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YMMV / Elsword

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  • Alternate Self Shipping: Given that there are three (later four, after major update) paths for each character, this is prevalent among the characters. It isn't uncommon to see two or even all three (even four) versions of one character being paired together in fanworks.
  • Alt-itis: Good grief. With a total of 56 classes across the cast of 14, you're going to fill up your starting 15 slots fast. If you're particularly dedicated, the Epic Point shop offers additional character slots for 500 EP each, which can be earned through Epic Quest progression or traded in with ED. This process can be done ad nauseum per character, allowing you to get the hard limit of 60 slots on your account without spending a single K-ching, more than enough to make every class in the game.
  • Awesome Music:
    • Particular examples would be the "Berthe" battle and "Return Plains" themes work well.
    • This animated video released by Gameforge (who hosts Elsword's EU server) has a pretty impressive rock theme.
    • Many of "Elysion"'s tunes fall into this category. The climactic final fight especially.
  • Base-Breaking Character:
    • Add has attracted praise and derision from all across the fandom since his release, owing to very strong and viable gameplay across all three (later four) of his classes as well as his prominence in official and fanmade material.
    • Eve also gets a large amount of attention, even having official birthday events devoted to her in-game when other characters do not. Add often being considered a Spear Counterpart to Eve - though this was later denied (link is Korean) - does not help. Nor does her class balancing, as at least one class of hers ends up having tier-related issues for one reason or another.
    • Rose has been divisive since her reveal. Many find her gameplay fun and like the designs of all of her classes, while others accuse her for being a Moveset Clone of various other classes and/or being a character from another game.
  • Better Off Sold: Most common Normal and Rare level equipment have little value and are usually sold if not deleted outright.
  • Broken Base: You either like the new third subclass or hate them all.
    • Though not all are Game Breakers (for example: Night Watcher was rather underpowered before her revamp).
    • Other 'evolution' changes have only fueled the feeling as well as NA exclusive tweaks, which border on Bad Export for You.
    • Eve's new system, which is her own core system, similar to Raven's. Reactions are mixed as some like how it helps her, others are upset that it's a Moveset Copy of Raven's, some more dislike how they've neglected to fix her real issues, or a mix of the three.
    • Rena's Nature Spirit system, mainly for people thinking that it either favors Grand Archer or Wind Sneaker.
    • The fans are torn on whether to call Add with the surname "Kim" or not. Early publications of Add had "Kim" after his name, but when he's finally released, there's no mention of his surname in-game. This has since died down since the reveal of Add's real name, Edward Grenore.
    • The English voicework, particularly for the EU version, has received quite some flak and people are quite divided on if it's actually good. While the NA/INT version's English voiceovers for all the playable characters were quite well-received or okay at worst and otherwise used the Korean voices, and allow toggling between them, the EU version has some questionable casting choices. While Add and Ciel's voiceovers are quite well-received (with some even arguing that Ciel's UK voice is better than his NA voice. Same with Add, especially the Vocal Minority, as some people don't like when Bryce Papenbrook plays against his typecasting, saying he would fit better as the titular character (which it was given to Nicolas Roye)), the rest of the voices are up in the air with Lu, Ara, and Elesis generally seen as having the weakest voiceovers.
  • Breather Level: The Shrine of Dedication Entrance. The enemies are much simpler and generally weaker than the Nasods from Altera Core, and the boss is a huge step down from the Nasod King. Don't let that lull you into a false sense of security; Feita ups the challenge and then some from there.
    • Pretty much any given first dungeon in any given region will be guaranteed to be this, at least in comparison to the later dungeons in those regions.
  • Ensemble Dark Horse: While each character has their fandoms, Eve stands out for being this on both sides of the Ocean and she's often credited with saving the game in Korea. To the point that Add was made as a response to her popularity.
    • A big one in North America would be Ara Haan for a mix of reasons and as soon as she came out, a massive number of players were playing her.
    • For NPCs, Yuno/Herjuno quickly won over the fanbase.
