YMMV / Strife

• Annoying Video Game Helper: Averted with Blackbird. While a lot of her advice is pretty useless she is likeable enough not to count as annoying.
• Anti-Climax Boss: The Programmer, especially after how scary he is implied to be (by both Macil and various slaves of the Order. He only has 400 hp (the same as a crusader robot) and while his attack is pretty powerful, it's also rather inaccurate. You can also Stun Lock him pretty easily with the assault rifle. Might be intentional as he is not as scary as he seems to be, and is merely a pawn.
• Best Level Ever: The assault on the castle. You have a bunch of Resistance members helping you fight against mainly crusaders and other robots, but also some regular guards, and even given that the Resistance fighters are pretty weak, it's still nice to have someone fighting beside you instead of going alone for once. They can even kill weak foes and distract the strong ones.
• Complete Monster: The Entity is a being who infects planets with a virus that turns people into its slaves, and then devours the life from the planet when it's done. Having crashed its spaceship, a comet, into the game's unnamed planet, the Entity proceeds to release a deadly virus, killing millions, with the survivors suffering a Fate Worse than Death. Said infected people are manipulated by the Entity into founding their own evil theocracy known as The Order, with the purpose of enslaving and terrorizing the rest of the planet. Depending on the choices "Strifeguy" makes, the Entity might be revealed to have manipulated him through the human guise into delivering the Sigil, the sacred weapon hailed by the Order, to its lair. Should the Entity win in the final confrontation, it regains freedom and proceeds to finish off what's left of the human race.
• Demonic Spiders: Crusaders, giant robots with triple rocket launchers and flamethrowers for close range. They take a lot of hits to kill, and their shots travel very fast, but what puts them in Demonic Spider territory is that they don't telegraph their attacks. All shots are fired near instantaneously, giving you very little time to get out of the way.
  • Though, use of the Environmental Suit allows you to be immune to fire damage, including their flamethrowers, so if you activate one and can get up close, you're effective able to punch them to destruction with no more danger, though their death animation can deal radius damage as well at certain frames.
  • Templars, found for most of the second half of the game, can be very deadly with their shotgun-esque maulers. And they are quick on the draw, as well as very tough to dodge. They're especially bad in pairs at the minimum and/or paired with other enemies. Again it might not be a bad idea to trick them into trying to melee you at close range, which while fairly-hard hitting if it connects, still does less damage than their Mauler does generally.
• Disappointing Last Level : The first 5/6ths of the game are a good balance between combat, exploration, and character interaction/story advancement. Despite being a Doom engine game, it's all very RPG-like. Once you reach the Loremaster's factory, however, the game pretty much turns into a couple hours of straight Doom-style combat through several levels of identical corridors, leading up to the final battle. You can skip the Loremaster's factory based on the choice you make at the decisive point in the game, but you end up with the less good ending as a result.
• Epileptic Trees: In the long route for the Golden Ending, you will at one point meet a boss spectre which is just floating around rather than possessing someone like all the others. While it's presence is never explained, a common fan theory is that it is the Programmer's spectre, as he is the only Sigil piece carrying boss who doesn't have a spectre in him, and the spectre in uses the same attack the one piece Sigil produces (which the Programmer also has.) Why exactly it isn't possessing the Programmer and is instead found in some old ruins is a Riddle for the Ages.
• Fridge Horror: In the bad ending, The Entity renders humanity extinct and leaves the planet because there is "nothing left to feed on", implying it could do the same with another planet's species. And who's to say it did not exterminate other species before landing on the planet the game is set on?
• Game-Breaker: Poison bolts early in the game, as most enemies then are organic, and the bolts can kill them instantly. Without provoking any other units. Despite you being in plain sight. However, they are less OP later in the game.
• Goddamned Bats: The stalker and sentinel robots, as the former like to cling to the ceiling while the latter like to hover and shoot at you. Made particularly annoying by how the game for some reason wont allow you to aim the mini missile launcher higher than a certain amount (even with mouselook). This also makes the turrets a pain to hit, as most are stuck in the ceiling
• Heartwarming Moments: At one point in the Oracle's Temple Blackbird simply tells you (without any sarcasm for once) "You are brave my comrade, I'm honored to be along for the ride"
• Scrappy Weapon: The crossbow, at least with the electrical bolts. Its damage is so low it takes 2 or 3 shots to kill the basic Order guards, and suffers the same problem the mini-missile launcher has of being unable to aim higher than a certain altitude. The poisonous bolts are a bit better, as they don't set off the alarms and can kill most human enemies in one shot, but are pretty much useless against robots (who obviously can't be poisoned.)
• Tear Jerker: The worst ending (which you get if you die while fighting the Big Bad). The Bad Guy Wins and the virus eventually kills everyone. The final bit is especially sad, showing a pile of corpses while the narrator grimly says "There was simply nothing left for it to feed on. We were extinct"
• That One Achievement: The Veteran Edition has two:
  • The "Unstoppable" achievement requires you to finish the game on Bloodbath difficulty. Not only do enemies spawn in their hard mode placements, but they're at their most aggressive, and mechanical enemies even respawn. Oh, and it also asks you to finish the game with the best ending, which is twice as long as the route for the mediocre ending, and requires you to kill the Final Boss to avoid the worst ending, who is extremely difficult because you have to take damage to use the weapon that can kill it. Have "fun".
  • The "Hardcore Warm-up" is even worse. Basically, you have to do the same as previous, but for the "Trust No One" demo. Except replace the best ending route requirement with a 6 minute time limit.
• That One Level:
  • Dear gods, the Training Facility. You need to complete it in order to get full stamina and accuracy (and, in the Steam re-release version, to get the "Top of the class" and "Fully Amphed" achievements), but doing so is virtually impossible; you have to defeat a Crusader at ridiculously close range, and if you survive that you have to (several times) clear death pits in the floor which can just be leapt over with a running jump, and then only with perfect timing.
  • The Proving Grounds runs a close second for being so confusing. Try to get through it without consulting a walkthrough, or examining it with a level editor.
  • The sewers early on. While not as hard as the other examples, they are really long and convoluted, likely resulting in new players going in circles for while before finding the right way. They also have several objectives you have to complete (first find the rat king, then get a guards uniform for him, then follow the path he opens to briefly enter the castle level to get to another part of the sewers, then destroy the generator for the castle forcefield, then finally get back to the surface.) as well as the sewage being poisonous to walk on for too long unless you have a biosuit. Amusingly, Blackbird seems to hate the level just as much as you do, at one point exclaiming "Great. More brown goo."

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