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  • Awesome Music: One that takes the cake is Iscalio's Map BGM, which includes awesome electric guitar riffs, which may fit Dryst's more rocking, chaotic personality compared to the other rulers. Only in the original, though, the Grand Edition version did away with the electric guitar.
  • Cult Classic: The creator of this game has been out of business, but up to today, this game has several dedicated fans still playing it and even went on to start a Kickstarter planning for its Fan Sequel. These cult fans exploded with the announcement of Legend of Runersia.
  • Demonic Spiders: There are some characters that can end up being seen as The Dreaded by the players, regardless of the in-universe reaction. Basically, when crossing these characters, the players are well-advised to mind their formation, lest they lose a project monster or even the whole battle.
    • The Legend of Forsena edition of Zemeckis. He has a post-movement 3-range Tempest Bow AND Geno Thunder. And either way, he hits like a truck. It is to much of the players' relief that in Grand Edition, Tempest Bow is no longer post-movement (but is now 4-range) and he lost Geno Thunder, so all Zemeckis had afterwards is just his impressive stats.
    • Cador. This guy is only one level away from maximum level (30), and he hits even harder than Zemeckis and has the highest tier single damage Black spell, Curse. While a group of Angels or White Magic can melt him easier, that's only if he doesn't roll over them with sheer stats.
    • If you are playing against Caerleon, Dinadan will give you a hard time. If he gets too close to your Black units, or you dare attack him in close combat with one, he will take out a good chunk of their HP. And if you have been ganging up on him, his Holy Word will hit many units and potentially eliminate them if his counters have severely damaged your units. Sometimes Caerleon's assault places him with Cai, which makes it even harder as Dinadan can keep tanking and even toss a Holy Word while Cai blasts you with his Geno spells.
    • Rudo in Runersia is basically what happens when Zemeckis and Cador had a Fusion Dance. He hits like multiple trucks and the AI of the game makes it that he has a preference on low DEF unit, to which a normal non-critical attack even to a neutral element from him can deal a fricking 200 normal damage when not being augmented and up to 400 when being augmented (and the AI loves doing that, especially when there's a Bard nearby)... to even the sturdiest monster. And for one time (which he always has enough mana for just for this one time), he has a post-movement normal white attack that deals MASSIVE damage which can take out a lot of HP even to the sturdiest units. It's not rare to see Rudo suddenly take an advantage of an opening where your monster is just a few levels from being upgraded... and one-shot it to death.
  • Ending Fatigue: In Legend of Runersia, while the main meat of the game and its story were praised, the late game was considered a hassle to run through, where aside of endless grinding, the confrontation against either Aurora or the Rune God were considered not very appealing on either side, with the Rune God being a typical Jerkass God at best, a Gnostic-style evil God at worst, and Aurora mostly fell into Unintentionally Unsympathetic territory because she came off more interested in sating her blind anger against the Rune God rather than helping humanity as she claimed. And overall, it doesn't really change the ending much: bottom line, you already conquered Runersia and it will enter a new age. Many fans considered this finale lacking the pressure or impact compared to Grand Edition's finale against Bulnoil, where Forsena would get destroyed along with the efforts to unify it if he's not stopped.
  • Evil Is Cool: Rudo in Legend of Runersia is a legitimate psychopath with a god complex. But, on the other hand, when playing as him, he spectacularly avoids Stupid Evil tropes, backs his psychopath tendencies with great brute force to one-shot any fools that dare come across him, and is so self-assured in his path without any care of how others are going to view him that when facing the Rune God, his Badass Boast boils down to 'This Rune God has ran out of uses. Time to depose him and install myself as the God of Runersia!'. Those who like playing as a Villain Protagonist usually will have a good time playing as Rudo.
  • Game-Breaker: You see the list of Demonic Spiders above? Remember: You can use them against your opponents when you control them, in which they become this trope. Especially Rudo; what can make all of the above get worse? When someone casts Weakness (decreases ATK and DEF on 100% chance) on Rudo's target, and he ALWAYS comes with a Nightmare when the game starts.
  • Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In Japan, Legend of Forsena was just another game, but worthy enough to get an updated version (Grand Edition). In the USA, it was largely forgotten, so Grand Edition was never imported. In Southeast Asia (especially Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam), where PS1 games were very cheap due to piracy? It was so damn beloved due to its unique gameplay and easy access either via cheap price or local rental store, to the point that they are keeping the game alive via mods even to the present day. The translation patch of Grand Edition had a lot of crew members from Southeast Asia working on it. This article can explain on how it went.
  • Goddamned Bats: Rocs in either Legend of Forsena or Grand Edition. By themselves, they're not that threatening, but it's the only monster that can freely petrify units via normal attacks at random, and it's only Tier 1. Petrification cannot be automatically cured unless using a spell, so you have to waste one of your healers' Cure to remove it, so it gets very annoying when an enemy Roc suddenly petrifies a character at random, or even worse if it petrifies your Knight and you have no means to cast a Cure. It is perhaps because of this reason that Rocs no longer petrify things at random in Legend of Runersia, whereas petrification status became exceedingly rare.
  • Ho Yay:
    • In Forsena, Vaynard is a bit too close to his confidant Guinglain, entrusting him with a lot of private secrets. It's not taken that far, however.
    • In Runersia, being in Shinobi means you have a lot of the female version coming. But most prominently between Medessa and Della, where they tend to get a little... intimate, despite having children on their own (via Mystical Pregnancy).
  • Low-Tier Letdown: Players tends to not favor Rune Knights on the second tier classes and yet having below 150 Rune Powers. Which means they do not have Magikarp Power to invest, can't serve as a Crutch Character and can't even store many monsters to begin with. Even worse if they have below average stats. Examples of this are Brusom from New Almekia and Victoria from Iscalio, but the worst offender is usually Langueborg from Leonia who combines all of those.
  • Obvious Beta: The original game is missing a lot of plot points; Big Bad Bulnoil is The Unfought, and when you beat all opposition, the story ends with how the land prospered in peace, even if you play as Esgares. Grand Edition feels like the game Brigandine should have been, but No Export for You unfortunately.
  • That One Achievement: In Runersia, Master Historian, which entails seeing every event in the game. This requires recruiting the majority of the game's characters, some of them in multiple ways, which already means beating most if not all of the main mode with all six playable nations. However, what really kicks this into overdrive is that there are 120 events based around in-battle conversations. Not so bad with the conversations between allies (though two of those involve three characters who do not start affiliated), but for vs. conversations between enemies, it is a huge Luck-Based Mission, relying not only in the player having the right characters in the right place at the right time, but the AI actually bothering to deploy the opposite half of the equation, some of whom start out rather weak in a game where the AI rarely develops much of its roster. Special mention to Dyzenys vs. Tomas; not only are they both quest knights, Dyzenys has complicated recruitment requirements, meaning the player needs to engineer either they or the AI fulfilling the right parameters, then hope the AI actually uses Tomas/Dyzenys in the exact right place to fight the other.
  • That One Sidequest: Getting the promotion items for secret advanced classes like Lucifer, Lilith, Thor, Loki (and in Grand Edition, Lizard King). You need to quest your Knights late game and be on a specific quest that is really rare (stranded to an island with idol statues) and could end up sandwiched with another kind of quest (dancing with faeries or meeting an old tree, the latter one even had the same music)... and you might not even get the item that your unit is ready to promote from and will have you spend a lot of months questing and questing... Runersia at least allows you to get the promotion items with more ease with post-game quests, allowing you to get some of these items for free by finishing the quests for the first time. But if you want an Ancient Dragon, Lizard Lord, Hydra or Basilisk to face off the nation rulers? Good luck with sending Knights to quests while minding where you sent them to, and these items are already rare as is.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Grand Edition is basically an improvement on many aspects. However, many would think that the music quality was downgraded, with Legend of Forsena having a lot more memorable music.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
    • In Forsena:
      • For someone whose goal is to be the best mage in Forsena, it's a bit odd that Carlota of New Almekia has no confrontation dialogue against actual greater mages like Gish of Esgares, or even in case New Almekia and Caerleon come to blows or she's recruited by another country, against the mages of Caerleon (starting from Janfadar to Cierra to even Cai). And that's not even counting what happens to her in Multiplayer Scenarios 2 & 3 (see They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot)
      • The Priest Knights Corps of Esgares certainly had something going on the background, with pious knights like Fiel and Roecod having their faith manipulated by Paradoll, who's having megalomaniacal ambitions to rule the world. Grand Edition never expanded upon that subplot, and when Fiel is recruited, he drops all the subplots about the Priest Knight Corps, while Paradoll just vanishes.
