YMMV / Gaia's Melody

• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Due to the characters being heavily tiered, Akira, Doken, and Zephyr are the preferred party members. Doken has a very cheap and spammable AOE with the highest damage multipliers in the game and the best HP growth, almost as if he was intended to be overpowered. Akira and Zephyr both have excellent defense growths and decent AOE skills that allow them to survive the game's Rocket-Tag Gameplay. Every other party member has a Glass Cannon stat distribution at best, making these three the most viable in the endgame.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • In Majikk Jungle, the player can encounter monkeys that can spam confusion skills, potentially locking down the party completely if Akira didn't learn the mass-silencing Usagi Song yet. The bestiary acknowledges that they are capable of causing people to Rage Quit. The guide book states that originally, these monkeys had every ailment in their kit before being limited to confusion and a couple of status debuffs.
  • One of the enemies in Mirrikh Lab 15, Worst Nightmare, is a Fragile Speedster that will either kill itself, use weak attacks, or use Crater Bite to inflict deathblow. Since it can move before a normally leveled party, it's very possible for it to just knock someone out with Crater Bite before they can do anything and the party has almost no chance in fleeing. It also tends to spawn in large groups, making it a gamble to survive the encounter.
• Fridge Brilliance:
  • While the power imbalance between the playable characters skews heavily in favor of Akira, Doken, and Zephyr, it makes sense lore-wise that they're much stronger the the rest of the party members. Akira is the most successful subject of Project Melody, so it's expected for her to surpass the majority of the party in stats. Doken and Zephyr both likely had extensive military training as the princes of their countries, and Zephyr in particular comes from a powerful demonic bloodline. In contrast, most other party members are relatively ordinary kids or a less successful Project Melody subject, which justifies their Glass Cannon stat growth.
  • In Misu's play about the first game, the actors and script mischaracterize everyone except for Agares, whose actor is almost as chilling as the real deal. This makes sense because Agares is a Flat Character with few traits outside of being a sadistic god wannabe, making him the easiest character to portray in-universe.
• Narm: Agares is presented as a completely humorless villain in an otherwise tween-oriented game, but he still uses skills with kiddy and memey names like everyone else. His eyebrows and facial expressions are also more exaggerated than most other characters.
• That One Attack:
  • In Echoed Melodies, Crater Bite is an instant death move that still deals high single-target damage even if it doesn't proc. This move is used by both bosses and regular enemies even in the first half of the game, making it an endless source of death for the player because the only replenishable source of combat revival at this point is very weak.
  • In Echoed Memories, many enemies have access to the Stats-Down skill, which targets all party members, lowers all stats, and can stack twice. Due to the constantly switching POV, the player won't always have a way to cure it, which can put them at a huge disadvantage.
• That One Boss: In Echoed Memories, the Duel Boss where Akira fights Cronan is brutal because he can spam Stats-Down, and there's very little room for error when fighting alone. Worse yet, he can use SuperOmniDeathStrike, which is fatal if Akira's defense is debuffed.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Although the player and enemy damage is clearly balanced for Rocket-Tag Gameplay in the second half of the game, the turn order has enough variance that slower enemies can move before faster party members, leading to the more fragile party members getting wiped out if the player gets unlucky.