Ash is introduced running from a bully, only for a glowing figure to transport him to Below, a dangerous world filled with lost spirits and murderous demons. Worse yet, the Crimson Skulls cult seeks to sacrifice mortals like him in order to free their Crimson God, who has the power to destroy human civilization with hellfire. Ash will have to overcome his fears and trauma in order to survive and free Below from the iron grip of the Crimson God.
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This game contains examples of:
- Always Accurate Attack: Unlike normal attacks, spells will always hit even if the player doesn't do the button inputs perfectly, unless the opponent is scripted to always evade like in the first two fights with Rose. Conversely, if an enemy has enough speed, they have a chance to land their attack without giving the player a chance to dodge or use button inputs.
- Attack Failure Chance: The player's normal attacks have a chance to miss even if the player lands a "Great" or "Perfect" hit. The player can buy an accessory, Blessed Ring, to decrease the miss rate of normal attacks.
- Bad Boss:
- Rose is the leader of the Crimson Skulls who kills her underlings because she wants to be the one to capture Ash and gain the Crimson God's favor.
- Downplayed with the Crimson God, who is mostly a Mean Boss by treating his minions coldly when they fail. However, he tied the Crimson Skulls' lives to their leader, Rose, causing them all to turn to dust once Ash kills Rose. If Ash is fully able to commit to being evil, he will actually spare Ash, even if their relationship cannot be considered a Villainous Friendship. However, if he thinks Ash is wavering as a servant, he will kill Ash without hesitation.
- Boring, but Practical: The first spell, Fireball, is the weakest and cheapest of the spells. Even a normal attack will surpass it in damage because Ash has higher physical attack growth than magic growth, but Fireball is still more accurate than physical attacks, at least until the Blessed Ring accessory is equipped.
- Boss-Only Level: Soul Gate Tower has no random encounters and only has a Hopeless Boss Fight with the Crimson God at the end of Chapter 6. The player then has to return in Chapter 7 to defeat the Crimson God for real.
- Break Them by Talking: In Soul Gate Tower, the party is transported to a mirror room where shadowy versions of themselves pick at their insecurities and denigrate them. This is implied to be the reason why Ash and Melody initially lacked the resolve to defeat the Crimson God, though they manage to regain their footing in the rematch.
- Bright Is Not Good: Peter is the leader of the Pieties, a cult that wears yellow smiley masks and seems to be allies to the mortals. However, they have their own rituals where they sacrifice each other in blood rituals, which Peter secretly gives to the Crimson God. Peter also sends mortals on a quest to defeat the Crimson God, but gives them incomplete information to ensure that the Crimson God wins and kills them in order to complete Somnium's ritual.
- Card-Carrying Villain: The Crimson Skulls have a recruitment poster that outright admits that they enjoy slaughter and that their deity, the Crimson God, is evil.
- Composite Character: The Crimson God has the backstory of Jesus up until the crucifixion, where he refuses to forgive humanity. God casts him down from heaven for refusing to fulfill his duty, and the Crimson God is forced to wander as a spirit on Earth forever. He tempts humans into embracing their worst impulses and enacting a human sacrifice ritual to revive him, making him a Satanic Archetype. However, it's unknown if the Biblical Satan is actually a separate character or if he's another identity for the Crimson God, since in-universe, humanity's copies of the Bible are supposed to be false versions of the real one carried by the Crimson God.
- Cowardly Lion: Ash is terrified of the monsters in Below and spends his first fight being too scared to fight back against the weakest enemy in the game. Later, he gains the courage to stand up to the Crimson Skulls, even when everyone around him is telling him to run away. In the final two chapters, he cowers again when he's forced to fight the Crimson God alone, but finds courage again after Bell sacrifices himself to save him. Ash then rushes back to the Soul Gate Tower to save Rose and work with her to finish off the Crimson God.
- Deal with the Devil: The Crimson Skulls are lost spirits who willingly threw their lot in with the Crimson God in exchange for receiving gifts. However, if their leader dies, they all turn to ash, which shows that allying with the Crimson God has dire consequences.
- Demon of Human Origin: The random encounters of Below are demons, who are the lost spirits of dead humans who gave into despair.
- Dung Fu: An enemy in the Fallen Temple, Turdy, drops pieces of poop in its attack animation. Hilariously, the optional boss, the Beast, also has this as one of their attack patterns.
- Fallen Angel: The Crimson God tried to teach humanity love and kindness as Jesus, but when they crucified him, he renounced his ideals and swore revenge on all of humanity. God stripped him of his divinity to punish him for his lack of faith, leaving him as a blood-red demonic being.
