Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Terra become a bully out of a desire to be recognized by the higher-ups at the House of Stars, or is it a side-effect of the experimentation done on her? She freaks out upon seeing the Cradle, worrying that she won't be herself if she ends up inside which would heavily hint towards the latter, but it's never explicitly confirmed.
The reveal that Mars, a foul-mouthed disrespectful Gamer Chick, is actually Captain Gillian's daughter. He is immediately confronted by Uranus and Milky Way, and makes the unfortunate error of mentioning that she was almost entirely raised by her mother. This earns him the ire of almost every lady on the Asterism, with the guys shooting down his attempts to get their word on the matter, and even Dark Walker mentioning that she enjoys the discourse. But the kicker is Terra's response: "Cheer up, captain. At least myfatherwas worse!" This immediately ends the discussion.
A Shadow Commander tries to throw a phrase that Mars used in a previous battle with the Relayers right back in her face. The result? "Behold! My Gear! A craft with a peerless arsenal that will allow me to teabag my enemy right in the face over and over!"
Growing the Beard: The game begins to pick up midway through Chapter 3 and really hits its stride in Chapter 4. The first two Chapters (and Chapter 3, to a lesser extent) are largely for worldbuilding and establishing the game's large cast, while the pieces begin to fall into place in the fourth Chapter. The scene-to-scene writing becomes much more interesting and characters have typically gained enough levels to really begin exploring the mechanics that the game has to offer.
Harsher in Hindsight: Part 22's Toilet Humor becomes less funny with the hindsight knowledge that Terra is hiding that her body is failing her, and losing control of her bowels and bladder is a viable concern given how there are instances of her temporarily losing her senses.
Lost in Medias Res: The first two to three chapters are a mess of new factions and terminology, with the first hour or so largely being considered the worst part of the game.
Much like the maligned English dub of God Wars: Future Past, the English dub of Relayer has been unfavorably compared to PlayStation 2-era voice acting. Despite having a healthy variety of otherwise well-received voice actors onboard, the combination of an occasionally awkward script, questionable casting, seemingly non-existent voice direction, and thoroughly poor audio mixing means that outside of a couple of standout cases, the English voice track is full of stilted, Dull Surprise-laden, difficult-to-hear dialogue where even the veteran voice actors often sound lost.
The word "Emo" being used multiple times unironically in a game released in 2022, including Saturn's unique "Emo Hacker's ____" skills. It almost feels like a case of something being Lost in Translation.
That One Achievement: Relayer has a number of painful trophies, not least of which is one given for opening every loot box and another requiring each of the very missable character interactions to be seen.
Visual Effects of Awesome: Don't be fooled by the bulky, dated user interface; Relayer has some of the most dynamic and visually pleasing 3D battle scenes that you'll find in a mecha strategy game. Even better, it does it with fully-proportioned mecha, unlike Super Robot Wars and SD Gundam G Generationnote Though Generation of C.E., a G Gen game in everything but name, uses full-proportioned mobile suits which use Super-Deformed units just like in their 2D entries.
