YMMV / LEGO Universe

• Alt-itis: A character can join one of four factions, and you can't change your mind later on. Conveniently enough, each player is allowed four characters.
• Awesome Music: The soundtrack, composed by Brian Tyler, has a lot of standout pieces.
  • Our Universe, an overture that opens and closes with the bright and cheery LEGO Universe theme, but the middle section is full of wonderful Nightmare Fuel.
  • Monument Race, a fast-paced and intense track played while ascending the Assembly Monument.
  • Rocket Area, the main Gnarled Forest theme, played upon your arrival to Gnarled Forest.
    • It's such Awesome Music, it can be heard in the beta for the upcoming Legends of Chima MMO. Time will tell whether or not it will be in the final product.
  • The Magic Forest, a mysterious-sounding remix of the Gnarled Forest theme.
  • Pirate Cove, a fun pirate jig played at the Pirate Camp.
  • Paradox, an oriental style remix of the main theme played at Cavalry Hill.
  • The Mystery of Forbidden Valley, a dark and solemn oriental style track played at the Paradox Refinery.
  • The beta soundtrack, comprised mostly of songs from the Audio Network, had its share of Awesome Music.
    • Character Creation Loop 02, simply beautiful. No other word can describe it.
    • Monument Opening Music Loop 2 (no available YouTube link, sadly), an orchestral track which builds up in power, with the feeling of something truly great on the horizon.
    • Battle Music, an intense electronic track that changed based upon the intensity of Avant Gardens Survival.
    • Pet Rock, a light and relaxing piano/strings/marimba track played at Pet Cove.
    • The Search Continues, an intense orchestral track played at Brig Rock.
    • Valley of the Kings, a low drone with light percussion played at Cavalry Hill.
    • Rising Mercury, a pounding, insistent orchestral track played in the Maelstrom Valley Dragon Den.
• Demonic Spiders: Maelstrom Horsemen. The moment they spot you, they start firing upon you with energy blasts. Then, if you get into melee range, they perform a stun attack that is nigh impossible to dodge. They're also the strongest Stromlings in the game, barring mini-bosses and bosses.
• Goddamned Boss: The Crux Prime bosses, sans Roo Morgg, Nuckal, and Butterscorch. Most of them are fairly easy to fight, especially with a team of four players. However, since they spawn randomly and infrequently, good luck finding them. And if you do find them, hope you or your team can get to them before someone else does, or you won't get credit for the kill. And, since they usually spawn amongst many of their fellow Stromlings, it can be frustrating to have nearly defeated one of them only to get killed by some Maelstrom Horseman shooting at you.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks!: Keep in mind that this game is aimed at children and not seasoned MMO players.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: At launch, discounting property worlds, only six worlds were available, and as far as MMOs go, these worlds are very small. Later worlds, such as Crux Prime, Nexus Tower, and especially Ninjago Monastery, were larger, but much of the game's main story quests can be completed in only a few days, relying on Fake Longevity with tons of grinding to keep people playing.
• Moment of Awesome: The concept alone. And the trailer.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • In the backstory movie, the entire sequence involving the Spider Boss. When Baron Typhonus spawns the spider, Dr. Overbuild's cute little Robot Dog pet barks at it... and the Spider Boss immediately crushes it beneath one of its feet. It begins to attack the other three explorers as Baron Typhonus laughs, but then the narrator says one bone-chilling line:
  Narrator: "His foolhardy attempt to control creation through destruction merely created chaos. And creatures of chaos have no master."
  • The Spider Boss then turns on Baron Typhonus, who realizes its intentions a second too late. He tries to flee from it, but the Spider Boss's foot snags his cape. The last we see of either of them, the Spider Boss is pulling a terrified and struggling Baron Typhonus into the Imagination Nexus, and then the bright blue energy turns purple as it is mutated into the Maelstrom. This is easily one of the Darkest and Edgiest moments in LEGO history, and the background music certainly doesn't help.
  • During the Spider Queen boss battle, she shrieks in agony whenever you smash one of her Dark Spiderlings.
  • Upon completing the "Something in the Maelstrom" mission, you are greeted with a vision where your Minifig is sent to what appears to be an elongated staircase in the middle of a Maelstrom vortex. The glowing red image of a skull accompanied by deep Evil Laughter flashes before your eyes as, in the distance, you see a silhouette of Baron Typhonus atop the staircase. Then, tendrils of Maelstrom energy lace out in a double helix around the staircase as the silhouette grows closer and closer. Just before the Maelstrom tendrils slam into your Minifig and Smash to Black, Typhonus towers above you, and you can see that his entire figure is pitch-black, like a silhouette, with his only visible features being the glowing red outline of a skull. This served as confirmation to Master Fong Shader's words: Baron Typhonus is alive, and he is now the Darkitect!
• That One Achievement: Many achievements require many, many, many hours of grinding to complete, whether it's completing 11,110 quick builds or smashing 6,150 Stromlings. Needless to say, by the time the game closed a little over a year after launch, most players had not come close to completing these sorts of achievements.
• That One Boss:
  • Butterscorch. It has the powerful moveset of most Maelstrom Dragons, plus the ability to spit out numerous fireballs in quick succession to take on multiple players. Nearly all of its attacks have knockback, making it all too easy for Butterscorch to knock players off the small floating island. In addition, Butterscorch has the greatest amount of health out of all enemies in the game and thus takes a lot of time for a team of four players to kill... and if all four players are smashed, Butterscorch regains all lost health. It is easier for a much larger group of players, especially Engineers and anyone with Summon Magic, to quickly take down Butterscorch... but in that case, good luck getting credit for the kill.
  • According to reports of the unreleased Lord Garmadon boss battle, Garmadon would have also qualified for this trope.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Alpha testers and early beta testers may remember the time where the developers tried to give Johnny Thunder a complete makeover. The outcry was so great, the developers actually scrapped their redesign and went with the classic appearance instead.
• Viewer Gender Confusion:
  • Ninja Tashi and the Ninja Guards are easily mistaken for male. Ninja Tashi at least has feminine eyelashes, but the Ninja Guards have no visible female characteristics unless the player clips the camera through their hoods, revealing their feminine lips.
  • No one is quite sure whether Shu Fitts is supposed to be female or male. This is due to Shu's hairstyle: is it supposed to be a woman's Tomboyish Ponytail or a man's Samurai Ponytail? Shu's facial features appear more masculine, suggesting that it is supposed to be the latter, though that hasn't stopped many from interpreting it as the former.
  • There is no way to determine the gender of Maelstrom Dragons such as Butterscorch, though supposedly Bronson Jarls used to refer to Butterscorch with masculine pronouns in an early Crux Prime mission. However, many players mistakenly refer to Butterscorch as a female due to its feminine-sounding name.

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