YMMV / Blazing Souls Accelate

• Catharsis Factor: Brumeia and Sauber earn the lion's share at being so far more evil than their leader, that it actually feels climatic and satisfactory when you get to plant their asses into afterlife.
• Continuity Lock-Out: Blazing Souls may do well on its on, but the truth is that the game is insanely continuity-intensive.
  • A good deal of characters (Liza, Naiz, Shiro) and Legacy Characters (Adelle, Al), and even Zelos' very origin, is connected to Spectral Souls II. In Adelle and Al's case, Aksys' Translation Trainwreck made important info, such as Adelle being Garnet's adoptive daughter and Al being Meu's son, Lost in Translation, as well as Zelos' origins as Anslow, a villain from this game, is his creator.
  • Snow and Jadore are the central characters from Spectral Force 2, where the former was the protagonist and the latter was the Big Bad. This game, however, never saw release in the West, and Idea Factory dropped the ball hard when they had the chance to release Spectral Force Legacy, a remake of the two Spectral Force games, in the West. Spectral Force 3, a P.O.V. Sequel to Spectral Force 2, was released in the West, however, but it doesn't follow the war as much as it follows the Norius Mercenaries, and those who know the franchise heavily debate its place in the canon.
• Complete Monster: Brumeia is one of the Human Genomes tasked by Gustavinus to replace all of the humans. Instead of following Gustavinus's orders, she went into the Vergis Kingdom and then enthralled its king to murder all of his families so that she could become its queen who rules the Kingdom with an iron fist while she manipulates the king for decades for her own benefit. At one point, she skinned a maid over the course of one week just because the maid called her "pretty". She also sent a thief that the main heroes encountered before to steal an Elemental Core which the main heroes possessed. When the citizens of Vergis Kingdom started a rebellion led by Nguyen Le, a survivor of the Vergis Kingdom massacre, Brumeia brainwashed her soldiers to fight against them, and when encountered by Nguyen, Brumeia then uses the king and the royal retainer as personal attack dogs against Nguyen while both of them were aware of what they are doing in order to cause Nguyen to become emotionally shattered. Running away to a faraway desert after being defeated, Brumeia then attacks the innocent bystanders who passes through the desert by controlling the bandits so that she could establish her new base. In the end, she ruins other people's life and makes them suffer, solely for her own amusement.
• Demonic Spiders: Angels, both holy and dark variants. Both dish powerful magic, which can go through Zelos' Unleash Hell as this game knows how to discern physical and magical defense, and they both have a powerful SP2 move, Angelic Voice for Holy ones that seals your movements for three turns, and Requiem from the Dark ones, which seals your actions. Both these statuses bypasses Total Resistance due to not being one of the five normal statuses, and demand unique Auto Skills to protect you from them. Needless to say, if your whole party is hit by one of these and get their movement/actions sealed, you're fucked. You can fortunately capture them and get their skills, which Sciorra, Noel, Shiro, Jadore, Zelena and Hermes can use, and use those against them.
• Disc-One Nuke:
  • If you manage to get your hands on a Sorcery Gun, you can slap it on Aqueous Core Zelos to make him a superb mage who can smash enemies with Turbulence (Blizzard + Stone Shower + Star Dust) under the effect of Critical Break.
  • If you get access to the means to make multiple Spark Shots and Lightning-elemental weapons, you can use the Electric Chair method to farm CP at Lake Eulid's first map and earn the cool weapons available at the Collection Souk well before the first half of the game is done.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Zelos himself has a nice demonstration that shows why he is as powerful as he is. With endgame content, he can obliterate just about anything.
    • His Infini Core is the sole reason why he is so massively broken. When completed and equipped, his stats skyrocket, and he gets a collection of abilities that make him a living catastrophe: Critical Break will buff his magic abilities, allowing him to cause destruction with hybrid skills, Satori will increase his evasion and hit chances, and then there's Unleash Hell: Zelos gets his strength and defenses doubled as long as his HP is at less than 1/8. You think this is all? His Original Skills get a big revamp as well: Heaven's Drive ^note An obnoxious two-hit Original Skill with 2700 Destroy power gets kicked downstairs to SP3, and the SP4 slot turns into Overdrive, an obnoxious self-buff that enhances Zelos' strength even further. Combining this with Unleash Hell allows Zelos to outright perform absurdities like instakilling Satanael at the last floors of Abyssal Gate.
    • His personal weapon is the Revolver Cannon. If this was Spectral Souls II, this weapon would not be much to write home about. In Blazing Souls, however, it's an Infinity +1 Gun with over 2800 ATK when fully upgraded, has long range and won't trample your allies when shooting, unlike other guns. Combine this with all of the benefits Infini Core gives and you basically have one of the biggest powerhouses in Neverland's history.
  • Koyuki "Snow" Saito got this from the moment she and her mate Jadore were added in the Xbox 360 version. Seriously.
    • She gets massive magic potential from the get go, having a pretty low cap for her INT, and as a mage she gets full benefits from the Magic Up Auto Skill (or Magic Up+ if you get an Extra Frame). Her spells will hit hard, and all of her slots ^note One General physical slot, one Dark slot, and two of each Holy and Void slots synergize well. This only gets better as she progresses through her classes.
