The 2.05 update added the Adventure Camp, a Monster Rancher inspired game mode with light Raising Sim elements.
    • The Deemo crossover event had two battles that play out like a Rhythm Game.
  • The Unreveal: At the end of Sunset the Watcher asks Rei about the connection between the Dracontines and the Watchers. When she goes to explain, things get... DIALOG_NOT_TRUE.
  • Virtual Pet: An update in Mirage features the addition of monsters that you can keep in the exploration mode. More monsters are caught using a special fruit and you also have a monster stable where you can upgrade or release the monsters you found!
  • The Virus:
    • Void Disease. It's spread by bites from geometric monsters, and is fatal 99% percent of the time. Victims spread the infection in true zombie fashion, but the rare survivors develop strange powers.
    • Bewitchment in East Alliance is another case: Affected beastmen not only slowly turn into humans, but if they so much as touch another living being, even plants, that being will become a violent monster.
  • Was Once a Man: Inverted. A strange disease called bewitchment that afflict some beastmen in East Alliance slowly turns the infected into humans.
  • Wizarding School: Rune Academy. Located in soul energy rich Whistlewood Valley, watched over by headmaster Charle Ceres, attended by Tica Chevalier and Elio Ceres and the recently matriculated Leah, famous alums include Aosta Clovis and Fredrica Lucien. To get in you have to find the hidden entrance.
  • You Are Already Dead:
    • Several characters, team combinations and/or stage bonuses allow your units to attack as soon as a wave starts. If the attacks triggered this way are powerful enough, you can walk towards the end of the level seeing all enemies die before you get to input any command.
    • You can keep inputting orb commands without waiting for the attack animation to finish unless it's the enemy's turn to attack, so with the right team combination that can prevent enemies from acting at all, you may end up furiously inputting command after command until the game forcibly stops you because all enemies are dead while there are still dozens of attack animations to display.
  • Younger Than They Look: Hestia's 11. Karnulla's 5. Dagger is 13. Less dramatically, Theodore is in his early 40s but looks like he's 60.

Alternative Title(s): Sdorica Sunset

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