  • Fandom Rivalry: With Dungeon Fighter Online. DFO players hate Elsword due to seeing it as a glaring example of Bribing Your Way to Victory. It appears to be largely one-sided at most, as most Elsword players barely know of the rivalry (or the existence of the other game for that matter). This is especially ironic considering Rose's existence, who is basically DFO's Female Gunner, but was sent to Elrios for a mission.
  • Fan Nickname: Chung has the most nicknames among the fans.
    • PuppyChung: His eyes have paw prints for pupils and his hair looks like puppy ears.
    • PikaChung: Both ends of his hair have a patch that resembles a certain Pokemon's ears. Once the Shelling Guardian/Tactical Trooper class line came out, this was applyed to them due to how those bits stick up like ears.
    • Chungdam: His futuristic armors and his cannon has led to him being mistaken for a Gundam. Especially as Tactical Trooper.
    • Chungina: A female variation of Chung, used due to frequently being mistaken for a girl, on account of his young, and overly cute looks. This nickname began to fade away as he takes on Shooting Guardian route, but is further enhanced as Fury Guardian. Greatly enhanced during the 2011 April Fool's Day event in Korean version, when all characters have been Gender Swapped.
      • Chung's Iron Paladin promotion (upgraded from Fury Guardian) further enforces it; his hair is down to his rear, and his armor gains three inch heels. Some of the promotional art for this form has a distinctly hourglass-ish waist, too.
    • Iron Princess: Chung's Iron Paladin class is called this, due to the above.
    • Elboy: The fandom's Affectionate Nickname for the titular character (and to disambiguate him from the title itself).
    • Elebro: Elesis during the April Fool 2014 event in KR
    • Franchise/Batman: Elesis' Dark Knight class is sometimes called this. The reason is obvious.
    • Pizza Seeker: Arc Tracer's Phantom Seeker skill. Name is taken from a Tumblr fad that replaces the disks of Phantom Seeker with a pair of pizzas.
    • Bird Dad for Raven, due to his Team Dad status combined with his name and the crow motif he gains as Veteran Commander.
    • Mochi: Erbluhen Emotion. Before the official spelling of his name was revealed, he was known only as "Ebeuluhen Amochion", the literal hangul reading for his name in Korean.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite much Ship Tease, the game has never actually confirmed any romantic pairings, leading to a lot of these.
    • Elsword x Aisha.
    • Raven x Rena.
    • Before Add debuted, Chung x Eve and Raven x Eve were this.
    • Add x Eve.
      • For some reason, Add x Ara has as much fans (if not more) as Add x Eve.
      • Same goes to Add x Elesis.
    • Lu x Ciel is pretty obvious, but it's there.
    • Class-specific:
  • Game-Breaker: Now has a page
  • Goddamned Bats: Stone Gargoyles. They're the first flying enemy that actually makes an effort to stay out of arm's length. While they're frail and not terribly damage, their sonic howl attack does too much damage relative to their actual strength, and they tend to come in groups, usually with other enemies thrown into the mix as well. Their stronger counterpart, the Wyverns (which attack with low-damage meteors), are a bit less annoying overall, but still piss off many players.
    • For Sander, the Harpies and Succubi, especially as they start a trend of flying enemies being almost as durable as their grounded counterparts.
    • In Elrianode has the Freak Defenders for their constants super armor, combo attack that can hit even ranged players, and their changed attack that bursts a pillar of energy. Picking a fight against huge group of them is a tough battle.
  • Goddamned Boss: The fight with Cutty Sark (a large flying monster), while not that hard, can be very short or very long depending on whether you can hit him properly with the stage-laid crossbows to take him down momentarily, or not.
    • Magmanta and Avalanche; detailed in That One Attack below.
    • Taranvash can summon copies of itself by 2 mirrors on the sides of the arena. Turning the mirror away is enough to make the copies disappear, but you'll often be distracted by Taranvash itself to not notice.
    • Spriggan: Not hard but tricky due to small size and speed, but if allowed to have his portals open, he'll unleash some vicious attacks. Many players overlook this.
