History PhantasyStarOnline2 / TropesNToZ

** Hunter: [[{{BFS}} Swords]], [[WhipSword Wired Lances]], and [[BladeOnAStick Partizans]].

* WeaponTwirling: [[BladeOnAStick Partizans]] have this as their main schtick, and it's not just for RuleOfCool. Not only does it restore a big chunk of PP, if Partizan Gear is learned, letting the PlayerCharacter twirl the Partizan at the end of any combat action, be it standard attacks or Photon Arts, charges the Gear Gauge, which can then be consumed when attacking to boost the Partizan's effective range.

* WeaponOfChoice: Each class has its own set of weapons that are unique to it (barring the universally equippable {{Gunblade}}s, though the Scion classes share them with another:

* SpecialGuest: Vivienne and Lumia Waber from the ''[[VideoGame/PhantasyStarUniverse Universe]]'' saga are unique among guest characters in the sense that they also star in bonus voiced cutscenes that expand on their characters, as part of ''Universe'''s [[MilestoneCelebration 10th anniversary.]][[note]]This is a MythologyGag to ''Phantasy Star Portable 2'', in which the two of them [[spoiler:built a spaceship that allows them to cross interdimensional barriers. The last time they used it, they wound up in [[VideoGame/PhantasyStarOnline Ragol]]]].[[/note]]

* SchizophrenicDifficulty: The North American version has this. To (partially) counteract the effect of having all the balance changes of the Japanese version but only with access to content that wasn't designed for that level of PowerCreep, the Super Hard difficulty was made to always be Level 75 regardless of what Quest you're playing it on. The effects of this are interesting; due to the way HP scaling works on Super Hard, this more or less '''triples''' the HP of basically everything on the difficulty compared to their Japanese counterparts, resulting in a massive DifficultySpike. This trope comes into play with Extra Hard difficulty, which was bumped up to Level 80, but due to the lower effect of stat scaling on XH most enemies on the difficulty have ''less'' HP than their Super Hard counterparts, making most Quests much easier.

** [[NecessaryWeasel Let's face it, this is a staple for [=MMOs=].]] A fair few of the client orders will have a time limit in which to fulfill them, started when you enter the required area/mission; fortunately failing doesn't mean you get kicked out of the area or anything, so it won't interrupt whatever else you're doing.

* UnexpectedCharacter:
** The existence of [[spoiler:the Profound Darkness]] in this continuity caught quite a few series veterans off-guard, since it hasn't made an appearance in any game in the series since its debut game.
** ''Sachiko Kobayashi'', famous ''enka'' singer. She performs in-game with her own concert.
** ''EPISODE 5'' [[TheBusCameBack brings back]] [[VideoGame/PhantasyStarI Alis Landale and Lutz]] as part of the Omega AlternateUniverse.

* UnfortunateImplications: This was the reason why all Specter of Destruction [=EQs=] were taken off March 11th, 2019 and moved to the next day; March 11th is the anniversary of the devastating 2011 Tohoku Earthquake, and the Japanese name of the Quest can easily be perceived as insensitive.

* TurtlePower: Zeshrayda looks like some unholy fusion of [[{{VideoGame/Pokemon}} Blastoise]] and {{Film/Gamera}}.

** The Phantasm-type enemies in Tokyo [[UpToEleven are stranger still]]: their ranks include zombies with blades and machine guns hidden in their torsos, tanks that can summon missile launchers of varying shapes and sizes, polar bears that can split their heads in half to project larger hidden mouths, Tyrannosauruses Rex that can stick their skulls out of their stomachs to use as a WaveMotionGun, and for the field's boss, bullet trains fusing together into a three-headed dragon ala King Ghidora.

* SetBonus: Highly prevalent in the early days of the game were Set Effects, where you can gain bonus stats by equipping multiple items from the same series (usually three units, but sometimes including a weapon, or some combination of weapons and units). This eventually fell out of favor as 12★ Units encouraged mix-and-matching for more flexibility, with only Austere keeping its bonus as a holdover from its 11★ counterpart. However, the game would later go on to introduce Divide Quest 13★ units, which basically cranks this UpToEleven: there are '''54''' Units, 18 each in Rears, Arms, and Legs, and combining any three Units produces a massive stat bonus.

* SinisterGeometry: Most of the architecture on Amduskia is composed of distinctly cubic and cuboid shapes. Some of these can glow, move to trap players, or even (at the Dragon Altar) unfold into turrets. Taken UpToEleven in Destroyed World: Amduskia, where the environment is explicitly ''out to kill you.''

