YMMV / Crypt of the NecroDancer

Cadence of Hyrule has its own page here.

• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Aria gets a lot of this. Why? Because you have to play as her to see the last third of the story. What's so bad about that? For those unaware, Aria can only use the dagger, has half a heart of health, and dies if she misses a beat. While some are happy that the main story ends off with a challenge that really tests your game knowledge and rhythm skills, others are frustrated at best (and totally pissed at worse) that playing as the second hardest character in the game after Coda is mandatory to see the ending. Aria was later patched to start with a potion, and this change was contested almost as much as Aria herself.
  • Bard is the only character in the game that doesn't need to follow the beat. A lot of people hate his gameplay for being very easy and generic, while a lot of people also love him, either because he is good for newcomers and learning new stages/enemies or because his speedruns are much faster since he is not limited by the groove. The Version 3.0.0 update in 2022 would add a "No Beat" mode as an option for all characters, to similarly mixed response.
• Breather Boss: Coral Riff is the easiest boss in the game. His tentacles can be easily telegraphed and attacked before they get the chance to hurt you, and the head moves slow enough for you to time your position just right to attack him without getting caught in his splash attack. The only thing that is a nuisance in this fight are the water puddles, which can be easily negated if you have the Explorers Boots, Winged Boots, or Glass Slippers.
• Broken Base: The Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc crossover soundtrack has managed to cause quite a fracture in the fan base. Some people love the soundtrack and think it's a great addition to the game, while others dislike it because it lacks the NecroDancer charm of the other soundtracks, due to being original compositions rather than remixes of Danny B's songs. And the third group simply hates the soundtrack because of its connections to anime, and believe that it's just a shameless promotion of the visual novels that shouldn't really be there.
• Cliché Storm: One of the less-appreciated aspects of Nocturna is that her story is loaded with every "tragic vampire" cliche under the sun - "I didn't ask to be turned", a lot of waffling about the importance of separating life and death, etc.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Red Dragons. Much like their green counterparts, they move every two beats, are powerful enough to break through walls, and can deal a lot of damage. But what sets them apart though is that they have the ability to attack with a long-range fire breath if you're on any square horizontal from them, so the only way to attack them is from vertical squares. If they catch you in a horizontal pathway, you're screwed. This makes them one of the more aggravatingly difficult minibosses to defeat and are often found with mobs of enemies. Whenever you hear thunderous stomps and see the area shaking, you know one of these are nearby.
  • For proper Demonic Spiders, we have Goblins in Zone 3. They only move towards you if you're moving away from them and they move away from you if you move towards them, instantly counterattack if you move into their space and can deal a huge amount of damage in short order.
• Difficulty Spike: Zone 3 adds enemies and dungeon elements that mess with your positioning and are much more aggressive, which require you to be far more attentive of your surroundings. Zone 4 spikes it even harder, adding even deadlier enemies and traps.
  • Each run of the main story becomes harder and harder. Cadence is a standard playthrough, with no special rules and access to all gear. Then after you complete the game with her, you unlock her revived mother Melody, who is restricted to using the Golden Lute. Picking up any other weapon will kill her. Beating the game with Melody unlocks her mother Aria. And as Aria, you are a One-Hit Wonder who starts with a simple dagger, but like Melody, is unable to switch weapons at the cost of death. AND to top it all off, if you drop the beat even once, Aria instantly dies. To complete the story, you must finish the entire game as Aria. While version 3.0.0 dulls the spike a little as far as Aria is concerned by giving the option to play without having to act to the beat, the third main story run is still far and away the hardest one of them all.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Freddie Merchantry, the singing shopkeeper, was popular enough for his bizarre and catchy synthesized vocals to get his own singing plushie and even became playable in Cadence of Hyrule.
• Fan Nickname: "Marv" has been given as a name for Mary's sheep, due to the small font making some players mistake Mary's name on her staircase as saying Marv.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Ballet Shoes allow you to maintain your money multiplier when standing still, or when you try to do something that you can't do (such as dig into a wall too strong for your equipment). This item alone makes getting flawless victories against bosses a simple matter of not getting hit, as well as maintaining 3x chains for Obsidian weapons. Once you're able to consistently get flawless victories without them though, they're a Power-Up Letdown, inferior to nearly every other possible item in that slot.
  • The War Drum is a usable item that isn't consumed after being used, not only essentially giving it the same effect as the Ballet Shoes (in that it allows you to stay still without losing your multiplier, so long as you bang the drum every beat) but also multiplying your attack power the longer you play the drum. Your attack will be twice as powerful after one beat, or three times as powerful after five beats.
  • Before it was nerfed, the Ring of Courage would provide a +1 to damage as well as causing the user to dash forward on a successful kill. What makes it strong, however, was that the kill dash made the user invulnerable to enemy damage, allowing wearers to recklessly slaughter mobs of enemies by chaining together kills. Combine with the Rapier, which lunges against enemies 2 spots away for double damage, the lunge movement stacking with the kill dash, and you're able to completely wipe the floor with your enemies. Use with a Gold Rapier to one shot everything (since, when taking an enemy's spot, you also take the gold they drop), or use with a Blood Rapier to heal ridiculous amounts of health. The +1 damage boost has been removed, but the Ring of Courage still remains as a very powerful item.