- The Final Temptation: At the very end of the Final Boss fight, the Crimson God tells Ash that even if the party defeats him, they will return to their miserable lives in the real world instead of getting a happy ending. He then offers to make Ash his accomplice in taking revenge on the world. If the player chooses to kill the Crimson God, Ash admits that he doesn't know if his life will get better, but he believes that chance is worth fighting for. Otherwise, Ash will let the Crimson God kill Melody and destroy the world.
- Foreshadowing: The Crimson Skulls wear cross-shaped necklaces and have cross-shaped marks on their foreheads, which indicates the Crimson God is actually Jesus Christ.
- Glass Cannon: Ash has higher base offensive stats and MP than Cloaked Figure, especially if the player completes the Shadow Knight's challenges. However, his HP and base DEF are lower. His lower AGI also means he won't get as many opportunities to dodge attacks from faster enemies. If the player has no deaths on their run, they can use the statues of strength to sacrifice 8 of Ash's Max HP in exchange for 5 more ATK.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The twelve human sacrifice system is facilitated not by the Crimson God, but by Somnium, an even higher demonic being who is considered the God of Death. As such, it's actually possible to usurp the sacrifice's purpose for one's own wishes, which is what Rose plans to do against the Crimson God.
- Heel–Face Revolving Door: Bell is a petty thief who steals Ash's lighter in Arbor Forest. In Glacies Cliffs, he hides Ash from Rose and the two seem to be on better terms. Unfortunately, Bell kidnaps Melody in Mount Ignis and tries to prevent Ash from saving her. In the final chapter, he attacks the Crimson God in order to free Ash from the latter's clutches, but the Crimson God kills Bell.
- Hiding Behind Religion: Ash accuses Peter, the leader of the Pieties, for interpreting his religion in order to support his own preconcieved viewpoints, justify his Jerkass behavior, and shrug off the previous mortals dying in vain. The reality is much worse, since Peter is actually sending mortals on a suicide mission so that the Crimson God can absorb their blood, and he'll also sacrifice his own followers to further empower the Crimson God. The reason he's so hostile towards Ash and Melody is not because he thinks they're too weak, but because he's afraid they'll win.
- Historical Hero Upgrade: In-universe, the Crimson God is portrayed this way. The Bible owned by the Crimson God supposedly has different text from the more common versions of the Bible. Later, it's revealed the Crimson God is Jesus himself, but filled with vengeance instead of forgiveness because of his crucifixion. This indicates the common Bibles lied about Jesus's true intentions to maintain hope among humanity while the Crimson God's Bible is the true one.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: In Soul Gate Tower, the first battle with the Crimson God cannot be won, since Ash is too scared to take any action. Once Ash is reduced to one HP, Iris whisks him away to the Fallen Temple.
- Hypocrite: God stripped Jesus of his divinity and barred him from Heaven for losing faith in humanity. However, the lore states that God Himself lost faith in humanity too, and the only moral high ground He has over Jesus is that He's not actively trying to wipe out humanity, instead taking a stance of complete apathy.
- Ignored Epiphany: Rose seems to show a soft side when she realizes Ash carries the same pain as her and realizes it would be wrong to kill someone who is in the same situation as her. Unfortunately, she doesn't learn to extend to empathy to Melody and tries to sacrifice the latter to the Crimson God.
- Jesus Was Crazy: Jynx the Quiz Master and other lore events reveal that the Crimson God is actually Jesus himself, who believed he sacrificed himself in vain and never forgave his persecutors, causing him to become a misanthrope who wants to wipe out humanity.
- Jerk with a Heart of Jerk:
- Rose seems to want to befriend and spare Ash during the events of Chapter 5, but in the next chapter, not only is she planning to sacrifice Melody to get her wish, she also uses Ash's life as leverage to manipulate Bell into helping her. This shows that despite having some empathy for Ash, she ultimately puts her own ambitions ahead of everyone else.
- The Crimson God seems to lament Delilah's death and tragic circumstances, to the point of using her death to justify his own genocidal goals, but he has no problem manipulating her and her soul pieces for his own benefit.
- Jerkass Gods:
- Played with in the case of the Crimson God. He's far above mortals, is very sadistic, has the power to wipe out humanity and was once Jesus Christ, but God stripped him of his divinity in his backstory.
- The one in charge of the human sacrifice ritual, Somnium, is a godlike or demonic being who is implied to be even higher than the Crimson God.
- The Abrahamic God doesn't outright antagonize humanity, but he did give up on both them and Jesus, deeming the former to be irredeemable and the latter to be a failure for giving into hatred. He also stripped Jesus of his divinity, threw him out of heaven, and left him to wander Earth forever as a vengeful ghost.
- Karma Houdini: Peter, the leader of the Pieties, faces no consequences for not only leaving Melody to die, but also sacrificing his followers to the Crimson God and tricking mortals into fighting the Crimson God without a chance of winning. Even if the player returns to the Piety HQ after defeating the Crimson God, Peter is still pointlessly sacrificing blood to him.