    • Kelaino; Everytime she retreats, she will summon 6 large blades (7 for her 3rd time) across the length of the stage while generating a powerful tornado that will disable all player skills and the ability to jump while also slowly pushing them outward from the center of the stage. The spears will then fall and explode when enough time passed.
    • Scar, especially since when he awakens, he will cut off all current actions in a cutscene. After that, he will create Demonic Vortex that suck everyone into it unless they can run away fast enough. This is especially bad in Henir mode where there are two of him, since they will both trigger the cutscene unless they're made to awaken nearly simultaneously.
    • Alterasia Type H, mainly due to the timer of the stage and the spores that heal him. His worst attack is at set intervals, making it easy to avoid if you're not over committing yourself. But if you go in sloppily, things will go terribly, especially after the Secret dungeon revamp where his hp, the spores' hp and how much they restore got a massive boost. Easily the most planning intensive fight in the game.
  • Good Bad Bugs: Previously, a "mechanic" for Aisha and Rena, known as "Tumbling": basically they continuously bounce up and down if the player holds up while their Aisha/Rena gets hit in midair. Eve has the similar mechanic, only that when that happens, it forces knockdown on her instead. These were patched out during certain revamps, as tumbling had become too much of a focus for any PvP match involving these characters.
  • He's Just Hiding: Some have this reaction to Yuno/Herjuno's Heroic Sacrifice after the end of Atlas Station portion of Elysion.
  • Ho Yay: Taken up to eleven in the fandom due to the fact that each character looks different in each class chain. As a result, in addition to shipping them with other characters (who may or may not be of the opposite sex), many circles of the fandom ship them with the heroes with themselves!
  • Iron Woobie: Raven gets a pretty Dark and Troubled Past and it plagued him from time to time, but he always focuses on doing what he thinks is right and staying calm about it.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Add is the most shipped character in the series. Period. He has been shipped with EVERYONE (there are even fanworks shipping him with Lu and Laby) and even himself. This is even lampshaded by the fact that he has his own official "Harem" Light Novel, Time Trouble.
    • Eve is also this at almost the same level as Add as she has been shipped with nearly everyone.
  • Memetic Molester: Add is often given this treatment for his obsessions of Eve. Fans often add the crush to his Stalker without a Crush towards her (canonically, he only follows her for her Code, which he can use to go back in his timeline).
  • Most Wonderful Sound: The loud sound that any Critical Hit makes.
    • KR Eve's "vei" (rhymes with "ray") on certain commands is just satisfying to hear.
  • Nightmare Fuel: This game has its moments.
  • Play the Game, Skip the Story: The lore and story of Elsword is actually pretty deep once you read into it. Unfortunately, even reading it requires some concentration as the stories are not parsed well with how the gameplay is handled. Many useful infos are also All There in the Manual and the access to said manual is very limited. As the result the players often care more about gameplay and fashion than the story, to the point that "This game has a story?" is a joke made by the fans about this. It's further perpetuated by the playerbase being pushy with skipping cutscenes, ostracizing players that are trying to read into the story.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: The Combat Power system that replaced Item Level mechanic. While this is isn't much a problem at first, it serves as a great roadblock once the player reaches 99. Dungeons beyond Elrianode requires ridiculously high CP which can be only achieved by getting hands on very specific gears and titles which most are extremely rare and expensive and requires tedious grinding. Such builds makes the character a full-blown Glass Cannon as defensive and speed options has to be ignored in favor of offensive effects. And that's just reaching the required CP, clearing the dungeon is another story.
  • Ship-to-Ship Combat: For the love of God, this game is also notorious for this. With the creator's occasional Ship Tease moments between characters adding more gas to the fire and the fact that NONE of the ships are actually canon (except probably in the case of Lu x Ciel). Doesn't helped by the fact that you can create pairings through the marriage system in the gamenote .
    • Let's start with Elsword himself. He's usually shipped with two female characters - Aisha and Eve. Both ships has been teased once (or twice) by the creators themselves so naval battles between these two are inevitable.