** Summoners generally want to look out for attacks or field gimmicks with a high rate of DamageOverTime, as said damage can be heavily exploited by bringing out Marron and walking into the damage to charge it up quickly. This gets taken [[UpToEleven to ludicrous levels]] with the Primordial Darkness fight specifically, as the generally-accepted speed strategy for the fight is to run far more Marrons than reasonably accepted and stand ''inside the flaming death wall'' during Sodam's fire phase and just start milling through your stash of Marrons, dealing around 5 million to 7 million damage per weak point hit plus Zanverse damage if properly geared. For the truly insane, the ''optimal'' version of this strategy involves '''menuing''' to swap out your KO'd Marrons for live ones. ''In the middle of the fight. While standing in the death wall.''

** [[spoiler:Bethor's death scene]] is one big reference to a certain [[Manga/JojosBizarreAdventure time-stopping]] KnifeNut. Bonus points for also being an ActorAllusion.

** Every NPC has a friendship level that gauges how friendly they are to you. Their friendship level can be raised by doing their Client Orders, and/or going on Quests with their Partner Cards if applicable. The system is mostly negligible, though, as it only affects how they talk to you, though there are some Titles, and [=NPCs=] may give you presents, which range from VendorTrash, to cool, to actually useful.

* VendorTrash:
** If you defeat an Izanekazuchi, it will often drop a rare type of Stone. This is the only Stone that has no value as a trade-in; however, you can dump it on the Item Shop for 50,000 Meseta apiece.
** ''EPISODE 5'' introduced an item called a Meseta Crystal, which has no use except for being sold for a small amount of Meseta.

* PantyShot: Barring the ability to invoke ProperTightsWithASkirt or ModestyShorts, the Rideroid in general is very guilty of this. The stance your character makes when you're using it involves a very bent-over pose, your feet planted on the vehicle while your body is hunched over nearly 90 degrees holding onto the handles; as a result, anyone with a miniskirt will ''always'' flash their panties at the camera.

* YouGottaHaveBlueHair: While a handful of the characters have normal hair colors, there are several characters with funny hair colors like Zeno's red hair, Marlu's light purple hair, Melphonsina's green hair, and so on. The player can gleefully pick any color of the spectrum if they so wish.

* NarratorAllAlong: The ''EPISODE 5'' narrator is [[spoiler:Shiva]]. This makes the fact that [[spoiler:she sounds a lot like Harriet]] much, much more meaningful.

** [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Dragon X and Noire Drahl]] both sport large shields on the sides of their arms. Attempting to attack these severely nerfs the resulting damage. [[ElementalRockPaperScissors Poison]] [[StandardStatusEffects helps]] with that, though.

* StandardStatusEffects:

* StatSticks:
** Harmonizers are completely worthless as actual weapons, since it's the Pet rather than the Summoner that does the fighting, and exist solely to give the wielder ATK and abilities.
** The Combat Cannon Launcher is designed to be this. It has several shortcoming as a actual weapon, including lacking any Super Special Ability slots and having a Potential that effectively handicaps you for having it out. However, it has the highest base raw of any Launcher in the game; this makes it a great candidate for Prominence Assail, as Complex Photon Arts ignore multiplers and scale exclusively off raw stats.

* UnfortunateNames:
** The Goldrahda Launcher is the butt of many jokes in the English fandom due to having the questionable localized name of ''"Illegal Negro"''.
** There's also the unfortunately named fist weapon ''"Hebrew Punisher"''.
** Defeating a UH enemy with an Enemy Shield may produce equipment with the ability "Crack I" on it, which is both rare and valuable. Considering what ''else'' the word "crack" is associated with, many English speakers have fun with it.

** Most infamous are rare weapon materials. These include the Time Reversal Stone Chronos, the Circular Amphitrite Stone, and the Unlocking Liberate. The weapon materials are bar none ''the'' rarest items in the entire game, and are used to make some particularly powerful endgame weapons that are made so powerful ''because'' the materials needed to create them are astronomically rare. Most players will get copies of the materials from handouts like Titles and campaigns, but ''dropping'' them...

** Notoriously, the Elder Pain. It was considered incredibly potent for its time due to its powerful LifeDrain Potential, but was outclassed by ''EPISODE 3'' due to the shift in meta towards stronger weapons. However, even in ''EPISODE 5'', it still remains one of the rarest weapons in existence by sheer virtue of being one of the only pieces of gear in the entire game that requires the player to break a specific part of the target.