- Laughably Evil: Bell is a snarky Jerkass thief who comes off as a comic relief character compared to the more menacing Crimson Skull cult. He introduces himself by stealing Ash's lighter and he has the audacity to set up a stall to try to sell it back to the latter for the money cap. He's also incredibly narcissistic, as shown when he locks Ash in a room where the only way out is to solve a tile puzzle in his image.
- Mad Scientist: Rose once had a second-in-command who used their scientific knowledge to create all the puzzles of Below. They were also just as complicit in the sacrifice of mortals, and the puzzles were likely created to slow the mortals down and make them easier to catch.
- Magikarp Power: The Toy Sword and Piety Mask are the weakest pieces of equipment in the game, but can be upgraded by blacksmith spirits into mid-to-late game tier equipment.
- Messianic Archetype: While Ash is not only the one who is supposed to defeat the Crimson God to save all the spirits trapped in Below, the true ending is reached by showing kindness and mercy to Melody, Iris, and Bell despite all of them betraying him in some way, giving them a chance to become better people. Additionally, by slaying the Crimson God, he makes it possible for the lost spirits of Below to finally try to ascend to Heaven. Ironically, the Crimson God is a version of Jesus who failed to become this archetype, and is meant to represent what Ash could become if he succumbed to hatred.
- Moral Myopia:
- The Crimson Skulls like to play the victim whenever anyone fights back against them and always swear to avenge their brethren, even though they're performing human sacrifices to gain the blessing of their god and have killed eleven humans so far without a shred of mercy.
- The Crimson God condemns Delilah's fellow townspeople for killing her, even though he was the one who manipulated her into performing human sacrifices to revive him.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Rose states that she sees a lot of her own trauma in Ash, due to both being social outcasts who lost their loved ones and burned down the churches that mistreated them, which is why she later hesitates to kill him.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: Bell seems like a Laughably Evil thief at first, but during Chapter 5, he'll put Ash through difficult Bullet Hell segments where losing will result in a game over and an increase to the death counter.
- Not So Invincible After All: Deconstructed. The Crimson God at full power is completely unbeatable and once defeated Melody, the Stone Wall party member, in one hit. Although Ash and Melody learn that he can be weakened by killing his soul pieces, they are still held back by their fear of him, since they have no knowledge of how much this actually weakened him. This leads to the Crimson God almost killing them again, but once they regain their footing, they find that his attacks have been reduced from one hit kills to survivable even for a Glass Cannon like Ash.
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: During the final battle, the Crimson God states that humanity is sinful and that by burning them all to the ground, he's helping them repent. In reality, he's a sadist who wants revenge for his crucifixion as Jesus and feels that humanity denied him his rightful place as their messiah. Additionally, it's highly doubtful the slaughtered humans can repent as lost spirits or demons trapped in Below, who are unable to move onto the afterlife properly.
- Omnicidal Maniac: The Crimson God's goal is nothing less than the eradication of humanity for crucifying him as Jesus Christ.
- Parental Abandonment: In the mirror room, Melody's phantoms reveal that her parents abandoned her, giving her self-esteem issues.
- Pieces of God: Pieces of the Crimson God's soul are contained in certain boss enemies. Destroying them supposedly weakens the god.
- Purgatory and Limbo: Below is a realm where the spirits of the dead are trapped, unable to move onto the afterlife because of the Crimson God. The only thing preventing it from being an outright Hell is that there are some safe towns for lost spirits to live in, though most of them would rather ascend to Heaven. In the good and true endings, the party defeats the Crimson God and the lost spirits form a line at the Soul Gate in order to enter the afterlife.
- Redemption Equals Death:
- Ash's friendship with Bell soured because the latter captured Melody and delivered her to the Crimson Skulls. However, when the Crimson God captures Ash and Melody, Bell attacks the Crimson God to free Ash, but the Crimson God kills him in response.
- Delilah sacrificed her townspeople to revive the Crimson God in the real world, but was shot. In Below, her soul is split into Iris, Rose, and a nameless spirit. Rose continues sacrificing people to the Crimson God while Iris tries to stop the Crimson God, but does so by trapping humans in Below to fight him, not knowing that her "ally" Peter secretly witheld information on how to weaken him. If the player spares Iris and resists the Crimson God's temptation, Iris will deal the final blow to the Crimson God and recomplete herself as Delilah before passing on.
- Religion of Evil: The Crimson Skulls worship the Crimson God in the belief that he'll bless them with gifts, and they're willing to kill any mortal who arrives in Below in order to ensure their god's resurrection.