    • Raven is usually only shipped with Rena and the two of them also got an official Ship Tease of their own. But, you can also see him being shipped with Eve and... Elsword. Those who ship Raven x Rena will defend that the only person Raven could ever love is Rena due to her resembling his deceased late fiancee, while those who ship Raven x Eve, aside from saying that they're connected with being (half) Nasod and having similar/contrasting color schemes, will argue that Raven may possibly love Rena only because she resembles his fiancee and not because of the person she really is and therefore deserves Eve. Raven x Elsword fans are surprisingly neutral. (Then again, for the most part, the BL/GL shippers tend to stay out of harm's way.) His pairing with Rena is eventually challenged with her pairing with Ventus, mostly with her Anemos form.
    • Add... who is practically shipped with EVERYONE, but four pairings stand out for him. Like Raven above, he is mostly shipped with Eve and the two has been Ship Teased more than once by the creators, the rival ships are Add x Ara, Add x Elesis and Add x Aisha. Add x Eve fans are mostly neutral (because they have pretty strong standing) but those who ship other Add pairings constantly argue that they feel sorry for Eve if that ever happens due to them portraying Add as a Memetic Molester and should look for somebody else. Add x Ara fans can be particularly vocal about their opposition with the Add x Eve ship and ESPECIALLY the Add x Elesis ship. Add x Elesis and Add x Aisha also have their share of fans. But, these two are probably the most hated Add ships out of all of them and are frequently targeted for naval torpedoes. Not to mention the faction that ships Add with himself either because Guy on Guy Is Hot or because they feel Add can't get along with anyone.
    • For Chung, it's more subdued (in part because he's a shota), but his most prominent ships include Chung x Eve, Chung x Ara and Chung x himself, with a slightly smaller faction shipping Chung x Rena.
  • Self-Imposed Challenge:
    • The game is sometimes played by either not taking hits at all, or just not dying. Some titles even require you to clear a certain (or more) dungeon(s) without taking too many hits.
    • Playing a dungeon solo, depending on your character choice, can have an increase in challenge (though not evident in the early game). Some titles also require you to do this.
    • Speedrunning is one of the most common player-imposed challenges. Some titles would require you to do this as well.
  • That One Attack:
    • The long stream of fire breath of Ancient Bone Dragon, Superboss of Bethma region. It can be avoided, but once you get in its path prepare to receive heavy damage (you can also force yourself down to avoid it, but you'll lose some MP). A more annoying (but slightly less deadly) one is when it flies and breathes a carpet of fire in the arena; there'll be a spot in the corner that's not covered in fire that you have to run onto, back and forth. Also the dragon's HP regenerates while doing so.
    • The boss of Altera's secret dungeon, Type-H, can use Elsword's Storm Blade whenever his HP is depleted to a certain number - it comes out quickly, without warning, and deals enormous damage. Especially careless players are often tricked into this.
    • The boss of Sander's secret dungeon, Enraged Manifestation has one homing dark ball attack. It is slow but will hit hard if the players didn't see it coming.
    • Magmanta, Avalanche, and Code A: Surveillan will periodically retreat to the background where they will do long-range attacks while being unable to be hit by players. This needlessly stretches out the fight time.
      • The former's jumping can be prevented, but telling those that don't know the trick not to attack him outside of Super armor frames can be difficult.
    • Herbaon's Quadrato Plasma, seven to eight barrages of location-tracking lasers during which Herbaon is invincible. It can be canceled, but requires your party to save up MP and all nuke him at once while he prepares the attack, unless members with strong equipment are able to pick up the slack for under-contributing members. Speaking of your party, if they don't manage to cancel it, they'll likely be running around the map trying to dodge the lasers, which doesn't tend to go well with one laser firing at each player (plus one more that activates regardless of the number of people in your party). This attack is close to unstoppable if Herbaon is fought in Henir's Time and Space, and Heroic Dungeon.