      • Irvin really has potential to be explored, as an old friend of Lance who suddenly turns against him and revealing that he has been envious of Lance all along and can make for a very personal conflict. But aside of a throwaway lineup in the Multiplayer Modenote , that's all Irvin gets, he's just an unremarkable Level 3 Mage of Esgares otherwise.
    • In Runersia, aside from the Lords and their subordinate characters, almost every character in Legend of Runersia has no battle conversations or cutscenes, making their unique and interesting biographies rather pointless. Some characters at least got lucky when they're vital in auto-recruiting someone or something elsenote , but not much. Examples include :
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Multiplayer Scenario 2 and 3 provides a rather interesting plot development, such as how after Vaynard conquered Leonia, he took Lyonesse as his Empress and by Scenario 3, Kiloph is hunting him down while working as a mercenary to anyone that stood a chance with Norgard. Meanwhile, Lance fell into another Heroic BSoD when Esgares mowed down New Almekia and eliminated many Padstow knights, retreating to Caerleon while only taking Gereint and Adilicia, while the other surviving Padstow Knight, Carlota, who treated Lance like her little brother, ended up in Norgard instead (she usually didn't join any other countries as long as Lance was around), and most naturally, Liguel didn't stick with Lance, moving immediately to Iscalio where Miguel resided (the other two recruitable knights post-New Almekia defeat, Batercus and Loufal, are nowhere to be seen, implying that they were KIA instead). And by Scenario 3, while Lance regained his composure, Carlota still didn't return, quite likely having grown accustomed to Norgard (also, Noie died before the war ended), while Dryst is presented with dilemma of having his troops isolated thanks to Vaynard's strategy. All these plot wouldn't come to foray much because of the multiplayer format so there was very little plot advancement on those points.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Runersia's Aurora. The game seems to want to push her as a sympathetic victim of the Rune God being mad for power and driven by lust, thus paints the Rune God as an evil jerk that makes humanity complacent with Mana that makes them go to war. And in the secret ending of Norzaleo, revealed that the Rune God was really pissy if someone veered onto his secret and would punish them with agonizing slow death, as what happened with Rubino's father. However, Aurora herself might come off as extremely biased since she's driven solely with the her hatred for the Rune God, constantly babbling that anyone handling Mana is a soulless puppet; whereas the game has shown that there are just as many people that used Mana but are more or less responsible and self-sufficient, aiming for peace instead of war. When she first made her appearance, she instead chose to attack your nation as a showcase of power and warning, but the act doesn't seem like the act of a benevolent, caring figure for Runersia. Meanwhile, the Rune God, aside of the few bad, selfish deeds he did (which prevented him from being Unintentionally Sympathetic), was actually fine with humans going their way instead of actively trying to manipulate or enslave them, in some endings when you side with him, he left the world, giving his blessings to the humans that conquered Runersia that they can take care of themselves, and if you side with him, he would occasionally heal you with 'Benevolent Rain' in battle. Thus, siding with Aurora makes it look like you trusted a stranger that just said a few words from her own biased mindset to destroy what you have believed so far, and there were no strong reasons to trust her based on her past encounters with you.
  • The Woobie: The Belferes twins Mira and Millet. Due to rumors, many knew and fear them as 'cursed twins' and drove them away from anywhere to go, only accepted in Esgares' Ranguinus' home as 'adopted children'. Their real parents have died and people blamed them for their deaths due to that rumor. In their special quest, they saved a village from a rampaging Salamander, and were accused as bringing the Salamander to wreck the village and knocked out without any wounds healed by the same villagers. They were only saved when a kind doctor that gives no crap about these rumors, Carmine, but then realized that because of the rumor, their nanny was also brutalized, causing them to think that it's their fault, and Mira broke down and wished they were never born, but thankfully, the nanny recovered and encouraged them further, also resulting a tearfully sweet reunion.

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