YMMV / Dark Siders

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Abaddon. Is he a Tragic Villain who meant well with his extreme methods or a corrupt general who cared little about mankind and became even worse when he became the Destroyer?
• Awesome Music: The Darksiders Theme.
• Base-Breaking Character: The Watcher of the first game. Some people love him for his snide personality, but others hate him for it.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Any time you encounter Wicked K. A zombie in a top hat, who fights with a cane and speaks with the stereotypical high-class British gentleman accent and mannerisms. Appears with no explanation, disappears after you defeat him each time and he's never talked about.
  • Vigil Games has said that Wicked K is an inside joke, meant to represent a few British employees at the studio.
• Complete Monster: Abaddon, one of the leaders of the Hellguard angels, devised a scheme to lure Hell's forces into a defeat by faking the apocalypse. When the plan goes wrong, Abaddon opts to join Hell rather than face the penalty for his actions. Becoming the monstrous Destroyer, Abaddon leads the horrific genocide of humanity and destruction of Earth, butchering and slaughtering countless innocent human beings while allowing his top lieutenants to do the same in their territories. Seeking to enact Hell's will upon the rest of reality, Abaddon even tries to slaughter his old Hellguard comrades, even snuffing out his brief regret at facing his former right-hand Uriel by hurling her aside before he faces the Horseman War, who rightfully denounces him as a coward unable to face up to his own sins.
• Demonic Spider: Wraiths. If you have the Abyssal Chain and are only facing one, they're a complete joke, but if you're facing more than one even that won't save you from their ridiculously powerful sword attacks (including a spin attack that can shave off at least two health meters worth of HP.) And that's before you start encountering ones that can turn intangible at will.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Wicked K. He plays no role in the plot, and fighting him is optional, but he is so funny that he turned into this and was brought back for the sequel.
  • Azrael also gets a special mention despite only having a couple levels of screen time. He became popular enough that he ends up being the tritagonist of the novel Darksiders: The Abomination Vault.
  • Some see this of Samael, for his memorable quote (see below), mysterious motivations and possible omniscience, among other things. He was well received enough to be brought back for Darksiders II as a boss.
  "Sometimes, the hero dies in the end."
• Game-Breaker: Though the Abyssal Armor does take some searching, and you can't get all the pieces until almost the end of the game, it does at that point drastically reduce damage taken, boost damage dealt, and give you a few other perks that make even Apocalyptic difficulty considerably less taxing. And then there's the fact that you can start with it in a new game once you've unlocked it, which would truly make it a Game-Breaker.
  • Chaos Form. Incredible damage and invincibility. It makes any non-boss fight utterly trivial for as long as it lasts, and it doesn't take much effort to refill the rage meter. The second fight against Uriel which would normally be challenging can be ended before Chaos Form runs out.
  • Death's Blessing upgrade, which gives a weapon (among other good things) an insanely strong life-draining power. You'll most likely never need a green souls chest after you get it.
  • Affliction spell, which could be more appropriately named "Make Everything Die". It summons a phantom that chases enemies and deals heavy damage to them, and usually lasts long enough to win most fights by itself.
• Goddamned Bats: The Goreclaws and Flamecallers, variants of the standard dog-like Minion enemy, which don't show up until the Hollows level. They're very easy to kill, but they do far too much damage for anything that small and they have an infuriating tendency to attack you from either off-screen, or just outside the swinging range of your weapons.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Death, eldest and most powerful of the Four Horsemen, is one of the Firstborn of the Nephilim. Having helped his eldest brother Absalom destroy numerous worlds, Death led War, Fury and Strife from the Nephilim and joined the Charred Council to uphold the Balance, wiping the Nephilim out. Fighting countless battles since, Death shows no regard for honor or anything but victory, once using a plot to kill and revive War, or to deceive an opponent with a vision of his lost love to secure the victory. Deeply loving his siblings, Death sets out to clear War's name when he is accused of starting the apocalypse and to revive humanity to clear away War's crime. Ultimately facing a reborn Absalom, Death destroys his sibling once more and prepares to give his life to revive humankind before being revived by War breaking the final seals with Death prepared to face all of Creation at his brother's side.
  • Debuting in the first game, Samael is the most powerful demon around and loyal only to his own mysterious agenda. Imprisoned for 'disapproving of the company' his former master keeps, Samael encounters War and steadily guides him to destroy the Destroyer's Chosen to recover their hearts with the promise it will gain War entry into the Black Throne to take his revenge on the Destroyer. In truth, the hearts simply bind Samael and he tricks War into freeing him perfectly. Once achieved, Samael holds to his own unique code of honor and refuses to kill War, departing as a deal is a deal.
  • Envy counts, see that page for details.
• Memetic Mutation: While you're trying to free Azrael from the Black Throne, he will repeat a certain line over and over again every couple of seconds. It has since reached meme levels of fame.
• Porting Disaster: In stark contrast to the Wii U port of Darksiders II, which is usually considered the best console version of that game, this game's Wii U port is the worst incarnation of the game by far, with a horrendously poor frame-rate and missing graphical effects. This is made worse by the fact that this is the case even after the port was delayed, and in fact was released months after Nintendo themselves stopped manufacturing the console; this suggests the extra time was needed just to make the game work on the Wii U at all.
• Spiritual Successor: The first game especially is consider this to Legacy of Kain and Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. Darksiders takes many Action-Adventure elements from those games in terms of exploration, puzzle solving, and the heavy use of dungeons.
• Squick: The Ashlands are a huge desert made entirely out of the ashes of humanity.
• That One Level:
  • The pit in the Ashlands where you have to scramble from board to board to avoid a very pissed-off Abyssal Worm.
  • The Black Tower. A lengthy, puzzle-heavy segment that has you fight the same sub-boss three times (with some added wrinkles each time, but still).
• The Un-Twist: Abaddon is a bad guy. That's a name pretty universally used for demons, after all.