    • Another Elysion boss: Solace, specifically his Halted Sun's Memory form. When he has a full power gauge, he launches an attack fan-nicknamed the "Flash of Death" which whites the screen and rapidly deals enough strikes to the player to take at least two full health bars. There is no way to mana break or dodge it normally; the primary ways to survive are to spam HP recovery potions or use a skill with long invincibility frames.
    • Spatio Reaper, the boss of Elrianode City, and a miniboss in El Tower Defense has one spinning attack that can easily strip large amount of HP or even outright kill the player character if he/she is Immune to Flinching when hit. The attack is less painful but still hurts if the player hit is between the boss and the wall. Outside these two situations, the attack will deal moderate damage and sends the player flying.
    • Chrysalis, the boss of the final Elrianode dungeon Forgotten Elrian Sanctum, is way weaker than the previous boss, Interdimensional Colossus. However, it is notorious for its one attack that silences players and charges an attack that, if unleashed, will ensure a Total Party Kill as it is almost completely inescapable. Said attack can be prevented by repeatedly attacking the boss with combos when it starts charging, causing it to flinch a set number of times within a timer. The problem is such attacks are usually discouraged in the entire game's play style, thus players tends forget about them and became helpless against the attack if they are not aware. You'd also think that the fight would be made easier because it's the first boss since Atlas Station to take debuffs, but that actually serves as a hindrance: If it is hit with an Action Speed reducing debuff, it will flinch more slowly during this attack, but the timer duration will not change, making it impossible to clear the condition. Due to the high value of Freeze as an attribute (Lowers Defenses and Action Speed on stack), it is highly probable that a party member will bring it with them to this fight, where they will either have to de-quip their weapon for this attack or get the party killed.
      • In the event that it does go off, it's possible to survive by pre-charging a mana break, using an MP potion, and manabreaking twice more each time you get up. Hold down your attack key for the entire duration to pre-charge your second and third breaks while you're down.
    • For PvP, certain player skills would count if they're used against you, such as Armageddon Blade for its huge range, and Energy Spurt for its 25% defense piercing.
  • That One Level:
    • Elysion territory dungeons are a polarizing affair. One side believes that KoG has done a great job of making truly hard and challenging dungeons for the very final area. The other side thinks they've been made too hard to handle.
      • The bosses in Elysion are usually a combination of Damage-Sponge Boss and "Get Back Here!" Boss. Previous dungeons have bosses with relevant gimmicks or tricks that could be used to skip or avoid more annoying attack patterns. Elysion bosses, on top of being immune to debuffs, spend much of the fight either super armored or invincible, with attack patterns that generally affect the entire boss arena. The conditions for making the fight easier, if they exist at all, tend to be obscure and often rely on luck or powerful weapons. Player skill has very little affect on what bosses do and don't do in Elysion, whereas knowledgeable players almost always held an advantage in other regions.
      • As for the stages themselves, there is a much greater emphasis on platforming over pitfalls and other hazards in Elysion overall, an aspect of the game that had fallen out of focus since Velder.
    • Hamel's Secret Dungeon, Temple of Trials. Originally a gruelling Marathon Level with minibosses in most rooms, this was compounded by the fact that the second room held a scripted battle against the final boss of the dungeon and Chung's fallen father, Helputt. After losing this fight against him, the party is transported to the main body of the dungeon - a complex where the main meat of the experience was backtracking through rooms you'd cleared before that had become overrun again. Players originally had to clear each trial hall twice, once going through and once backtracking, and still have to clear the main hall three times each run. Before fighting Helputt again, players are presented with one last room that slowly fills with doppelgangers of the members of the Elgang (everyone before Elesis), but the most efficient way to handle this room is to stall outside for two minutes and nuke all the clones at once when you enter.
    • The Heroic Dungeon after its latest update became much harder than before, yet it retain its combat power requirement.
  • That One Sidequest: More often than normally you'll find yourself wondering about the purpose of some of Camilla's quests. Camilla's Intermediate Training? Part 3/5? Have fun spending more than 300% stamina trying to finish that Fetch Quest. For this reason they tend to have the Fan Nickname "Camilla's trolling".