- Running Both Sides: Although the Pieties appear to be the Good Counterpart faction to the Crimson Skulls, it turns out the god they worship is also the Crimson God, though most of the rank-and-file worshipers are unaware of this. Peter instructs Iris to recruit mortals to fight the Crimson God, but neglects to mention that the Crimson God can be weakened by defeating his Soul Pieces first, ensuring that the Crimson God will win every battle and absorb the blood of the mortals.
- Saintly Church: Subverted. The Pieties are a religious group that functions as a Good Counterpart to the Crimson Skulls, since they're friendly towards mortals and put up posters with encouraging platitudes. They also oppose the Crimson God and believe that slaying him means the lost souls can pass onto Heaven. However, in the Ignis area, it turns out they also practice human sacrifice, albeit voluntarily. Their leader, although well-intentioned in wanting to defeat the Crimson God, is an utter Jerkass towards Ash and Melody because they don't fit his ideal of heroism. He also outright refuses to heal Melody when she's on the verge of death, and Iris has to steal a Divine Elixir to save her. Worse yet, he turns out to be in cahoots with the Crimson God, aka Jesus. The only good news is that the rank-and-file worshipers don't appear to be in on this, and some of them will sell useful items to the party.
- Satanic Archetype:
- The Crimson God is responsible for tempting his followers into performing human sacrifices to empower him, and he did the same in the real world with Delilah by manipulating her into becoming a serial killer. He also has the Beast of Revelations as his ally, who can be fought as an optional boss. Once Ash and Melody defeat him, he tries to tempt Ash into joining him in getting revenge on society. This makes it even more of a twist that he's actually Jesus, but this still fits with how many examples of this trope are fallen angels or gods.
- Downplayed with Somnium, the one who facilitates the human sacrifice rituals. He is a demonic being who is known as the God of Dreams and Death. Those who complete his ritual get a wish, which is essentially a Deal with the Devil. However, he never directly appears in the story and is never shown tempting anyone, though the very existence of his ritual counts as a form of temptation.
- Sinister Minister:
- Peter is the head clergyman of the Pieties and is secretly sending mortals on a suicide mission against the Crimson God so that their blood will fuel the evil deity.
- Father Joseph is the leader of Ash's church, but abused the latter. He's also implied to be involved in Delilah's poor treatment in her hometown, leading to her joining the Crimson God.
- Spared, but Not Forgiven:
- When Ash learns that Iris is the one teleporting people into Below, he attacks her in rage. Once she's down to one HP, the player has the choice to spare or kill her, though Ash and Melody don't forgive her even if the former choice is picked. This becomes more ambiguous in the ending, since he and Melody cry when Iris passes on, which implies they may have forgiven her.
- Almost all of the important moral choices in the game require this mindset to get the True Ending, since it requires Ash to refrain from vengeance against those who wronged him, otherwise he would become just like the Crimson God.
- The Starscream: After realizing that the Crimson God doesn't truly appreciate her, Rose seeks to usurp his wish in order to benefit herself.
- Stone Wall:
- The Cloaked Figure, Melody, has higher health and base DEF than Ash, but also has lower offensive stats and MP. They also have slightly higher base AGI, giving them a higher chance of dodging attacks.
- In the brief fight against Peter, he will spend all his turns praying and he has only 10 ATK, but his HP is higher than the Crimson God's at 2000 and he has 70 DEF.
- Then Let Me Be Evil: The Crimson God was once Jesus, who tried to spread benevolent ideals, only to be crucified and treated as a blasphemer. Unlike the Jesus in the Bible, the Crimson God didn't forgive humanity for this, so he now wants to be the evil that humanity treated him as. He also tries to instill this mindset into his followers by convincing them to help him get back at the world that persecuted them.
- Treacherous Advisor: Peter, the leader of the Pieties, orders Iris to recruit mortals to fight the Crimson God. What Iris and the mortals don't realize is that the Crimson God is invincible unless his three soul pieces are defeated first, and Peter is banking on the Crimson God killing and absorbing the blood of the mortals. Learning this causes Melody to realize that the Pieties can't be trusted, but also causes a rift between her and Iris because she can't be sure if Iris is in on the conspiracy.
- Unwitting Pawn: Iris believes sending mortals to the Below is the only way to defeat the Crimson God, as per Peter's instructions. She doesn't realize that Peter is actually working for the Crimson God and that he witheld important information about how to actually weaken the mad deity. This means every mortal who fights the Crimson God is doomed to fail and die as yet another sacrifice to revive him.
- Was Once a Man: Mortals that die become lost spirits, who will either maintain their existence as a spirit if they hold out hope or turn into demons if they give into despair.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Iris forcibly summons mortals into Below in order to kill the Crimson God before he destroys the world. What she doesn't realize is that her superior, Peter, intends for this to be a suicide mission so that the Crimson God and his followers get to sacrifice the humans to get a wish from Somnium.
