Video Game / Trillion: God of Destruction

Trillion: God of Destruction is a 2016 game made by Compile Heart for PlayStation Vita as part of the Makai Ichiban Kan ("Number 1 House in Hell") series, a project that consists of multiple non-connected games which are developed as part of Compile Heart's branding for titles created by a newly established development team.A PC port was released on November 7, 2016 as well.

Zeabolos, a great overlord and the former overlord of wrath, was having a normal life in the underworld when he discovers Trillion, a powerful monster with a trillion HP. An attempt to battle Trillion leads to his death. However, he comes back to life by making a pact with Faust, a mysterious woman who wields a grimoire: in exchange for Zeabolos' soul, Faust will revive him. Back on his feet, Zeabolos travels to find a way to defeat Trillion, aided by six Overlords (who are all cute girls), in order to stop the destruction of the underworld.

The game is a mixture of Sim RPG and Rogue Like in which you have to train your overlord to be strong enough to defeat Trillion. During training, you can raise their stats, improve their weapons and techniques or take a break.

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This game contains examples of...

• Amplifier Artifact: The Ring of the Tyrant, which houses Zeabolos' lost power. It's actually this power the Overlords are drawing out, so it can be passed from one to another, if necessary.
• Antagonist Title: The eponymous Trillion, the main bad guy of the game.
• Anyone Can Die: Your first playthroughs will have a few or all your overlords die against Trillion. However, you can bring someone back to life if your relationship with her is high enough. The true ending path can add Elma, Cerberus and Faust to the body count.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Justified. Trillion releases a powerful miasma ahead of it, and only Zeabolos is powerful enough to repel it, so only the Overlord wearing the Ring of the Tyrant can even get close enough to fight it. In addition, an Overlord's entourage of familiars is capped based on their leadership stats.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: The most powerful of the Overlords has the right to take the throne of Great Overlord. Since Zeabolos fell against Trillion, he decrees he'll abdicate in favor of whoever manages to kill it.
• A Taste of Power: Inverted. You get to play as Great Overlord Zeabolos in the prologue... who is at the base stats every Overlord starts her training with. Against Trillion. It's not your power you're getting a taste of.
• Awful Truth: Revealed early on. The first Great Overlord didn't defeat Trillion at all, instead sacrificing himself to create a new Netherworld Core after Trillion was done destroying it. This is what spurs some of the Overlords into agreeing to face Trillion if necessary.
• Badass Family: Five of the overlords are Zeabolos' relatives: his nieces (Ruche and Perpell), his sister (Fegor), and his cousins (Mammon and Ashmedia). He also has his brother Astaroth.
• Big Friendly Dog: Cerberus. At the beginning, he looks threatening. Only to be reduced into something closer to a plushie after being affected by Trillion's miasma.
• Bishōnen Line: Trillion's final (and most powerful) form is a human looking woman.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Every ending except for the true ending. Every one of the Overlords' ending ends up with the chosen Overlord becoming the Great Overlord, but Zeabolos has to leave as part of his contract with Faust. If you maxed out the chosen Overlords affection rating (as in, got the pink heart to 100%), you will get a heartfelt ending where Zeabolos stays, the Overlord professes her familial/romantic love for him and everyone lives happily ever after... except for the Overlords that died against Trillion. Cerberus's ending is more on the bitter than the sweet since he lost his Master Elma, and Faust's ending ends with her marrying Zeabolos but everyone playable before her are dead. The only way to get a completely happy ending is to either get the True Ending or to beat Trillion with your very first Overlord.
  • And then there's the false true ending: Zeabolos defeated Trillion, but everyone who dies against Trillion stays dead.
• "Blind Idiot" Translation: Only a minor example. Judging from the animation, the skill "Lai" is supposed to be "Iai".
• Boss Game: In spirit. Trillion is the only meaningful foe you'll face; literally everything else in the game is a training exercise with little consequence for failure (besides the opportunity costs of not succeeding, of course). However, there's a LOT of training gameplay to get an Overlord powerful enough to face Trillion.
• Break the Cutie: All the Overlords aren't bad people in the slightest, being at worst rude and impatient. As the game wears on, more and more of them are ruthlessly killed by Trillion, and the survivors start to crack as the game wears on.
• Character Level: Averted. Training grants six different kinds of experience, which are spent on stats and abilities as currency.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: Levia, the Overlord of Envy, is Zeabolos' Childhood Friend. She is also easily angered at seeing him with Faust.
• Comically Missing the Point: Zeabolos intended for the burning-hot spring to be an endurance test. Every Overlord candidate mistakes it for an extreme beauty therapy and jumps right in, getting more Charisma experience than anything else. Zeabolos lets it slide, since that's still useful.