    • The skill tree revamp has changed most of these to be more bearable... save for the last step of the expert skill quests: Getting 5 S ranks in Sander stages. This is easy for a few classes and for others it'd be a matter of not having certain other classes mess things up.
    • Part 5/5 of the Grand Archer sidequest is also hair pull-inducing. It involves having to get 20 item drops from Glitter Necromancers. Unfortunately, Glitter Necromancers are not common creatures to begin with, and the drop is very rare. Have fun grinding the Underground Chapel 4 or 5 times to maybe get one drop!
    • Both Code: Battle Seraph and Lunatic Psykers have it even worse in their sidequest: 40 drops from the aforementioned Glitter Necromancers in Part 5/5 of their quest. Have fun wasting all of your stamina on these quests!
    • Part 2/2 of Ariel's Skill Notebook sidequest involves collecting 20 drops of Fine Leather from the Fire Komodos in both Bethma Lake (Night) and Dragon's Nest. The item itself is a rare drop so good luck even getting more-than-one drop on a single dungeon run (if any at all). This sidequest will really test your patience at the cost of your stamina.
    • ALL of the Transcendence related quests. Most of the parts involve getting 3 to 15 decently rare drops from Secret, Lanox, and Atlas dungeons. Total, you must run at least 104 dungeons, and assuming a rate of 1 for every 3 dungeons, you need to run around 300 dungeons to bring your character to its highest potential. It's no wonder many players open their wallets to instantly purchase the reward instead of actually doing the quest. KOG is a genius in marketing, indeed.
    • The 3rd Job quest and the Hyper Active quest after it is similar to above, but WORSE. Not only dealing with ultra difficult Elrianode bosses, but also most of its runs require the possession of Elrianode Defense Request, which is a Rare Random Drop in Elrianode region. If you want to achieve 3rd Job, you have no choice but to use real money if you don't want to deal with that tedious grinding.
  • They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Starting from the introduction of oft-overpowered Chung onwards everything goes downhill...
    • The skill tree revamp was definitely not received very well at all. Messages of complaints, insults, and quitting are all over the Korean website.
    • Some of the other changes weren't exactly popular as the new end game sets have nerfed and/or less special effects.
    • The NA region's reaction to the version of Gate of Darkness they got. To elaborate in short: the KR version still has ingredients as rewards for special potions and costume pieces, but the NA version changed it to all potions and costume pieces depending on a chance in a box with other, less-appealing prizes inside. And you only get two of those upon completion, no matter what. It's only sometime around the 2015 revamps that it was reworked to be almost like the KR version.
    • The near-unanimous reaction to the PvE and PvP skill tooltip split. It was initially suggested during a player-developer conference because many skills had different effects and reduced damage during PvP, but the description only showed the PvE damage and effects. A few months later, the skill descriptions were updated to resolve the problem. Not suggested, however, were the damage nerfs to the affected skills, enraging certain parts of the playerbase. Many high MP nukes lost around 300% to 1000% of attack power multiplier. The major complaining seems to have died down, as later patches buffed most skills back up to normal, reversing the changes.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: All 3 of Transcendent Lu/Ciel's Awakened Will passive skills have exactly the same effect that kicks in when their Combination Gauge is less than half-full, which some claim is at it's most useful for Demonio.
  • Values Dissonance: The couple system prevents same-sex couplings and marriages, which is criticized mainly by members of the LGBT and western playerbases. However, KOG Studios is a company based in South Korea, where LGBT rights aren't quite as progressive, and the playerbase there would have much more divided opinions whether or not the game should allow it. The Soulmate System is intended as a compromise, allowing anyone to be Partners, but it heavily downplays the romantic tones a handful of LGBT players are looking for.
  • Win Back the Crowd: The third major skill revamping (starting around August 2015) that brings back the old system and makes it better (skill points have been abolished, and all skills are unlocked automatically, save for a few but straightforward exceptions) receives much props from the playerbase.

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