YMMV / Rivals of Aether

• Abridged Arena Array: Similar to Smash 4's Omega Stages, each stage has two different forms. "Aether" stages have a gimmick to add a bit of chaos, while "Basic" stages go without said gimmick. Most people tend to gravitate toward Basic stages, and it's the default stage type online.
• Awesome Music: With a soundtrack composed by Flashygoodness of Tower of Heaven fame, there was never any doubt that the OST of Rivals would be anything short of awesome.
  • The character selection theme never fails to hype up the battles to come!
  • Air Armada's rock and roll feel gets your blood pumping every time!
  • The Rock Wall, being conceptually based on the Great Wall of China, has tiny bits of Chinese influence in its slow, but powerful melody.
  • Blazing Hideout takes inspiration from traditional Japanese music, and it sounds wonderful.
  • Luna Ascension EX is a revamped version of an iconic song from Tower of Heaven, and it's just as amazing as the original.
  • Tempest Peak has a fast-paced, yet beautiful theme befitting a stormy mountain top.
  • The Frozen Fortress stage theme starts out slow, but gets more and more energetic as the song goes on.
  • With the release of Ori and the Spirit Tree stage comes this gorgeous medley celebrating the phenomenal music of Ori and the Blind Forest.
  • The Forest Floor's theme, Howl of the Forest is a piece that perfectly frames a fight against a powerful entity fitting of Sylvanos. The music almost suggests the fight is like a Final Boss with how the strings of notes feel fierce and dangerous.
  • Full Steam VENGEANCE!! plays on Julesvale, and like Frozen Fortress' theme listed above, it starts out slow, this time as if to give the imagery of Eliana preparing her mech for a flight at sunrise... and then quickly switches gears into a fast-paced rock-esque melody.
  • The Shovel Knight medley featured on the Troupple Pond remixes together some of the best Shovel Knight tracks and makes them seamlessly flow into each other.
  • "Decisive Encounter", the theme of Aetherial Gates. It's a main theme remix, fitting for the place where you battle the story mode's final boss. The Omega version that plays when every remaining player is down to their last stock or the timer hits thirty seconds left ratchets up the intensity, appropriately reflecting the tension at this point.
  • As it serves as an alternate skin for the Aetherial Gates, the Frozen Gates get the surprising "Nihil Redux", a remix of "Nihil Descent", one of Flashygoodness's contributions to the soundtrack to Pause Ahead. Like "Decisive Encounter" above, it gets a remix during the climax of a match while the stage dramatically shifts in tone and visuals.
  • The special fighter select theme that plays in tournament mode, when each player is one game away from winning the set. It definitely can get a crowd hyped up, knowing that the next one will decide it all.
• Base-Breaking Character: Clairen, who people like due to the unique take on the sword-fighting Fire Emblem characters from Super Smash Bros. (particularly Marth), or don't care much for due to being out-of-place alongside everyone else. This division increased after she was confirmed to return in Rivals 2.
• Broken Base:
  • Go over to the subreddit to see who's the OP character of the day. Everyone has been accused of being overpowered at some point by someone.
  • Steam Workshop support. On the one hand, you have people who love that there's an unlimited amount of characters that workshop support provides, especially since it now allows for unofficial crossovers with other franchises. On the other hand, people hate it since most of the popular characters tend to be horrifically overpowered joke characters who can usually infinite combo opponents or kill at extremely low percents. This further makes people worried that this will cause Aether to be brushed off/"stained" as another "dumb meme fighter" like M.U.G.E.N.
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Almost nonexistent due to the game advertising itself as a primarily competitive experience, though less skilled players often grow frustrated with the rather large skill gaps between themselves and the more hardcore players.
• Character Tiers: Like Smash Bros, characters are placed into tiers by the community, though there is significantly less emphasis on tiers compared to nearly any other fighter. The differences between top and bottom tier characters are almost completely negligible, so the majority of players tend to ignore tier lists for the most part.
• Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: A vocal portion of the fandom is mostly interested in the Steam Workshop, which adds dozens, if not hundreds of new characters and stages that are just as good, if not better, than the official ones. When Rivals 2 was announced, a very common question was "Will it have mod support?" (not at launch, but the devs are designing the game so it will be possible later), as well as complaints that since the game will use 3D models, it will be much harder to make custom characters.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Kragg is easily one of the most common characters players will meet online, since he easily crushes unskilled opponents, and isn't nearly as affected by lag as much as more technically demanding characters. Zetterburn is also played frequently for similar reasons. But once Shovel Knight was added to the game, he dominated the online landscape ever since.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Ranno, the first original DLC character revealed, has proven incredibly popular since his reveal at Super Smash Con 2017, with his designer, Marc Knelson, being bombarded with praise and fan art for the character.
  • Elliana, the third "Air" character, due to her unique premise (a snake controlling a mech suit), and sympathetic (if ultimately destructive) motivation.
• Fandom Rivalry: Brawlout, another Smash Bros.-esque Platform Fighter, has been the subject of some mockery in the Rivals of Aether fanbase due to some of the characters in Brawlout having very similar moves to characters featured in Rivals, and having supposedly inferior balancing. There was also some controversy surrounding this tweet by the Brawlout developers featuring a teaser image for a new character (later revealed to be the protagonist from Hyper Light Drifter) that looked almost exactly like a teaser image posted by Rivals artist Marc Knelson a couple months beforehand.
• Fan Nickname:
  • The community prefers the Smash Bros. term "smash attack" over the official name, "strong attack".