** One of the last weapons to be added to the game prior to the release of ''New Genesis'' is the Halo, a 15★ Talis based on the weapon type of the same name from ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarNova''. Its Potential is named "Supernova", playing off the title of the game it hails from.

** One of the last weapons to be added to the game prior to the release of ''New Genesis'' is the Halo, a 15&#9733 Talis based on the weapon type of the same name from ''VideoGame/PhantasyStarNova''. Its Potential is named "Supernova", playing off the title of the game it hails from.

* PunnyName: The name of the class "Luster" puns on the word "last", since it's the ''last'' Class in the game.

* SuperPrototype: The Cosmogenic Arms, the weapons used by the Council of Six and other major [=NPCs=]. Being the first weapons infused with Photons, they're also FlawedPrototypes because their immense power means only certain beings can use them, as well as [[spoiler:being powered by Xion means they lost some of their power once she is killed.]]

* RealityEnsues: ARKS in general is filled with a number of issues the story deconstructs as it goes along:
** ThereAreNoTherapists despite grabbing people from any walks of life if they have any worthwhile Photon potential at all, so characters like Theodor are simply not ''prepared'' for the tragedy that can ensue in losing loved ones. Consequently, [[spoiler:Theodor goes absolutely apeshit with insanity in the aftermath of Ulku's death, something caused by Luther to gain himself a worthwhile pawn]]. It's even worse in ''Anime/PhantasyStarOnline2EpisodeOracle'' because the sheer carnage and death of on-field warfare is [[BloodierAndGorier brutally demonstrated]], but no one seemingly gets any help over it all much less the series' version of the protagonist, Ash.
** The entire organization was put together by Photoners and [[spoiler:Xion]], which means someone like [[ObviouslyEvil Luther]] has full tyrannical control from behind the scenes and the Council of Six can't do a damn thing about it until it's too late. [[spoiler:This nearly gets the Player Character killed because of exploited evidence and a ''brainwashing'' Code ABYSS order across the entire ARKS to suppress them, and severely harms the public trust in ARKS as well as makes everyone in the organization realize how screwed up everything is.]]
** In between Luther's shenanigans, the Dark Falz forces, and more new occurring threats with time, the whole organization practically falls apart at the seams because said Council are too hands-off with much of the management while placing tight laws restricting the knowledge of very crucial events "for morale reasons", and most of the operatives on the ground simply don't communicate with eachother well at all if something rotten is afoot. As a result, problems that could've been prevented [[PoorCommunicationKills simply aren't]] because the heroes were not prepared for almost any of it. Between all of this, Xiao and Ulku end up having to severely work overtime to try to fix the organization, and do away with all the secrecy as they directly communicate and work with all operatives, especially the Player Character at the focal point of everything.
** ARKS was so twisted under Luther's control that [[spoiler:Risa]] silently bid her time for potentially a century or longer rather than dare speak up about anything involving what she knew of the bigger picture, never mind [[spoiler:containing the Oracle version of Hariette's soul within her]]. Once this gets pointed out in the ''Episode 6'' opener, the Council of Six can only solemnly agree on the sentiment due to their own failure to stop the obvious madman before.
** On a different subject, the protagonist's TimeTravel power gained in ''Episode 2'' is liberally used at first to SetRightWhatOnceWentWrong, but gets shuffled quietly to the side mostly because of what it took to get to the episode's conclusion in the first place. Alma retroactively implies that Xion intentionally kept looping the events of the story over and over with nudges to a desired outcome - so if the protagonist did any more attempts to change history, such as [[spoiler:preventing Xion's HeroicSacrifice]] or interfering with [[spoiler:Matoi nearly being corrupted into the Profound Darkness]] (though Xion herself manually blocked off that one), everything Xion and the heroes had worked towards could become undone with [[ButterflyOfDoom potentially disasterous results]]. Thus, time travel goes off-limits [[spoiler:until Matoi herself breaks this silent rule at the very end of ''Episode 6'' to save the protagonist.]]

** ''EPISODE 4'' has the Ame-no-Murakumo, a MidSeasonUpgrade Hitsugi acquires that enables the wielder to temporarily dispel the effects of aether from a desired target.

** The offical North American translation seems to be confused as to whether Quna's song added in in the Episode 3 concert is "Never-Ending Story" or "Endless Story". Other similar inconsistancies are peppered thoughought the localization such as Hilda saying "godspeed!" while her word balloon says "gods be!" and Melitta says "Something's coming... I think!" ...Probably!