    • Her initial Potentials are Magical Barrier, which makes her immune to all magic should her HP hit critical, and Critical Break, which massively enhances her magical power when her SP gauge hits level 3. With class advancement, she gets Total Resistance, which gives her total status immunity sans for the ones that would stop her from moving or acting, and Alien Soul, which doubles her ATK and DEF at the same conditions as her first one.
    • All of her Original Skills have some massive utility. Healing Wind is a massive party healing with a wide range; Vi Ellarge is her answer to Final Fantasy's Reraise and affects every member of your party on the map regardless of distance; Holy Lance is a single-target Holy Hand Grenade... And then we have her crowner Signature Move, Excelan Theta, where Snow unleashes what amounts to be apocalyptic levels of power. The thing has huge range and huge area of effect, and hits anyone in its area like a locomotive, even if they are resistant to Holy attacks. The only way to survive such a blast is being outright immune to the element.
    • Her Combination Attack with Jadore, La Delfes, is nothing short of absurd, demaning only SP2 from both of them. It hits like a bullet train, over a massive area of effect (FIVE SQUARES from the target, which makes its range ridiculous), and has enough Break value for Destroy to leave a fucking Double X defenseless from full Break gauge. With Jadore trained to keep up with her, this move basically sweeps the battlefield for you.
    • Her personal gear, which you get if you go into the True Ending, is just as powerful. Her Rod of Omniscience has an extra Holy, Dark, Earth and Void slots. Combined with her innate skillset, this means she can whip up the most powerful Holy, Dark and Void spells all by herself.
    • She is also the main choice for using the Rune Blade, which can do almost the same stuff as her personal weapon, with an extra kick: it has huge physical attack power and thus benefits hard from Alien Soul. This means that a normally "eh" K'Tourga becomes an atomic bomb when she's using the Rune Blade at low HP.
  • Kaye's Shadow Form makes so that no enemy detects her for three turns (counting the one where she activates the Original Skill), even if she's planting her dagger at its eye. It's so broken that you can solo stages with her if you're smart enough to count the turns and spam enough self buffs to fill at least one level of the SP gauge before going to town.
  • Liza's Encouragement caused her to receive the Fan Nickname of "SP Battery"; it gives anyone two squares from her a level and half's worth of SP gauge at the cost of three levels of her own. Thing is, you can have your entire party at the start of the battle spending their first turn basically for filling Liza's SP gauge via buffing her with basic spells, with Liza accelerating the process by buffing herself ^{How the SP gauge works}The SP gauge has 30 points per level. Each action made sans for moving will give two points, and every action received will give other two. This means a character gets a level of the gauge every 15 actions performed or received. This can be shortened to eight actions if said character is buffing him/herself, as he will be both performing and receiving the action.. With such a strategy, Liza can hit SP3 at her second turn, activate Encouragement and give the other five members a load of gauge. This means characters who get buffs by getting to the second or third level of the gauge (like Genius, which cuts the AP costs of skills) will be fully ready for action by their second or third turn. And the best part? As the party also accumulated SP by repeatedly buffing her, this means they will be perfectly able to unleash their Original Skills as well.
  • The Spark Shot Spam, referred in some circles as "Electric Chair", is used to rack big amounts of CP. It consists of gearing your whole party with Bolts and Spark Shots, go to any map with a Penetrate-weak enemy, summon a Lightning Spirit and start a long chain of Spark Shots. A Spark Shot against a Broken enemy deals 12 hits; if you get the ball rolling along your six members, plus the spirit (Or spirits, as some Titles allow you to summon more than one monster at a time), you can easily rack more than 400 hits. Getting so far in a combo can get you 256 CP for each succesful attempt, allowing you a quick farm at the CP shop on the Collection Souk and tons of powerful items before you hit the first half of the game.
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Search system. To unlock new places in the Point-and-Click Map, you have to enter the Guild and pick three characters to perform a search. NPCs give hints on where to look, but some of them are poorly translated (ex: "Mountain Range" is called "Silvesta"). Searches also cost WP (Work Points), which are hard to get, forcing you to abuse Save Scumming to not waste them, as running out of WP means that you have to either complete one Fetch Quest available or spend some time grinding for CP to convert them into WP. ^note 5 CP worth 1 WP; you usually need 6 WP to perform a search.
  • To make things worse, some places have specific requirements to be unlocked (except the game doesn't tell you that), like the three characters needing a sum of +35 STR and VIT stat, or having a specific alias equipped. So, in the end, even if you find the right place, you still fail and lose WP.