  • Introduced in the Amplified DLC, the Warhammer weapons are easily the most overpowered non-unique weapons in the game. Essentially combining Broadswords and Longswords, the Warhammers hit everything in a 3x2 area in front of the character. That is powerful enough, but since Warhammers are non-unique, they have all the standard variations, including Obsidian and Glass. This allows you to clear out whole armies of monsters in just a few beats.
  • Amplified adds Cutlasses, which make the player invincible on beats where they attack. This makes dealing with large swarms of enemies much easier: as long as you keep attacking, you don't have to worry about other enemies attacking you. It also makes minibosses trivial, since they are completely harmless as long as you attack them (except for the red and blue dragons, whose breath is not parryable, but that can be circumvented by attacking from the top or bottom). Add in a two-tile range and the possibility of special enchantments like blood or obsidian, and you have a weapon that nullifies almost every threat in the game.
• Genius Bonus: A lot of Punny Names and Shout Outs in this game make a lot of references to things that require some knowledge of the subjects to even understand.
  • Many characters' names (Cadence, Melody, Aria, Dorian, Coda and many others) refer to various musical concepts.
  • Deep Blues is an obvious reference to the Rhythm & Blues music genre, but being based on the board game chess, it also references the Deep Blue chess computer.
  • Coral Riff's head is based on an upside-down red Rickenbacker bass, a model some musicians consider to be cursed. His alternate name, Octoboss, not only refers to octopi, but also to the octobass, a real bowed string instrument with a really deep sound.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • Quite literally, the bats. Unlike other enemies, who will pursue you on sight, they just randomly move around the area in unpredictable patterns, so it is tricky to know where they'll move next and attack them properly. You'll move one square in hopes of getting next to a bat for an opportunity to attack, only to find out that you've taken a hit from it because it randomly moved onto the same square you moved in. One or two bats are not that much of a problem, but a swarm of six-to-nine bats can easily shave off a bit of your health if you don't approach them carefully unless you have weapons that have good range and can take out multiple bats in one attack. But the worst offenders are the Black Bats in Zone 4 and the Red Bats in All-Zones Mode, since they move every single beat, so it is a lot easier to take damage from them than the normal bats, sometimes bordering on Demonic Spider territory at worst.
  • The Skeleton Knights. They're Skeletons on horseback which gives them an advantage of moving every single beat, meaning they can quickly flank you and take your attention away from more dangerous enemies and bosses. Plus, taking them out is a two-step process: kill the horses first to bring them down, and then bypass the Skeletons' shields to finish them off.
  • The Ooze Golems. While they're not entirely threatening on their own unless backed up by a mob of enemies, they're still a real pain to kill due to how tedious their patterns are. Each time you attack an Ooze Golem, the square you're standing on will be covered in green ooze which will shrink you and render you unable to attack until you step off the square, forcing you to make a couple steps back until you get another opportunity to attack it again. And because the Ooze Golems are slow (they move every four beats) and have five hearts of health, you'll be doing this constant pattern of "hit, hop, hop, hop, repeat" four times until they go down. Certain footwear like the Explorers Boots, Lead Boots, and Winged Boots can help circumvent this however, and as of Amplified, they've been nerfed so that upon attacking them once, they'll lose their green ooze and turn into regular Golems.
  • The Devils in Amplified start in an egg that slows them down, making them move only once every third beat. This is offputting by itself since all other "slow" enemies move every second or fourth beat. Then, when you break their shells, they start moving every beat towards you, and can move diagonally, giving them the best mobility of any normal enemy.
• Goddamned Boss:
  • The Direbat, which is essentially a normal bat but with more health. While they arguably aren't as annoying as their smaller cousins - stronger Direbats lack the ability to move every beat like red and black bats, their larger healthpools means you'll be spending more time waiting for them to make a mistake you can capitalize on with an attack.
  • Amplified adds Metrognomes. Their pattern consists of pursuing the player for three beats, and then doing a splash attack on the fourth. Unless you have a weapon with good reach, this means that you must position yourself carefully so that they land next to you before they do their splash. Also, they teleport back to the exit stairs each time they get hurt.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • The tempo switches. If you set one off, and blow up the button before it reverts, the music will stay slowed down/sped up for that level.^*Can be used as either an Easy Level Trick or a Self-Imposed Challenge.
  • South facing walls will always be lit if there is empty space in front of them, which is such a useful trick for digging pathways and finding hidden rooms that it's never been fixed.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Since April 4, 2024, it became common for Steam gamers to admit buying and playing Crypt of the Necrodancer simply because of the Hatsune Miku DLC.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "Glass Rapier? NO REGRETS."
  • Glass anything? NO REGRETS.
  • "FREE ANIME!" ^note The Necrodancer and The Conductor say "Reanimate!" when they summon enemies, but the line has been misheard as this.