  • Orcane is sometimes affectionately referred to as "Whaledog". Similarly, Elliana is often called "Snek in a Mech".
  • Some fans jokingly refer to Wrastor as "Captain Falco".
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Fans of Super Smash Bros. are what make up the majority of the playerbase, as Rivals of Aether is designed as a more competitive version of Nintendo's beloved franchise.
  • Fans of other indie games such as Shovel Knight or Dust: An Elysian Tail are common in the community. Discussions involving guest characters usually involve requests for the main characters from the aforementioned games to appear as fighters. This goes doubly for fans of Ori and the Blind Forest now that Ori himself is a guest fighter. Shovel Knight himself would eventually make his way into the roster as well.
  • In a show of good-natured competition, lead Rivals developer Dan Fornace once challenged the developers of Brawlhalla to a contest to see whose Twitter account could reach 20k followers first, with the loser having to make a skin based on the victor's game. In the end, Brawlhalla won by a large margin, and the devs honored their bet by adding a Ragnir skin for Maypul. But the contest created something of a Friendly Rivalry between the fans of both games. The developers of Brawlhalla even decided to do the same and added a Ranno skin for Wu Shang.
• Good Bad Bugs: Fittingly enough, many versions of the game allow Kragg to infinitely duplicate his rock in one way or another. This allows for the creation of fairly useless, but nonetheless impressive structures.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: At one point during the Lovers of Aether dating sim, Zetterburn teases the player about possibly having a crush on the "kinda cute" new student, Clairen. Two years later, the Tales comic reveals that Clairen is biologically related to Zetterburn (being Forsburn's granddaughter, and thus Zetterburn's half-great-niece), making this come across as either oddly sweet or hilariously awkward.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Within a week of being implemented, tutorial "character" Orby, a glowing ball with a mouth, became this among the fanbase. This is thanks to the fact that almost all of its attacks will kill your character if you fail to perform its trials correctly, as well as the tutorial music becoming very intense whenever you're tasked to interact with it.
  • The "100 Accurate" characters can be seen as this, mainly due to being based on TerminalMontage's parodies of characters. Melee Fox even gets an "Ultra Instinct" version of himself.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • Any time the topic of guest characters is brought up, you will inevitably see somebody ask for the Car from Rocket League be included in the game.
  • In the workshop community, "What does Down Special do?" has caught on as a meme, due to repeated Steam comments asking what Kris' Down Special does.
  • Mario with every meter◊ ^ExplanationA recurring meme every time a new fighter is announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate that has something unique by their damage percentage is to post pictures of this modded RoA character, who is Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Mario with every meter in the game. In its earlier forms, it was already stacked with things such as Villager's Pocketed item, Robin's weapon durability, Little Mac's KO Meter, and Cloud's Limit Meter; as more characters with gimmicks get announced, like Terry's "GO" icon or Steve's material meter, Mario's UI has only gotten even larger.
  • Two flickies ^ExplanationThis video by Clen discusses moveset ideas for Sonic in Smash Bros, suggesting that his down smash could be changed to him summoning two flickies on both sides of him. This caught on in the Rivals community for how ridiculous an idea it is as an attack, with many making their own variations of it with other characters, and the phrase is often used to critique movesets that overuse references to the source material.
  • I want 30 spriters, 40 coders, and 20 animators, i cant pay tho i'm a minor◊ ^Explanation An image featuring Eduardo Perez portraying him with the aforementioned text has become a popular way to mock "idea guys" that want to spearhead workshop projects without any development experience.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • The opening riff of your main's home stage theme, playing every time you make a victory with that character.
  • Some people may note that the constant "-DINK" as Shovel Knight hits things with his shovel sounds oddly satisfying, even if they're on the receiving end of a beatdown.
• Popular with Furries:
  • The Furry Fandom has taken to the game and its cast of anthropomorphic characters quite well. Lovers of Aether has certainly helped reel in some new furry fans too, as did the reveal of Fleet, one of four main characters of the upcoming Dungeons of Aether.
  • The team themselves have even made subtle nods towards the furry fandom. For example, during the Lovers of Aether Direct 2021, one of the buttons on Adam Capybara's^note Adam Carra's avatar in the Lovers of Aether universe backpack reads "Not a furry, but", a statement commonly attributed to people taking interest in anthropomorphic characters despite claiming not to be a furry. In Lovers proper, one of the posters that can be seen during the English presentation reads "Legalize Awoo", another running joke in the fandom.
• That One Achievement:
  • The Swift Rival achievement requires getting gold medals on all of the chapters in story mode, which requires beating your opponents within strict time limits against AI that are very good at playing defense, requiring good proficiency in all of the original 6 characters. Even worse for some is that the achievement also unlocks the second custom palette.
  • The Ardent Rival achievement requires the player to reach Level 10 with all 8 characters and was required to unlock the Endless Abyss stage, the game's Final Destination equivalent, until the Definitive Edition update where it is unlocked by default. It can take hours to fully level a single character, so having to fully level every character, including those you may or may not be particularly good with, makes for an exhausting grind. Fittingly, this is an equally-long drag as it is to unlock Final Destination in Melee, too. Fortunately, unlocking stages is not required in online play.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Maypul's in-game appearance lacks any feminine traits and her name is neutral-sounding, as well as the game not having any voice acting whatsoever^note Not counting the many Workshop characters., so it's quite common for people to refer to her as male.

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