• That One Attack: Most bosses' Original Skills are Total Party Kill attacks, but Etelo's "Metatron Hunt" deserves a special mention, as it deal about 20.000 damage to everyone four squares away from him and drain their HP. In a single turn, Etelo can completely change the tide of the battle by killing most party members and fully healing himself at the same time.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Adelle's past and present, if you think about it. She had her parents killed by a Bounty Hunter when she was little; she got determined at all costs to find and kill the responsible, hence starting to take every physical training class available in the Varanoir Academy just to excel at it and become strong enough for her opponent. As soon as she gets the information about her mark, she storms out of the Academy, rushing right at him, and takes a job as a mercenary just to stick close to her target, a Bounty Hunter by the name of Zelos. After waiting for long enough, she challenges her mark. Thing is, Adelle is truly traumatized by the events of her parents' deaths, while Zelos has done his job for so long that he can't even remember that particular kill, triggering an emotional breakdown right before she draws her sword against Zelos. It's heart-wrenching to see the following battle, as you, playing as Zelos, beat her down in what you can easily imagine as her uncontrolled attempt at ending his life. It gets worse after the fight, because Zelos even makes sure to show Adelle that she never stood any chance at killing him by impaling her BFS against himself and warning that not even he knows what keeps him alive. Seeing all of this shows us clearly how her rude attitude and coldness are actually a coping mechanism for her misery.
  • Bridgette is a bigger contender than Adelle. Her parents were archeaologists, and died on a cave-in during one of their explorations. Where normal families would offer her support, hers were just too fucking greedy, squandered her of all her money and kicked her out of her house, leaving her homeless. There's a big uncertainty of what would have become of her had Kaye and Vaughn not stuck by her side regardless of what would happen. She then decided to be an Archaeologist just like her parents, if only because this is the only connection she could have with them. So, every time you see that angry Spoiled Brat lash at the world in her usual fit of rage, take a time to consider that she actually does that to mask her immense misery.
  • While Nguyen is much less angsty than the two examples above, his past and present is nothing to scoff at. His actual name is Heidelberg, prince of Vergis Kingdom, who had to run away from his home when one of the Genomes, Brumeia, enthralled his father into killing his family. Nguyen spends a good portion of the game plotting to take his throne back from her, with the help of his retainer Orson, and going as far as to hire Zelos to help him. And when Nguyen gets to her the first time, Brumeia forces him to strike a bodyjacked Orson down. Not content with that, she sics King Archbald, Nguyen's father, at him, and Nguyen would have let his father kill him, had Zelos not seen the scene and become pissed enough to interfere. After Zelos almost gets Brumeia's hide, forcing her to flee, Nguyen holds his dying father in his arms as he takes his last breath and wishes to his son. Cue Roaring Rampage of Revenge culminating in his second battle with Brumeia, where Nguyen and Zelos actually team up to kill her.
• That One Achievement:
  • The Title demanding you to perform every party Combination Attack possible for the first 18 characters. This becomes jarring by the point you have to go through six-people combinations.
  • Also, the Titles demanding you to defeat specific Superbosses. Not for the difficulty itself, but rather for the demand being extremely cryptic, letting you without understanding what exactly you should do. You definitely need a guide for that case.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Due to the franchise's large cast and the fact that many of them are alive by the time Blazing Souls takes place, this ends up happening.
  • Meu is not around this time. Instead, we get her child, Al. Which is a real bad move, as we lost the chance to see an older version of her, and she's basically the Spectral Souls series' Breakout Character that basically risked taking Hiro's place as the Series Mascot.
  • Hiro. Blazing Souls happens to be one of the few main games in the Spectral franchise to not feature her in the main story. She's mentioned to still be around by Liza in a scene, despite the implications that she hibernates when a war isn't breaking out. Even so, the game almost doesn't mention her at all, while her brother Jadore made it to Zelos' party in the main story.
    • What makes this worse is that Hiro and Zelos are not that different when you look at their personalities. One could only imagine her having some curiosity about Zelos' arms (as that big skull arm of hers is also artificial), for example.
  • Roze is also absent. And unlike Hiro, she has no excuse to be out of this game as she's still the Empress. Liza states multiple times that she works for her, and the lore flat out confirms she is Hiro and Jadore's half-sister. She's stated to be fully active by Blazing Souls' time, and she's alive and well 200 years into the future in Spectral Force Genesis where she is one of the Final Boss fights. But she only gets passing mentions throughout Blazing Souls; Jadore doesn't even catch wind of this fact over the course of the game, despite being informed that her upbringing was similar to his.
  • Bayard and Siegreid. Both worked for Roze in Spectral Souls II, but the icing on the cake is that both also worked for Jadore in the First Neverland War. Liza constantly confirms Bayard is still around, and Spectral Force Genesis shows both Bayard and Siegreid as leaders two hundred years later, and fighting each other at the end of the Neverland Republic campaign. Bayard is constantly mentioned both by his daughter and her profile; Siegreid has no such luck and gets left forgotten in Blazing Souls.
    • It gets jarring that Liza comments to Jadore and Snow about being Bayard's daughter, and it doesn't even cross either Jadore or Snow's minds to tell her that her father once worked for Jadore.
  • Mad Scientist Anslow, who got Karma Houdini treatment in Spectral Souls II, got a bus dropped on him in the twenty years that preceded Blazing Souls, despite still making a huge impact in the game's plot.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: At first glance, you will think Hermes is a boy. Funnily enough, this doesn't happen with Kaye, as her voice and face is too feminine to even pass for a Dude Looks Like a Lady.

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