  • "I came back to destroy the lute." ^note The first spoken line of the first cutscene in Aria's story. It plays at the beginning of every Zone 4 or All Zones run if cutscenes are on, leading to many players hearing it over and over due to how difficult the character is to master.
  • "The 8th beat."^note Many players who faced King Conga playing Aria (who only has half of a heart point and takes damage if you miss one beat) and who are unfamiliar with conga music (or who are simply used to move every beat) have chances to die on the aforementioned 8th beat they are not supposed to move on.
• Nintendo Hard: The game moves to its own pace... whether you're ready or not. You have to move and attack to the beat (unless you're playing as the Bard) just like the enemies, and the game's fast pace doesn't allow for you to carefully plan your next move. And if you die at any point on a normal run, you're thrown all the way back to the beginning of the zone you were playing, regardless of how far you got or how many items you amassed. And you should expect to die frequently.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The game has been built with dance pad support in mind. Playing using one in place of a keyboard is never encouraged or rewarded (the alternate "Dance Pad" mode is playable regardless of input method), but it's noticeably more difficult due to the physical exertion.
• Scrappy Weapon: The whip attacks in a 5 square wide line in front of you, allowing you to very safely attack enemies at a distance. Problem is, it can only attack one enemy at a time, and its range is so huge that you'll constantly be stopping and hitting targets that you wanted to ignore. In a very cramped room, it can be a death sentence.
• That One Boss:
  • Death Metal. His level comes with the fastest song in the game. The first third of his fight features a shield that summons more enemies, and players with an AOE weapon like a Broadsword can get caught on it and quickly die to summoned enemies. The second third of the fight involves him teleporting away and summoning Demonic Spiders, which can quickly overwhelm anyone unlucky enough to have him keep reappearing at the far opposite corner of the room. This goes on until his last two hearts, at which point you have to start worrying about his horizontal fire blasts...
  • King Conga is the only boss in the game who actively punishes you for failing to stick to the beat (every time you do he leaves his throne and attacks you), and comes with a beat that has a long pause that is easy to fall right into. The conga lines, both of whom must be killed before Konga can be harmed, can be annoying to whittle down and will easily trap and kill an unwary player if you don't have the right weapons for the job, especially when you take the mooks and Konga himself into account.
  • Deep Blues becomes this for Eli and Monk, since the former cannot attack directly and the latter has to watch out for gold drops from each chess piece.
  • There's also the Golden Lute at the end of Aria's run. Taking the aspects that already make Aria hard into account, you are practically required to beat this boss flawlessly. The boss' only weak point is its head and each time you attack the boss, it'll get confused which will make its movements more sporadic and unpredictable. There is a trick to attack it while it's confused for heavy damage which involves attacking the body dead center for the head to get into position, but it still requires careful timing to pull off. It'll also cast an area-wide confusion spell to temporarily reverse your controls and summon two dragons (both a Green and Red Dragon) to attack you. What's worse is that you also must be wary of the statues that shoot fireballs from atop the walls and the boss will sometimes make them go on a sequential shooting frenzy. Good luck with this one.
  • Frankensteinway, one of Nocturna's final bosses. It has a huge health bar, and certain tiles are electrified to damage you. Once you deplete its health bar, it gains a new one in addition to a shield, which you must deactivate by pressing a switch, and spawns two coffins of increasingly high strength and a miniboss. It also gains a long-range dash in the later stages of the fight. With the mooks, minibosses, electrified floors, and area attacks, it can be highly confusing to find a way to dodge everything, deactivate the shield, and attack the boss.
• That One Achievement: The "Impossible, Right?" achievement requires you to beat an entire All Zones Run as Coda, an unlockable character that moves at double speed, dies upon picking up any gold, missing a beat, or getting hit, and can only use the starting dagger. With how difficult it is to unlock Coda (by completing an All Characters run) combined with the task itself, it should be no surprise that only around 30 people across every version of the game combined have been documented to have legitimately obtained this achievement.
• That One Level: Zone 3 is where the game stops playing nice. It's a zone where half the map is fire and half is ice filled with enemy types that start using diagonal attacks, change tiles to ether hot coal tiles that damage you if you stay on them and ice tiles that slip you and potentally push you into a trap. It's also filled with the above mentioned Goblins and Skeleton Knights, on top of Fire or Ice Beetles, who are not only protected by shells until they're near you (And hitting them like this turns five tiles into hot coals or ice tiles), but have enough health to deal a lot of damage to you. Unlike other zones, Ghasts start appearing in the first floor, and do a teleport on first hit behind you, often into a wall where you will dig instead of attack.
• That One Sidequest: Unlocking the Diamond Dealer can be a pain. You have to find the Glass Key in Zone 2, keep it intact through the next two levels (which means getting through them without taking damage), and then get to the cage containing the Diamond Dealer and set him free. Thankfully, unlocking him once unlocks him for every character, meaning you can play as the Bard and have a much easier time.
• Unexpected Character: Even after the game's official Twitter/X account teased it a few days prior (admittedly on April Fools' Day), not many people seriously expected Hatsune Miku to show up as a playable character.