• Crosshair Aware: The spaces Trillion’s attacks will hit are marked, turning from white to yellow to red as they get closer to executing. Avoiding these is absolutely crucial, since Trillion's strikes can gouge immense quantities of AP/HP with one hit. A higher Speed stat makes the warning last longer, which is critical, as once you're in striking distance Trillion can carpet the area around itself with a mesh of overlapping impact zones.
• Cute Ghost Girl: Lillith, who is also Zeabolos's grandmother. Justified since she died young while fighting Trillion.
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Exaggerated with Trillion and its eponymous amount of Health. In fact, its health is so huge that it takes multiple fights to defeat it.
• Darker and Edgier: As mentioned under Spiritual Successor, influences from Disgaea and Zettai Hero Project are visible. However, the game's tone quickly takes a turn for the much more serious, starting with making it obvious Zeabolos is sending his nearest and dearest to their deaths in hope of wearing a Eldritch Abomination down.
• Death as Game Mechanic: You train Overlords and send them out to fight the eponymous Trillion, a Damage-Sponge Boss with one trillion HP. Your Overlords are intended to die during the fight; the first few won't be able to do more than whittle down Trillion's HP a tiny bit and weaken it. When your Overlords die, they can unleash a Death Skill that does things like disable one of Trillion's body parts or extend the time you have to train your next Overlord. The True Ending requires every single Overlord to die fighting Trillion.
• Death by Disfigurement: The Death Skills images make it a point to show how torn up the Overlords are. Massive cuts all over, shattered horns, ripped up wings, bloodied heads. Their living weapons and clothes have been cracked, shatter, and have damaged eyes.
• Death or Glory Attack: The Death Skill Final Strike, if Trillion's HP is low enough.
• Devil in Plain Sight: Nobody trusts Faust. Even Zeabolos is completely aware he's probably being played, but he considers anything to be worth defeating Trillion.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: The game.
• Do Not Go Gentle: The game, from the Overlords' perspective.
• Downer Ending: If all your overlords die against Trillion and there's no one to oppose it, the game ends up with Trillion consuming the Underworld, killing everyone. This is the most likely ending you will get on a first playthrough.
• Dump Stat: Everything but Attack, Speed, and Affection are utterly worthless. HP and MP are pointless because Trillion hits so hard that you'll die no matter what and that skills run off affection unless it's out, respectively. Defence and Resistance suffer the same issue as HP, and Intelligence later becomes outright unviable. Capacity would be useful if the AI on the mooks wasn't utter garbage and they didn't die so easily. As it is, it's only useful on a very specific Seal build that relies on them dying to amp the Overlord's abilities.
• Dwindling Party: As you progress in the game, the number of overlords will diminish, as they will die fighting Trillion one by one. This is especially reflected in the training room, as less and less icons appear as they die.
• Dying Moment of Awesome: Zeabolos in the prologue, doing enough damage to Trillion to make it hibernate for almost six weeks, (inadvertently) buying the others time to train. See also Heroic Sacrifice below.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: The true ending sooooooo much. Zeabolos loses everyone who fought against Trillion; his sisters Fegor and Elma, his nieces Ruche and Perpell, his cousins Mammon and Ashmedia, his childhood friend Levia, his dog Cerberus and his savior Faust, leaving him as the last person strong enough to defeat Trillion. At the end, however, he defeats Trillion and everyone is resurrected. So worth it! Also Invoked - you can't get the true ending without letting every other Overlord get killed off first.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There: Many of the Overlords possess weapons and accessories that have eyes on them. They even blink in cutscenes!
• Fanservice: Ashmedia's and Mammon's outfits, for a start. The event CGs are also quite happy to provide cheeky camera angles.
• Flash Step: The exact name of a skill that your Overlord can learn. A very practical one too, as it allows them to move up to three spaces in a single turn for a very affordable cost, and doesn't count as walking, allowing certain passives to keep stacking up while you nonetheless stay mobile.
• Game-Breaking Bug: The game can freeze while fighting Trillion's final form. To make it even worse, this is the only form that you can't retreat from.
• Glass Cannon: This is the best way to build practically all of your characters, given how redundant defensive stats are in the game.
• Godzilla Threshold: Neither Zeabolos' deal with Faust nor the training regimen would have even been considered if Trillion wasn't around to threaten the Underworld.
• Gory Discretion Shot: In addition to Astaroth's death, every overlord will be brutally murdered by Trillion after they throw their Desperation Attack.
