YMMV / Crystal Story

• Cliché Storm: If you played any RPG before this one, you can immediately tell what's going to happen next. It's not so bad in the first game as it was more played for laughs than anything else, but it's glaring in the second one.
• Demonic Spiders: Most monsters in the second game's main story don't cause much trouble if you know what you're doing; however, go into a 3- or 4-skull area unlocked after chapter 5 before you've upgraded your stats enough, and nearly any of the stronger monsters can be this. Not only can they hit for a significant portion of your HP if you go too early, but they have high SPD stats, meaning they can be FASTER than you under the same conditions. The worst offenders are the Holy Cow and Flame Samurai monsters in Doom Lair, as it's basically unlocked right after you complete chapter 5.
• Difficulty Spike: Hard mode in the sequel, unlocked by defeating the Dargon King, massively amplifies the stats of the enemies throughout the map you already explored. You can return to normal mode, however.
  • The Updated Re Release adds to this with an additional, harder chapter and more boss sidequests that will really test what you know about the game! On top of that, it gives the optional bosses that you could previously spam ailments on the Contractual Boss Immunity treatment like the story bosses!
• That One Attack:
  • Wind Shear in the First game. This attacks is used by wolves and certain species of Birds and lowers both offenses of all party members. Worst case scenario is that in that game, buffs don't overwrite the debuffs at all, meaning the only choice to get rid of it is to use Dispell...which also removes buffs too. Have mercy if you're fighting more than one wolf or bird
  • In the second game:
    • Burst All deals heavy physical fire damage to all party members. It's the enemy equivalent of Super Grenades, except it's used only by some bosses and deals much more damage per target than the single-target Burst. Redempted slightly in later versions as enemy Burst All damage got lowered from 3x to 2x, but it can still hurt nonetheless.
    • Dargon Claw. Only in the skillsets of a few specific bosses, it hits brutally hard, attacks four random targets (meaning it can hit anyone twice, likely killing them), and can inflict any one status ailment with all four strikes (e.g., everyone who gets hit is confused). Good luck if any boss with this skill attacks all your party members... This is slightly downplayed in Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch where while it only hits two times, it casts 3 ailments on each party member that got hit.
    • Judgement, also a rare boss-only skill, summons a meteor that hits all party members for 95% of their health and dispels all stat buffs, making it seem like an example here. However, it can never kill anyone, it doesn't remove special buffs such as Regen, and the fact that it brings everyone down to low health means that certain equips trigger buffs after this attack. Ultimately, this attack may be intimidating, but if you use the following turns wisely it can easily be a breather attack! Downplayed in Crystal Story: The Hero and The Evil Witch where it no longer removes stat buffs and has a long charge turn.

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