YMMV / Cosmic Star Heroine

• Awesome Music: The whole soundtrack by Hyperduck Soundworks is pretty damn good and fits perfectly the game's setting.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: After Alyssa and her friends defeat a giant mecha all by themselves, the mecha's pilot, as a last-ditch move, unleashes a creature that grows to kaiju proportions in seconds, to destroy part of the city and frame Alyssa for the destruction caused. What does Alyssa do? She knocks the guy out, proceeds to become the new pilot and fight the giant monster in a playable cutscene that plays like the rest of the game, just as an one-on-one battle. When the monster is defeated, she presses the self-destruct button on the mecha's cockpit, thus blowing up both the monster and the robot (in the middle of the city she needs to protect!). After all is said and done, the whole incident is soon forgotten with no repercussions on the rest of the game. And neither mecha nor kaiju are seen again after this.
• Cliché Storm: The plot condenses dozens of well-known sci-fi tropes. It's not bad per se, just not very original. It also borrows heavily from other games (most notably, lifting the Millennial Fair nearly wholesale from Chrono Trigger).
• Complete Monster: Eternity is the malevolent machine behind the dark conspiracy. A powerful robot from ancient times, Eternity believed himself to be far superior to all life and attempted to take over the galaxy, killing many. Trapped inside an asteroid, Eternity waited for a chance to come back, using Arete as a vessel, and resurfaced when Director Steele stumbled upon lost technology, which was under Eternity's control. Eternity took over Steele's mind using those machines, and controlled API in order to bring him back. After Alyssa L'Salle and company learned about his plans, Eternity, using Steele, ordered their execution and committed numerous atrocities in his attempts, including attempting a massacre and assassinating a mayor of an alien city to frame Alyssa up for that. He attacked Alyssa's mind through nightmarish visions and attempted to indoctrinate her to his side, succeeding by getting Arete to get close to Alyssa and then betraying her to steal the Lumina Key. Having returned, Eternity tried to take over again by brainwashing everyone in the galaxy. In the end he failed, and during his last moments attempted to kill the party by activating the self-destruction in his ship.
• Disappointing Last Level: The final dungeon is quite linear, boxes with every party member's most powerful weapons are there in plain sight, the few encounters aren't particularly engaging or difficult at this point, and even the final boss is a pushover if you managed to beat all the side quests, bonus bosses and hidden random battles. The graphics are pretty good, though.
• Game-Breaker: Psybe becomes the single best cleric in the game if he's equipped with the Ancient Lore accessory, which makes it so his songs never end - even if you use skills that would end them - letting you use his best moves with no drawback. In addition to his other support skills, the only reason other characters would use anything other than attacks and ailments are because he doesn't have a revive skill.
• Good Bad Bugs: If you restart a fight where the opponent has summoned enemies, their sprites stay on the field instead of vanishing. However, they can't be targeted by even field-wide moves and don't get any turns until they're summoned naturally.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: On the equivalent of "Normal" difficulty, it's not uncommon for a player to get through the entire game without any party members dying at all. The game even openly tells you that enemies on difficulties below "Hard" aren't using all their moves.
• That One Boss: Mecha-Dragon, a miniboss with no plot relevance encountered in the final dungeon. If you've done all of the sidequests, chances are you've been taking down the enemies in the dungeon so far without much trouble and you're feeling pretty confident... and then Mecha-Dragon comes along, with attacks capable of causing 1000+ damage to even high-level characters which is likely more than you'll be able to heal. Many first-time players will likely find themselves staring at the screen in horror as he slaughters their party one-by-one.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: The battle system is the most refined, absorbing and balanced of all the Zeboyd games, at least on Super Spy, but the story is lackluster and the character development is close to non existent.
• Spiritual Successor: The game is very obviously inspired by the Phantasy Star original tetralogy, down to the art style, cutscene presentation, and Science Fantasy setting involving three planets in the same galaxy.
• That One Level: Escaping the prison. The combat system in this game is built heavily on exploiting elemental weaknesses (to the point the game openly tells you what elements any given enemy is weak to). The prison sticks you with a party that doesn't have any moves capable of hitting the weaknesses of the enemies therein. It also forces you to use Clarke, who is utterly useless until he gains a couple of levels - his only attack capable of doing real damage kills him, and you don't have any way to revive dead characters at this point.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Once someone joins your party and their part of the plot thread is finished, that's it - they never develop or have any expansion on their characterization from there on out. Characters who join before the game gets into giving characters mini-arcs (like Chahn) are particularly bad, as they never get any characterization.

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