• Guide Dang It!: Being a Compile Heart game, getting the two secret endings and the true ending requires a lot of effort. First, you must make sure that all your Overlords have 100% affection. Then, you must defeat the Agent (which is Astaroth) with Ruche (losing will cause the game to jump right to resurrecting one of your overlords instead). Then, you must make sure that all the Overlords die against Trillion. Doing so will unlock Chapters 7 and 8, where you will play as Elma and Cerberus. Winning will net you the Elma ending or the Cerberus ending, while losing will let you choose to either use Faust as a character or revive one of your overlords, Elma, or Cerberus. Choosing not to revive anyone and defeating Trillion with Faust will give you her ending while losing will unlock the final chapter where you play as Zeabolos. You have to defeat Trillion as Zeabolos or else, it's game over. Finally, the total affection points across the Overlords has to be 1.5 billion, or else you gain a sadder version of the ending.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Averted. Trillion actually deals damage numbers that make it look as powerful as it should be. Luckily, your Overlords would be Final Boss material in most other games, with HP and MP reserves that are displayed rounded off to the nearest thousand even before you start training.
• Heroic Sacrifice: The Overlords who lose against Trillion will use a last technique where they can do things like giving it massive damage, slow it down to give your other overlords more time to train, or appear as a ghost to aid their successor (though it can be subverted if Final Strike kills Trillion). The first Great Overlord, Satan, also pulled one of these long before the game proper during the last time Trillion came knocking.
• Hidden Depths: There is MUCH more to every Overlord than their Seven Deadly Sins cliches would lead you to believe.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: The fight against Trillion in the prologue.
  • The first Mokujin fight. Justified since this is showed to explain that fighting Trillion is a Suicide Mission.
  • Interestingly, the game doesn't have to cheat with these. Technically, both these fights are winnable, and if you manage to land a hit against Trillion in the prologue, that damage will actually stick. It's just your stats are so awful it's mathematically impossible to win at that point. It doesn't stop them from doing so, however — smack them around a little too much without taking a very specific precaution and they'll cast Fatal Miasma, which instantly wipes the Overlord.
  • The first two or three Overlord candidates selected stand very little chance of surviving. The best they can hope to do is wound Trillion enough their successors can finish the job.
• Interplay of Sex and Violence: Ashmedia, the Overlord of Lust, is quite aroused with battle.
• Irony: Of the situational variety. All of the Overlords end up representing the Heavenly Virtue opposed to their specific Deadly Sin just as well as the Sin if not better.
• It Only Works Once: Every skill on Trillion's final form will only work once per battle, as Trillion gains immunity to them for the rest of the battle.
• Kill the Cutie: Because Perpell was one of the first Overlords to challenge Trillion, there is a huge chance she might be the first one to die.
  • The True Ending can add poor Elma to the body count.
• Kissing Cousins: Mammon and Ashmedia, Zeabolos' cousins (albeit adopted in Mammon's case), both end up expressing some interest in him.
• The Last Dance; From Zeabolos' perspective, the game is this.
• Last Stand: Death Skills. After losing all their HP, the Overlord has the opportunity to make one final move with all their power before they die for good. These can change the course of battle for the next Overlord. It's a way of encouraging the player to continue even when their first Overlord buys the farm.
  • Storywise, the whole game is revealed to be this. Trillion has already consumed the Human World and almost destroyed the Heavens, with God barely holding it by himself. If Trillion consumes the Underworld, the dimension will be destroyed forever. And it's not the first dimension to fall this way.
• Living Weapon: Each of the overlords has one, though they seem incapable of saying any more than their names.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The Overlords are named after the Demons most associated with the Seven Deadly Sins, and each of them has the respective sin as a character trait (Perpell's Sweet Tooth, Fegor's tendencies to doze off, Mammon's Treasure seeking, etc), as well as being that respective sin's Overlord (formerly in Zeabolos' case).
  • Trillion is so named because it is the embodiment of a trillion curses (and because that number is the same as its health pool).
  • Faust is named after the sorcerer that strikes a Deal with the Devil, and that is exactly what she does. Ironically, she comes off more as Mephistopheles.
• Multiple Endings: There are 10 endings available, based on the who lands the killing blow on Trillion and whether or not you meet a condition (or almost meet it) for one of them.
• My Sister Is Off-Limits: Zeabolos is extremely protective of his younger sister when Uriel the angel tries to seduce her.
• One-Winged Angel: Trillion has three forms; the basic Titan form, its more powerful Dragon form, and its final form who took the shape of a woman.
• Passing the Torch: If an Overlord dies and can't be revived, the Ring of the Tyrant, imbued with all their progress and power, is passed on to another.
• Raising Sim: While the actual combat is quite deep and nuanced, half the game is getting primed for it through a combination of non-combat activities.
• Random Number God: Unfortunately, a great deal of the most-important and useful skills and items in the game are earned through randomly-proccing events that themselves have a random chance of success.
• Relationship Values: A rather important thing to raise since the higher the relationship with the overlords is, the higher the protective aura will defend them against Trillion and they can be Back from the Dead.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Each one of the main overlords has a crest based upon a sin:
  • Zeabolos himself is the former overlord of Wrath. Cerberus becomes this on Elma's death.
  • Levia is the Overlord of Envy.
  • Perpell is the overlord of Gluttony.
  • Mammon is the Overlord of Greed.
  • Ruche is the Overlord of Pride.
  • Fegor is the Overlord of Sloth.
  • Ashmedia is the Overlord of Lust.
  • The odd men out are Astaroth, who holds the crest of Gloom, and Lilith, with the crest of Vanity. Both of which draw from some alternative sins, namely Despair and Vainglory.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism: Played with. The entire main cast are decent, self-sacrificial people throwing themselves into an incredibly-lethal battle to save their world, Uriel comes representing their ancient enemy to make peace and lend whatever help he can, and all the citizens of the Netherworld support them almost unconditionally, with the army especially volunteering en-masse to have their souls put into combat drones to assist in the war effort despite knowing it's a one-way trip. But, for all this idealism, the vast, vast majority of them are probably going to die fighting a horrible, sadistic monster that exists only to consume.
• Spiritual Successor: To both Disgaea and Zettai Hero Project. The former is because it's about demons (or as they are called, Fallen Ones) who are much more like noble demons and it's directed by the same person who did Disgaea 3 and Disgaea 4. And the latter because it's about training yourself against a really powerful being who wants to destroy the world and losing most of the time.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Several Overlords express their desire to have Zeabolos stay by their side once they beat Trillion and become Great Overlord in his place. Zeabolos is always careful with his answer, since he knows if they come back, he has to go.
• Sweet Tooth: Perpell. Fitting for the Overlord of Gluttony. Even her weapon is a literal lollipop.
• Take Your Time: Averted. You have a limited number of days to prepare for the next engagement with Trillion. Nothing short of the previous Overlord's Heroic Sacrifice will extend this grace period. On the other hand, battle itself is turn-based, and you'll be grateful for having time to think.
• Theme Naming: The Overlords are named after demons associated with the Seven Deadly Sins.
• The Power of Love: Anything you do with your Overlord builds Affection Points, which are consumed before HP and MP in battle. Additionally, if your Relationship Values (a different meter) are high enough, an Overlord can be saved from death.
• Time-Limit Boss: On two levels. During an engagement with Trillion, it will gradually progress toward a line at the end of the arena; if it gets there when the Overlord is Out of Continues, it'll cast Fatal Miasma, offing your Overlord on the spot. On a broader level, after every clash, Trillion will make progress destroying the Netherworld. If it reaches the core, Game Over.
• Training from Hell: Literal puns aside, training the Overlords involves blocking steel balls while blindfolded, spam-casing magical glyphs to the point of exhaustion, dodging fireballs that fall from the underworld sun, maintaining their balance while meditating above a pit of spikes, dancing while dodging a storm of swords caught up in a whirlwind, and bathing in a scalding-hot spring for as long as they can stand. The trope is deconstructed to a point, as everyone acknowledges this regimen would be insane if they weren't facing a Godzilla Threshold, and is dangerous even for an overlord — in fact, they can get injured if pushed too hard without rest, losing up to a week of time as they recover.
• Turns Red: After proving that you're a threat to it, Trillion morphs into a combat-focused dragon form. Manage to make it through that, and the final form will stop screwing around and outright seal a number of mechanics that the player's almost certainly exploited to make it that far.
• Unstable Equilibrium: If you beat Mokujin you get a good chunk of experience, or an utterly ridiculous amount if you subject him to a Curb-Stomp Battle, and a massive Affection boost, making it easier to beat him despite the buffs he'll receive the next time you fight him. Beat him too much and then lose to Trillion and the next Overlord has to face him however strong you buffed him up to be with only a fraction of the previous character's strength, leaving him nearly unbeatable and giving minimal rewards to the new character so it becomes harder for them to catch up. And no, he doesn't lose strength if you fail to win.
• Useless Useful Spell: The majority of death skills are useless compared to Part Seal and Demon Barrier, offering either small bonuses or dealing scratch damage. Magic is also utterly worthless after a certain point, as Trillion pulls It Only Works Once with all skills. Since there's no way to cast magic without using skills, it renders a magic-focused Overlord a sitting duck after only a little bit of damage.
• War Is Glorious / War Is Hell: Discussed. Alma mentions Zeabolos' love of reminiscing about the war against Heaven and how great it was, but she also mentions that Zeabolos never talks about anything of the fight against Trillion because of how awful it is.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Astaroth, Zeabolos's brother, who dies in the prologue. However, he came back as Trilion's agent.

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